Jane Harvey-Berrick Saving The Billionaire

by Harvey-Berrick, Jane

  At least Anderson has canceled the morning run.

  At 6AM, I take a shower. When I look in the mirror, I realize that I’m beginning to resemble an extra in one of those damn zombie movies: bloodshot eyes—check; drawn, haggard face—check; rabid snarl—check; snazzy charcoal suit—oh, wait, that’s just me.

  I head into the main room and really wish I hadn’t.

  Ms. Alvarez is standing there, looking like she wants to audition for the same zombie movie. It’s obvious that she’s been crying. Questions wash over me in a red tide of anger. Has the boss hurt her? Invited her to an orgy? Taken her to his fucking meditation room? That fucker! That lousy fucker!

  “Did you know?” she says, her voice strangled. “Did you know?”

  I wish she’d be more specific.

  “About his meditation room?”

  Oh.

  She spits out the words, then her rage fades suddenly and she just sounds tired.

  “Of course you know. You live here, you’ve lived with him for months, years, maybe. Of course you know.”

  She slumps onto the sofa, her hands covering her face.

  “I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know what to say to him, how I can make it better. Everyone says that when you meet a guy you want to change him, but people never really change. I didn’t want to change Devon! I liked him just the way he was! I mean, I thought I did. But … God, is there more? The sex parties at the Farm and now that … that terrible room? Am I going to keep finding out that there’s more, or worse? Something even darker? Because I don’t know if I’m strong enough. I don’t think I can do this.”

  She stares up at me, her eyes glassy with tears as she looks for answers she won’t want to hear.

  “Ms. Alvarez, this is a conversation for you to have with Mr. Anderson. But … if it helps … he has changed since he met you. For the better, ma’am.”

  She blinks back tears, surprise and confusion battling in her expression.

  “Thank you, Trainer. Thank you, I … well, thank you.”

  The boss walks into the room, his face defeated, his icy control gone.

  “Maria, please…”

  She holds up her hands like a traffic cop.

  “Dev, no. I need to think about this. I don’t understand why you do … that. I think you need help and I don’t think I can be the one to help you. I wish I could, but…”

  “Maria, you do help,” he says quietly, and I know he’s telling the truth.

  She shakes her head.

  “You are not my only responsibility, Devon. I have three younger brothers—two of them are still at high school. They need me. Abuelo needs me. You’re a grown man—you have to figure this out for yourself.”

  “I’m trying, Maria, I am. I … I see a therapist.”

  “Oh … a psychiatrist?”

  “A sex therapist.”

  “A sex therapist? But … you’re not … you don’t … you always … oh my God, were you … abused?”

  She reaches out to touch his cheek, and I have to look away. It’s too personal, but there’s no way I can exit the room without drawing attention to myself.

  He doesn’t reply but she can see the answer in his eyes.

  “Oh, Devon! Oh my God!”

  She wraps him in her arms and he lets her, holding her gently as if the weight of his arms might be too much.

  “I’m glad you’re seeing someone, Dev. Does it help?”

  He nods.

  “Yes, but the meditation room helps, too.”

  She stiffens and steps backward, his arms falling away from her.

  “Really? Beating yourself bloody is helping? I think … I think, Dev, that you’ve got a long way to go yet. And I don’t think that I can…”

  “Maria, please. I am getting better. Just … give me a chance. I’m trying.”

  “I’m not saying this is goodbye,” she whispers, her voice soft with tears. “I’m saying I need time. Will you give me time, Devon?”

  He nods stiffly, fighting to keep his emotions in check.

  She stares at his face, looking for something, but I don’t know what.

  “Okay,” she says, her shoulders slumping. “I’ll see you.”

  The cost of this gilded cage was too high.

  But the look on the boss’s face shakes me: he’s desperate.

  I wonder how I’d feel if Rachel ever spoke to me like that. The thought chills my blood.

  The world is a cold and lonely place without your soulmate, and without Maria, the boss’s world is in danger of spinning into darkness. I know what that’s like because I’ve been there.

  And not for the first time, I pity him.

  “At least let Trainer take you home.”

  I’ve never heard the boss beg before. I don’t think God has heard the boss beg before.

  “I’ll bring the car around to the front door, Ms. Alvarez.”

  I can’t bear the tension in the room. And Ms. Alvarez needs a ride.

  She glances toward me without meeting my eyes and nods quickly. Then she walks out. She doesn’t look back, so she doesn’t see the bleakness in Anderson. I look away.

  As Ms. Alvarez exits the elevator, I can tell that she’s only just holding it together. I open the car door for her and she slides in, blank and wordless.

  I head out into the traffic and she’s trying hard not to cry, but tears are running down her face.

  For only the fourth time in my life, I want to kill someone. The first time was when my bastard of a father hit my mom and I tried to rip his head off; I was fourteen. The second time was in Iraq. Then earlier this year when I saw Rachel tied up, with Van Sant holding a gun to her head. But the fourth time is right now: I want to hurt Anderson as badly as this girl is hurting.

  How many more people are going to be broken on his rack? How many more like Aston? How many more like Maria? How many times will Rachel be put in danger because of his fucked up lifestyle. No. It stops here. It stops now, at least for me.

  When I get back, I’m giving my notice—and for Rachel, too. I won’t have her exposed to this fucked-upness anymore. I know I don’t speak for her, but the need to keep her safe is my number one priority—screw job security.

  As I help Ms. Alvarez out of the car, she can’t meet my eyes. She just shakes her head when I ask if she’d like me to see her up. I watch her struggle to get her key out of her purse, her eyes blurred with tears. Through the small pane of glass in her front door, I see her gripping the doorframe to hold herself up.

  “Goodbye, Ms. Alvarez,” I say softly.

  I need to get back in control, give my notice, pack up my shit—and get the fuck out.

  But when the elevator doors open, I don’t do any of those things. Anderson is sitting on the floor, his head in his hands. He looks up when he hears me—and I see a broken man.

  Maybe it was his own stupidity … maybe it was his own fucked up, twisted fault. But suddenly all I see is a broken man, a drowning man, a good man who made a mistake. A man who finally found love—and threw it away because he didn’t understand what he held before he crushed it.

  “I’ve taken Ms. Alvarez home, sir.”

  He stares at me like he doesn’t understand the words, then nods very slowly.

  “Thank you, Trainer.”

  He looks down, almost puzzled, as if he can’t understand why he’s on the floor.

  I don’t reach out my hand to help him up. I watch as he stumbles, off balance. I watch as he straightens slowly, and I watch as he walks away, his hands jammed into his pockets, his head hanging down. But I don’t hand in my notice either.

  I watch and I listen.

  It’s as if I can hear the sound of his heart splintering.

  Chapter 14

  The Well of Loneliness

  I FEEL SO fucking useless.

  Give me a target, give me something I can aim at, give me an armed insurgent with a Texas-sized death wish, give me something tangible that I can wrap my hands around and
choke the living fuck out of—give me SOMETHING I CAN DO.

  Allison is sick, so Rachel has taken some vacation and gone to look after her sister and nieces. I’m stuck with the Leonard Cohen of Lower Manhattan.

  I want to be with Rachel but she insisted I stay with the boss. She says it’s my job, and it is, but she’s my life. It kills me that she won’t let me be with her. I’m respecting her wishes—that shit is hard—when everything inside is telling me to be with her even when she visits with her sister.

  The boss has disappeared into a black pit of despair. He showers and eats, impersonating a human being, then vanishes into his lair.

  He’s as coldly efficient as ever, dealing with Pam’s calls and Howard’s emails, but I see the storm raging inside.

  I can’t help him, and I’m not sure I would if I could. He’s dragging everyone else into his darkening world, and that is un-fucking-acceptable.

  Instead, I go to my home office and work through the usual protocols: check CCTV again; check the alarms on entrances and exits again; check Mason’s daily status report again. Nothing to raise my pulse, let alone provide a distraction.

  Then on Saturday morning, before our run, Anderson comes to my office, lurking at my door like the Grim Reaper’s long lost cousin.

  “Trainer, I’m going to be doing some … redecorating.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I know it’s not in your job description…”

  If he’s talking interior design, we’re in trouble.

  “But … I’d appreciate your help.”

  Holy shit! The boss is asking me for a favor! Those pigs musta grown feathers over night.

  “Sir?”

  “I’ve decided to make some changes. My meditation room…”

  He takes a deep breath and I can see how hard this is for him, to let go of this thing, this process, whatever it is, however it works, it gives him some sort of balance.

  But there are other ways to find balance.

  “Sir, when I was based in Okinawa, we were encouraged to meet and greet the locals. One of the brass, one of the officers arranged for us to visit a Buddhist monastery for a meditation lesson.”

  I know I’ve got his attention, so I continue.

  “This old monk said he was going to train us to meditate the way he’d been trained by his master as a young man before the War. Hell, he was so old, he could have meant the First World War. So we all went to the meditation room, took off our shoes and socks, thinking it was damn funny, and knelt on tatami mats in complete silence. Then this old monk came up and thwacked us on the back with his bamboo cane to help us focus our minds, that’s what he said. And if we moved, he’d do it again. Fucking stung, too, he wasn’t taking it easy on us. I’m not sure how it was supposed to help me meditate because all I could think of for the next 20 minutes was how much he’d better not hit me again.”

  Anderson is frowning, but I also see understanding dawn in his eyes.

  “So make it into a Buddhist-style meditation room: tatami mats on the floor, images of mountains on the wall, calming, peaceful.” I shrug. “It’s worked for those monks for a couple of thousand years—no reason it shouldn’t work in Manhattan.”

  He stands upright and nods his head.

  “Thank you, Trainer.”

  For the rest of the morning, we rip down all those depressing fucking religious messages that reinforce to the boss how fucked up he is, and toss all his whips, belts, floggers and canes. I haul them to the garage and put them in the trunk of the Rover to take to the dump, thus preserving what’s left of Anderson’s reputation.

  Then I order two gallons of white paint and two roller brushes, and the boss and I work side by side, transforming the meditation room into a clean, white cube. No bad memories here.

  He doesn’t thank me but he doesn’t need to. I’d do the same for any guy in my platoon, whether I liked him or not.

  Then Anderson orders some tatami mats, and a well-known artist to render the mountains of Hakone onto the wall of his meditation room, with Fuji-san glowing under a red sunset. Apparently it’s after the style of Hokusai, but whatever, it looks great.

  If the boss still beats himself with a bamboo cane, I hope like fuck it’s for the right reasons. Whatever those are.

  By Monday, he seems to have reached some equilibrium, but Ms. Alvarez hasn’t come back.

  And it turns out that our weekend of Fixer Upper was the calm before the next storm. There have been so many storms in Manhattan that I’m thinking of relocating to Tornado Alley—Kansas is nice this time of year.

  Howard is waiting for the boss in his office, his eyes gleaming with excitement, yesterday’s dinner on his t-shirt.

  “Boss man! Saruman is hunting the Ring! Price went up to three-hundred-and-fifty Benjamins!”

  It takes me a second to realize that he’s talking about the blackmailer; Anderson is quicker.

  “Can you isolate his IP address?”

  “Nah, man, he’s bouncing it all over using a satellite relay.”

  Excuse me while I say, huh?

  “But now he’s out of his cave, the game is on.”

  “Did he release another video?”

  Howard’s smile dissolves.

  “Um yeah, but I nuked it before anyone saw it.”

  “Good work, Howard. Anything else you need?”

  “Nah, I’m pulling down some extra juice from the power company, but it’ll just look like a power surge.”

  “You got a name for us, Howard?”

  “Other than Saruman?”

  “It might come in handy.”

  “Well, I don’t know which ID he’ll be living under these days, but he was born Neil Brown. He also goes by Oscar Black, Rufus Lovell and Maryann Summers.”

  “Okaaaay.”

  Howard shrugs.

  “Dude has issues.”

  “And where can we find him?”

  Howard frowns.

  “He’ll flip out if he’s cornered, and then he’ll swarm the boss’s home videos all over the internet. If he even suspects that you’re within two clicks of him, the guy will implode.”

  “We need to have eyes on him, Howard, but we won’t move without your Bat signal.”

  Howard rubs his eyebrow with his middle finger. Either he’s flipping me off, or just really, really distracted.

  “He has an apartment in Princeton, a house in the hills behind the Hollywood sign, and he owns a condo on Cayman Brac.”

  And here I was thinking that crime doesn’t pay.

  He wanders out of the office, hitching his pants up and shuffling his feet. Hard to believe that a brain the size of Jupiter is hidden under that home haircut.

  “Sir, we need to alert Mason’s retrieval team. This guy is a computer geek but he’s not working alone. Van Sant or someone connected with the Farm sold or gave those videos to a third party.”

  Anderson rubs his forehead.

  “Fine. Update Mason, but no action until we hear back from Howard.”

  “Sir.”

  “And … we need to increase security at Wolf Point. And Maria, Ms. Alvarez…”

  “Yes, sir. John Evans is available full time.”

  “Good.”

  MASON HAS BEEN running down some leads on Neil/Oscar/Rufus/Maryann, but there’s still no solid news. With nothing else to go on, all I can do is increase security. Mason has briefed Evans who is now on stand-by 24/7.

  One of the staff bedrooms in Wolf Point has been set up so Evans can be available. Rachel is working from Allison’s to organize additional hours from the cleaning crew she uses, as well as a guy named Craig, a chef to provide breakfast and an evening meal. He’s a nice enough guy, but it’s thrown off the dynamics, and the staff wing no longer feels like my home. At least he’s only there four nights a week.

  Right now, Evans isn’t here either, but renting a room in the apartment building opposite Ms. Alvarez.

  The whole house feels different. It’s Maria—her absence has
left a big hole. I realize that I’ve gotten used to having her around. When she’s here, there’s always happy, salsa music; the sound of laughter. She’s so full of life.

  A pulse of anger surges through me as I think how he broke her.

  Sex games, BDSM, contracts, subs—it’s all shits and giggles until someone gets hurt.

  But Maria isn’t the only one suffering. As long as I’ve known Anderson, I’ve never seen him like this. He had three coping mechanisms for dealing with bad days: fucking at the Farm, hitting the gym and making Basqiat earn his money by getting the crap beaten out of him in the boxing ring, or beating the crap out of himself in the meditation room. Kind of ironic, when you think about it.

  Right now, he’s stopped the orgies at the Farm, redecorated the meditation room, and Basquiat isn’t around because he’s commentating on a big throw-down in Vegas.

  It makes me nervous. My job is based on predicting the unpredictable. No easy thing around the boss, but I’ve recognized certain patterns, certain likely responses to situations. But this is a new situation and I have no clue how he’s going to respond.

  I decide to stroll by his home office and make sure he’s not speed-dialing rent-a-sub.

  His head is bent and he’s leaning forward on his desk, ignoring the fucking spectacular view. I used to think he got off on seeing all the little people running around in their small lives below. But I realized long ago that I was wrong about that. He likes it on the top floor because he’s further away from all that seething humanity: he can see it, but it can’t touch him and he remains invisible in his eerie fucking eyrie.

  And I feel so bad for her and bad for him, too. Hell, I’m so damn miserable I feel bad for myself and seriously consider ransacking Rachel’s CD collection of show tunes to cheer myself up.

  I’m not that desperate—not yet.

  I watch for a few more moments, noting his total absorption, and reverse out of the study.

  Someone who didn’t know how that fucked up brain of his works might think he looks peaceful. I know that mad fucker better than anyone, and I can guarantee that his brain is whirling around like an ice-skater on acid. The only thing that’s missing is the tutu.