Chapter 3 #3
“They were disorganized,” I muttered, feeling heat creep into my cheeks. “It’s a serious office supply emergency.”
“You can’t paperclip your way out of this one, Annie.”
“I’m not trying to avoid anything,” I insisted, even as my fingers betrayed me by aligning another paperclip with military precision. “In two weeks, you’ll have a match against my ex-not-quite-boyfriend.”
I took a deep breath. “There are rules and procedures in place for the match and everything will be just fine.” I nodded firmly, as if I could convince my anxiety through repetition. “Just fucking fine.”
Havoc grimaced, the expression making the scar above his left eyebrow more pronounced. That scar was older than me. He said he kept it around because it reminded him of consequences.
“I just got a call from Alliance PR,” he said, his voice carefully neutral. “In conjunction with the Aegis.”
I froze, my hand hovering over the paperclips.
“What are you about to drop on me?”
Havoc’s expression darkened. “I wanted to tell you myself before the PR director calls you. Alliance PR wants you to take over as Valor’s handler in public settings.”
“And?” I shrugged, trying to ignore the prickle of unease between my shoulder blades. “Isn’t that what I was doing anyway? Managing his schedule, babysitting his interviews, preventing him from insulting people who could destroy his career with a single scathing article?”
Havoc ran a hand over his face, the gesture so uncharacteristically weary it made my stomach drop. Without a word, he passed his tablet to me.
“Just read it yourself.”
I took the tablet and scanned the document with growing horror. My eyes caught phrases like “romantic interest angle” and “public courtship narrative” and “leveraging Bishop’s appeal as the human element.”
The tablet nearly slipped from my suddenly numb fingers.
“No. Absolutely not.”
They wanted me to be Valor’s handler for the press, but they also wanted me to pretend to date him.
To be his arm candy. His human accessory.
Complete with staged public appearances and “candid” photos of us gazing adoringly at each other.
There were actual specifications for how close I needed to stand to him during photo opportunities.
“No,” I repeated, stronger this time. “I’d rather eat glass. Radioactive glass. While being set on fire.”
I thrust the tablet back at Havoc and looked around my office. It was the perfect cage I’d mistaken for safety. I’d spent years living by Alliance rules, clinging to their structure because I thought it would protect me from the Halcyons and Ciphers of the world.
But the rules I worshipped were just bars on my cage.
“You can’t possibly be okay with this.” My voice cracked.
I shoved up from my chair and paced the small confines of my office, bumping into the edge of my desk and barely feeling it. The pain seemed distant compared to the hot ball of panic expanding within me.
“It’s not my decision, Annie.” Havoc’s voice was uncharacteristically gentle. “The Aegis decided it. PR thinks Valor needs humanizing, and you’re...”
“Expendable? Convenient?” I laughed, but it was humorless.
“Why me?” The absurdity of the situation made my head spin.
“There are dozens of Keepers who would kill for this assignment. Give him someone who actually wants to be on camera. Someone who will happily soak up his golden glow and bat their eyelashes for the press.”
“You have natural defenses,” Havoc said quietly.
His eyes flicked to the metal cuff on my wrist before meeting my gaze again.
“His persuasion powers would make anyone else compliant and they’d end up worshipping him by the end of the first day.
The Aegis knows you are the only person, except maybe me, who can stand next to him all day and remain completely unaffected by his powers. ”
“I won’t do it.” I crossed my arms, my nails digging half-moons into my biceps. “I’m a Keeper, not a prop for some overgrown man child with an ego problem. I didn’t spend years training to be arm candy for the Alliance’s newest PR project.”
For just a moment, Havoc’s expression slipped, and I caught a glimpse of the same outrage I was feeling. He looked like he wanted to blast something into oblivion—preferably whoever had come up with this plan. But then he took a deep breath.
“You did it for Cipher,” Havoc said quietly. “Alliance PR was impressed with how you handled yourself at his side. They thought the optics worked well.”
“That was different and you know it.”
“It wasn’t that different. You were looking for a rogue, but he needed you for the hit his ratings took with the Syndicate when he saved you.”
“But I wasn’t his girlfriend! I -,” I bit back the words that almost tumbled out. What would be the professional term for ‘fuck toy’? Personal entertainment system? Disposable emotional outlet?
I shook my head.
“What exactly does Alliance PR think they saw when I was with him in public?” I asked, genuinely curious about what delusion they were operating under. “Because Cipher and I didn’t exactly have the type of relationship on camera that the Alliance would want for one of their Heroes.”
“They saw what they wanted to see, Annie, a Villain showing his human side.”
“That’s not what the public saw it as and you know it,” I said but the fight was draining out of me.
The day had already been too long and I didn’t have the bandwidth for this level of fuckery.
“The thing with Cipher was completely different and at least I had the benefit of anonymity. This is asking me to degrade myself, my actual self, professionally. To pretend to be romantically involved with a colleague I’m supposed to be managing. ”
I stared at Havoc, my heart pounding with a mixture of anger and disbelief.
“Is this my fucking career now?” I finally asked. “Posing as a girlfriend for ratings? Because no. I’m a goddamn Keeper, Havoc. I deserve better than that.”
A sharp knock interrupted my spiral into career despair. The door opened to reveal a courier in the Tower’s blue and gold uniform, holding a large paper bag that smelled like heaven if heaven were made of garlic and butter.
“Food delivery for Ms. Bishop.”
I accepted the bag, peeking inside to find containers of pasta from Marcello’s, my favorite comfort food spot downtown.
I set the bag on my desk, the aroma of garlic and cheese momentarily distracting me from my impending career doom. “Is this your way of softening the blow? ‘Sorry you have to pretend to date a walking shampoo commercial, here’s some carbs to cry into?’”
Havoc frowned, his silver eyebrows drawing together. “I didn’t order this.”
“Simmons, then?” I pulled out a container of fettuccine alfredo still hot enough to fog the plastic lid.
“Probably.” Havoc shrugged.
I sighed. “I need to start being a better adult. Take care of myself more so you two stop feeling like you need to feed me like this.”
“What do you mean, feed you like this?”
“The stealth food deliveries,” I said, pointing my fork at the pasta. “The perfectly made coffee outside the press room today. I appreciate it, I really do, but you and Simmons don’t need to babysit my caloric intake.”
An odd expression I couldn’t quite place flickered across his face, but he smoothed it away quickly.
“Right,” he said. “Because Simmons and I are definitely the only ones who could possibly care if you starve to death at your desk.”
I stabbed my fork into the pasta. “There’s Dawn, but I’m betting it was Simmons.”
Havoc let out a bone-weary sigh. It wasn’t his usual “the world is testing my patience” sigh or even his “I’m too old for this shit” sigh.
“Go home, Annie,” he said. “Get some sleep. The world won’t end if you leave those paperclips unsorted for one night.”
I poked at my pasta. “Pretty sure it might. I’ve read the Alliance handbook cover to cover, and there’s definitely a section about proper office supply management preventing the apocalypse.”
He didn’t laugh. Instead, he moved around my desk and did something so unexpected I nearly dropped my fork. He pressed a kiss to my forehead, the way he used to when I was younger and the nightmares came.
“We’ll figure this out,” he promised quietly.
The gesture left me frozen, fork suspended halfway to my mouth. By the time I recovered enough to respond, he was already at the door.
“Havoc—” I started.
He paused, hand on the doorframe. “Go home, kid.”
Then he was gone, leaving me with cooling alfredo and the distinct feeling that I was missing something important.