doyenne.

by Anne Malcom

  And in the current situation I was in, that wouldn’t do.

  “So you came here to lurk outside my building? To try to tell me what to do?” I asked sharply. “That’s not in your job description. But it will be in the letter I write as a reason for the termination of your employment.”

  He didn’t even blanch and I used my most scathing tone. “Not dressed for running.”

  My eyes flickered down to his jeans and boots.

  He still hadn’t gotten new ones. Hadn’t gotten new anything. I’d given him an advance on his first paycheck, considering he had technically started protecting my safety two weeks’ prior.

  It was generous.

  My realtor had told me that no one had taken possession of the apartment I’d reserved for him. He hadn’t spent a dime on new clothing, nor had he moved into the five-million-dollar apartment that was now his for the duration of his employment.

  I ached to ask him why this was. But I didn’t ask personal questions. It sent the wrong message. It also wasted my time. My time was little more than priceless. But he owned that. Something that money couldn’t buy and countless people had tried to purchase, steal and ruin, he owned without trying. With just his empty stare.

  “I’m not dressed for running, therefore, I can’t come with you and I can’t do my job, which is to keep you safe, as outlined in the contract I signed,” he said, voice harsh.

  My stomach fluttered at the mention of the contract, at the slight inflection in his voice as he mentioned it. Something in it betrayed knowledge of exactly what was in the contract. Which was impossible. I’d been there when he signed it, barely glancing at the page long enough to read the first two paragraphs, let alone something that was hidden on the second page.

  He hadn’t taken it with him, either. It was in the safe in my office.

  Therefore he couldn’t know the exact details of it.

  “You’re runnin’ inside for today only. Tomorrow I’ll have the right shit. I’ll go with you.”

  I inwardly flinched at the thought of doing the one thing in my day that didn’t require my mask of indifference and consisted only of the simple task of putting one foot in front of the other, doing that with Jacob beside me.

  “I assure you that you are not needed on my runs,” I said, my voice not betraying an ounce of unease.

  His eyes probed past the flat tone, dissecting everything I was trying to hide. “Don’t give a shit what you assure or not. Get inside the building.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “You don’t have the right to tell me what to do.”

  He stepped forward and every part of me froze. His weathered boots almost touched my black, top of the line running shoes. His scent curled around me like an embrace and like an assault at the same time.

  “I have every right,” he said, voice a whip. “Now get inside.”

  Any other person on this planet who ordered me to do such a thing would get a glare, some of my choice verbal barbs, a dressing down which would ensure they would finish the exchange in a puddle at my feet.

  Metaphorically, of course.

  Any other person on the planet but Jacob.

  I held his stare for a long time. Long enough for my inner thighs to shake, for my heart to splinter my ribcage and my breathing to become shallow.

  His face didn’t change.

  His hands were fisted at his sides. The knuckles were turning white. His chest moved up and down evenly.

  I swallowed.

  Took an inhale, held onto his scent inside me, let it imprint onto my lungs and then I stepped back.

  I didn’t say a word as I shoved my headphones back into my ears and walked into my building.

  He watched me the whole way.

  As promised, Jacob was outside my building at five the next morning. I didn’t speak to him. He didn’t greet me. Our eyes met for exactly five seconds—I counted—before I turned the volume of my music all the way up and began running.

  He fell into step with me.

  He didn’t have headphones.

  I was a fast runner. I was also fit, I had to be the best at everything and being at peak physical performance was compulsory. Even though I could likely keep pace with seasoned marathon runners, I didn’t think that I was any match for Jacob’s long stride and powerful thighs. He didn’t let on if he was slowing down for me, nor did I take pains to even glance in his direction, to try and gauge whether he was or not.

  We entered Central Park, mist still lingering in this strange moment between night and morning.

  The park was as empty as it could get, but there were many like me who woke before the rest of the city. Powerful people who started their days like this. Who ran through the stretch of green embedded into a concrete city, competing with themselves before they spent the day competing with the rest of the world.

  I had been worried yesterday that Jacob would consume me in the one part of the day that belonged to me—as much as anything could. I knew that despite my bank balance, I could never really own the things that mattered. The mornings were as close as I could get, and they were priceless. Jacob might have limited means, but I had a visceral kind of knowing that he’d be able to buy the thing that billions of dollars couldn’t purchase.

  Control over my thoughts.

  With him keeping pace beside me, I realized the mornings prior, without him, after that night in the alley, those mornings had belonged to him. Strangely, with him beside me, I was able to purge him as much as I could from my thoughts even though he was in the immediate vicinity. I wasn’t annoyed with his presence, as I would’ve been by anyone else. That shouldn’t have surprised me, since Jacob wasn’t anyone else, and he didn’t evoke things in me like others did.

  It was dangerous. Because I could easily fall into the routine of having him beside me. When his presence, physically at least, was always going to be temporary.

  “Hot Rambo is on his way in,” Vaughn’s voice filtered through the intercom.

  Every cell in my body froze. “Stop referring to him like that,” I demanded into the intercom.

  All I got was dead air.

  Vaughn seemed to think he could push the boundaries now that Jacob had all but destroyed them.

  My finger hovered over the phone to snap something at him, chastise him, bark in my cold tone, if only to remind myself I was capable of it.

  Then the door opened.

  I pointedly powered the intercom down as I did every time Jacob was in my office. Which wasn’t often. I wasn’t sure where he went when I was inside the building—he’d determined it safe from threats after the first morning—all I knew was whenever I exited it, he was there. He had a copy of my schedule, but even as I left for last-minute meetings, he was there.

  I didn’t ask him where he was because it was a show of weakness. All questions were, I shouldn’t have to ask such things, I had the means to find out, and knowledge was power. Without it, I was nothing. So I didn’t ask. But I wondered. A lot more than I should.

  He closed the door behind him, yanking all the oxygen from the room. I steeled myself for the interaction. Any interaction with Jacob was a battle. It was a war.

  I was never one to back down from a fight.

  In the past at least.

  My whole existence, my position in this world was a war, so fighting was as easy as breathing for me. Winning was as easy as breathing.

  But with Jacob, I could barely inhale and exhale easily.

  I wasn’t too proud to admit I knew I was losing with him.

  What exactly I didn’t know.

  No, I did know what I was losing.

  Everything.

  But I wasn’t giving up. Surrendering.

  The smart move was to fire him.

  “My sister is coming tonight,” I said, trying to drown out those thoughts with an icy tone.

  Tonight’s event was in my schedule so he knew about it. He had also been to a handful of events with me, staying close to my side, acting invisible. But of c
ourse, someone like Jacob was never invisible. There were whispers, as I knew there would be. I told all my business associates that he was a security expert I’d employed as a consultant. This explained away his brooding demeanor and attire as being ex-military. It worked. Mainly because it was a mix between lie and truth. Life always required lies, mine much more than most. The key was to make sure no lie wasn’t accompanied without a truth.

  But tonight I couldn’t explain him away. Primarily because of the fact Molly was going to be there. My sister knew when I was lying and she would’ve seen through the lie about Jacob in an instant. The alternative I’d decided on wasn’t much better but had a higher chance of being successful.

  Jacob nodded once.

  He didn’t ask anything about her, follow up questions, social niceties. Jacob didn’t do social niceties. Nor did he do questions.

  “She’s my twin sister and she is nothing like me,” I continued, answering something he’d never asked. Giving information as well as asking for it was a sign of weakness. But I couldn’t stop myself.

  “And that’s a good thing,” I continued, glancing down at my phone, if only for a distraction. “That’s the reason I protect her from as much of this world as I can. She knows nothing about the attempts made on my life. And for as long as the press doesn’t know, neither will she.” I glanced up at Jacob’s iron jaw and intense expression. “Which is why introducing you as my security will serve as problematic. My sister is smart enough to know me employing extra security means something’s happened. And she will not rest until she gets the truth. I’ll give her no reason to go looking for it.” I put my phone down. “I’m assuming there’s no way to assure you I don’t need your services tonight?”

  He gritted his teeth in response.

  One came to learn Jacob didn’t speak if a brooding silence or steely glare would suffice.

  I nodded. “I thought as much. So you’ll be acting as my date. To my sister’s eyes, at least.”

  He didn’t respond.

  “Molly, she’s...” I trailed off. How did I explain Molly to anyone? Why did I want to explain Molly to Jacob, of all people? I didn’t share my personal life with any of my employees, except Vaughn. I doubted any of my staff even knew I had a twin sister or a family at all. They most likely thought I emerged from the bowels of hell, to do Satan’s bidding. I wasn’t being creative, it was something I’d heard in the office when they didn’t know I was listening.

  I guessed if you asked my mother, I might’ve been the product of some kind of demon since she murdered my father convinced he was possessed by one.

  I never shared personal details willingly. Jacob didn’t need to know anything more than what I’d already said. But with him, it wasn’t about need. Or maybe that was all it was about, which was why I kept speaking, kept offering more of myself that he didn’t ask for.

  “She’s my twin. Biologically at least,” I said. “We look alike. We’re meant to be identical. But even with biology telling Molly she has to be the same as one other human being on the earth, she doesn’t listen.” I wanted to smile at the thought of it. My lips might’ve even turned up. “She’s everything that I’m not, in all the best ways. But she’s...soft. She believes in the goodness of the world. Though I know better, I take it upon myself to protect her from that, best I can. She’s the best person I know. She’s the other half of me. The better half. ” I stopped speaking abruptly. I realized what I’d done. What I’d shown with those words.

  Weakness.

  Jacob’s eyes bore into me, prodding painfully at all the nerves I’d exposed.

  I sucked in a breath and jutted my chin up, glancing to my computer if only for a respite from his gaze. What a coward I was.

  “Anyway,” I said after a handful of seconds spent composing myself. “I just need you to understand she’s not like any of the other people I associate with. She’s...a person. I expect you to treat her with respect.”

  He nodded once, something moved in his eyes, or most likely, I imagined it.

  “I’ll arrange for Vaughn to set you up for a suit fitting,” I said after a long moment. A moment in which I waited for him to surrender even a hint of something beyond his mask, to offer something more than a cold silence.

  There was nothing.

  “The event is black tie. You can’t wear that.” I nodded to his jeans. “I understand your reservations about suits, so if you don’t want to attend, I’m sure I can arrange other—”

  “I’ll wear the suit,” he cut in, voice brutal.

  I nodded, the movement jerky, shocked by the violence that had seeped into the sentence. I recovered quickly. “Then you should be going to the tailor, it’s short notice, but no one says no to me. Vaughn will tell you where to go.” My dismissal was clear. It bordered on desperate. I needed to breathe. To regroup. It wouldn’t do for me to continue to volunteer information like it was free. Like he was entitled to it.

  Nothing in life was free and no one was entitled to anything.

  Jacob didn’t move. He merely continued to stare.

  I struggled not to squirm in my seat.

  “Is there something else?” I asked, my voice colder than usual, as if to make up for the warmth in my tone before. “I’m busy.”

  His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides.

  “You’re not half of anything,” he said, voice a blade searing through all the walls I was scrambling to replace.

  And then he turned and walked out.

  7

  I took care in my appearance tonight.

  Granted, I always made sure I looked flawless. I was the face of a cosmetics company, for starters. And no matter what was politically correct, women and men would not buy Charlotte Crofton products if Charlotte Crofton herself didn’t look flawless.

  With the help of Botox, one of the best facialists in the world, and an extensive beauty routine, I was always flawless.

  At the start, even then, being in the business of making women beautiful, being in the business of beauty, it wasn’t my goal to be in Vogue, though my products and face are regularly featured. No. I didn’t want that. I wanted to be in Forbes. Not because I wanted to be rich—that was a favorable side effect of success—but because I wanted power. Not to wield over others, but over myself. When all my childhood was controlled by the whim of an uncontrollable disease, when it was ultimately ruined by that same disease—power was what I wanted. No, craved. Something to control.

  Everything to control.

  If I created a life in which I enjoyed control and power over everything on the outside, maybe a favorable side effect might be that I controlled that disease that destroyed my mother. Killed my father. Massacred my family and childhood.

  Maybe that was just wishful thinking.

  Maybe it lurked, like a silent assassin, waiting to pounce and tear at my psyche and laugh in the face of the work, the blood, sweat and no tears I’d shed to create this life.

  But that was not something to dwell on.

  Dwelling was a practice of the pathetic and lazy. Doing was an instrument of the successful and powerful.

  So I did.

  And doing was making sure I was put together at every event I went to. Granted, it was all a lie, what I was selling to people, that my flawless exterior was one maintained by the products that I represented, when it was more thanks to injectables and thousands of dollars, but everyone was selling a lie.

  This one was the most important events of the year. Not for business. But for Molly and I. It was a charity I founded, anonymously, of course. For mental health research and support for those suffering from conditions that the government didn’t pay enough attention to.

  It wasn’t about what dress I wore, how my hair was styled or what my makeup looked like, in the end. But I needed my mask. I needed to be the Charlotte Crofton of the present so I didn’t resurrect the Charlotte of the past.

  That was every other year.

  This year was different.

/>   I told myself I wasn’t dressing up for him.

  But I was a liar.

  My dress was couture, obviously. Designers scrambled to dress me, every time I wore something off the rack and was photographed in it, it sold out instantly. I wasn’t a fashion icon, by any means. But career women in New York knew me, they wanted to emulate me. And clothes maketh the woman, apparently.

  I’d gone with a lesser-known designer, as I always did to this event. One struggling and just starting out. I’d had research done on the young man. He happened to be from the Midwest. Living on the fourth floor of a studio walkup with three other people.

  But he made art. True art.

  And he’d outdone himself for me. The dress was blood red. It was long sleeved, high necked, tailored beyond perfection. I’d had many clothes made for me—in fact, almost all of my clothes were—but not once had something glided over me like this did. It covered me neck to ankle, with a small but striking train in the back. There were tiny embellished studs around my sleeves, sharp but almost invisible.

  I was covered, but somehow, I felt sexier than ever.

  My hair was yanked back into a low and severe pony, Long diamond strand earrings almost touched my shoulders. I’d had a lipstick made to match the shade of the dress perfectly.

  It would go on sale tonight. I predicted it would sell out in less than an hour.

  The elevator door opened, and Molly was all but shouting at Jacob, who was stony-faced and looking straight ahead. This might’ve deterred anyone else—especially since Jacob’s entire energy was pure danger—but not Molly, she had a grin on her face and didn’t shut up. Not much scared her, even the man who terrified me more than anything else.

  She was chattering until her eyes landed on me.

  Then she shut up.

  And gaped.

  Rendering Molly speechless was a damn near impossible feat.

  Her eyes ran over me.