He looked at the cover as if he could have misinterpreted. “Catcher in the Rye,” he repeated with more certainty. “It was written by–”
“What is it called?” she repeatedly hotly.
He paused and realization washed over his face as the point of the exercise struck home. “I need to clean up,” he replied, “By Alexi Volkov.”
“What is it called?” she replied angrily, the sound squashing his sarcasm.
He looked bitter but he swallowed his pride before he replied properly. “I need to clean up.”
She nodded approvingly and he kept restoring his books.
By the end of the first day he was so exhausted from lack of sleep and from hunger that she was certain that he was beginning to realize that resistance was not in his best interest. His stomach had grumbled so loudly that she could hear it from across a quiet room. But his fatigue was genuine and it was enough to convince her that he didn’t have any fight in him. Not today at any rate.
“Tomorrow, if you’re good,” she said as she prepared herself to sleep, “I’ll see to it that you get something to eat. Good night.”
She let him sleep for an hour before she again greeted him with the fog horn and made him recite his mantra a hundred times before she let him curl up on the rug at the foot of the bed.
The following morning he offered no resistance to her in the slightest as she made him resume his work. It amazed her how quickly he had succumbed to her authority and she made a note to be wary. Others had tried to feigned compliance before in an effort to get her to go away, but she maintained her vigil. She had him clean up the kitchen, the guest room, and the small sun room that he had before she went down to breakfast.
When she came back up she found him sitting on the floor beside the elevator doors, reminding her of a dog awaiting the return of its master on the front porch. The look of hunger on his face was dominant and she reevaluated his willingness to comply with her commands.
He hadn’t eaten anything long before I showed up, she judged. That’s why he’s being so submissive.
“You’ve been good,” she said with a smile. “I brought you something to eat.”
He perked up excitedly.
She reached into her pocket and removed a single cherry that she had carefully folded inside of a napkin in her pocket. “Here you go,” she said, dropping the small morsel into his palm.
The look he wore was one of confusion and pure hatred. And when his eyes traveled up to look at her she saw the rage behind his features.
“I can always take it back,” she said, her voice daring and unconcerned if he didn’t eat it. She knew health and nutrition well enough to know that she could keep from feeding him at all for days before things got dangerous for him. And she could already see that his anger was costing him precious energy.
He hastily changed his mind and swallowed the cherry, stem and all.
She cupped a hand and put it to her ear as if straining to hear something far off. But what she wanted to hear was no less than an arm’s length from her.
“Thank you,” he said, his voice gruff.
“And…?” she prompted.
He sighed, “I need to clean up.”
By the end of the third day Alexi was so out of sorts that she allowed him to sleep for three hours before she blasted him with the horn again, making him recite his new motto three hundred times. Then she let him sleep another hour before waking him up again and reciting his new mission, but this time she made him do it a thousand times.
Janice prided herself for being able to go long stretches of time without sleep. It was one of the things that gave her an edge over most people and it was handy for circumstances like these. When her clients were without their finer senses, when they were vulnerable from lack of rest, it made them more open to suggestion.
Some people called it brain washing. History was full of such things but she’d never viewed what she did as anything negative. Not when the outcome was positive. It was a violation of morality, perhaps, but she wasn’t being paid to feel bad about what she did. She was being paid to deliver results and that was all there was to it. Someone else could argue the morality of it when she was sitting on a beach somewhere enjoying a well-earned vacation.
It has to be done, she told herself.
She carried on.
Chapter 6
By the end of the first week Alexi’s resistance to the will of his father was just as thin as Alexi himself was becoming. He looked leaner and she made sure to get some screen captures from the surveillance cameras for coverage of his progress.
“I’ve not seen him look so skinny for a long time,” Mr. Volkov said one day while she was eating her sandwich for lunch and watching the camera footage of his son while she was absent. “Are you sure the damage will not be lasting?”
She nodded confidently. “Positive. The human body can survive for three weeks on its own fat if it doesn’t have a morsel to eat. Yesterday he had a bag of chips and the day before I gave him a candy bar. But today, I think he’s finally earned a full meal.” She picked up a plastic bag that held a submarine sandwich, a bag of chips, and a bottle of water.
Mr. Volkov nodded approvingly as he watched his son through the cameras that she had had installed. “And you’re sure we do not need to put any of this out in public? A few pictures might convince the press—”
“That you’re holding your own son prisoner while he’s supposed to be in a rehab center somewhere? Mr. Volkov, I know rehab facilities well enough to know that each of them has a system. There is always some orderly or doctor that can be bribed to provide the substances that patients shouldn’t have access to. Sometimes it’s the patients themselves that steal or manipulate their way into getting what they want to avoid cleansing themselves. But done like this, we control the environment and every stimulus he has access to. And in all honesty, Mr. Volkov, it’s not illegal. He is still your dependent after all.”
He looked at her sideways but gave a comprehensive grunt. “You’re being hard on the boy… I approve. It’s like he could be back in Russia.” He straightened his suit. “So by today you will have established that proper behavior yields rewards. What comes next?”
She smiled at him. “Physical therapy.”
“Physical therapy?”
“Once I get him eating again, I need to see how much of his body is willing to follow through on getting back into shape. The food that I get him will strengthen his immune system, enrich circulation, and clean out everything that he was smoking or drinking before now. Weights… cardio… whatever I need him to do.”
Mr. Volkov nodded. “Very well, however I do have another issue that I wish to discuss with you.”
“Yes?”
“The press is hounding me for updates on his well-being. I tell them that not even I have access to my son at his rehab facility as per my instructions until he is cleansed.” He looked at her interestedly. “I am uncertain as to how to respond.”
She nodded. “Make a public statement. Tell them that you’re in regular contact with his caregiver – that’s crucial, Mr. Volkov, tell them caregiver – and that he’s doing fine and that you hope to be reunited with him by Christmas.”
“Why is this important?”
“Because doctors run rehab facilities… people that can be reached or inspected. But caregivers, on the other hand, could mean that he’s anywhere there’s a private compound. That is to say, he could be anywhere in the country and you could certainly afford that. The press keeps hounding you because they’re fishing for clues as to where he could be… it might even be some of his own friends that are trying to see him. The last place they would expect to look for him while he’s “recovering” is in his own home. But if you tell them his caregivers are taking care of him… well, then they have an entire country to scour looking for him.”
He shook his head. “That is a dangerous gambit, Ms. Roe. The press is well-connected. Sooner or later – later, hopefully – they
will have determined that my son is not at any of the facilities in the country.”
“And how many facilities are there, Mr. Volkov?”
He was quiet.
“There are hundreds of thousands of them. How long do you think it would take for them, even the major league press corps, to check each and every one of them for your son? Alexi was great headline material, sure… but he’s not so juicy a thing that someone is going to kidnap and interrogate your staff trying to get the truth out.”
God, I hope I’m not lying, she thought.
Chapter 7
By the end of the second week, Alexi was looking more like his old self. He was eating three square meals a day and she had stepped up his regimen. He was back into decent shape, it had been a while since she had gotten even a hint of resistance from him for anything, and he was doing pretty much everything that she had told him to do. She had even gotten him to the point where he put on a dress shirt and slacks at her command. She would have begun a lot sooner on such things, but Alexi’s collection of finer wear was somewhat lacking.
It was alright. She’d seen the assortment of jackets and ties that he had in his closet and each of them was a bit dated by about five years or so. It might as well have been a millennium in terms of fashion for the rich and powerful. She would have to get custom suits made for him, but that was still a few days off at least. Eventually there would come a time when she had to take baby steps.
But that time was not yet. Christmas was only two weeks away and she had to make ready to present the new Alexi Volkov to the world before then. She had her plan lined up to give Alexi over to the public by Christmas Eve; the press would look at it as a genuine Christmas miracle and they would eat it up. It would be a great thing to really sell the magic of the season. But that time was not yet.
“How’s the soup?” she asked him across the dinner table as they ate their meal one evening.
He looked up from his meal and even paused to properly wipe his mouth with his napkin. “Pardon?”
Yes! She raved inwardly. He stopped using the vernacular! It had only been three days before when he would have responded, What now?
“Your soup,” she repeated, keeping her face neutral. “How does it taste?”
He gave a short approving nod. “I find that I was never partial to tomato soup before… but this blend of spices is actually quite… delectable.”
She wanted to get up and dance at this. In addition to his mantra she had been schooling him in vocabulary and mannerisms. Just as with all of his other lessons she feared that he was only feigning interest until such a time as she would leave. But after the third or fourth lesson – given while he was moving some weights around in his private gym – he began asking questions.
And he was asking the right ones to boot.
It happened that he had a great hunger for what she was teaching. It was apparent that he hadn’t realized it himself until they began speaking of things that were other than what she was trying to teach him. One of their lull periods, she had thought of it as. Even she needed a break from what she was trying to accomplish every now and then. And that they should share that time together had seemed fitting to her.
She couldn’t find any evidence to the contrary that he was simply being illusory about her presence with him. His questions were about her schooling… where she had grown up… how she had come to be in this business… things of that nature. None of it had any bearing on when she would be leaving. It was for that reason that she had begun to believe that his intentions were far from being disingenuous.
She smiled at him.
She sat and watched him as he did his morning sit-ups. He was responding better now that he had all of the toxins from out of his system. He had recovered from all of his drinking and other narcotics with surprising speed. She had seen withdrawal symptoms in her clients before and none of them had ever recovered from such things like this.
He compensated by way of throwing himself into his workouts. She’d seen that plenty of times, but apparently some of his more brutish ancestry still reached across the generations to give Alexi the strength to get through his pains. It was a wondrous thing to watch.
Wondrous… and a little exciting as well.
She watched from the doorway as Alexi performed his motions. He was dressed down into a slim pair of shorts and ankle-tight shoes. His body was half prone on a small mat facing a mirror in his private gym. Every time he sat up he would look at his reflection in the mirror and mimicking a boxer he would cast two quick punches towards his reflection before reclining and repeating the motion.
His ab muscles tensed and relaxed with every swift movement of his body. Back and forth he went, like a fleshy accordion… but was far more pleasant to look upon. There was a thin layer of sweat upon his body that created a sheen that was caught in the early morning light.
He grunted with each motion and she strained her ears to listen. She held her breath between his sit ups and could faintly discern the words she had not prompted him to say.
“I need to clean up.”
She wanted, again, to dance at this realization. But somehow she found it more satisfying to simply watch him as he completed his exercise and flipped over onto his belly, doing pushups.
The sight of seeing him bob up and down on his workout mat with sweat lightly dripping from off of his body added to her own excitement. There was something… primal… in the motions. Primal… and desirable.
Chapter 8
She sat on a chair in the kitchen as he practiced a simple skill that she had taught him: frying eggs. He hadn’t shown any particular skill in the kitchen but she had made part of his rehab regime simple cooking skills. To that end, she’d had food delivered that was no good unless it was prepared and properly so.
“If you want to eat, you have to learn to cook for yourself,” she had taught him. He had grumbled at first, but he’d learned to cope with it better than she had expected. As it so happened he was turning into a passable cook when faced with the option that he couldn’t order in like he used to. It provided her a chance to do two things at once.
She checked the books that Alexi’s father provided. “It says here that marketing has found a problem with the new U220 units.” She paused, testing him. “What are those?”
He didn’t look up from his frying pan as he responded. “Performance enhancers… supposed to be a competitive medium for energy drinks. U220 is just the name that the men in the lab gave it. What’s the problem?”
She smirked and looked back at the report. “It says here that the lab generating it is running out of funds. The pill’s predecessor, UN10, hasn’t sold as well as the original projected rates. That income was meant to fund the U220 into its final phase of production.”
She paused, waiting for him to respond. This too had been part of plan, getting him more involved with the business that he would one day have to run. His knowledge of business, she’d discovered, was actually quite impressive. What had been lacking before now had simply been his interest.
He nodded. “Reduce the price on the old stuff. Make it up in units.”
She paused. “That simple?”
“The marketability of UN10 can generate what’s needed for at least the next quarter if the price goes down. The market isn’t as large we’d like, but it’s large enough to generate the kind of capital that we need. It doesn’t have to be cheap long, just long enough to bring U220 into full production.”
She thought about it and considered the option. It sounded reasonable and certainly within the scope of good business. The company might suffer a small loss but if U220 worked as the researchers and focus groups predicted that it would then the loss would be minimal. And the overall marketing could be made up for before the following quarter.
“I never would have thought of that,” she admitted.
He chuckled and looked at her over his shoulder. “I do have a mind for business, you know.” She found herself blush a litt
le, but tried not to let it show. “What’s next?”
Janice stood watching him as he rubbed the thick shaving cream across his face. He spread the foam across his chin and the underside of his neck with a slow and graceful touch. Then he slowly began to run his razor across his features, removing the beard that had been growing for several days now.
She had allowed him the freedom of being able to have a razor, which was a traditional straight razor, in the tradition of shaving that his father had insisted upon. It had been the same day that she’d had the cameras removed from the suite and she found herself occasionally looking over her shoulder as to where the small and imperceptible devices had been housed. Each of them removed during the night while Alexi and she had slept.
It felt strange knowing that they were well and truly alone here now. Security was still in place, as she had requested, but they were no longer tuned in to the goings on inside Alexi’s suite. In a way, it felt kind of odd. Every client that she’d had before… their recovery and the sharpening of their personal image had taken longer and much longer at that. But Alexi… he was different. He’d managed to accomplish his recovery in just under a month.
She looked at her watch again and noted the time.
It was just before 8 AM on Christmas Eve morning, and she didn’t recognize the man that was standing before her. It wasn’t the same man that she had seen weeks ago who’d been lounging with messy hair, an unshaven face, and the raggedy shorts that he’d been wearing.
Instead, she was looking at a man reborn. His body was reshaped, and very well, she thought. His mind had also been honed to new heights and he didn’t seem the over-amped kid that she had first thought him to be.
He had actually become quite fetching. His hair… his features… his body… his mind… his manners… the way he spoke… all of it was crafted from her work. From our mutual work, she reminded herself. Yes, that was true. She had to remind herself that he had contributed to the effort as well, though it had taken a while for him to do so. He was transformed from what he had been and in his place this new specimen had emerged.
REGENCY: Loved by the Duke (Historical Billionaire Military Romance) (19th Century Victorian Short Stories) Page 54