Page 3 of The Grand Duel

To keep showing up.

Today, a week from now, and the one after that.

Lance can make his choices, and I’ll take the consequences of them on the chin and make my own—I’ll come back here and sit in that room again knowing full well he won’t see me—but fuck him for doing this to her. To them. To all of us.

Fuck him for doing this tome.

I locate my phone ringing beneath the wheel of someone’s car. When I pick it up, I find the screen cracked and the edges peppered with scratches, rubble still sticking to the aluminium.

I swipe across the screen and answer. “What is it, Mase?”

Mason Lowell, one of my oldest friends, pauses, his frown likely to be as severe as my pounding head. “Aldridge, you okay? Your message is telling me you’re stressed.”

“I’m fine, Lowell. Five o’clock, yeah?”

ONE

Lissie

London City Centre ate my ass this afternoon.

Not literally, obviously.

But I would say it’s a perfectly acceptable way to summarise getting sandwiched on the tube between bodies and eyes I refused to meet whilst some vile excuse of a human dipped their hand into my bag and took my purse.

It was enough. I was rattled. And then the universe whispered in my ear, “Lissie, you’re not just going to let them run off with your purse, are you?”

Being the proactive, positive woman I am, I said, “Absolutely not,” and off I went. My favourite pair of Christian Louboutin’s? Well, they said sit down. On the dirty tube station floor. Sprawled out like a fucking fish.

I hope they needed it.

I hope my cashless purse changes their life for the greater good, and that anus-faced prick goes on to find the cure to every disease known to man.

Positive, positive, positive. I am the face of positivity. It lives within me. It’s my body. My next step. It’s?—

“Alright, darlin’. Need me to give you?—”

“Fuck off.”

—missing.

In fact, I’m pretty sure I left my positivity somewhere between North Greenwich and the dirt I ate on the ground at London Liverpool Street.

The job interview I’m on my way to is nestled down a sleepy side street on the outskirts of Shoreditch, a law firm owned by a thirty-something rich guy, who is in need of an assistant.

I googled him last night over a bottle of wine.

And then there’s me. Lissie Elton. A twenty-four-year-old rich girl, who, apparently, is far more stubborn than her mother gives her credit for.

Case in point: the stupid girl with an honour’s degree in criminal law and a trust fund that could feed a small country, hobbling towards the doors of a position as an assistant, purseless and technically homeless.

Let’s hope they haven’t googled me.

I straighten out the skirt of my dress and look up at the building in front of me.

Feeling as ready as I’ll ever be, I force open the door to Charles Aldridge’s offices.

Only it doesn’t budge.