18. Chapter 18
18
HER
I stood at the door of the Cadillac, keys in hand, breathing in and out.
Why should this be one of my triggers, anyway? I’d been driving this car for over a year, and he’d only been in it twice. But I’d also been sleeping in my bedroom for ten years, and that didn’t stop him from being the first thing I thought of when I saw my bed, my desk, my bookshelf, my chair, and oh, every time I opened my goddamn eyes. Fuck him for being so damn memorable.
Besides, what really mattered was that my dad had agreed to give me the keys back. The fact that he’d confiscated them to begin with was a joke because what the hell did he think I was going to do? Drive off a cliff in some dramatic final act of rebellion? It wasn’t like I could go look for my boy—I’d need at least one clue as to his whereabouts to do that. But I could drive to campus, and on campus, I could find Erica, and Erica could tell me what she’d discovered about Maeve. And that was exactly what I planned to do now.
The confrontation with my father had been the catalyst; the chemical reaction, one might say, that had set me in motion. Now, to stay moving, to go toward something—to beat back the inertia that wanted to keep me in bed and shutting out the light morning after morning—was the only thing I could do.
I turned around when the door to the garage opened gingerly. The maid stood there, her hair pulled back in a swingy ponytail, brushing dust off the knees of her jeans from wherever she’d been kneeling earlier. She shrank a little when I met her eyes.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey.”
Ugh. I supposed this was the two of us attempting to interact like normal people, but it was still awkward as hell.
“So, uh, I just came from the downstairs storage room.”
Never mind the awkwardness. She had my full attention now.
“One of the paint cans fell off the top shelf. A mouse must have knocked it down or something. At least that’s the story the housekeeper gave me. Anyway, I’m supposed to be cleaning it up, but—I think there’s something you should see before I—”
I was out the service door before she could even finish the sentence. But before I disappeared, I stopped. Stuck my head back in. “Thank you.”
The maid—who had flashed me that smug smirk so many times—responded with a smile. A real one.
HIM
In the very discreet back room of Max Langer’s favorite men’s clothing boutique—so discreet it had a separate entrance—the salesman draped a white linen suit jacket over an upholstered brown leather chair and asked for my opinion.
“He loves it,” Lemaya said next to me, almost jumping out of her chair.
I shot her an alarmed glance.
“Don’t worry, it’s the desert,” the salesman assured me flippantly. “We wear white all year round here.”
Yes, as if making a fashion faux pas were my main objection. “Wouldn’t it get dirty?”
“Oh, that,” the man replied as if he’d suddenly remembered I was a slave he was being paid boatloads of money to pretend was an actual customer. He waved it off. “Remember, you don’t work in the dirt anymore.”
Throughout my life, I’d been able to get attention from women in just about any and all situations, including while bloody, dressed in rags, and covered in filth. But I had to admit it was much, much easier in a white linen suit tailored impeccably to my form, a floral shirt printed with green banana leaves, gold and amber pendants on delicate eighteen-karat gold chains, and gold-plated aviator sunglasses. At least if Lemaya and the salesgirls who kept poking their heads in just to gawk were any indication.
Look, I wasn’t an idiot. I knew it was all just an elaborate illusion, a ridiculous charade—a dog wearing clothes doesn’t make it a fucking person, as I’d so helpfully been reminded a few days ago—but it was easy to brush all that aside when the brand of bourbon they’d handed me to sip while I waited was the same brand that, a few weeks ago, a certain ex-employee of Langer’s had smashed on the pool deck just to make me clean up. The same ex-employee who was currently in the hospital, hooked up to a brainwave monitor, being fed protein shakes through a tube, while his family debated whether to pull the plug.
Smugness was an unattractive trait, I knew. But still.
In any case, resolving to use the day to learn as much as I could without earning myself another “warning” from Resi, the first thing I learned was that I was surprisingly good at blowing offensively large wads of someone else’s money, especially if the other person in question was someone I was still eventually hoping to destroy. And Lemaya was my perfect partner in crime. She may have nominally been a “research assistant,” but her only “research” that day was to get me fitted for not only a half-dozen suits of all colors and patterns, both casual and business formal—plus a couple more bespoke ones to be delivered later—but dress shirts and silk ties in a dozen patterns and shades of light blue, green, and gold. Plus a bunch of other shit, including things that at first struck me as highly unnecessary—like sterling-silver tie clips and faux-snakeskin wallets—and then once she insisted I see and touch them, struck me as very necessary indeed. Look, no one had ever given me anything, ever, and who knew when I would get this chance again? Hell, I was supposed to be dead right now .
Yes, Lemaya was good at what she did—and innocently flirtatious through it all. But then again, so was I because that seemed to be a way of interacting that we both implicitly understood. If she’d previously been a slave—a personal maid to someone rich, if I had to guess—she probably just saw that kind of thing, as I always had, as a survival mechanism. Anyway, her words suggested she was pretty sadly hung up on Langer, which wasn’t surprising, even with the age difference—pale blue eyes, charm, and gobs of money would always be an irresistible trio for any girl. If only Langer weren’t clearly a guy who threw away women as easily as the tissue paper on top of a cheap birthday gift, and if only warning her about that had any chance of making any difference at all.
Anyway, what I really wanted to do was to pump Lemaya for more information. I’d figured out she was Maeve’s friend, and I was pretty sure she’d known all along that I was Maeve’s brother, which meant we both had information the other sorely needed but that neither one of us knew how to get. Though she was bubbly and assertive, even demanding at times, she wasn’t very forthcoming, except when she was gushing about Giza cotton shirts, Italian leather belts, or what she saw as Max’s endlessly worthy attributes. Not to mention, if there was any chance Resi, not Max, was telling the truth and Resi did have Maeve, it was too risky to ask her—there was a non-zero chance that Resi had insisted Lemaya be assigned to the task to keep an eye on me, and that anything I said to Lemaya would filter immediately back up to her boss. And she was right to be wary of me, too. Maeve had thought she’d disappeared, but it was clear that she’d actually “graduated” to a far more privileged position than a vet tech. And she no doubt knew that appearing to sympathize with me over Resi was the quickest way to get booted out of it.
Of course we still might find a way around all this, but the sharp ache down there , whenever I thought of my interlude with the blonde in the hot tub, was enough to make me think twice.
I was also happy to accept my first-ever manicure from Langer’s (yes) “personal manicurist,” but from his “personal hairstylist,” I drew the line at giving my hair any more than a light trim or, God forbid, product. Yes, okay, maybe I was a little vain about it, but at least my hair, like very little else—including the money going to pay for all this shit—actually belonged to me .
And as for the pain? It was bad. I wasn’t going to lie. The pills could no longer help, either, because I’d poured them down the toilet. I simply couldn’t be off my game the way I had been the other night; not with this much at stake—but shit, it was hard to watch them go. No wonder Louisa’s brother got hooked on these things—they were biologically engineered to make you never want to stop taking them. Come to think of it, if Louisa were here, she’d likely be flushing them away herself, informing me I was better than this, and demanding—as she’d once promised—that I get my fucking act together. And even though the thought made me smile, here I was feeling every ache, pop, and groan of my retorn rotator cuff. Which was what it was, according to Dr. Waxler, the first actual medical professional to ever bother to give me a diagnosis, five years after the original injury. Well, fuck it. There was ibuprofen in the bathroom cabinet, and that—washed down with a couple large bourbons, because there was no way I was giving up those —would have to do for now. I didn’t want to endure pain, but I certainly knew how . And I would. As long as I had to.
I’d never made a habit of looking in mirrors—I got more than enough comments on my looks as it was, and counting new scars and bruises hadn’t seemed like too worthwhile a use of my time—but the salesman urged me to now, and I blinked as the colors they’d chosen bounced off all the golden facets of my hair and eyes. Well. These people knew what they were doing, clearly. I locked eyes with Lemaya behind me, reflected in the mirror as she perched like a sparrow on the edge of her chair in her pleated leather miniskirt and heels. She followed my gaze down, to the rich fabric of my sleeve hiding the marred skin underneath, and the one accessory neither I nor she had chosen. And that the sales team—none of whom were slaves themselves, which I was sure wasn’t an accident on Langer’s part—had been discreet enough not to mention.
What would all my owners and overseers—the ones who saw my body only as a blank canvas for their sadistic handiwork—think if they saw me? Would Louisa—forbidden from even looking at me, and vice versa—even recognize the guy she’d met a month ago? Not like it mattered. She wasn’t here to see this and was never going to be. She likely thought I was dead , or very soon would be. And here I was, the selfish prick in the gaudy suit who had left her to twist in the wind. Suddenly, the face in the mirror looked highly punchable.
I’d spent the last seven years with the knowledge that if I were to drop dead tomorrow, my sister was the only one on the planet who would care, the only one who would remember that I had ever existed. For a long time, I’d been happy about that, or at least content with it. I still wasn’t quite sure how, but somehow, maybe due to what and who she’d already lost, Louisa had helped me come to understand that people—even slaves—weren’t meant to live that way. And she’d given her all, risked her heart, said what I couldn’t. And in exchange, she was getting—knowing her—tears, probably right this second. Sure, I may no longer be drugging myself to oblivion, but I was still getting comically expensive bourbon, bespoke tailored suits, and the promise of more cold, hard cash than I had ever expected to see in a lifetime. Did that seem fair? Of course not. But if Louisa were here, she’d remind me that it wasn’t as if I had asked for any of it, and I’d know that she was right. In the moment, though, it didn’t help much.
The message , I kept reminding myself, as pathetic as it was. A message couldn’t comfort. It couldn’t protect. It couldn’t do my job for me. But for now, it was all I had.
“Look at you!” Resi said cheerfully, walking around me slowly as if I were a marble statue and the glass-roofed central atrium of Langer Enterprises, a Renaissance art museum. The waterfall flowing down into the lush indoor garden provided a background of eerie tranquility to it all. “I can’t believe the illusions they can create. Anyone would think you were a free man. I mean, if they didn’t know where to look.”
She giggled and directed her eyes toward the chain on my wrist. The one that, that morning, Langer had explicitly given me permission—if I chose—to cut off. He’d even directed me toward the tools with which to do it. But I had refused, and not because I thought it was a trick to get me in trouble. I’d finally accepted that Langer’s tricks, whatever else they were, went deeper than such cheap chicanery. I’d refused because it would be a lie, to myself as much as anyone, and every time I looked at my bare wrist, I’d be reminded of it. But now, face-to-face with the veiled mean-girl sneer behind Resi’s light blue eyes—almost level with my chin, thanks to her black-toed stiletto heels that matched her body-skimming nude pencil dress—I was starting to rethink my decision.
I stood motionless, trying to decide how to play this game. It was mid-morning, the atrium was empty, and she knew the layout of the office and everyone’s schedules much better than I did. She knew no one was coming to interrupt her fun, especially not Max.
“But all in all, I think I like you best in the hot tub, crying and making those adorable sounds. Although I can’t help wondering whether I’ll get to hear them again. Or maybe you’ve decided to stop playing detective?” she quizzed me, that deceptively innocent tone back in her voice. She directed her eyes lower, to a specific spot behind my new gray wool suit trousers.
I moved back, eyes warily on her nails. Like I was ever again going to make the mistake of letting them anywhere near there . She saw where I was looking and giggled again, her light blue eyes dancing with amusement in the atrium light. “You do learn fast. I’ll give you that.”
“I know you’re lying, Resi,” I said, forcing calm into my voice. “You don’t have my sister. Max told me that.”
She laughed lightly and bounced a little on her heels. “Ah, the old calling my bluff trick. God, I cannot get over how cute you are when you think you’re outsmarting someone.”
Heat flowed into my face. Oh, that was a low blow.
“And by the way? When we’re alone, that’s ma’am to you.”
I rolled my eyes. “If even Max doesn’t want a title, what the fuck makes you think you deserve one?”
Lightning-fast, she reached up and grabbed a handful of my hair at the roots. With an iron grip, she jerked my head down to meet her at eye level. I struggled to swallow as she wrapped her weaponlike nails around my throat, her breath cool and cinnamon-like as her lips brushed my face. “Because I do deserve one. From you, anyway. And nothing Max says will change that.”
“Fuck that. You think I’m not going to put it to the test?” I muttered, trying to jerk my head back against the sharp pain. I’d never had the occasion to throw a 120-pound woman to the floor, and as much as I wanted to, I wasn’t going to start with Langer’s head of R&D.
“Well, just try it. Go ahead. Tell him everything. See whose side he takes. He may own this company, but he’s loyal to me in ways you couldn’t possibly understand.”
“I thought you said you used to be a slave,” I choked out, indignant.
“I did,” she said and released me nonchalantly, tossing her sleek, wispy blond ponytail, then directing the toes of her stilettos down the hall. “And doesn’t that explain everything?”
“I ask one and only one thing from the people who work here with me,” Max Langer said as we walked side by side down a row of sprawling glass-paneled offices. Transparency seemed to be Langer’s thing, at least when it came to decorating. Actually, his corporate headquarters, for all its brand-new crystalline trappings, was surprisingly intimate—besides Langer himself, it played host only to a couple of assistants, a small accounting team, an in-house legal counsel, one HR manager, security, and formerly—in the office at the end of the hall that I would soon be occupying—Corey. In fact, Langer currently had no other staff that worked in his core business on a daily basis. He kept his circle small, in other words. “Complete trustworthiness.”
“Right,” I replied, trying—as I had all morning—not to sound intimidated. Not to avert my eyes. To ask questions of anyone, at any time. Sure, I may not be here by choice, but that was no reason to act like it. “Then how do you explain me?”
An amused smile appeared on my boss’s lips. “I have different requirements for you.”
I nodded and flicked my eyes toward the people working on the other side of the glass. They didn’t look up, but that couldn’t shake the feeling that Resi—and Wainwright-Phillips, and Corey, and everyone who kept reminding me of the same damn thing—had left me with. That despite the trappings Langer had provided me with, I wasn’t some up-and-coming corporate hotshot—or an engineer, or a rocket scientist, or even an intern. I was just—as always—a slave who refused to learn his place. And everyone who looked at me could see it. “Do they know that I’m, well—”
“Yes, they know,” he cut me off. “And if anyone tries to treat you even the slightest bit differently because of it, you come to me immediately, and I’ll handle it. But that won’t happen.”
It’s already happened. And for the sake of my sister, I wouldn’t be coming to Langer about it. Nor would I, as I’d found out to my dismay only a few minutes ago, be sneaking into Langer’s office after hours and going through the file cabinets because there were none. Langer Enterprises had evidently completed its digital transformation, since everything the least bit proprietary was stored in a database locked down tighter than a bullion depository. Of course it wasn’t like I hadn’t expected to encounter something like this in the course of my search for Maeve. I’d even managed to teach myself some rudimentary coding (read: hacking) in the lab in Heidelberg, but my skills were nowhere near what I’d need for this kind of job, and I wasn’t sure how much I remembered, anyway. Luckily, I was about to get my own computer and almost unlimited access to the internet, so I’d soon be able to dive back in. But like everything, it would take time.
I was gripped, not the first time in these past few days, by the cold of the void of ignorance, of having no way of learning whether Erica’s team had found anything during their search of the two addresses. I was working totally blind.
Realizing I was probably supposed to say something, I remarked, “Well, that covers your office. And what about the rest of your companies? What about Orbital Dynamics?”
“They don’t know you exist, nor will they,” Langer replied. “That’s for your own good—and mine, given my public views about slavery. It shouldn’t be an issue, since you’ll be reporting to me and only me, but if they, or anyone, find out I have a slave, even one that’s not mine, it could compromise everything we’re working on. And then you’re back at Keith’s mercy, and I won’t be able to help you anymore.”
I swallowed and nodded. “Ah. So I’m living proof that you’re a gigantic fucking hypocrite, but I can’t say anything, or I’m the one who’s going to pay the price for it.”
“Exactly. But it beats the alternative. And I’m not reminding you of that because I’m trying to hold it over your head. I’m reminding you of it because it’s true.”
It was true, but still. Fuck him. “What about Project White Cedar?”
“That’s offsite.”
I had a feeling I knew where the site was.
“Resi and the girls work there. In fact”—Langer glanced at his diamond-studded Rolex—“we’re due there in a half hour for a tour. I’ve called for a car.”
Good. I knew Resi would do her damnedest to make sure I didn’t see anything even remotely interesting, but I sure wasn’t going to make it easy for her.
We’d reached the elevator in the atrium—also clear glass—and Langer pushed the button that would take him up to his office on the top floor. “Before we go any farther, I just have one request.”
“Which is?”
“For the sake of keeping me from going absolutely batshit insane, can you please give me something, anything , to call you? It doesn’t even have to be a name. You can be fucking Superman if you want. Just something .”
“No.”
“Why the fuck not?” He didn’t seem angry, just exasperated. “I know you’re not supposed to have one, but I can tell you right now—as I tell everyone else who works for me—that here, you’ll be doing a lot of things you’re not supposed to be doing. Because that’s the only way to win at the game I play. So give me a good reason.”
“Because it wouldn’t be my real name, legally,” I said stubbornly. “And I don’t want any name they can take away from me.”
Langer groaned. “I’m going to wear you down on this, you know.”
“Well, I’m going to have fun watching you try.”
Langer actually laughed a little at that, which surprised me. The elevator dinged gently upon its arrival. Langer made to step on but paused on the threshold, holding the doors open. He looked back. “Ah, shit. I forgot one other thing. Your office.”
“What about it?”
“I didn’t have time to get it cleaned out. Corey’s parents had the balls to call me up and demand I hand over everything in there, but I told them it’s all proprietary. Naturally, they threatened to sue me, so I figured I’d leave it untouched, just in case.” He recognized the look in my eye and shook his head. “Trust me, there isn’t anything proprietary in there. I’d known for months that their idiot son couldn’t be trusted with anything more than paper pushing. But my concern for the Killeens ended the second I finished signing their seven-figure check, which you’d think would be more than enough to get them to fuck off and leave me alone. Anyway, I’ll tell the assistants to get on it, but—”
“Don’t bother. I’ll do it,” I said quickly, not entirely sure why. Just a hunch.
He raised his eyebrows. “You sure?”
“Yeah, it’s no problem.” Let him think I was being helpful. “I’m used to cleaning, after all.”
Langer forced his way onto the elevator and smirked as the glass doors closed. “Knock yourself out, kid.”