Chapter 17 Elias
SEVENTEEN
Elias
Andre is quiet today. He’s often quiet. He works hard.
But today’s quiet feels different. Or maybe it’s me?
I’m quiet too. I’m still … I’m not sure.
Embarrassed? I mean, yes, definitely, but I realized as I was lying on my couch for hours that what was really bothering me was that something is off.
I don’t know what it is, but I can feel it.
I don’t even know if it’s my stalker or Andre. There’s a weird tension between them.
My stalker keeps needling me about Andre, and I don’t know why. To fuck with me? To test me? Does it mean that he likes Andre or that he hates him?
And Andre … he’s complicated. On the surface, he’s not. He’s everything you would expect: rich, smart, cultured, a bit arrogant, very dominant. But sometimes it feels like … a mask—and I don’t know what’s beneath it.
Sometimes, I almost feel like he’s playing a game with me. Despite his justifications for hiring me, it doesn’t really make sense. And he’s so hot and cold, sometimes crowding into my physical and mental space, sometimes so distant that I almost feel … invisible.
I know that I’m needy. I know that I’m making something about me when it’s not.
The feeling of being invisible isn’t actually coming from Andre.
It’s inside me. I know that. Even the tension that I feel between him and my stalker is all in my head because the only thing between them is me, and Andre doesn’t even know about it.
God, my head’s a mess. I was so sure I was onto something, that something was indeed off, but now I’ve just talked myself around to seeing that I’m imagining it.
Maybe I’m even imagining Andre’s masking, or at least blowing it out of proportion. I mean, it’s not unusual. We all do it to a certain extent. I do it.
I hide my fantasies, all the fear and violence that I crave.
I’ve hidden my past with lies and false documents.
I’ve hidden the fact that I’ve done work like this before.
It’s one of the reasons that I took this job.
I knew I could do it. Some of it’s been new to me and some of it’s hard for me, like the phone calls, but mostly I’ve been pretending to learn while what I’ve actually been doing is dusting off old skills.
So I’m probably just projecting.
Andre is a normal person. Intense and dominant, yes, but normal. I’m the one who’s fucked up—because only a fucked-up person would be disappointed to realize that the man they’re desperately attracted to is normal.
I force myself to focus on the slew of very normal emails in Andre’s business account.
When the landline rings, I answer it. “Andre’s Black’s office, Elias speaking.”
“Elias, it’s Jeremy at the front desk. I need to talk to Andre.”
“Andre?” I say, holding out the phone. Those gorgeous blue eyes flick to me. “It’s Jeremy.”
Andre takes the phone from me and says, “Yeah, Jeremy.” Anger flashes through his eyes as he listens. He replies tightly, “I’ll deal with it.”
He hangs up the phone and stands from his chair. I want to ask him if everything’s okay, but it’s obviously not, so instead I ask, “Do you need me?”
Andre looks at me almost like he’s surprised to see me there. I cringe at that, but then he says, “Yes. I mean no. Stay here.”
“What’s going on?”
“Just … someone who shouldn’t be here. I’ll deal with it.”
That’s what he said to Jeremy, but this time I see past his anger to something else. I’m not sure what, but he’s clearly upset. He doesn’t say anything else though. He leaves the desk and walks toward the elevator.
I feel like I’m not controlling my body when I get up too. I follow him with a strange sense of obeying and disobeying at the same time. He did, after all, say yes and no.
He doesn’t object to me following him. Almost, as we get in the elevator, I feel like he doesn’t realize I’m there. Fuck, why can’t I stop leaping to that invisibility paranoia? I thought I was over that.
Yeah, it used to bother me, but I hadn’t really thought about it in years, not until …
Not until I wanted Andre’s attention so badly.
I get that attention for a second. When the elevator doors open, he says, “Stay back. She’s—” He cuts himself off. Weirdly, I feel like he was going to say “dangerous.” Instead he says, “I don’t want you around her.”
“Who?”
“Rebecca Grange.”
Andre exits the elevator. The doors start to close, but I dart through.
Andre quickly outpaces me. My feet are slow and clumsy while my mind is racing. Rebecca Grange …
I’ve read about her. She’s the widow of Peter Grange, former owner of The Axis. Why would Andre not want me around her?
From the doorway between the private elevator alcove and the main lobby, I watch Andre stride toward the front desk. There, a lady in her 60s appears to be arguing with Gina and Jeremy as they try to lure her away. She’s not having it.
“I’m not leaving until I see Andre!” Her sharp voice cuts through the vaulted space, where a few guests are pretending to mind their own business.
“I’m here, Mrs. Grange,” Andre announces.
She spins to face him, her pink pastel coat swirling. “Finally! I’ve been trying to reach you for weeks! Phone calls, emails—”
“I’ve been busy, Mrs. Grange.”
I puzzle over that. I’ve never seen or heard anything from her. Either she’s lying or Andre has blocked her.
“Busy destroying someone else’s life?” she sneers.
Andre gestures in the direction of the tea room. Like Jeremy and Gina, who are now hovering, he wants her away from the front desk, but she’s still not having it.
She draws herself up, though even her heels only bring her to about Andre’s sternum.
“I won’t be fobbed off with a mimosa and overcooked Eggs Benedict. I want the landscape painting that was hung there. The one of the island.” She points an imperious finger to the right of the front desk.
“It’s gone, Mrs. Grange.”
“I can obviously see that. But it has personal significance—”
“I said it’s gone.”
“Gone,” she echoes. “What does that mean?”
“It means, Mrs. Grange, that I took it down from the wall, ripped it to fucking shreds, and burned it.”
Rebecca Grange goes silent. Everyone goes silent.
Andre doesn’t move. He has his hands in his pockets. Somehow, in spite of that, he looks dangerous. He sounds it, too, when he speaks again. His voice is low, but it carries.
“Stop playing this game while you can. You know very well that I hold all the cards.”
She shrinks from him. “You’re a monster, Andre.”
“Takes one to know one, Rebecca. Now fuck off and don’t come back.”
He stares at her until she retreats. He stares her all the way to the door.
Everyone else is staring at him. The confrontation was a little shocking in the lobby of a luxury hotel, but what I see in Gina and Jeremy’s faces goes beyond that. They look almost … scared.
When Rebecca Grange is gone, Andre turns away from Gina and Jeremy without a word. He comes walking back my way.
As he gets closer, I see what they’ve seen: the vicious, predatory look in his eyes. He’s even walking differently, stalking more than striding. It doesn’t fit with the cultured sophistication of his clothes. It’s more than the intensity and arrogance of a rich and powerful man. It’s … primal.
It makes the hair lift along my nape. It makes my cock harden.
Maybe I wasn’t wrong about him. Maybe he isn’t so normal under that mask.
I shiver as he walks by. He doesn’t say anything until he reaches the elevator. His back is to me when he punches the button for the doors.
“We’re done for the day.”
I guess I already knew that because I haven’t moved, haven’t followed him. I would if he called to me or even looked at me. But he never does, not even when he gets in the elevator and turns to press one of the buttons on the panel.
I think he knows what I saw in his face, what everyone saw. He’s not happy about it, and he doesn’t yet have it under control.
The doors close. He’s gone.