Fake It For Me
Layla Valentine
Ana Sparks
Contents
Fake It For Me
Want More?
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Layla Valentine
Take Me
Introduction
Want More?
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Epilogue
Layla Valentine
Killer
Introduction
Want More?
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Layla Valentine
Buy Me, Bride Me
Introduction
Want More?
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Epilogue
Fake It For Me
Copyright 2017 by Layla Valentine and Ana Sparks
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part by any means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the explicit written permission of the author. All characters depicted in this fictional work are consenting adults, of at least eighteen years of age. Any resemblance to persons living or deceased, particular businesses, events, or exact locations are entirely coincidental.
This book was previously published under another pen name, Evelyn Troy.
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Chapter One
Eva tilted her head back against the ergonomic support at the top of her chair, stretching against the tightness she could feel in her neck and shoulders. A glance at the clock on her desk phone told her that she only had two more hours left in her shift; the rush had soon tapered off into the mid-afternoon slump. By the time she clocked out, there would be another rush—people calling in right after work to take care of their business with the bank—and Eva wanted to make sure that she clocked out exactly on time to avoid being roped into staying “on the floor” as they called it.
She closed her eyes, imagining fleeting memories of better days: the Louis Vuitton handbag she’d had to give up, along with the Louboutin shoes, and the vacation she’d taken to Cancun. How the mighty have fallen, she thought bitterly, opening her eyes once more.
Eva blinked a few times, scrubbing at her face with her hands. Just two more hours and I’ll be out of here, she reminded herself, glancing at the time once more. She could hear Jana, one cubicle down, patiently explaining something to a customer. Eva gritted her teeth and took a slow breath.
She had known it would be a bad day as soon as she’d arrived on the floor, stepping off of the elevator and into the cacophony of a rush. Eva had quickly learned the apparent cause of the influx of calls: there had been a system issue the night before, which had made twenty-five thousand accounts reflect “past due” status. The tech team didn’t have an ETA on when the issue would be resolved, but had simply told everyone to flag the accounts in question.
Same as always, Eva had thought bitterly. She had been through two similar incidents with the company within about six months after training; and generally speaking, unless there was an issue that the higher-ups thought really merited a “mea culpa” from the company, any and all customer satisfaction surveys that came in during those incidents still counted against the metrics that all the call center employees had to meet. “We trust that you have the resources and intelligence to turn a negative moment into a positive branding opportunity,” they always said.
Eva was certain that her surveys—if any went out for that day—would all come back with solid negatives. No matter how she explained the issue, using the script provided in the update in her own words, none of the callers had sounded satisfied at the end of the conversation. They had—almost to a one—wanted a statement credit to compensate them for the inconvenience of having to see a big, red, Account Overdue on their homepage online. Of course, Eva—as a first-tier representative—didn’t have the clearance to do that, and even if she had, she knew she probably wouldn’t have done it for more than maybe three of the thirty calls she had taken that day.
Beset by mind-numbing boredom, she reached out for the water bottle she kept on her desk, pushing her chair back enough to look down the line of cubicles that extended across the entire floor of the office. There were easily a hundred people just in her section, though at night there would be less than fifty. Eva sipped her water and debated putting herself in Aux to run to the bathroom; she didn’t really have to go, but even the threat of being reprimanded for “aux overage” wasn’t quite enough to remove the temptation of getting away from the desk for five minutes. Her last break had been an hour before, and even if there were fewer than two hours left in Eva’s shift, that seemed like entirely too long a time.
“How you hanging in there, Johansen?” Eva turned her head and saw one of the other team leads, Rebecka, walking up the aisle.
“Glad we finally slowed down a bit,” Eva admitted. “That was a brutal first half.”
“Well, at least it wasn’t boring,” Rebecka said, beaming with the kind of fake brightness that Eva immediately recognized. She wouldn’t last ten minutes in a real game, she thought, returning the woman’s smile with her own best fake grin.
“I’m glad of a little boredom right now,” Eva quipped.
“See? There you go: the bright side to that rush this morning.”
Eva simpered at the team leader as
Rebecka walked past, heading over to another section of the immense cubicle farm. Eva pushed her chair back into place, wiggling her mouse to keep the screensaver from coming up. A bleep in her headset announced an incoming instant message, and Eva opened up the application, glancing at the screen to see who was messaging her.
When do you think they’re going to learn not to mess with things outside of their understanding?
Eva snorted at the message; it had come from Clarence, a member of her team who had recently moved up to Online Services Specialty. It wasn’t a real promotion—he only earned about a dollar fifty an hour more than she did—but it had given him at least a little prestige, and a little bit of clout in the cubicle farm.
Right about the time the asteroid hits the planet and wipes us all out, Eva wrote back.
The running joke in the call center was that tech were all people who had come in with fake resumes, who managed to screw up more than they actually fixed. It wasn’t entirely true; Eva assumed that they made plenty of repairs to the system without incident. But the issues with the system—ranging from the payment system going down, to the website itself going offline—were legion, and they always seemed to happen at the worst possible time.
You doing anything after? came the reply.
Eva considered that, pressing her lips together.
Clarence wasn’t a bad guy, but he wasn’t her type at all; if he were asking her out personally, she would have to think of a way to decline him without ruffling feathers. It was harder than she would have assumed—especially in the cramped and confined environment of the call center.
She’d been asked out by three men in her short time at the company, and the first two had come completely unhinged as soon as she’d said no; the third, Eva was convinced, had gone to her supervisor about something that most of the other employees generally agreed to look the other way on, whenever it happened; certainly, she’d gotten a “random call monitoring” session within days of turning Richard down; she hadn’t been slated for one for another week or two. The “random” in the call monitoring sessions was less accurate than the assertion her employee packet had made that the company valued its employees even more than its customers.
The sound of a call coming in—two steady beeps in her headset—cut through Eva’s thoughts. She took a deep breath and tapped the “unmute” button on her phone base.
“Good afternoon, and thank you for calling DigiFinancial. My name is Eva. How may I help you today?” She heard the roar of wind over the other line and rolled her eyes to herself, waiting for the caller to speak.
“This is DigiFinancial?”
Eva pressed her lips together to resist the retort that rose up on her tongue.
“Yes, sir, it is. How can I help you today?”
“You can help me by telling your company to stop illegally charging me fees!”
Eva closed her eyes. The man’s account—or so she assumed—had come up on her screen.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean, sir,” Eva said, as calmly and as coolly as she could.
“Your stupid company keeps charging me an ‘account maintenance fee’ which is totally illegal and I want the fees for the last six months credited to my account right now.”
Eva counted to three mentally.
“Let’s look at your account and see what we have going on, shall we?”
The man made a noise that sounded weirdly like a growl on the other end of the line.
“Fine. Do you have my account up?”
“I believe so—but in order to access your information I’m going to need for you to confirm the answers to a few security questions,” Eva explained, sitting up straighter in her chair.
“Those goddam questions…why do you even ask them? I’m clearly the account holder.”
“Unfortunately sir, since I do not know you personally, there’s no way for me to know who you are. You have not even provided me with your name—much less verified that you are that person,” Eva pointed out. She pressed her lips together to prevent herself from speaking further; she counted to five in her mind, slowly. Don’t let the rude ass get to you.
“My name is Steve Jersik,” the man said, exaggerating each syllable.
“Thank you very much, Mr. Jersik,” Eva replied, as levelly as she could. “In order to access your account, would you please tell me the month and day of your mother’s birthday?”
“January third,” Jersik said, once more with exaggerated slowness.
“Thank you again,” Eva said. She typed the answer into the field and the next question popped up. “For our second verification question: what are the last four digits of your account number with us?”
“Oh my God!” Jersik sounded as though he were on the point of throwing his phone. “Four-five-six-three,” he said after a moment.
“Thank you, I’ll put that in now,” Eva said, feeling the beginning trickle of a rush of irritation. The man had to have accessed his account over the phone before; the fact that he had security questions set up for phone access proved that. How he could be surprised at the fact that he was being asked to verify his ID was beyond Eva’s understanding.
“Do you have my account up yet?” Eva clenched her teeth and the tone of the man’s voice.
“It’s coming through now,” Eva said, struggling to keep her voice patient and calm. “So we’re looking at your monthly maintenance fee, you said?”
“Yes! Yes, that’s what we’re looking at.” Eva pressed her lips together, reaching over to her phone base to press the “mute” button while Jersik continued.
“Why do I have to keep repeating myself over and over? I want you to remove these illegal charges on my account right now—that’s all.”
Eva rolled her eyes, shaking her head as she accessed the account transaction details. It was true that the man was receiving a monthly maintenance fee—but it was for a product that he would have had to apply for, an investment package that the company offered. The fee was part of the standard contract for that product, and would have been explained to him when he signed up.
“I’m seeing this monthly maintenance fee,” Eva said, after unmuting her phone. “However, what I am seeing is that this fee is for our Digi-Investment product.”
“So? That doesn’t matter. It’s an illegal fee. Just like the late fee you put on my account last month.”
Eva shook her head, clicking through to the previous month’s transactions. The man had paid late—there was a notation on the account that he had acknowledged paying late, and that his reasoning was that he ‘didn’t feel like he should have to pay for something he wasn’t using half the time.’
“Unfortunately, sir, that maintenance fee is part and parcel of the service you signed up for,” Eva said, keeping her voice neutral.
“It’s illegal to charge fees for services like that that come with my account!”
Eva managed to keep herself from snorting, but with an effort. Oh, goodie—a customer who has literally no idea what he’s talking about, at all, about anything.
“At the point that you signed up for the service,” Eva said, still attempting to remain calm, to keep her voice level, “it should have been explained to you that there is a monthly maintenance fee associated with the Digi-Investment service.”
“There was, but that’s not fair! I told the girl who signed me up that I shouldn’t have to pay a fee. You’re already making money off of me just by having me invest,” Jersik said. Eva rolled her eyes, shaking her head.
“I do apologize for the misunderstanding, Mr. Jersik, but that fee is attached to a service you signed up for. If you’d like to cancel the service, I can certainly do that—and you won’t receive any further fees. However, if you signed up for this service, the fee is—I assure you—perfectly legal.”
“What is illegal is not informing customers of those fees in advance, or charging fees that customers cannot opt out of. If you would like to no longer receive this monthly fee on yo
ur account, I can cancel the service for you.”
“I want the service and I don’t want to be charged a fee! How hard is that to understand? Jesus Christ, did you even graduate high school?”
“Yes, sir,” Eva said. She could hear the sarcasm beginning in her voice. “I did absolutely graduate high school.”
“So that’s the state of education in this country these days,” Jersik said bitterly. “Look—you just need to remove these fees for me. I don’t care how you do it, but I want them off of my account.”
For the sake of at least paying lip service to her job, Eva selected one of the fees and submitted the request for a credit. The screen refreshed and she nearly laughed out loud at the resulting message: Credit request denied. Customer has exceeded credit value on account for the year. Apparently Jersik had requested credit not only for his late fee the previous month, but for other fees he’d accumulated in the previous twelve months; he was not generating enough money for the company to justify providing any further credits.
“Unfortunately, I’m unable to credit any fees on your account at this time,” Eva said. She may have relished being able to tell the man that; he was steadily not only getting on her nerves but stomping on them.
“That’s bullshit and you know it!”
For what felt like five minutes straight, Jersik continued to rant and rave about illegal fees, about the bank’s shady, crooked policies, about his right to not pay any charges he didn’t want to, and how DigiFinancial should be bending over backwards to make him, the customer, happy. Eva kept microphone muted as he went on the tirade, glancing around the office.
“Are you still there?”
Quickly, Eva took her phone out of ‘mute.’
“Yes, sir, I’m still here,” she said. “I wanted to make sure that I heard all that you had to say without interrupting you.”
“Well, then, what the hell are you going to do about my account?” Eva shook her head.
“Let me be real with you for a moment, Mr. Jersik,” Eva said; she knew that the rising anger she felt bubbling through her veins was a dangerous thing; she knew that she should put him on hold and wait until she could calm down to address his issues; but after a long, stressful shift, the sixth day in a row of working, Eva’s ability to be circumspect simply vanished.
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