CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FOUR
A UGGIE HADN ’ T FULLY thought through what he meant by securing new flight staff until they boarded the plane. Where she found herself being treated as Matias’s guest, and not as the flight attendant. She knew a total out-of-body experience when she looked at a woman standing next to the liquor cabinet, wearing the same sort of smart outfit that Auggie normally did.
“Can I get you a drink?” the woman asked.
Auggie blinked. “Sure.”
“Champagne,” said Matias. “We are celebrating.”
The woman, to her credit, did not ask what they were celebrating. Because of course people in her position knew that details would be revealed to them as the employers wished to reveal them.
It was the sort of thing that Auggie knew well.
Their champagne flutes were filled near to the top, and she took a seat with him in the position usually occupied by his arm candy.
She grimaced internally. She didn’t like to think of the women in reductive terms. Perhaps he was their arm candy. So there. Equality.
She took a sip of the champagne, which was undoubtedly the best quality she had ever had.
She was going to have to try and explain all of this to the work wives. She had a feeling that Irinka would be proud of the resourcefulness. That Lynna would be slightly wary, but overall see the merit of it. It would likely wound Maude’s softer soul. For her part, Auggie didn’t feel like she could afford to be a romantic. She had never messed around with men. She had too many important things to try and build. Too much to make up for. Too many experiences to reclaim, and relationships hadn’t been high on the list, because they would come with an obligation to another person.
It just wasn’t what she wanted. So this was... Strange, but it didn’t mean anything to her as far as romance went.
As far as attraction went...
She knew exactly what he was. She had watched him engage in all manner of uninhibited behaviors.
She wasn’t stupid enough to get herself involved in that.
He might not be quite who the media thought he was, but he was indiscriminate with his body.
And that was fine. His decision.
But she didn’t need to go involving herself in it.
Auggie liked to be an expert before she jumped into anything.
And sexual contact with Matias would require expert-level skills.
She didn’t even have entry-level skills.
So when they finished their champagne, and he extended his hand, drawing her out of her seat, his hands warm, and much rougher than she would’ve imagined, her heart leapt up into her throat. “Time for us to retire, I think.” His eyes were intent on hers, and she could barely breathe.
It was hammering against her breastbone. But she followed him, into the bedroom. The one that she had just sneaked into so that she could make sure the woman he was with was not taking pictures of him.
He closed the door behind them and lounged on the bed.
“Nothing to do but wait for a while,” he said.
She pressed herself against the door, her shoulder blades tight against the hard surface.
“I’m not going to molest you,” he said. He rolled over onto his back and looked up at the ceiling. “I don’t have any need of that.”
“Oh, I’m aware,” she said. “But this is slightly uncomfortable for me.”
“Why?”
“I’ve been in here many times after you’ve finished entertaining yourself with your guests. Like I said, I check their phones. For nudes.”
“You cannot tell me this has actually been an issue.”
“How are you na?ve? It’s laughable. There have been many instances. I always come in and make sure that those photos are deleted. And they never realize it.”
“You must be joking.”
“No.”
“I don’t think anyone else ever did that.”
“Maybe not. But there are pictures of you floating out around on the internet.”
“I don’t care about that.”
“You don’t care if your naked body ends up posted on the internet?”
“Do I strike you as someone with insecurities?”
“That doesn’t mean you want the entire world to have access to...”
“Does that mean that you see me naked?”
“This is the kind of thing that I was worried about. Lines are being crossed.”
“It’s a genuine question,” he said.
“Yes. Though, I can’t say that I... Lingered on it.”
“Then you have more restraint than some,” he said.
“Nice to know that your ego is very healthy and undented in spite of everything that you’ve done to create the situation,” she said.
“I didn’t hire someone to break into my files.”
“You also didn’t protect them very well.”
“Fair. I admit that I was complacent.”
“I imagine it’s difficult not to buy into your own press.”
He frowned. “I don’t think that I buy into my own press. I know how much of it’s a lie.”
“You know what everyone thinks about you. And I suppose it’s easy to imagine that is true universally. That you are... This beloved playboy who is so enjoyed by women that of course one of them wouldn’t actually be out to get you.”
“I don’t think that’s the case.”
“You don’t think that’s the case, but do you know any of the women that you slept with? Am I the first woman that you’ve ever conversed with in this room?” She wished that she wasn’t like this. She wished that she didn’t have to belabor the point. But she found that she did, even as the topic was making her uncomfortable. Even as she felt like she was breathless from talking to him about sex and his body in the enclosed space of this room.
She knew who she was. If she did choose to take a lover, it wasn’t going to be him. Not one with so many strings attached. Not one who... Who created such powerful feelings inside of her. It was attraction, she knew that. And the worst thing was she knew that it was an incredibly basic response to him. It was simply how he made women feel. Because he was Matias Javier Hernandez Balcazar, and he was widely considered to be the most beautiful man in the world. It would be strange if she didn’t respond to him in this way.
No. If she ever did decide to take a lover, it would be an English man, perhaps. And they would have a casual arrangement, where they met at a cottage on rainy afternoons, and they would drink tea and make love.
She did not think that Matias made love.
She rather thought that there was a rougher and cruder term for what he did in bed. And she ignored the tightening in her stomach that indicated she was interested in discovering for herself.
“No,” he said. “But I don’t actually talk to anyone. In fact, you and I have exchanged more honest conversation in the last few hours than I have with anyone in years.” He didn’t sound surprised by this, but a bit grim. And she felt...
How strange. How strange to know that this man had given more to her than he had to anyone else for a long time.
His connections were physical, theirs wasn’t.
It made her feel...she couldn’t parse it. She wasn’t sure she wanted to.
“Anyone?”
“Anyone who knows me knows me on my own terms. And my terms are that I do not wish to be perceived.”
“Why is that?”
“Because who I was doesn’t serve me. At least not in any way beyond guiding me toward getting revenge on my father.”
“You should tell me why you hate him.”
“You’ve done research on me, I assume?”
“I know about you, yes. I’ve read your bio.”
“Then you know I had a sister.”
“Yes,” she said slowly, “I know that you had a sister.”
“What you don’t know is that I’m responsible for her death.”
He watched her process that information, her birdlike features knitted together tightly as she tried to take into consideration what he had just said. He didn’t know why he wanted to push her like this. She was helping him. But perhaps what he really wanted to see was if she was up for this. Because it wasn’t going to be easy. The truth was, Javier had set his sights on him. And that meant there would be more. So there could be no secrets between himself and Augusta, not really. He would have to make sure the same was true with her. Because things would come out. That was the truth of it.
His father would stop at nothing.
“You... You were responsible?”
“Yes. In order to explain, I will have to paint a clearer picture of how my father ran our household. My mother was meek and compliant. There was no other way to survive a life with him. He was cruel. He ruled with an iron fist. Though he never stooped to hitting us with it. He was an emotional manipulator, he would set a bar, and if we would clear it, he would tell us that we hadn’t. He changed the metrics often. I wanted to please him. I bent over backward trying to make myself into the son that he wanted me to be. Seraphina... She kicked against it. She couldn’t stand what he made of our mother. She couldn’t stand being subjected to his demands. When she began rebelling, he did everything he could to stop it. He cut her off financially, he stopped our mother from speaking to her. I still kept in touch. It wasn’t until later that I realized he allowed it for reasons of control. As long as there was a link between himself and Seraphina then he could still get to her. And as long as there was still someone she cared for in the family... There was something to exploit. I was... I was convinced that what he was doing was necessary. That Seraphina was harming herself, and... It wasn’t wrong. Some of her behavior was self-destructive. And yet, his methods were not... It was not the way. But I didn’t believe that, not at the time. At the time, I was a boy. I was his thing. His robotic soldier. I ordered the staff around the way that he did, I lived my life with ruthless precision. I denied myself all pleasures of the flesh. And when he told me that I had to go and give Seraphina the hard word that I would no longer be able to support her or be in her life unless she came home and complied with all of my father’s demands... She overdosed. That same night. Because the one person she had thought cared about her had been acting as surveillance, had betrayed her in exactly the same way.”
He had never told the story out loud before, and it sounded strange in his voice. He had said it in his own head many times. Cementing his culpability in what had happened.
He hated himself for it. He didn’t hate himself less for hearing it said aloud. If anything, he hated himself slightly more, because it made him feel closer to the twenty-year-old that had done his father’s bidding with such vigor. With such conviction.
“The most truly terrifying thing to learn about yourself is that you have the capacity to harm those you love, because you have been brainwashed. Manipulated. To realize that you are not half so clever as you think you are. That was when I decided that it all had to end. That was when... At Seraphina’s funeral, when my father stood there without a tear on his cheek, I vowed that I would end him. But not only that, that I would prove the way he saw the world meant nothing. I decided to be all the things he had ever told me not to be, to compete with him, and to win. To destroy him. While smiling. You see, I have no desire to steal secrets from my father, I don’t need them. But I do like to keep tabs on him.”
“Matias... I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”
Her words were like a balm, but he refused to let it soothe anything.
“Why would you know? I’ve never spoken to anyone about it. It is immaterial. What happened then can’t be changed. And that is the truly chilling thing about revenge plans, Augusta. They fixed nothing. They’re simply more destruction in an already destroyed landscape.”
“But if you feel that way, why do it?”
“Because I want scorched earth. I don’t want to fix anything, I know it’s impossible. I just want to salt the ground so that nothing can grow there ever again.”
“Pitbull,” she said. “I knew it.”
“You said pitbulls weren’t that aggressive.”
“Mostly, they aren’t. Like I said, they’re reactionary. But when they’re abused... They get mean.”
“Apt, then,” he said.
She seemed to be sitting with the revelation, though her next question wasn’t about Seraphina. “Why let the media think you’re... Simple?”
“Because I prefer to be unknowable. All evidence suggests that can’t possibly be true, doesn’t it? It’s amusing, I think, that they see me as being something so utterly unthreatening.”
“It allows you to move in the open,” she said.
“Yes. Exactly. And in the end, I cannot imagine a more poetic headline. My father’s fool of a son putting him out of business. Better that I’m not thought of as ruthless or brilliant or exacting. It makes my father’s eventual downfall that much more humiliating for him.”
“You thought of everything,” she said.
“Absolutely everything,” he repeated. “Except what I’ll do when it’s finished.”
“Won’t you just... Live?”
“Maybe,” he said. But he didn’t mean it.
The truth was, he was accomplished at numbing the pain. At blunting his grief with alcohol, with sex. He didn’t touch drugs, because they had been the undoing of Seraphina, and he would never line the pockets of any of the people who had sold her illegal substances, he would never contribute to that trade. It had less to do with treating his own body like a temple of any kind and more to do with the festering rot of the industry.
“You can have a life, you know,” she said.
“My sister doesn’t,” he said. “You can see where my dilemma is.”
“Do you think that maybe it’s not a great tribute to her to not live at all?”
“And what would you know about that?”
“I know about grief. Whether you can compare the two or not.”
“Comparison is the thief of joy, I hear.”
“My mother died,” she said. “When I was eighteen. I never knew my father. She was the only parent that I had.”
“I’m sorry. Let me tell you, a bad father is worse than no father.”
“I suppose so,” she said. “Neither of us would really know.”
He nodded slowly. She had been alone in the world at eighteen. And she didn’t seem to come from means. He wondered how she had navigated that. What she had done. He didn’t ask.
It explained her. The determination, the scrap.
“We should land soon,” she said. “Maybe I’ll try to do some work.”
“Is your computer in here?”
“Yes. I’ll just... Sit over here.”
And she did, at a desk in the corner of the room, working away, and he watched. Fascinated by her. By the focus that she gave to what she did. There was definitely more fire to her than he had ever seen when she was simply acting as his flight attendant. But she wasn’t an entirely different person. She interested him more than he would like to admit. But he supposed that was a good thing. Because over the next couple of months they were going to spend a lot of time together.