Page 98 of Take Her
Junior didn’t appear to notice anything; he just started pacing. “This should be illegal?—”
“Explain what part of it you don’t understand?” I asked him, full of saccharine. “Maybe I can help?”
Years of doing doe-eyes in my favor served me well, as he glanced over to see if I was teasing him, and then decided I was not.
Fuck you, my soul said, so emphatically it was hard not to give the words voice. Fuck you for ever thinking you were better than me.
My eyes drilled lasers into him as he furiously texted on his phone. Other people outside the cage could look in, and I knew what they were seeing: him, looking like he’d just licked voltage, and me, calm and collected.
“If you’re done—I’ve got stuff to do, Junior,” I said, tucking a lock of hair back behind my ear. “Being Corvo’s investor relations officer is going to be a lot of work. I need to get started.”
I made sure to sound simple and clueless—which wasn’t entirely far off from the truth, where investments were involved—and he just kept reading his screen, then he snorted.
“Where’s Rhaim?”
“With Dad,” I said, shrugged, and then leaned over slightly, indicating that he should see himself to the door.
“Yeah, well, my dad and your dad are going to have some words,” he said, pocketing his phone, before staring at me. “He said to tell you hi, by the way.”
It was a good thing I already had a smile plastered on my face, because otherwise he would’ve seen me looking gut-punched.
My heart started racing, my stomach acid burned, and stupid parts of me that I could not control began wanting to cry.
“He does?” I said, to buy myself time, my voice rising.
Then I briefly looked out the window at the cityscape beyond him.
I was the one in this office, right now. I belonged here, all the way. Rhaim would make sure of it.
And I knew where the bodies were buried.
“Tell him hi back from me,” I said, letting go of a held breath as I turned my attention back to Junior.
It was the first time I’d stood up to Freddie Senior since I’d burned my old house down.
And the second it was done, I wondered why I hadn’t done it sooner.
“You can tell him yourself, he’ll be home in for your Dad’s birthday,” Junior said, without passing it along on his phone.
But I knew I’d tried.
And if I’d managed it once, I could manage it again.
Junior glared at me, then looked back—more than one pair of curious eyes from the outer offices were on us—on him—wondering why the hell he was inside the cage with me, losing his shit, and he finally realized this. There wasn’t any other furniture in the office yet, and we both knew if he sat down in Rhaim’s chair and Rhaim came back and found him in it...
“Tell your boss I need to speak to him,” he said gruffly, trying to reclaim control over the situation.
“Okay!” I said cheerfully, and gave him a wave as he walked on out. Then I made a little bit of a can you believe that just happened? face and smiled at anyone still looking in, a true smile—and made a mental note to figure out when all of their birthdays were, if they had kids, and anything else in their lives that might be significant to them.
I was going to get them on my side.
I’d start with this floor, then the whole building, then with the groups Rhaim wanted me to meet, until my being on the board was an inevitability.
Rhaim came back twenty minutes later. He looked around the office and breathed in the air. “Junior?”
“Yeah,” I said with a nod. Freddie Junior did have a pungent aftershave.
His eyes flickered over me in a proprietary fashion, then after finding me whole, he asked, “You okay?”