Chapter 10 Lilian
LILIAN
PLAYLIST: SALT – AVA MAX
My eyes follow her as she moves, and part of me wishes to seize her, tell her to come back, and make her understand her place. My mind is a whirlwind of thoughts. Whatever just occurred wasn’t what I had intended.
I roll back my shoulders, trying to shake off the feeling lingering in my chest—only it doesn’t work.
She took control from me.
She controlled me, and the worst thing was that I enjoyed it. Never have I experienced anything like it. Right now, I want to murder and devour her at the same time. The thing with her was supposed to be easy, clear rules, business as usual; she was to be shy and submissive.
Now I’m a mess with longings who stares at a closed door.
“She gone?” asks Doug and rips me from my thoughts. I snap back into business mode. Control. It gives me all the control.
“Yes,” I say and ignore his cocked eyebrow. “I’ll sleep here, get some rest, business as usual tomorrow.”
Every single one of my days looks precisely the same. Predictability. Structure. Rules.
I have made excuses lately, because of a woman I thought would be a shy, devoted girl. Instead, she’s cheeky, bratty, and overstepping.
I need to get her out of my head!
And yet, the thoughts of what she has done float around my mind.
I get ready for bed with my seven-step routine. Doug has laid out everything for me.
In bed, I try to fall asleep, but my body has flashbacks of what happened.
Her hands around me.
So close.
The overstepping.
The way she moved my body over her thigh.
The way she provoked me.
The looks.
The breathing.
I roll my hips from thinking about it.
I can’t lose control like this again. Stop it! I tell myself in my head, but it doesn’t stop. Even worse, I get turned on more and more with every minute passing.
“Urgh,” I curse and get up and dress in my fitness clothes at two in the morning.
I leave Doug a note, telling him I’m in the hotel gym. We’re out of routine, no one will be there at that time of night, so I feel safe going there alone, and he needs some rest. He’s been working more hours than I have in the past weeks, and I need him to be at his best.
I take the elevator to the level with the gym and wellness area. As expected, no one is there. As a precaution, I don’t put my headphones on and start warming up. I walk for a couple of minutes before I switch to running. Faster. And faster. All the energy needs to get out.
Sweat runs down my temples and between my breasts, but my mind still won’t be quiet.
I stop the treadmill and stretch. There’s a punching bag in a freestyle area of the gym—exactly what I need right now.
I strike it. Again. And again. Harder. More power. I picture the punching bag to be her.
How dare she?
Dare to overstep the boundaries.
Dare to ignore my rules.
Dare to challenge me.
Every punch gets more valiant.
And instead of releasing energy, I feel even angrier.
“That bad, hm?” asks Doug's voice suddenly behind me.
“You were supposed to sleep,” I tell him off between my heavy breaths.
He walks up to me and grasps the punching bag, holding it in front of him.
“Try to think differently,” he says. “You’re bracing for impact. What you need to do is to prepare to move. Boxing is an interaction, not blind hitting at a wall.”
“I’m in no mood for a lesson right now,” I say under my breath to signal my dislike.
“Focus your mind on the movement, on your technique, your breathing, and you won’t have the time to think about anything else,” he says, and I’d really like to murder him.
I lock my knees and hit even harder.
“Soft,” he says and steps around the bag to tap the back of my knee. “Back and forth, with the movement. Flow with it.”
I hit again, full force.
“You’re panting like a lion that ran after an antelope. Focus. Become quiet. Structured steps. Flow. Knees soft.”
I do as he says because his voice and instructions somehow keep Ella from popping into my thoughts.
“Yes,” he says when I strike again. “Exactly like that. Again. One, two, three, break. And again. One, two, three, break.”
I have no clue how much time passed, but my mind is silent and back to focus when we finally stop.
Sweat runs over my skin as exhaustion comes, but I feel like myself again.
“Get some sleep,” I tell Doug when we get back to the room. It’s four in the morning.
“Two hours don’t do well with my schedule,” he says.
“I’ll set my alarm to 9,” I say. Somehow, I’ve already broken my routine, and I feel like getting a few hours of sleep, too. He nods. I fall into bed sweaty, and in the clothes I am in. I don’t care.
When I wake up, it's past noon.
I groan as I stare at the number on my phone.
Never have I slept in before. Never. Not even as a teenager and after a night of overindulgence.
It’s her fault.
Ella.
Nothing of it would’ve happened without her.
That’s what a woman like her does. Mess with me and my schedule.
I close my eyes and breathe in and out once before I get out of bed.
When I return from the bathroom, breakfast is set for me, and Doug stands by the door in his typical manner.
“You should’ve woken me up,” I hiss at him.
“You are allowed to rest,” he says.
“I pay you to protect and organize, not for having opinions,” I snap back at him as I put milk in my coffee.
“Reminding you to rest falls under protection,” he says, and I am close to throwing an apple from the fruit bowl on the table at him.
I suppress the impulse, of course, because my father would murder me if he ever found out I lost myself and threw something at the staff.
We’re in the office an hour later. Lingering eyes of surprised employees follow me, because everyone here knows I am never late or miss a meeting, and today I have missed two.
I can already hear the gossip coming.
I need to get Ella out of my head. This can’t happen ever again.
The day passes by, and it is late afternoon, when Doug walks up to me in the middle of a meeting.
I know something is wrong the moment I see him, because interrupting a meeting is only for emergencies.
He leans in and whispers in my ear while he’s showing me a picture on his phone. My heart plummets.
“I just got word that the apartment burnt down last night while you two were in the hotel. Fire investigator has been called; they believe arson.”
I stare at the image of Ella’s apartment, completely destroyed. Nothing is intact anymore.
My mind races immediately.
Her apartment was burnt down.
She was followed by a man when she saved my life.
Maybe she is running from someone?
After last night, how she acted, how she switched into something different, maybe she’s not who she pretends to be because she is being hunted?
Maybe the bullet wasn’t even meant for me, but her?
I look at Doug. He’s waiting for me to react.
“Do we still have the tail?” I ask as quietly as possible, and he shakes his head. He has probably stopped it after our meeting last night.
“What do you want me to do?” he asks, and I glance around. Everyone is staring at me. They know something is up, and I can’t have that. The last thing I need right now is employees suspecting something is going on behind their backs after everything that has already happened.
But then, if Ella is in danger—
Not your concern, I tell myself. You wanted to get her out of your mind anyway.
Only I can’t. The thought of her being in danger tightens my chest.
My breathing gets flatter.
I need to act.
So I do what I shouldn’t do at all.
I am not even sure I recognize my own voice when I say it. “Find her,” I tell Doug.
One nod and he is gone. This will be my greatest mistake. I know it.
Throughout the entire meeting, my mind is distracted. I catch myself staring into nothingness while someone asks me a question. I am not on top of my game, and I hate myself about it. All I can think about is what has happened. What if someone got to her? What if someone killed her?
It should be the best thing that happened to me, because she wouldn’t haunt me. But it isn’t. I am concerned and worried. Something I never am. I don’t care about anyone. Only I do now.
My fists clench so hard my nails dig into my palm, the knuckles standing out white.
“Lilian, sure you’re okay?” Ian asks.
I need to get a grip on myself; it’ll land with my father through Ian, how distracted I am, something I cannot have at all costs.
“Yes, excuse me,” I say. “Jared’s death caused some problems.”
I really, really need to focus.
When the meeting is finally over, I get into my office, pacing up and down.
A knock behind me, and my assistant enters, a worried look on his face.
“What happened?” I ask immediately.
“Something arrived for you via mail,” he says carefully, and I groan. “Not another threat?”
“Worse, from how Doug reacted,” he says and nods, telling me to follow him.
Worse.
My mind spins out of control the very moment with the wildest fantasies of what arrived by mail.
What the hell is wrong with me? I ask myself because I control my thoughts, not the other way around. I don’t assume or overthink, but since Ella—
“Tell me what it is,” I say as I walk mechanically to the front desk. I half-expect to find Ella’s cut-off head in the mail; someone must’ve seen us and gone after her to make me stop our projects.
My heart pounds into my throat.
Doug is at the desk, an envelope in his hands, wearing a mask and gloves. The staff stand at a distance.
“Put on protection,” he says, and my assistant hands me a pair of medical gloves and a mask before he backs off, too. I put everything on. Doug is concerned, and if he is, it means something is not right.
Doug slips several photos out of the envelope, and white powder falls onto the desk. The pages are covered in white powder, too.
Doug hands me the photos, but I already know what they show. They’re proof, and someone else has it now.
Shit.
My chest feels like being compressed from all sides.
I rub my fingers against each other with some of the powder between them. I bring them up to my nose and sniff them through the mask.
“Cocaine,” I tell Doug, our eyes meet. We both know it’s probably the cocaine Jared died from, and someone is declaring war against me.
“Is there anything else?” I ask. “Something they want?”
“Nothing,” he says after glancing into the envelope one more time.
I skim through the photos. My eyes fly to the upper corner of the last one as a rug is pulled underneath me.
YOU ARE NEXT
It is scribbled onto the page in capital letters.
My mind needs a moment to catch up.
I want to run and collapse at the same time.
Only I can’t show a reaction.
I can’t show how much fear rushes through me.
Employees are watching.
I hold the page for Doug to see, carefully keeping it out of the camera's view.
My eyes are wide. It takes all my strength to slip on my mask.
He nods.
“What do you want me to do?” he asks.
I can’t have the police involved. If they find out about the pictures, I will be questioned thoroughly, something I can’t afford right now. Not another scandal.
“Log everything, securely and discreetly. Play it down,” I mutter to him so no one else hears. We store everything back in the envelope.
I breathe in and out. Everything is fine; no one can know.
“Alright, everyone,” I say, removing my gloves and mask when I turn.
“Looks bad, but it’s just one of the normal threats.
It is once more important that every envelope is scanned; let this be a reminder to you.
We’re doing important work to ensure the security of the citizens and our country here.
People feel scared and threatened by it. ”
Everyone breathes out, and we go back to our work. Only I don’t. I stare into the void, desperately trying to grasp what will come. It’s been a long time since I felt out of control like this.
At least it wasn’t Ella’s head, a barbaric voice in my head says, and I snort out.
I subconsciously grab my phone.
My finger wanders to her contact.
I really shouldn’t do it.
Don’t do it.
But I do.
The day is fucked anyway.
It rings.
Once, and then it’s interrupted by the automated voice telling me the person I have called is currently unavailable.
I'm feeling exhausted right now, even though I've slept more than ever. I’m not physically tired, but mentally, because everything feels like it's slipping out of my control.
I rub my eyes. Only three times in my life have I felt this kind of pressure.
The first time was when I nearly failed my bachelor’s because a professor thought I was entitled and needed a lesson.
The second was when Jared blackmailed me.
Now, for the third time, the fear of everything from the past surfacing looms over me.
My phone rings, and before I can even get my hopes up that it’s Ella, alive and well, I see my father’s picture on the screen. I groan because I know what’ll come.
My father doesn’t even concern himself with a hello.
He lectures me that I cannot be distracted, how he taught me to be better, and ends it after fifteen minutes with what a disappointment I am and how badly it reflects on the family name when Ian calls him, asking if I am okay because I seem stressed and distracted.
My father, who manages to hit the news with every possible scandal involving way too young women. The hypocrisy of it grumbles murderously in my chest.
He hangs up before I can say a word, not that I would’ve. After all these years, all my success, I would never dare talk back to my father. Everyone else, yes. But not to my father. He is the reason why I am where I am today, and I have to be grateful for that.
I rest my face in my hands.
My mother’s upcoming birthday will be hell.
I seriously consider liquidating all my assets, buying an island somewhere in nowhere, and becoming no one. It seems tempting at this point.
The door to my office opens without knocking, probably Doug, he’s the only one allowed to enter without knocking.
I don’t even look.
I need silence.
“You look like you could use a break,” says a voice I’d recognize anywhere, and my head shoots up.
Ella.
Leaning casually against the door, a weak smile on her face—and my mind turns off entirely.