Chapter 26 - Jillian
JILLIAN
“You don’t fool me, oh babe, you don’t fool me”
— “You Don’t Fool Me” by UFO
It feels like I blink and wake up at my desk in the office on Tuesday morning. My hair is still damp from a shower I barely remember taking and I’m wearing a horribly wrinkled, mismatched outfit. All highly unlike me.
My external environment is no better. The desk is a disaster zone, with papers piled up everywhere, notes left half-unfinished. The only thing it’s got going for it is that it’s a pretty accurate representation of my mental state.
I sit down and open my laptop and then just look at the screen for a while. My cursor blinks in an empty search bar, but I don’t type anything.
I can still feel him. That’s the problem. Not just the obvious stuff, although yes, that, too—the fingerprints on my inner thigh, the ache between my legs. But also his hands on my face when he pulled the mask off. The fading bruise around his eye that his father gave him.
My father ordered me to kill you.
“Yo!” someone crows from behind me. “If it isn’t my little cup of— Oh my God, Jill, what the hell happened to you?”
I spin around in my chair. Weston is standing there with two coffees, one already extended toward me, but his face has gone from cheerful to concerned.
“Nothing happened to me,” I mumble, taking the coffee and carefully pointing my face away from him. “I’m fine.”
“You are not fine,” he emphasizes. “You look like you slept in a dumpster. And I mean that with love.”
“You do know how to make a girl feel special.”
God, it’s hard to summon my usual sarcasm today. I am completely unmoored and floundering, and Weston knows it. Unfortunately, he’s not the kind of guy to let me off the hook easily.
He perches on the edge of my desk and studies me. “Seriously, Jill, what’s going on? Talk to me. This is a safe space.”
I take a sip of coffee and, like a captain going down with a sinking ship, I stick to my regularly scheduled programming. “It was just a late night. Met a guy at a bar. You know how it goes.”
Weston doesn’t laugh, waggle his eyebrows, ask for details, or make some dumb joke about my sexual stamina. He just looks at me skeptically and declares, “Bullshit.”
“It’s not bullshit!”
“It is grade-A farm fertilizer. I would know, I’m from Wisconsin.
” He pulls me closer on my wheely chair and drags my hand into his lap.
“Jill, sweetheart, you roll in here every day looking like a goddamn magazine cover. Hair done, outfit coordinated, nails perfect. Today, you’re wearing a navy blazer with black pants and your shirt is inside out. ”
I glance down. My shirt is, in fact, inside out. And backwards. The tag is poking out right under my chin. Fuck me.
“So whatever’s going on,” he continues, “it’s not from a fun one-night stand. Try again.”
The look in Weston’s eyes says there’s no chance in hell I’ll be wriggling out of this one.
But what am I supposed to do? The truth is obviously out of the question.
After what happened to Elliot, the last thing I’m going to do is get another innocent person wrapped up in this sordid shit.
My normal lies and pretenses are also not gonna fly, though, so I’m feeling stuck.
Fortunately, I’m saved. Sort of. Not that Doug is much of a superhero, because once he starts talking, I realize it’s really more of an “out of the frying pan and into the fire” kind of situation.
“Weston, scram,” orders Doug as he stalks up, pointing toward Weston’s cubicle with his bagel. “You owe me five hundred words by eleven A.M. and, if my suspicions are correct, you haven’t written a single damn one of them.”
Weston blushes guiltily. “Aye-aye, fearless leader.” He glances at me and frowns, then mouths, We’ll talk later, okay? I flash him a thumbs-up and he trots away.
I try to pretend like I’m headed to the ladies’ room to escape the wrath of my editor, but my ass is barely an inch off the seat before Doug redirects his bagel at me like the royal scepter he seems to think it is. “I don’t think so, Pierce. Pop a squat. Debrief me.”
Sighing, I sit back down, resigned to my fate. “As you wish, Your Majesty.”
He wrinkles his nose. “You’ve been hanging out with Weston too much. Your sass is starting to sound like his. Anyway. As it were. Did you get a sit-down with anyone at Lazarev yesterday?”
I put on my best I’m definitely not lying face and shake my head. “I tried, but this ice queen communications director stonewalled me. Offered to pass along my questions through ‘proper channels.’”
“So that’s a no.”
“It felt more like a ‘no, and also go fuck yourself.’”
Doug grunts and holds up his phone screen.
“Then why are you sitting here? Kir Lazarev’s doing a ribbon-cutting at a children’s hospital this afternoon.
His family’s charitable foundation donated a new wing to save kids with incurable cancer of the eyebrow or whatever the fuck.
It’s a big donor photo op, the whole nine yards.
Local press pool, too, and an open gaggle afterward. ”
“What’s that got to do with me?”
He glances up at the heavens like he’s praying for the patience to deal with me.
“It’s a chance to get in front of the younger Lazarev, numbskull.
You show up, you introduce yourself, you shake his hand, you ask for a formal sit-down.
That’s it. You don’t have to ambush the guy.
Just get your face in front of him so next time you call his office, you’re not a stranger. ”
My chin falls to my chest. “Do I have to?”
Doug doesn’t even deign that with an answer. He just brandishes the bagel at me one more time. Pumpernickel today, I see. Good on him for mixing it up. “Wear something that doesn’t have the tag sticking out.” Then he stomps off, whistling Vivaldi under his breath.
Grimacing, I grab my press badge and my voice recorder, shrug on my coat, and make for the door. On the way out, I catch my reflection in the scuffed chrome of the elevator doors.
Alright, Kir… Game time.
The children’s hospital is on the Upper East Side, a big modern building with a fresh banner strung across the entrance that reads LAZAREV FAMILY FOUNDATION — PEDIATRIC ONCOLOGY WING.
Inside, a Lazarev Global PR team has corralled the members of the media into a bright atrium with balloons and a podium.
The press pool is small. I count six reporters and two camera crews.
A local NBC affiliate, a couple of health trade publications, a blogger I vaguely recognize from a philanthropy newsletter.
Nobody from the Times Metro desk, which means Bartlett isn’t here to steal my scoop. That’s a small relief.
I grab a spot near the back, behind a cameraman adjusting his tripod.
I flip open my notebook and click my pen, same as everyone else.
Just another reporter covering a donor photo op on a Tuesday afternoon.
Nothing to see here. Who, me? Sleeping with the CEO?
! No, no, of course not! You’ve got the wrong woman.
At the top of the hour, Kir emerges through a side door flanked by two hospital administrators and a woman I recognize as Vera, the press liaison I met yesterday.
He’s wearing black suit pants with a crisp white shirt and no jacket or tie.
It’s casual and charmingly at-ease, with none of the predatory menace of the man who darkened my door and murmured filthy promises in my ear twelve hours ago.
For starters, this version of Kir is smiling.
It’s a smile that makes you trust him instantly.
Well, I don’t, but others might. He shakes hands with the hospital CEO, laughs at something one of the doctors says, and then crouches down to talk to a little girl in a wheelchair with a bald head and an IV pole.
He stays down there for a while. It’s not a quick photo-op crouch, either.
He’s legitimately talking to her, eye level, nodding very seriously at whatever she’s telling him.
The girl giggles. Kir reaches into his jacket pocket and produces a small stuffed animal and hands it to her. She hugs it against her chest, spilling over with love.
I watch all of this with my pen frozen above my notebook. What the hell am I supposed to note about that?
When the gaggle opens, he steps to the podium and handles the initial barrage of softball questions without breaking a sweat.
What inspired the donation, what’s next for the foundation, how does it feel to give back.
He answers every one with warmth and specificity.
Damn near every woman in the room sighs longingly when he talks about “building a world where every child gets the full and happy life they deserve.” I’d bet dollars to donuts that they’re all thinking, Did he say “child”?
I’ll give him a child if that’s what he wants.
Goddammit, he’s very, very good at this.
Then the moderator points to the back of the room. “Last question.”
Before I lose my nerve, I jump to my feet.
Kir’s gaze lands on me and freezes. For a fraction of a second, something swims behind those gray eyes, though I’m too far away to see exactly what it is. But it only last that long. Then he waits with a bland, pleasant smile on his face, like I’m just the same as every other reporter in here.
“Jillian Pierce, New York Times,” I announce in the clearest voice I can muster.
“Mr. Lazarev, Lazarev Global’s charitable arm has donated over forty million dollars to New York institutions in the last three years alone.
Can you speak to whether any of those donations are connected to ongoing legal concerns facing the parent company or its subsidiaries?
Are you trying to distract the public from some less-than-savory elements of your family business? ”
My question sucks all the air out of the room.
The NBC guy lowers his phone. The blogger stops typing.
“Jesus Christ, woman, it’s a children’s hospital event,” someone mutters under their breath.
Vera, off to the side, is suddenly white-knuckling her clipboard like she’s trying to determine if she could sever my head with it if she threw it hard enough.
Kir grins.
Those eyes, though… They aren’t smiling at all.
“That’s a great question,” he says. “And I appreciate the creative accusation you worked in there, too. The short answer is no. Our foundation operates independently of the parent company’s legal and business affairs, always has, and every dollar is publicly audited and available on our website.
I’d encourage anyone interested to take a look.
It’s pretty dry reading, but transparency usually is. ”
A couple of polite laughs ripple through the room. His gaze lingers on me for one more heartbeat before he turns to look at someone else.
I’m still standing stupidly in place. “If I could just follow up on—”
“I think we’ll leave it there,” Kir interrupts smoothly. He points to a reporter in the second row. “Yes, go ahead.”
The NBC cameraman to my left snickers under his breath. Not loud, but loud enough for me to feel my face go hot and sit back down, pen pressed so hard against my notebook that the tip punches through the page.
The next reporter asks some marshmallow question about the foundation’s plans for next year. Kir answers it with the same easy nonchalance he gave everyone else. He doesn’t look at me again.
A few minutes later, the gaggle ends. The rest of the members of the press start the slow shuffle out of the room, but I stay in my seat, recorder still running, pen still in hand, face still burning from getting publicly swatted down in a room full of colleagues.
The NBC guy nudges me on his way past. “Swing and a miss, eh there, Lois Lane?”
“Helpful as always, Ed,” I snap at him.
He smirks shamelessly and keeps walking.
Behind him, an older woman I vaguely recognize from one of the health trade pubs pauses at my shoulder and lowers her voice.
“Word of advice, honey? Don’t poke the Lazarevs.
They have long memories and longer reach.
I’ve been covering philanthropy in this city for twenty years, and I’ll tell you this: The reporters who go after that family tend to find themselves covering school board meetings in Albany.
If they’re lucky, that is. Some of them find themselves wearing concrete shoes in the East River. ”
“I appreciate the concern,” I tell her acidly. “Don’t you want to go ask Kir a follow-up question about how good it feels to help children in need?”
She recoils at my obvious and vicious sarcasm. Then she shrugs and tucks her notebook into her tote bag. “Your funeral, darling.”
I watch her go, then click off my recorder and drop it into my coat pocket.
Stay away from the Lazarevs?
Ha. Yeah, right.
It’s way too late for that.