Chapter 3
The scarlet goddess, my darling, my love.
Crisis
“You are a waste of space,” I tell my reflection, going through my usual affirmations while I attempt to tame the mousy brown wisps of hair I’ve just dried. They are not cooperating, because they hate me, I can only assume. “You’re not worth the carbon monoxide you create. Not even the plants appreciate you.”
My hair.
It just.
Won’t .
Huffing, I startle when my phone begins to ring in my bedroom. No more of a main character than I was before my shower, I leave the bathroom, find my phone on my nightstand, and learn that it is still five in the morning. Yet Viktor’s calling.
Unprecedented.
Concerning.
This must mean he’s had enough of my current “research endeavor.”
Time to provide a false sense of hope and hit him where it matters.
Faux chipper, I answer, “Why, hello, sleepyhead! Has your body adjusted to these hours? We’re making progress! We can go over the spreadsheets I’ve put together this afternoon during your lunch break and assess how this schedule has impacted your work.”
“That won’t be necessary,” his deep voice murmurs.
A cuss pricks my skull.
The ice bucket.
It was too far.
Duly noted. Now, let’s not be dramatic, Viktor. All assistants throw ice water on their bosses every so often, as a joke. I’m a silly little guy, full of great jokes—but I still get impressive results. And, obviously, if you didn’t want to be woken with a bucket of ice water, that should have been outlined in our work agreement.
’Twasn’t.
Manipulation tactics ever intact, I allow all joy to fizzle from me, turning my sweet voice pitiful. “Not necessary? I’ve put so much effort into the charts. I was hoping this schedule would allow you to meet your writing goals ahead of time and give you free evenings, so you aren’t up all night working. It’s not good to be up all night. Bad for your circadian rhythm. I have a report on that I can send you if you’d like?”
See, Viktor?
I’m an angel, thinking only of you, and now I’m so sad .
The pause bodes well.
As does the sigh.
“Fine, we’ll review.”
My lips curl.
“ But —” he says.
My stomach clenches, and I fortify myself for the worst.
“—we will also discuss something else I’d like to…test. ”
Something else he’d like to test? He’s not the tester. I’m the tester. He’s my little torture experiment, not the other way around. The only reason I get him to agree to any of my plots is because I present them with logic, science, and Canva Whiteboards.
Color-coded Canva Whiteboards outlining the precise times for water breaks—which I uphold, rigidly—does something to the bowl of jello that is his brain.
The man is particular beyond belief.
His book outlines go straight through the septenary level, using Greek characters for those subpoints. And, in interviews, he coarsely states how he is a planner , and, no , his characters do not “run away” with the plot. That’s ridiculous.
They aren’t real.
They can’t run.
He tells them what to do and creates them in such a way that they’ll do it.
He once, literally, said, I’m not God; free will doesn’t matter to me, so why would I give it to my characters?
Big huge I tell you to jump, you say, “How high?” energy between him and his poor abused leads.
“Crisis?” he asks, while I’m blacking out and twitching, trying to discover what exactly he could possibly want to test involving me. I make him millions and trimmed his working hours each day down from fourteen to seven. My evil little methods work; I need no reciprocating evil little methods.
And I’m positive I can convince him of that. No matter what his jello bowl brain has come up with.
Bouncing back, I say, “Yes, Mr. Bachelor?”
“Take the morning and afternoon off to go over the data you’ve collected. I’ll pick you up for dinner, then we can analyze how to proceed. ”
“Sounds perfect. What time should I expect you?”
“Six. Sharp.”
The call cuts before I can reply, so I sag.
Six sharp. I have to make a lovely, bright, calming presentation by six sharp. Should take but a few hours. And it’s still five in the morning.
Lucky me. I can squeeze a nap in after the pie charts.
Cheerfully optimistic, I grab my laptop, sit down, and open Canva.
?
Dinner with Viktor—lunch with Crimson, my twin, who is actually not related to me at all.
But no one needs to know that.
They only need to know that she is my identical twin, best friend, and the mate to my soul.
And they need to ignore the fact she’s a giant with long red hair that always falls in perfect, floating waves, deep brown eyes that are canonically flecked with gold, and a perfect seductive hourglass figure that has her weight distributed in all the right places, leaving her looking more like Athena and less like…a pear.
Which is what I look like, in case that wasn’t obvious.
I am a frumpy pear. She’s a goddess.
While she’s elegance, beauty, and grace, I’m extremely likely to fall on my face.
And—yet—we are identical twins, and neither of us will tolerate anything but that acknowledgement.
Planting her long fingers on the small table, Crimson stretches over our teapots and sandwiches to stabilize a waitress’s tray before it can go tumbling over top of me, sear my flesh with three hot pots of tea, and embed floral shards of glass in my skin .
“Gracious,” Crimson murmurs, rising to assure the woman’s tray is steady and I am safe.
The waitress sputters, “I’m so, so sorry, Miss Nightingale!”
“Just be careful.”
“I will! I will, promise. Won’t happen again.”
It will. I promise that. So long as I come here again, it will happen again, and my shining husband Crimson will save me again, so I may sit—in awe—of her perfection.
Slipping back into her seat as the woman rushes off, Crimson hums, plucking her teacup and taking a dainty sip while she reclines. Gold-flecked eyes find me. “Where were we, Cris?”
“I don’t know where you were. I was busy basking in your glory, seated in a devastating trance, beholding the wonders of your flawlessness.” Perching my elbows on the table—and effectively flipping a fork across the restaurant—I rest my chin in my hands, grin, and stare. “Angel.”
Crimson’s attention tracks the clatter of the fork with dull amusement. “I certainly hope the government never weaponizes you.”
“That would be detrimental to their well-being, I’m sure.”
“Indeed.”
A fresh fork appears beside me, and the waiter who delivers it literally bows to Crimson as he backs away.
I mean.
As he should, obviously.
Crimson is the heiress of the Nightingale family, which means she’s a part of money older than the most ancient wines. Her family connections tie in with both mafias and governments—probably. Maybe just businesses. But big businesses. The businesses beneath her father’s jurisdiction bring in millions . And, she lives here, in Sunset, the perfect town curated by Viktor himself to be gorgeous without fault.
Now that the old regime has passed and I’m involved in the upkeep of our lovely hometown, it is glorious and safe by Canva Whiteboard design—as all things should be. Therefore, by design, Crimson is royalty that falls into a similar vein as the Bachelor brothers themselves.
The mere peasants who were granted access to the lush homes, regal countrysides, and quaint business roads know their place around her.
As such a peasant, I never would have discovered my long-lost twin if some guy with a coffee hadn’t fallen into me in front of her about a year ago—producing the miraculous feat of having one hundred percent of that coffee land on me, and zero percent splash onto her.
Even though she was wearing an elegant white sundress. And it would have been so simple for the universe to send a drop in her direction. If it didn’t hate me.
Anyway…
I might have cussed, then asked her to marry me because whatever she had, I needed it in my life. You know. Coffee-covered clearly .
She may have lost herself laughing for several minutes, then insisted we take our honeymoon. Which was code for girl’s day .
When I said I was on my way to work, she called Viktor’s private number on her own phone, told him his assistant was hers for the afternoon, and put me under a spell so majestic, I am still falling pitifully at her feet.
Such was our meet-cute.
The rest is history.
Sighing dreamily, I pluck my new fork off the table and stab at the lettuce of my salad. When I hit a hidden cherry tomato instead and that cherry tomato launches itself, Crimson’s hand jets out to catch it. She returns it—visibly—to my plate as though nothing happened.
“Still offended you won’t marry me publicly,” I say, stuffing arugula in my face. “Hate me confirmed.”
“Incest is frowned upon in my family.”
“Yeah, so is homosexuality, and the lower class, and women in STEM, and—”
“Lots of frowning, my family does.”
I beam. “Which is why your smile is so precious .” I jut my lip. “Basically, your family is stinky. They shouldn’t dictate who you can love. Leave them. For me.”
“Tempting offer…I’d consider it, but…the money.”
“How fickle. How shallow. My heart, it bleeds.”
An amused smile flirts with my pretty friend’s perfectly-painted red lips. “As long as it’s the only thing bleeding, I’ll count that as a success for today.”
“Ha, ha. Very funny.” Almost as funny as the very real reason she swiped my butterknife and quarantined the thing on her half of the table when we sat down.
See, I’m not clumsy .
I’m something else.
I don’t fumble and trip over myself like a clumsy person. I don’t cut myself at home. I don’t miscalculate the position of items and, therefore, catch things on fire.
No.
Clumsy would be a blessing. I’m sure, with enough determination, I could figure out a few systems and make a Canva Whiteboard that would game clumsy into submission.
I’m simply a distress magnet.
Ovens ignite in my presence. Tires implode. Other people trip. Into me. Constantly .
The knives conspire to stab me, all on their own. I have nothing to do with it.
It’s my personal belief that I’m so much of a side character the universe itself doesn’t make allowances for my presence. Crimson says that’s not true, because she saw me, and she sees me, and—yeah…she really does. But I’m not convinced.
What I am convinced of is that being her loveable side character is more than enough.
Being loved by one person who gets me is more than enough.
Broaching the topic I’ve been avoiding, she asks, “So, you really have no idea what Viktor wants to talk to you about this evening?”
I sigh, nudging a slice of onion away from a piece of baby spinach and checking for more cherry tomatoes that might be plotting my demise. “Not a clue. You don’t think he’d fire me if he’s still letting me present my findings from these last few weeks, do you?”
“If anyone woke me up by putting an ice cube down my shirt, I wouldn’t just fire them. I’d kill them then and there.”
Cold blood. Bare hands. Half asleep.
Yup.
That checks out.
My husband is glorious.
“The first time you put ice down his shirt was weeks ago.” Crimson sips her tea. “I think it’s pretty safe to suggest that if he were going to fire you, he would have already. You’ve set that poor man up in a solidly abusive relationship, what with the way you spent months love bombing him. It’s hard to argue with the results you get. Sometimes, I want to steal you away as my own assistant, but then I recall how I like you and want to keep liking you.”
“Hey.” I point the prongs of my fork her way. “I’d be a great assistant to you. I am good at my job, you know. Amazing at it, even. That’s why I’m able to flawlessly marry it with torture, which I would unwed just for you.”
“Your skills do astound and inspire me, Cris.”
I sniff. “Thank you, Crim. You’re right. I am the greatest at being the worst.”
She shakes her head, tenderly. Then she sets her teacup down and breaks into her broccoli cheese soup. “I wonder if,” she murmurs, blowing on her spoon, “you did go a little too far with the bucket yesterday. Maybe he needs a break this morning and afternoon, and then tonight he plans to beg you to be gentler with him.”
Viktor Bachelor, begging, on his knees, would be a sight to behold. Especially since I’d find some way to clasp his praying hands and whisper not a chance without losing my job. I’ve gotten very good at the “disregard for work boundaries without losing my job” thing. It took several months to chart Viktor’s behaviors and slowly ease out of generic perfect assistant mode into perfect assistant from the centermost ring of Dante’s Inferno mode.
I know how many times that man breathes in an hour.
And so I also know exactly what to do to make that breath catch.
Friends close, enemies closer, and all that yada yada.
“I would hire you, you know,” Crimson says, “if you ever get exhausted of living in a constant state of retribution. Good help is hard to find, and I’m sure we could take over the world together if we put half our effort into it. Maybe even a quarter of our effort.”
Please. Combined? The world would need one percent of our effort.
“Tempting. But. The spite.” I blink. “It fuels me.”
“Right… But, isn’t spite tiring? Most things you put Viktor through, you also put yourself through. You taste yo ur death smoothies to make sure they’re adequately deathlike. You’ve suffered through eating foods you hate since you discovered Viktor also hates them and you plan his meals. Even these past few weeks you’ve also been up at five every morning. You used to start work at ten.”
I remember those glorious days when I could sleep in. The quiet mornings with my Potato…lounging about in the self-loathing, plotting the ultimate demise of Viktor Bachelor in a three hundred forty-nine step plan—as outlined with pictures on a Canva Whiteboard…
Five is early for me. I dread the screech of my alarm, and the weariness in my bones usually doesn’t abate until distress of some kind creeps across Viktor’s face for the first time each day.
Tiring, it is.
However.
“If not live to torture Mr. Bachelor, what live for?”
“Surely you’ve other aspirations.”
My heart breaks. “My love. Do you not know me at all?”
She chuckles. “Dearness, I want better for you than the rancid taste of hate.”
“Hate isn’t rancid.” I lean back in my chair and cross my arms. “It tastes like flowers.”
“Hate is the last thing I’d expect to carry floral notes.”
“And yet,” I sniff, again, indignant, “it does.”
“What about writing again?” she asks.
A ripple of displeasure scales up my spine. “What about writing again?” I echo.
“This whole thing started because you won a critique from the famous Viktor Bachelor , author extraordinaire, who launched onto bestseller lists everywhere, and he crushed your hopes and dreams of being an author. Crushed though they may be, you still had them, and they weren’t make myself miserable by making someone else miserable . Couldn’t you consider having them again?”
My stomach knots, because while I may have told Crimson—my dear twin, lover, sun and moon—about the reason I hate Viktor and want to impale his head on a pike in front of my castle… I have not told her that I never stopped writing.
Not even for five minutes since that horrible day when his email found itself in my inbox.
Angry, discouraged, and heartbroken in the wake of my favorite author massacring my spirit with his cold email, I wrote. Tears splashing across my keyboard, I poured my heart into a story about a princess who faced every trial to save her prince—only to discover he had never been a prince at all, but a dragon.
She then slayed him.
And dragged his head back home.
For the pike.
In front of her castle.
I hate that the Bachelors’ sprawling manor looks like a castle…
It’s not one, of course, but the vastness of the olden architecture laid out upon acres and acres of land, with towers and peaks does lend itself to palace . With five grown men made of money in the building, it would need to be massive if for nothing else than to contain all the ego.
Not that any of them particularly have an ego problem. Lukas, the second eldest behind Viktor, comes closest, but he’s not even home right now since he’s busy on a multi-month, worldwide tour that won’t end until after he’s hopped through the states up until September, according to the schedule I Canva Whiteboarded for him.
Canva Whiteboard and I have some codependency issues …
“Crisis?” Crimson nudges me from my grumbly thoughts full of too many rich men and not enough pikes.
I pout. “What were we talking about again?”
“Writing. Could you release the loathing and go back to dreams of writing? Maybe even consider providing Viktor with the opportunity for a redemption arc by asking him to take a look at your work again? Not to be the only voice of reason at the table, but you were seventeen. A seventeen-year-old’s writing maybe didn’t meet the standards of a notably grumpy professional for hurtful but not entirely invalid skill concerns…? I’m positive your work has grown since then with all the drafting emails you have to do. Things could be different if you give him another chance to let them.”
I bristle. “How can you hate me so, my love?”
“I’m worried about you. I know it’s only been a year since we met, but you’re the only friend I feel I can rely on, and I don’t know if this is healthy for you. You’ve harbored a grudge for ten years, acting on it explicitly for the past two. And, now, you’re throwing entire buckets of ice water on a man who could pay to make you disappear without a trace or repercussion. If you keep building up like this, dearness, you’re an unsolved mystery, or a general lawsuit, waiting to happen. Viktor’s had a lot of bad days. Your first collision may have been on one of them.”
Yeah. I know people have bad days—even billionaires with big families who love them sooo much. I used to try and tell myself that, too. But the hate didn’t go away.
Viktor had everything I ever wanted before his parents passed. And he couldn’t even spare me a kindness? Especially if my writing was giving “enthusiastically immature”?
Dropping my attention off Crimson’s goddess-like imploring eyes full of angelic grace and mercy, I reach for my rye and pumpernickel grilled cheese to learn that they forgot my tomato, and life is sadness. “What am I even supposed to do with writing, Crim? Become an author so I can live forever in Viktor’s shadow?”
“Viktor is not the be-all, end-all of the author community. Regardless of what he might say or where his shadow falls, you keep writing. You seek out agents. You find someone who believes in you the way I do. Even if you’re never as famous as him, people will love your work. And you’ll know his disapproval didn’t stop you. It’s a different kind of spite, maybe, and not entirely healthy, either, but at least I won’t have to worry about you needing a lawyer. Or an alibi.”
“You would be my alibi, though, wouldn’t you?”
“I’d also need an alibi.”
My lip juts as my eyes well with tears. “You’re the best, Crim.”
Her smile warms me through. “If you’re the greatest and I’m the best, we’re in splendid company.”
Truer truths have ne’er been truthed.
Sadly, it does mean that the stark contrast between my lunch experience and my dinner ordeal might induce whiplash.