by Elena Monroe
At least my hands and conscience were still clean of whatever goes on there, just like they were before, when I took deliveries or phone calls at the front desk.
Pouring into the office before anyone arrived gave me an opportunity to snoop in Vic’s office. The sun was barely up, and here I was punching in for work.
Gross.
I was fucking up my sleep schedule to find Abigail. She had better appreciate all this digging I was doing.
Digging my own grave too… right next to her, if she was even still alive.
Setting down my coffee on his desk, I started with his laptop sitting on the clean, almost empty, desk. There was a password, and I wasn’t wasting precious time trying to figure it out. It was probably “Ha! You lose!’ or something else degrading.
Opening the drawers, there wasn’t much to look at except more green files, none of them labeled. Walking over to the one single black bookshelf he had, I couldn’t help but stop at the framed photos catching my eye.
Four boys all holding medals and wearing swim caps.
I couldn’t get my eyes to move from a young Vic. He was easy to spot with his chest puffed, standing in the middle, like the victory was no big deal, with the same kind of jaw that gave you papercuts—only on your heart, not your fingers.
He looked less haunted in this photo with the other three guys, like maybe he had a normal adolescence and just got fucked up later in life.
It almost convinced me there was hope for him. Too bad I knew better than to gobble up hope and expect myself to feel full.
I was done collecting bad boys with bad problems and expecting their jagged edges to fit into my empty spaces to create a whole person. I would rather take what I wanted and let that fill in wherever it could for one night.
Only one night.
Human connection was overrated when it came to trying to make it less about primal instinct and more about how much you don’t want to die alone.
Vic scared the shit out of me when he spoke: “What are you doing in my office?”
It wasn’t really a question that needed a reply. I set down the photo and decided to give up my coffee that I had sat down on his desk. I couldn’t lose to him, so if it meant sacrificing my coffee, then so be it.
“I brought you coffee, then clearly got distracted…”
“It’s from high school. We were all on the swim team. Never lost.”
“Congratulations. I’m sure that’s when your addiction started,” I retorted with a bite, even though he was being vulnerable.
“I was bred to be competitive. I told you, I don’t lose. You have my folder?”
The whole reason I was here early was to snoop, and I blew it by being distracted by the wrong kind of clues.
Slamming the folder down onto his desk, I smiled in a way that seemed porcelain, fragile, and too glossy to be real. “Here. Have your folder back. I’m done with it anyways.”
“How many copies did you make?”
Vic wasn’t stupid. He was probably the smartest guy in the room, but he never let you forget it… and that was the problem.
He was dressed in his usual fitted suit and tie, while I stood on the other side of his desk in jeans, Converse, and a t-shirt that said on it, “If you can read this, you’re too close”. A desk between us might as well have been a world. Day and night. Black and… pink. Depressing and fun.
“Enough to ensure my safety. I know exactly who you are…” I wasn’t lying through my teeth. I knew who Vic was in the grand scheme of things here—the Illuminati, the Horsemen, the weird events they don’t exactly avoid, and all the things I didn’t know, like what exactly he did in his office all day.
“Safety?” His chuckle was dark and full of intimidation. I wasn’t taking that bait. He continued, while digging in his drawers and placing a gun on top of his desk. “Maybe I wasn’t clear about you being alive as a courtesy. Safety is something I reward you, and if you keep pissing me off, I won’t care about anyone’s safety anymore.”
He picked it up, and I watched him check the barrel for bullets. None of his charm was visible, yet parts of me liked the danger.
He was full body angry, and I was full body turned on.
“You really have a way with dirty talk, huh?” I couldn’t flatten my smirk sprouting up.
I circled the desk, really testing his limits, and perched on the end, keeping my eyes on the sleek gunmetal grey against his tawny flesh.
Pushing his chair to face me, I watched his smirk flare up in a silent retort with his gun laying against his thigh, making my eyes fall down to his crotch. “You distracted me with your pussy once. You get one time to best me; the rest will cost you… more than you can afford.”
Crossing my ankles, I fished the calling card out of my back pocket and let it fall on the desk next to me, still digesting the fact that he has a gun in his desk at work. “I’m pretty sure this is my golden ticket. This is your handy work, right? None of the other guys care enough to leave clues like you.”
I watched his facial expression dampen from full of pride to pensive in a way I couldn’t read beyond. Whatever he was thinking was concealed from the world, even when he was caught off guard.
“You think that’s a clue?” Standing up, he walked to the painting on the wall and pulled the corner to reveal a safe.
Vic was still sharp when caught off guard, while I was still catching up to him, dull as ever.
“This was an invitation to see who will conquer who first?” I held up the card he left by her table, like it would make up for the mess I woke up to.
A kind of trauma I didn’t know I was reawakening.
He put the gun safely behind the thick wall of the safe and closed the framed photo over it again, before turning around to me with that angelic scowl he was so fond of. “No one ever plays…”
It was exactly that easy. He left me a clue that led to him, and now he was robbing me of my victory.
What else did I have to figure out?
I knew the Clave was the Illuminati. I knew they were taught to be deadly weapons that herded the sheep. I knew they were responsible for Abigail going missing. I wanted answers, and he clammed up.
Standing up, just as annoyed as he was with me, I folded my arms and pushed off the desk, leaving his bullshit clue. Neither of us were winning, and I was done playing his game. If he wouldn’t tell me anything, I would just go to the source.
Grimm.
VIC
Justice was digging too deep and uncovering too many of our precious secrets. Every time she smirked in my direction, I felt her melting a layer of my reserve.
She thought she was being fucking cheeky.
My alarm went off that I needed to fire her or put her down myself, before she unraveled too much.
When I continued to search for Justice online, I was drowning in results about her activism, but nothing personal—nothing I could use against her the same way she was using the Clave against me.
Thank the gods my teenage good looks distracted her from noticing the new green folder with her name on it.
I had to write two emails and make a phone call to get her file sent over, which was very odd, and that wasn’t lost on me. Employee information is one of the easiest things to get if you’re one of us.
Nothing about Justice is easy.
Ripping the bubble wrap open at the top, I poured out her folder, finally feeling like I was getting my upper hand back. I deflated quickly when I saw the folder was thin and that created a pit in my stomach, which was still hungry with desire.
Cracking open her file, I sat down at my desk and sipped the coffee that Justice had left behind, fully aware she could be poisoning me.
The sweet as fuck coffee didn’t taste like coffee at all when I was forced to swallow it down.
Shouting into the intercom as I choked on the liquid sugar, “That’s not coffee! For future reference, I’m a purest. No sugar. No cream.”
Pulling my finger off the intercom
on my desk, I focused on the pages her file yielded. Two to be exact. Petty information like her birthday, birthplace, and HR information, instead of the details I wanted.
Turning the page, all you could see clearly was all of the sentences which had been redacted. Big bold black blocks making sure you couldn’t see any of the words. Slamming my fist against my desk, I hit a dead end, and I knew it.
I didn’t want to reach out to my dad for this. I didn’t want to admit defeat to a Titan that never lost.
That was the thing about my dad: His love came second to the victories.
I learned that pretty quickly when I was younger. While the other guys had freedom until we hit fourteen and were sent off to the mountains to learn the family secrets, I was already submerged, head under water.
I had been bred to be the Clave’s Golden Boy, and the way to my dad’s black fucking heart was out showing the others, even my brothers.
Every summer, the heat would swell up to the hundreds, and everyone would be outside but me. The Hunt used to include your whole family back then. Of course, us four boys would be accompanied by our nannies all weekend and purposely pointed in the opposite direction of harm.
Some harm might have done us some good. We all needed a blow to our ego to keep us in place. Now we all acted like untouchable fucking kings of the island, when the island was really just an upside down cross on fire.
I was the reason the Hunt was no longer family friendly, when I picked up a gun and we all learned I had natural aim. Everyone smiled and laughed to themselves when they realized I was never aiming for one of their marks on the loose, but at my nanny, who vetoed cookies after midnight.
If I was going to be the Golden Boy, I was going to get what I wanted out of it. After that, no one dared to question my wants or needs.
Except my father.
He didn’t care what you needed or wanted; he was recklessly himself all the time.
Cold.
Heartless.
Setting a standard so high you can’t see it, never mind reach it.
My dad was old school and refused to respond to text messages. He would leave you unread if you even tried, so I waited for the ringing while I held my phone to my ear.
“What did you do now, Victory?” He said my name with this kind of smooth disappointment, like he regretted naming me that at all.
“I need you to look at this file. It’s all redacted…” Ignoring his chilly tone, I breezed by onto the point.
“Not worth looking into. Anything hidden that well isn’t worth digging up.”
I was trying to find any holes in his words for me to fall into, but he was just as solid as when my name hissed from his mouth.
“Not optional. It’s information I need. Justice Fritz was promoted to my desk, and I’ve made it my priority to know her weaknesses.”
“Leave this alone, Victory. I mean it.”
The line went dead before I could argue or build a case for why he should do what I wanted.
Throwing my phone across the room, I heard it shatter against the frosted glass wall between Justice and me. Now I have to resort to even more dangerous ways of getting information, like leaning on the guys I grew up with, but felt disconnected from completely.
None of us had been close, since we were in high school, and that was solely the result of being the only attendees of Servants of Patmos.
A means to an end.
Asking for help and leaning on people was the exact opposite of winning. It was a silent death. You didn’t get a bronze or silver medal because you forfeited.
Justice sauntered into my office, mid anger-attack. Her voice sounded like a melody; it was so happy, “Everything okay? Some guy called and said he’d be dropping off something. I told him now isn’t a good time since you clearly just got your first period. I have tampons and Midol in my bag if you need anything. Us ladies have to stick together. Right, Vicy?”
I glared up at her, not ready to move on from punishing myself for not getting what I needed before from the Horsemen.
“Why don’t you just… go get lunch or something?”
I needed her out of my office, this building entirely, far enough away so I could think without her coming up first.
“Physically, you’re flawless, but mentally exhausting. You should figure that out,” she quipped, like I would care when my face was balled up in a permanent kind of pissed off.
“Justice!” I barked her direction—only her name tasted like begging, a new sour taste on my tongue I hadn’t experienced before.
I don’t beg.
I don’t ask twice.
I don’t live in between reality and make believe. I can leave all the hints I want for someone to give a shit, but until I want to accept that, I’m a lost cause.
By the time I felt more like myself, I texted Grimm, instead of seeing his office empty, like I knew it would be. You couldn’t pay him enough to come to work.
Another freedom I couldn’t afford if I wanted to be the best.
ME: We need a meeting. I’ll text the guys. Your place - tonight.
GRIMM: No.
ME: Justice’s blood will be on your conscience not mine.
GRIMM: Whatever. Tonight.
That was as much caring as you were going to get out of Grimm. He was the monster his parents made him out to be, yet Abigail was able to take all of his broken pieces and make him whole.
The anger subsided only long enough for me to toy with the idea of someone making me whole from all the unsalvageable parts left in the wake of my mom abandoning me, my dad hating me, and all of the hate I nursed for myself.
I kept the file in the safe, just in case Justice was feeling the exact amount of comfort she didn’t take much time to settle into. She would come into my office without even knocking with no care in the world, if I was working or surfing porn sites. She did what she wanted, regardless of my name plate on the edge of my desk, declaring me CEO of Clave International Holding.
She was digging enough without me serving up clues.
Returning calls, placing orders, and making sure CNN was on the flat screen so I could hear the havoc I was leaving behind by doing what I did, I decided to cut out early.
There was enough metal and bullets in the world without me staying an extra few hours to make sure shit got worse.
Justice watched me leave. I could feel her eyes stuck to me and her mouth open without any words actually falling out. I stopped, realizing I should probably dismiss her, like the obedient secretary she was currently being at the moment.
A sick kind of joy ran through me every time I perpetuated gender inequality, insulted human rights, or whatever the fuck she was into fighting for.
“I’m leaving early. You can go after he drops off my crates.” I stood there, letting the tension lick my skin, while her glare dug deeper.
Karma.
Maybe my absence would leave Justice in a state of discomfort, one that would stop her from digging, if she knew what happened behind closed doors. She knew this was the Illuminati, but she didn’t actually know what we actually did in the name of creating those strings.
What I do.
Dante Ares was not a pleasant man. He was rough with a long scar over his eye and a voice that sounded like he had demons on his back. If anyone was going to make Justice uncomfortable, it would be him.
This was going to be my version of scared straight, except mine involved heavy artillery, ammunition, and bundles of cash in crates ready to grate her every nerve.
Standing in the elevator, I bit down a smile at my own victory.
JUSTICE
The office was quiet without Vicy’s yelling and moving around in the office behind me.
Too quiet.
When four o’clock finally rolled around, the phone rang for only the third time today. At least when I was at the front, time moved on without being this torturous. Deliveries, people, calls… all consistently kept me busy.
When I answered th
e phone, the same guy with the decade-long, under-the-influence voice cut off my greeting. “I’m in the garage. Tell Vic to come verify the shipment.”
The phone line went dead before I noticed, as I continued to explain that Vicy left early.
Heavy flow kind of day.
By the time I realized I was talking to myself, I plucked my office badge from the still empty desk and bolted for the elevators. I only knew that shipments were dropped off in the garage because of how many times lunch deliveries got caught in the bowels of the Clave.
By the time I waited for the elevator and ran down the short set of stairs, I was out of breath, while the goons unloaded the Mercedes truck with no plates attached to the back end. Unmarked was never a good thing.
With my arms folded and a new thorn in my side about being his assistant, I took inventory of the four black industrial crates stacked on the concrete. The guy with the voice made up of nightmares stood there in the same position I was, angry, but still, and he ordered the guys to open the crate to verify the shipment.
“It’s all here. See?”
My eyes widened, and I saw exactly how fragile the cargo was inside. Guns, money, bricks that resembled movies, but good to know those movies are accurate.
“Excuse me, who are you? Vicy isn’t here, and if you didn’t hang up so quickly you would have known that before unpacking all this.” I was trying to not look directly at the sun, keeping my focus on the nameless gangster.
He took a big step towards me. “I’m Dante Ares—supply and demand. I’m not taking anything back, so you can leave it here or verify the shipment yourself. Vic is your problem.”
I could smell the cigars, the death, the catatonic people in his wake from our proximity.
I stumbled over every sentence forming in my mind before any could make it out of my mouth.
Crap.
Missing my desk at the front was now at an all-time high. At least I was at a safe enough distance to pretend I didn’t know what kind of bad things went on behind me. Now I was in the thick of it. Now I knew exactly what kind of bad things Vic did.
Everything I fought against.