Leverage #3
The pressure on her throat, the restriction of her breath, his thumb on her pulse point: Her world narrows to these things, and her grasp in the sheets spasms, sweat-soaked.
It doesn’t feel like she was anything before he forced her through this, near crying—before this overwhelming crush, when he’s as deep inside of her as he can go, hand wrapped around her throat—and the terrifying freedom in the thought that he could push further still—adjust his hold, pure weight on her windpipe—that he could clean everything away until she’s nothing but a dwindling breath—
The silence collapses in on her. A spectacular bloom of heat that drains her of herself.
As her vision fades, she wonders if he’ll let go in time.
Light creeps in.
An unfamiliar room, soft sheets.
Pushing onto her elbows, she winces at the soreness in her hips, in her throat. Blinking against the shift of morning, trying
to make sense of her surroundings.
A salmon-colored newspaper is tucked under a breakfast tray across the room. Fresh orange juice, black coffee. Steam wafting.
Movement in the bed beside her. A broad shape snags in her periphery: tangled sheets, back turned to her, expanse of skin,
sleep-mussed dark hair—
Oh, fuck.
Silently, Lili slips out of the bed. She snatches her dress and shoes, downs a glass of water from the frankly offensively
extravagant kitchen, and steals out of the loft.
She calls an emergency meeting at Domino Park.
“What do you know about him?”
James takes a long, luxuriant sip of his iced coffee.
“Well, he used to work with my father, back at Goldman,” he starts.
“Started out in London. Then went over to BlackRiver after some succession disputes, which I don’t think my father ever really forgave him for.
Told him that BlackRiver wouldn’t amount to anything, and look how that turned out—world’s largest shadow bank, biggest asset manager globally, all that.
Anyway, worked out of the Hong Kong offices for a while.
No, wait, maybe Shanghai? Either way, led their APAC expansion, massive M be forced
to let go again, like she did that night.
She swallows, forcefully. “You know, your entire industry is evil,” Lili says, words clumsy. She’s acutely aware of the fact
that she doesn’t look like she did that night. Her nose piercing is restored, dirt under her nails from extra work shifts
she picked up over the last week at the farm, messy bun, short skirt with combat boots. She grasps for intellectual contention
to exert distance, to push him back. “Helping the disgustingly rich get richer. All you do is entrench systems of oppression
and inequality to benefit elites. Billionaires shouldn’t even exist.”
“Is that so?” he says. His arm rests on the back of the banquette, shoulders broad under the cut of his suit. Commanding space,
it’s like he’s the center of this entire godforsaken restaurant. “What about you? What do you do?”
“I’m a radical anarchist freegan tarot card reader with a strong communist bent,” she deadpans. She tries not to stare at
his fingers—his mouth—as he takes a drink of coffee; tries to smother all her want. “Eat the rich, all of that, you know.”
“I’d think the anarchism and communism incompatible,” he muses.
Lili freezes.
“But I’m not clear on what the youth are espousing these days,” he concedes. “We were still passing around The German Ideology when I was an undergrad. Probably passé now.”
“Where’d you go to school?” she asks, before she can help herself.
“England. Then Boston.” He adjusts his sleeve, checking the fit of his cuff links in a habitual movement.
Lili digs her nails into her palm.
“You didn’t answer,” he says. “What do you actually do?”
“Oh. Right. Um, grad school.”
“Studying what?”
“Economics,” she mutters.
Aleksandr grins, like he’s caught her. “And you needed a primer on shorting stocks from second-year analysts? Where are you
studying?”
“Columbia.”
“Impressive.”
She instinctively tenses, but it doesn’t sound mocking at all. It sounds like he’s praising her.
Take it, sweetheart—there you go, come on, just like that—
She takes a hot swallow of coffee.
“What do you plan to do after that?” he asks. “You’re friends with Greene’s boy. Investment banking?”
“Hardly,” Lili retorts, bristling at him knowing anything about her, even if it’s just her friendship with James. She wonders
what else he might have found out. “I’d like to actually do some good in the world—UNHCR, the Development Program, ECOSOC.
Maybe dismantle the hegemony of Western capitalism as a sleeper agent within the World Bank or IMF. Undo some of the damage
you’re doing.”
“What a saint.”
That is mocking. She frowns—about to retort—when her phone buzzes.
“Shit.” Jackie. “I have to go; I’m late for a friend—”
Aleksandr stands as she gets up, elegant where she scrambles.
“Um,” she says, looking up at him. “So, I guess—bye—”
He plucks her phone out of her hand. He taps in a phone number, and then his own phone buzzes in his suit’s breast pocket.
He takes it out, and smiles, before handing her phone back.
“Goodbye, Miss Marwan.”
When Lili’s halfway down the street, she looks back over her shoulder. His newspaper is up again, but he’s looking at her
over it.
Aleksandr smirks, and she flushes.