by Julia Kent
Their glitch.
Ian bends down to kiss my cheek, startling me, his clean-shaven face so smooth, hot, and dry, making my pulse skip.
“Congratulations, Hastings. A job well done. Give my best to Burke when you see him next.” He opens his mouth slightly, as if to say something more, and then shuts it quickly. I want to ask him what he started to say, but I know that no matter what, he’s sealed up tight, like a drum.
Men like Ian McCrory don’t equivocate. If he changed his mind, his mind is changed.
I can’t help myself as he leaves, my eyes taking in the back of his body, that bespoke suit jacket perfectly molded along the lines of his tight, wide shoulders. His legs are long, shoes shined, a deep Italian richness that you can’t buy with just money.
You need taste, too.
Real taste.
José’s eyes jump from Ian, to me, back to Ian. The man is clearly making decisions based on social importance. If I am important to Ian McCrory, then upsetting me could upset the alpha.
Social calculations take microseconds for people like me, Ian, and even José. You can’t be the maître d’ at one of the hottest restaurants in one of the hottest cities in the world and not be people smart. Emotional intelligence isn’t just for softhearted church ladies, preschool teachers, and therapists.
We need every advantage we can get in this world.
“Isn’t Ian wonderful?” I murmur as I bring José into my space with a confidante’s wink. “We go back ages.”
José’s eyes narrow. He’s trying to figure out if by ages, I mean we’ve slept together. It can’t hurt to pretend that’s the case, so I lean in and lower my voice. “He’s a good friend to have. Comes through when you need him. I’ll bet he’s a great tipper, too.”
That elicits a chuckle, something in my gut unclenching at the sound.
“Will you excuse me?” I say to him, my hand on his. “While you figure out the computer glitch, I need to get back to my guests.”
As if I weren’t deflecting, I give him a flirty smile and move away quickly… but not too quickly. I can’t be...
Hasty.
“Is there a problem?” Ms. Bannerton asks, batting dark eyes at me that make it clear she knows damn well there’s a problem and wants to watch me squirm.
“No problem. Just dealing with—” I hold up my phone and jiggle it. “You know. The husband.”
“Everything’s okay with Burke, I hope?” Mr. Wang Min asks. He's the senior person from Zhangwa and his silence thus far has been a great contrast to Mr. Zhao.
That same strange look passes between him and Mr. Zhao, though.
“Oh, he’s fine. Just had a personal-life question. You know. Marriage.”
“My wife texts me twenty times a day when I’m on trips,” Mr. Zhao says, lips pressed in a tight smile. “And she doesn’t care about time zones, so I get the texts at two in the morning.”
“Mine pretends I’m dead when I’m gone,” says Mr. Wang. Everyone halts. He laughs. “Not literally. She decided that it’s easier to have no contact when I’m away than to have only a little. As long as I bring her back real maple syrup from Vermont, she’s fine with all the travel I do.”
“It’s not as if she has a choice,” says Mr. Zhao. That comment elicits the heartiest laugh from the men at the table.
Ms. Bannerton and I give each other sympathetic looks, but not too sympathetic, because we can’t telegraph weakness in a crowd like this.
Suddenly, the men all stand in unison, Ms. Bannerton struggling to join them in her high heels. My skin breaks out in gooseflesh as I realize something has changed.
Pressing my palms into the arms of my chair, I rise to my feet and turn.
Even before I see him, I know exactly who is drawing this reaction from them.
“Ian!” Ms. Bannerton says, her lips spreading in a grin of joy, eyes devouring him. She bypasses all of the men to launch herself into the arms of the ninth richest man in the world. Mr. Zhao and Mr. Wang are only ranking in the high ’teens these days.
Ian accepts her hug with the gracious formality of a man who knows exactly what to do, then works the table, shaking hands. When he’s done, he turns to me, arms stretched out in a gesture of gentlemanly acknowledgment, and says, “I don’t need to hug you.”
Ms. Bannerton’s eyebrows shoot up.
“We already took care of the intimacies earlier,” he adds.
Normally, that sort of comment would get him a high-heeled spike through that beautiful Italian leather on his size fourteen (I'm guessing) feet, but I’m grateful tonight. It cuts through the tension of my declined credit cards and gives everyone at the table something to whisper about later, long after this dinner is over.
On the other side of the group, José appears, making eyes at me. My heart jumps up into my throat, clawing its way into my sinus cavity, beating like it’s in the Tour de France and about to wipe out at the bottom of a steep hill.
I reach for my purse, the universal gesture of going to the ladies’ room, and I step away, grateful for Ian’s presence. He’ll keep them all busy as I go and untangle this very private mess.
My phone buzzes. I look at the text, hopeful.
It’s a reminder from my carrier to pay my cellphone bill.
Dammit, Burke. Where are you?
Those words have rushed through my brain hundreds of times in the last three days. He’s never gone this long without answering, even if it’s just a single letter, “K,” when I ask him if he’s alive.
I find my way back to the concierge desk, where José is now standing with even less warmth than he had before Ian appeared.
“This is not a credit card machine failure, as I suspected,” he informs me. “You need to pay the bill.”
“I’m a good customer. I’m sure this is some sort of an error. Can’t I just—”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Monahan. You have to settle the bill immediately. Do you have a debit card?”
“Oh! My personal account. Of course! I can pay it, and I’ll have my company reimburse me once this is all sorted out. There’s plenty of money in our personal accounts.” I pull out the debit card and hand it to him, relieved to have been given an out, still furious to be in this position at all.
He runs it. I stare at the machine. At the same moment, my skin does that prickly thing again, goosebumps everywhere. If I weren’t in this state of abject terror that I’m working so hard to cover, I would think that I was aroused.
Aroused in the most delicious of ways.
Ian McCrory's entirely at fault.
The light on the machine turns red, the word looking like Hebrew, although at this point I know damn well what “decline” looks like upside down.
“Hastings,” Ian purrs in my ear, his hand resting between my shoulder blades. His eyes flit down to take in the machine, then the cards gripped in my hand. He looks at José. An extraordinary expression of sympathy that makes me want to rip my own liver out and eat it in front of him covers his face.
“Oh, Hastings. I had no idea.”
That is the exact moment I learn how much I hate Ian McCrory.
“Had no idea of what?” I challenge.
He looks at the debit card as if it were a limp penis. “That you and Burke were in financial trouble.” The words come out of his mouth as if they’re in slow motion, in free fall, BASE jumping without a parachute.
“We are not in financial trouble,” I snap, hating the edges of my words, how they vibrate out into the waiting area. Two people turn, microscopic shifts in the way that their ears tilt. I know full well about eavesdropping on other people’s drama–and I know damn well that I don’t want to be someone else’s funny story for later. “We’re fine. This is some kind of computer glitch.”
“Ma’am, you have now attempted four credit cards, all from different issuers, and your personal debit card. Everything has been declined,” José says, completely obliterating my cover story.
The shift from Ms. Monahan to Ma
'am is the worst.
The spray of shock that radiates through my body as his words hit me makes it hard to breathe. Something really is wrong. How can the greatest moment in my entire life implode like this?
“José,” Ian says to him, making himself a human shield between the prying eyes of my dinner party and me, “put it on my account.”
“You can’t do that!” I protest.
“I am doing that.”
“But this is my dinner. This is my responsibility. And my contract,” I growl.
“I’m not trying to take your contract away from you, Hastings. I’m trying to save you from embarrassment.”
“I don’t need you to rescue me.”
“It sure as hell looks like you do.”
“This… this isn’t… I’ll pay you back,” I hiss, furiously grateful, but filled with more fury than gratitude.
“Of course you will.”
“And–I’m not in financial trouble.”
“Of course you’re not.”
Condescension is my kryptonite. It’s what I use against other people as a weapon, a cover for my insecurity.
Yeah, yeah, I’m not supposed to be that self-aware. I went through enough therapy to know I don’t give a damn what other people think about me, but I certainly give a damn about how I feel when someone else perceives me as weak.
And that’s exactly what Ian’s doing right now.
“First of all, you’re a jerk. Second of all, thank you.”
“That’s the worst thank you I’ve ever received in my life.”
“I’m sure you’ve been subjected to worse.”
“Well, there was that one time in Sydney when I was in bed and—”
“I don’t want to hear about your sex life!”
Especially when mine is non-existent.
“Look,” Ian says, grabbing my upper arm gently, pulling me out of the view of my dinner guests. “I don’t want you to win this contract any more than you want me to win the ones that I take from you.”
“You admit it? I’m a competitor of yours?”
“You’re an annoyance, Hastings.”
“Annoyance?”
“You’re so much smarter than you give yourself credit for, and you’ve attached yourself to that slimy piece of overblown ego masquerading as a finance expert.”
“How dare you talk about my husband that way!”
“You knew instantly who I was talking about, though, didn’t you?”
We're both breathing harder than we should be, and a flush of heat wanders around my body like it's looking for something to burn.
I straighten my spine and let out a deep sigh. “I am not having this conversation with you.”
“Actually, you are. We’re literally exchanging the words right now.”
My phone buzzes in my hand. I look at it. It’s from Burke. It’s two words:
I'm sorry.
My eyebrows drop, my face twisting with horror. “I’m sorry?” I whisper.
“That’s better.”
“Not you! I’m reading my text from Burke–‘I’m sorry’? At least he's finally contacting me, so I can stop worrying.”
A second text follows:
Don't tell them anything.
I frown. Before Ian can rudely ask me what the new text says, his phone buzzes, too. Over at the table, everyone’s phone buzzes at the same time.
The timing is too coincidental.
A snake begins to uncurl along my tailbone, rising up my spine between my shoulder blades to the base of my neck, splitting in two and going to each ear, crawling up over the crown of my head.
Something is terribly wrong.
Burke doesn’t apologize for anything.
Behind me, the door to the restaurant opens, bringing with it a cool blast of evening air that should be refreshing but feels more like death. The sound of heavy steps makes me turn, and a clink-clink-clink that is distinct and unfamiliar.
“Hastings Monahan,” says a man behind me. He's not asking if I'm her.
Because he knows.
I look at Ian. His eyes are wide, hand gripping his phone, thumb on the unlock position already. When I turn around, I’m faced with uniformed police officers and men and women in black, all of them wearing weapons and expressions of doom.
“Yes?”
What happens next is a blur. Words float into my brain, like under arrest and charged with as Ian punches the glass screen on his phone like a jackhammer on concrete, barking orders to some person named Irene on the other end. My purse is taken out of my hands, my wrists pulled behind me. I catch Ms. Bannerton’s eye, and her whole expression melts into one of mocking delight.
The men at the table do not move, do not defend me, do not protect me, do not interfere in any way.
I can’t blame them.
Ian, on the other hand, the Ian McCrory, my biggest competitor, my outright nemesis, reaches through the molasses of the moment as my hands are zip tied behind my back, forcing my breasts out, my feet teetering on the platforms of my shoes, my soul slithering out of my body.
“I’m getting lawyers on this. Whatever’s going on, I’ve got you, Hastings,” he says grimly, the stark emotion in his voice cutting through the horror of what unfolds.
“You what?”
“I’ve got you.”
And those are the last words anyone says to me as police officers remove me from the restaurant, my perp walk the ultimate free-fall from Peak Hastings to Freak Hastings.
Less than an hour has passed since we signed the contract for my nine-figure deal.
The only pen in my life now is going to be a holding pen.
2
One month later
* * *
“Honey, I am so glad to have you back, but what on Earth have you done to your hair?”
My mother’s hug should be reassuring, but it feels like yet another way I’ve failed. It’s been a month since I was hauled out of Essentialz in handcuffs, with my Chinese colleagues, Ian McCrory, and what felt like half the world watching.
A month is a lifetime and a blink.
“I dyed it.”
“I can see that.” She cradles my face in her hands like I'm a wig mannequin and she's checking out the newest line. “But that color is so dark. You're a beautiful, natural blonde! It's almost chestnut now. What's the shade called?”
“Evaded Felony.”
She frowns. “Huh. Does Madison Reed carry that?”
“Mom.”
“Between that dark hair and those boxy sunglasses, I'd have never guessed it was you!”
“Good. That's the whole point.”
“Why would you… oh.” Her face falls. “You don't want anyone to know who you are.”
“I don't want to be who I am, Mom.”
Here’s what I’ve learned in the last thirty-two days: My husband, Burke Oonaj, is a festering boil on the back of a rat. He is pond scum, and he can take his “Don't tell them anything” text, print it, roll it into a tiny little ball, and shove it up his ass so far that it hits his prostate and then jabs his throat, where he chokes to death.
I, ladies and gentlemen, am a sucker. I’ve been taken. I’ve been fooled.
Me, Hastings Monahan.
While I was closing a nine-figure deal, turns out Burke was handling nine figures of money, too.
Just illegally.
Burke was committing financial crimes left and right, using me as leverage whenever he could. The man convinced investors to fund companies that didn’t exist, to make wire transfers to offshore banks, to invest in gold that was as real as the paint on a Buddha statue in a Manhattan gift shop.
And so much more, all of it deeply illegal and cravenly predatory.
I have seven figures in revolving lines of credit for accounts that I never opened, all using my social security number.
Every penny of savings, 401(k), personal defined benefit pension plans: You name it, it’s all wiped out.
I am not a stupid woman.
I have safeguards on everything. What I didn’t plan for was the complete, utter, malignant sociopathy of a man who spent more time manscaping at a spa than he ever did learning computer security protocols.
Even worse than all that, it turns out, I’m not really married to him.
Oh, I have the marriage license to prove it. I have the big wedding Mom and Dad paid for to prove it. I have photo albums, and a minister who filed our marriage license with the state of Massachusetts after we got married at the local country club five years ago–all proof.
What I don’t have are the names of his other wives.
That’s right, other wives.
I have no idea who his first wife is—and by “first wife,” I don’t mean in serial, I mean in parallel. Somebody in the world is legally married to Burke Oonaj.
But it's not me.
I’ve spent the last five years acting as if I were, which means I’ve spent much of my adult life living a lie.
A lie I never agreed to.
“We kept it just the same for you, sweetie.”
“Kept what?” I ask Mom, who is stroking my hair absentmindedly, like I'm a pet ferret.
“Your room! Of course, you could take Mallory’s old room if you’d like. She doesn’t, you know, need it.” The drop in her voice as the words come out with painstakingly earnest horror almost makes me laugh.
Almost.
The stairs of my childhood home are carpeted. Not a stylish carpet runner over wide, polished oak treads. Oh, no. Wall-to-wall carpeting, all the way up the stairs and into most of the bedrooms.
It’s quaint.
Mom and Dad aren’t hurting financially, but their home is nothing like the life I’ve been accustomed to since I moved out to the Bay Area after graduation. In Massachusetts, everything old is treasured.
In the Bay Area, everything smart that can be monetized is king.
Or, in my case–queen.
Memory makes me kick my shoes off, toes sinking into the thick carpet as we go upstairs. I’m laden with baggage, literally and figuratively. Everything I’m allowed to own is in the three pieces of luggage I carry upstairs. One big backpack with a newly scrubbed tablet, one large checked item of luggage, and one carry-on – a cooler filled with precious cargo. My purse is tucked inside the backpack.