Chapter 5
5
Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him.
THE ART OF WAR , SUN TZU
OPERATION TROJAN HORSE
Get CM’s password.
Kill CM.
Re-write web copy.
Find another new coffee place.
Just Desserts WhatsApp Group. 9.56EST.
Bella
Is it illegal to use computer password spyware and where might one get hold of it?
Sienna
Why do you need it?
Bella
The less I say the better.
Every single part of Bella ached. It had been two days and she still hadn’t recovered from her run in Central Park on Saturday. Which was why she’d decided that no matter what the time was she was wholly justified in eating the red velvet cake she’d bought from the bakery that offered gorgeous cakes but disgusting coffee.
As she swallowed the sweet deliciousness, she glared at Chase as he walked from his office to the kitchenette. He’d known about the diversion and had specifically decided not to tell her about it.
What wasn’t his fault was the alcohol-fuelled headache she’d incurred while helping Astrid pick out the most suitable clothing to seduce Aiden Carter with. But as it was her muscles that hurt the most, from visiting four of the galleries she’d identified as Nayak’s closest competition for research purposes after the unnecessarily long run she’d taken, Bella had absolutely no qualms about holding Chase wholly responsible for her agonies.
‘You’re growling,’ Maurice observed.
‘I am not,’ Bella flatly denied.
‘Well, you were . It’s only 10a.m. on a Monday morning. Who put sand in your panties?’
‘No one,’ she said, shooting another glare at Chase as returned to his office.
She’d arrived early, in the hope to snoop around a bit, but Chase was already here. And because she’d already looked over the briefing document for her meeting with Magenta later that afternoon and prepared for the meeting with Maurice to discuss the plans for Nayak’s quarterly magazine later that morning, she had turned her attention to the gallery’s computer files, hoping that somewhere someone had documented each user’s passwords.
Of course, if she’d been office manager, she would have put everyone’s passwords somewhere safe, but easy to hand in case someone was taken ill, or was out of reach and the team needed access to information in their emails.
Bella assumed that if there was a list of passwords, it would have been given to Ali, as gallery assistant. And having read through the pack Ali put together for her, and been pleasantly surprised by the level of information and organisation, Bella knew it wouldn’t simply be in a folder marked passwords.
She flicked from one folder to another, in the admin folder. Contact lists, addresses, copies of identification.
‘If you’re not in the middle of something, we could meet now?’ Maurice asked, peering over the top of his computer at her.
Bella bit her lip. It was quite clear by her demeanour that she was in the middle of something – something that Good Bella would never be caught doing in a million years.
‘Not at all, Maurice. I just need a minute,’ she hedged, hoping that ‘CRIMINAL’ wasn’t written in a painful red blush across her forehead for him to see. She clicked through another folder titled important , then documents , then sick days .
Maurice stood.
Bella knew she could come back to it, but she’d come so far. And, after all, Ali was an Alpha Phi who would absolutely be so organised as to keep passwords located within reach of when she would be documenting sick days.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Maurice check his watch, his right eye twitching in warning.
Bella clicked on the Excel spreadsheet, skimmed a glance over the bottom tabs.
Notes.
A shadow cast down over her keyboard.
‘If now isn’t a good time?’
‘Not at all, Maurice. Now is perfect,’ she replied with a mega-watt smile, the fizz of victory running through her veins. She grabbed her folder, mentally retracing the folder pathway.
Admin, internal, personnel, sick days, bottom tab, notes, passwords .
She was in. Jason Bourne, eat your heart out.
* * *
Only six hours later, she was feeling more like the villain that Bourne had just beaten the daylights out of.
Bella stared at the documents provided by Eloise, the project manager from Magenta who had been working with Julia, and couldn’t work out whether Julia was a mastermind at disguising her ineptitude, or Chase Carter was bordering on criminally negligent.
It had taken every bit of Bella’s self-control not to drop all sense of propriety and ask a very Astrid sounding question: What the fuck? That she had been driven to the point of uttering a curse in a professional setting should have been warning enough. Instead she had asked Eloise to give her a précis of the situation as she saw it.
And now Bella wished she hadn’t.
She flicked a gaze at Maurice, wondering whether he knew or was in the dark like she had been. But discarded the thought as soon as it arose. She knew the pride he took in his work, and his integrity wouldn’t have countenanced such deception.
But Bella needed a minute. Because while Bella could certainly use the information she’d gleaned to knock a chunk out of Chase Miller, it would also bring down the entire gallery. And she didn’t want to do that. They were hard-working people, Maurice was clearly fiercely loyal under neath all his snark, and Ali was just joyous and Bella would hate to do anything that would dim that light.
‘The generally held belief is that the last comms director quit under mysterious circumstances. That Nayak is a bored billionaire playing with Daddy’s money and wouldn’t know a piece of artwork from a toilet. That hiring you was a PR stunt – no offence.’
Offence had been taken.
‘I’m only repeating what’s being said. And rumours are that you’ve lost your featured artist. At this point it would be a miracle if this gallery gets to opening night at all.’
Oh yes. Bella could absolutely find the straw that would break Chase’s back, but it would break hers and everyone else’s too, and she didn’t even have to check in with the girls to know that they had a zero collateral damage policy.
They had lost their featured artist and Chase had not told her, communications director! He’d let her be blindsided by an external hire and oohhhhh she was mad.
Oh, this man!
* * *
Bella hovered in the corridor between their offices, drumming her fingers on the folder, deciding how to play it. She took one step towards his office then stopped. Then turned to go back to her desk, anger making her forget that the entire office, including Chase, could see her wavering. And then finally, deciding to confront him, she turned to find Chase already holding the door open and gesturing her inside.
The bemused expression on his face just made her even more mad. And what he saw in hers was clearly enough for him to think again.
‘What is it?’ he asked, as if concerned.
As. If . Concerned.
Did this man even have a conscience?
She opened her mouth, but closed it to prevent the stream of hot angry fury from pouring out into the room. Years of being the good girl, the fixer, the smoother of heated emotions warred with outrage and she was caught in the vortex of that storm, helpless and immobile.
‘Bella, are you okay?’ Chase asked, very concerned this time as he guided her into a seat on the sofa.
No. She wasn’t okay. She was furious with male incompetence, with their egos, with their refusal to communicate the basics, like we’ve lost our featured artist , or I don’t want to marry you . She just couldn’t keep her cool around this man and every time he did something to make her mad, it all came pouring out. Why? Why was it like that? Why couldn’t she control herself and her emotions any more?
Shockingly on the verge of tears, Bella felt a small glass of cool water thrust into her hands.
‘Drink that.’
She did as was told and the moment that the sharp hit of vodka caught the back of her throat, she promptly spat it out. All over Chase.
He leaped back with a yelp, while Bella proceeded to choke on the fumes from the sudden shocking mouthful of alcohol.
‘What is wrong with you?’ she demanded when she could finally find her breath.
‘You looked like you’d had a shock,’ Chase replied defensively.
‘And your solution is to feed me alcohol?’
‘I asked, several times , if you were okay and you didn’t reply,’ he said, brushing his shirt and tie down with a napkin.
She swallowed around a slightly raw throat – though she couldn’t precisely say whether that was from the alcohol or the coughing and sank into the sofa. Where did she start? She knew where.
‘Why did Julia quit?’ Bella demanded.
‘What?’ Chase’s response to the question was confusion.
‘I want to know why Julia quit?’ Bella asked firmly. Lack of information created a vacuum, a vacuum filled with far-reaching answers, all of which were beginning to make Bella faintly nauseous.
Chase sat in the chair opposite, peering at her until understanding dawned in his eyes. His hands fisted and flexed on his thighs.
He looked her hard in the eye.
‘Whatever you’re thinking, it’s absolutely wrong,’ he said, slashing his hand through the air.
‘You don’t know what I’m thinking,’ Bella replied, trying to keep her cool.
‘Don’t ever play poker, Carmichael.’
‘This isn’t a time for jokes, Chase,’ she said, with all the poise she didn’t feel.
She could see the muscle in his jaw flickering from the pressure he’d applied to his teeth.
‘Julia is in Cabo.’
‘What?’ Bella asked, not expecting the answer.
‘She didn’t even bother handing in her notice. Her father – a friend of Tej’s – called me one morning to tell me Julia wasn’t coming back and that he’d pick up her things just before the office closed for Christmas,’ Chase declared mutinously.
‘Cabo?’
‘Yes, Bella, it’s where…’
Spoiled socialites , Bella’s mind filled in the blank left by Chase’s words.
‘Rich kids go to have fun,’ he finished pointedly, as if Bella didn’t know how to have fun.
She knew how to have fun! She did .
Bella sighed, smoothing the sides of her hair back as she gathered her thoughts.
‘She was a silly kid with no skill and a whole lot of desperation, whose father’s intervention put her in a position she wasn’t ready for,’ he explained. ‘There’s nothing more to it.’
‘Okay,’ she said, ordering it in her mind. ‘And the featured artist?’
Air punched out of Chase’s lungs. Jesus Christ , she was hitting him with both barrels today.
‘How did you know about that?’ he demanded, rising out of his chair.
She glared at him and he couldn’t quite work out whether her famous poise was holding her tongue, or just because she was that angry.
‘Our PR firm heard rumours. Do the team know?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he confessed, taking a breath. ‘I’d wanted to be able to present the team with a solution.’
He’d wanted so much not to fuck this up. Dammit. He ran a hand over his face.
‘You have to tell them,’ she as much as accused.
‘No,’ he denied. Not until he’d figured out who to replace the featured artist with.
She stared at him blankly, the look having the same impact as a sharp inhale of frustration, which was impressive, really, when you thought about it.
‘I would like you to advise me how best to do my job when you are withholding significant information from me,’ she articulated with such patience that it only served to show how impatient she was with him.
Chase barked out a laugh.
‘You know, most people would phrase that question differently,’ he said.
‘How so?’
‘Something along the lines of… How the fuck am I supposed to do my job like this?’
He watched her closely. She all but flinched at his curse.
Jesus, they were like chalk and cheese. But that didn’t mean she was wrong.
He bit his lip, failing to see her eyes flick between his mouth and his gaze and by the time he glanced back to her there was a pretty blush on her cheeks, presumably from his curse, or her question.
‘Is this how you want to run a gallery?’ she asked hotly. He seemed to have driven her beyond the boundaries of her usual poise, and that he felt a second’s worth of pleasure from it was warning enough. But he couldn’t deny that he quite liked seeing her off balance, when it was all he was most of the time. ‘We’re all doing separate things and no one person is talking to another. It will be a miracle if we make it to opening at this rate,’ Bella said as if more to herself than to him. But it was her last jab that landed particularly hard. ‘How can we help you if you won’t let us?’
The question reverberated in Chase’s mind, echoing back through the years. One that he’d said himself, to the father who had been stretched to the point of breaking. Standing in his father’s garage, sucking the smell of oil and exhaust into his lungs the way most kids did with the sugar in a candy store. His father, his hero, callused hands the size of dinner plates and overalls that were never clean, utterly devastated by the loss of the wife he’d loved more than anything in this world.
All those people who’d come by after the funeral, wanting to help with food, or things around the house and his father had not let anyone help him. He’d done it all himself – the Miller way – but it had come at a cost. Unable to talk about his feelings, a distance had grown between them, and Chase had been left alone to navigate his grief. A distance that became physical when he’d left for art college in London.
Was that what he was doing now? Making the same mistake as his father?
‘Can I ask, what is it you want for Nayak?’ Those grey eyes, startling and surprising in such a classically beautiful face, delving where he didn’t want her to go.
‘Because I can’t see it,’ Bella said. ‘Not in any of the material provided to Magenta, not in the website design, not in the artists that you have managed to secure. I can’t see it in the layout, I can’t… see it,’ she concluded with frustration.
That she even wanted to see it was frankly a minor miracle. So far, since arriving, he’d insulted her, tested her without her knowledge, withheld information that she needed to do her job and – from the looks of the way she’d held herself walking around the office – accidentally committed bodily harm by omission.
Is this how you want to run a gallery?
Christ, no. He railed at the accusation. He’d just… he’d just wanted to prove that he could do it. He’d wanted to come up with the solutions. Wanted to get them out of the mess that he’d caused. Dammit.
And it was his fault that she couldn’t see what he wanted Nayak New York to be. Tej trusted him completely. He wanted, needed , Bella to see what he did, what he knew Nayak could be. He might not be able to explain it, but he could show her.
He looked at his watch.
‘What are you doing right now?’
She squinted at him. ‘I’m talking to my boss,’ she said slowly as if he were a child, or had had a stroke. Either one was a possibility in her eyes, he realised with a smirk.
‘Funny. Okay, do you have plans after work or can you come somewhere with me?’
‘Now?’
‘No. Tomorrow.’
‘Funny,’ she shot back and him and his thought was, There is still hope .
He pulled out his phone and fired off a message to an old friend.
She was right. What he wanted for Nayak wasn’t here. But hopefully when she saw what he wanted to show her, she’d get it.
‘Grab your stuff. I want to show you something,’ he said.
She hesitated.
‘If you want to see what I want from Nayak, then this is it,’ he said. Now or never. It seemed a tad on the dramatic side, but for some reason it felt that way.
‘Okay,’ she said, rising and leaving his office to get her things. His phone pinged with a message from Mannon explaining that keys had been left with security. The simple act of trust in Mannon’s reply meant a million times more now that he was starting his own gallery.
And frankly, after Annalise, he wasn’t sure that he’d ever be able to trust someone like that ever again.