by Amy Brent
But not before giving me a poisonous smirk on the way out of course.
It took all of my control not to pick up a piece of furniture and bash it into the ground until it didn’t exist anymore. It killed me that she had any custody at all, as she clearly only cared about our son as a way to get more money. I couldn’t believe that I had once allowed myself to be married to such a snake in the grass.
Actually, that was an insult to snakes everywhere.
Finally, after what seemed like a literal eon, I was up on my floor. Of course I could come in late whenever I wanted, there was no one forcing me to hold a nine to five, but I was in the middle of several intense projects involving new directions I wanted the company to go in, and being four hours late meant four hours less of making my company as competitive as it could be.
I cursed under my breath as I closed the door behind me, trying to center my mind so I could actually be productive. I decided a couple quick emails to one of my assistants to send any calls to voice mail as well as order my lunch and bring drinks to my door would be a good place to start. Sitting down at my large desk, I dove in to my to-do list for the day.
I didn’t get up for a while, letting my anger fuel me into getting as much output as I can. I drafted plans, set proposals, created presentations and reviewed reports while adding my own notes. I knew that plenty of my CEO brethren liked to take plenty of golf breaks and only show up for important work meetings, but I wasn’t interested in coasting on my wealth.
I remembered once that I had been called ruthlessly ambitious. Granted, that had been by another CEO that I had been outbidding for a contract, but I took it as a compliment nonetheless.
When my father came to this country, he had nothing. He had worked so hard to give me just the bare minimum, and I wasn’t about to let that go to waste. Although my father had passed when I was in my mid-twenties, I continued to push and push so my son could be proud of me too.
But eventually, even I needed a break, so I decided to grab myself some coffee from the mini-barista stand we had in the upper-floor café, only to be surprised when no one was in the office.
“What the hell?” I said, looking around at the abandoned space in front of my door. It was only after a quick glance that I realized it was pitch black. What time was it?!
Whatever, it didn’t matter. Dominic wouldn’t be home until Wednesday, so it wasn’t like I had anything to be home to. With a shrug, I headed to the café and helped myself.
It was strange being behind the counter, but it reminded me of my high school days when I worked three-part time jobs. I put on a pot to boil and perused the different selections they have, letting my brain rest for the first time in hours.
At first, I didn’t notice any other noises beyond the percolating of the coffee, but eventually I heard a strangle shuffling followed by banging. Confused, I stood up and listened intently, and realized I could hear heavy breathing as well, like someone was working out.
If my building was being robbed, someone had gone through a hell of a lot of effort to get to the top floor. Curious, I headed out and looked towards the sound.
I don’t know what I expected, but it certainly wasn’t a woman in a maintenance outfit dancing her heart out in the middle of the office. I watched, puzzled and a bit amused, as she shook her head, flinging red hair every which way, and mouthed words into her mop-handle.
But then I began to notice other things and that amusement faded into… something else.
For being in a jumper, her curves were still more than evident. Every time she twirled her hips or bounced that delicious rear end, it felt like the world recalibrated herself. And then, when she turned to grab something from her couch, I saw that the first few buttons of her uniform were undone, revealing the tops of two pale globes as they jiggle around within her jumpsuit. She reminded me of that ever-so-famous painting of Aphrodite being birthed form the seas, all pale skin and ocean spray.
God, she was so attractive. The perfect hips for grabbing and holding onto, the softy womanliness to her body, from head to toe she had me spellbound, riveted in place like a gargoyle.
Coming to my senses for all of ten seconds, I looked around to make sure that I wasn’t on some sort of prank show, but as far as I could tell, no one was waiting in the wings to swoop in with a camera. But it had been several more minutes and she was still rocking it out while spreading some sort of powder with her mop and the water from her bucket.
It went on for hours, like a whole dance show courtesy of some maintenance goddess, with sweat beaded on her brow and her full lips opened as her breath rasped through them. God, she really was a vision. Her skin was paper white, which I usually wasn’t into, but it went well with the freckles that dotted her heart shaped face. Although I couldn’t see the color of her eyes from where I was, I could see that they had an interesting shape, almost reminding me of a cat.
I wanted to go out and introduce myself, to see those perfect lips curl into a smile. If I was anybody else, I might even ask her out for coffee and find out how her mouth felt on mine.
But she was an employee, so that would never happen. Not to mention the fact that I knew better anyways. Even the most attractive of women was most likely a gold digger who would see me as dollar signs instead of a human.
How disappointing.
She heaved a sigh, and her hands went to her headphones to take them off, so I stepped back into the café. The last thing I needed was to get caught leering at one of my employees for an hour or two.
I heard her shuffle towards the elevators, her breath slowly returning to normal. Once she was gone, I relaxed a little, but all the tension that her little show built up was definitely still there. Who was that woman? Obviously, an overnight janitor, but that didn’t answer who she was, just what position she was working. Had she been with my company long? Had she only ever worked overnights? I had no idea. I was going to have to go to HR and see what they could tell me about her in… I glanced to my watch and my eyes widened. It was two am. Just how lost in my work had I been?
Maybe this was the universe’s way of telling me I needed to go home and sleep. If I dallied much longer, I wouldn’t be able to go to sleep in time to get up at seven am and get to work at a more useful time. Not to mention that I was going to have a whole day’s worth of voicemails to go through after my assistants finished sorting through sales people and who I actually wanted to speak to.
Yeah, I definitely needed to go home. Crossing the freshly cleaned floor, I grabbed my keys and wallet then headed out, my thoughts full of a certain mysterious redhead with a good sense of rhythm.
Chapter Four
~McKenna~
I yawned as the subway came to a stop and I shuffled off with the rest of the overnight people who were trying to get home and in bed before the sun rose. We were like a heard of apathetic zombies, shambling our way through the city with dark circles under our eyes and cold coffee in our hands. I had never seen so many scrubs and cleaning uniforms in one train car, and yet that was our story every night.
The first rays of sun were just beginning to poke over the horizon, turning the onyx sky into a myriad of purples while the stars faded back into obscurity just as I reached my apartment complex’ door.
I struggled with my keys for a moment, sleep really beginning to clutch at my brain, but managed to get in without giving up and slumping to the floor there. Once I was inside, I dropped my purse and keys by the door and shuffled straight towards my bathroom.
I turned the water up as hot as it could go in my standing shower and disrobed, throwing my cleaning uniform into my laundry basket to inevitably be worn again before I washed it.
I stepped in, and some of the stress slipped away, washed down the drain in a deluge. It wasn’t quite enough to forget everything that weighed so heavily on me, but it helped.
But the water grew too cold too fast and I had to step out before the warmth within me switched to shivers. But without the sound of water
, my tiny studio was oppressively silent, and I was reminded that I had no one and it needed to stay that way.
I didn’t want to go to sleep on such a depressing thought, so I went about prepping my uniform and socks for the next day. I really was lucky that I had been able to find a full-time job that paid as well as mine did along with benefits while under a fake name. I had never thought I would get away with it, but it was my second week, and no one had said anything, so I was pretty sure I was in the clear.
But still, the two months I had spent searching had quickly bled through all of my savings. The biweekly pay was killing me, as my first chunk had just been completed and now I just had to wait for the check to come in the mail in a week.
I groaned headed to my mini-kitchenette. I had thought that kitchenette was as small as it could get, but my studio went a step down and only had a sink, a tiny fridge and a single counter piece that I crammed my microwave, blender, coffeemaker and toaster on.
Shuffling around in my fridge, I looked to all of the food I had left until I got paid. All ramen and old deli meat with stale bread. Fantastic.
Well, at least I had food. I had already dropped down a couple of pant sizes in a year and I didn’t want to lose any more weight so unhealthily. I forced myself to think of the positive side and went about making myself a sandwich and a side of cereal bar that was only… a month expired.
I somberly finished up my food and then shoved it back into the fridge in my battered lunchbox. It was so easy to get down on myself if I looked at all of the unpleasantness in my situation. Sure, I was lonely. Sure, there were water spots on the ceiling and my bed was a mattress on the floor of my living room. But it was better than where I had been before, and it would be improving very soon. I just had to wait for that first check and things would get a whole lot easier.
My sleepiness was really starting to get insistent, so I went about my nightly routine. Brushing my teeth with a toothbrush that needed replacing, washing what few plastic dishes or cutlery I had used to make my lunch, drinking water and refilling my filter-less pitcher, then brushing my wild, fiery mane with a brush that was missing a few too many bristles.
It was in these moments of silence, with only monotonous routine to fill my mind, that I wished I had someone I could trust. Someone who I could talk about my day with and tell them all the crazy things that happened at work. Not that anything crazy ever happened at work considering I interacted with a total of three people every day, but still. It would be nice. I missed knowing that I was loved, and that I had people who cared if I got up in the morning, or if I was healthy.
It was so tempting to just roll over and message some of the friends I left behind, but I couldn’t. That would open a door that I had worked so hard to close and I didn’t have the strength to shut again.
Although it didn’t feel like it, things were better this way. I just needed to remember how bad it could be before I was lured in by the greener grass on the other side of the fence. I was McKenna O’Grady, I was twenty-eight years old and a proud, independent woman. I could do this.
But as I laid in bed and sun started to trickle through the beige-stained venetian blinds, I couldn’t help but be lonely. Despite everything that I had gone through, I still missed someone beside me in bed. There was a certain warmth that I craved and, although dancing made me forget about it for a short while, it wasn’t enough to last through the night.
It didn’t help that it was the off-seasons on all of the shows that I liked to watch so I couldn’t even distract myself with television. I couldn’t read any new books considering how broke I was and signing up for a library card was a no-no, and I didn’t feel like rereading any of my well-worn adventures.
No, I was trapped in reality and it was a sucky one at that. I just had to hope that tomorrow would be better, and each day would be on the up and up. Just four to five more days until I got my check.
I just had to survive.
Chapter Five
~Raphael~
I looked to my watch again as I finished answering all the messages I wanted to answer and back-burnering all the ones I wasn’t sure on yet. It was just after ten and seemed like a good a time as ever to drop in on HR.
I hadn’t slept well the night previous. I had ended up at home at about three am, but my mind wouldn’t rest. It was full of images of the mysterious redhead as she danced across the floor so effortlessly. Her thighs as they moved past each other with no undue amount of friction -there was no gap on her- the inset of her waist as she twisted and turned. Her dance was like a movie on repeat in my own skull, and I wasn’t sure I even wanted to escape it.
But what I did want was answers. So, I made my way to HR as quickly as I could without drawing any extra attention to myself. Difficult to do, considering that I was the owner of the company and people either wanted something from me or were terrified from me, but I managed to only be stopped twice -which might have been a record for me.
I knocked before I entered then sauntered right in. The woman at their desks all sat up straight, like a bunch of prairie dogs that was spotted a predator, and I recognized only one of them. Her name was Shelly, and she’d been with the company for about ten years, if I recalled right. I hadn’t hired her, but she certainly had made an impression when she caught three corporate spies while she was an assistant HR admin just off their background checks and social media alone. She was a fairly standard looking woman, overweight with sandy brown hair, glasses and a kind face, but there was something slightly ruthless behind those hazel eyes of hers.
“Mr. Barbos! To what do we owe this surprise?” Her tone was arch and cheery as she stood, but there was an underlying concern. I was sure that after Westin’s dramatic outing, she was blaming herself that she had never caught him.
“I wanted to know a bit about one of our employees,” I answered smoothly, as if this very thought hadn’t been haunting my thoughts all night. “Female, works on the overnight cleaning crew. Red hair, relatively tall.”
“Is something wrong?”
“No. At least I hope not. Just want to check a couple of things. If you could email me her employee file -what’s not private information that is- I’d appreciate it.”
“No problem, sir! And is there anything else we can do for you today?”
“No, that’s about it.”
“Alright then. I’ll try to have it to you before you make it to your desk upstairs.”
And this was why I remembered Shelly. Hard workers should always be celebrated. “That would be most appreciated. You have a good day now.”
I tipped my head to her and headed out, making a beeline straight towards the elevator.
Unfortunately, this time I wasn’t quite lucky enough to only be stopped twice. It seemed every few feet someone was walking up to me and asking some question that could have been sent in an email, but I supposed that was partially my fault for being so available.
Although I didn’t tolerate nonsense, I wasn’t one of those board members who thought they were too good for lower-level employees to interact with. If I was truly needed for something, I wanted to help, and I figured if an employee had summoned up enough guts to talk to me, they deserved to be heard out. But like everything I ever did, there was always those who tried to abuse it, using it as a way to humble-brag about their accomplishments or wheedle favor. Of course, I was well versed at shutting those people down, but they were still tedious to me in the few seconds that they stole.
It was a solid fifteen minutes before I was able to get back into the office and shut the door behind me and a quick glance to my phone revealed that it was already flashing red on line two.
Line two was only for inter-office calls so I knew it had to be Shelly. Heading over, I hit the button to return her call and waited for the ring.
It didn’t even make it through one ring before she answered, voice professional but urgent. I instantly knew that she had to have found something, otherwise she wouldn’t sound nearly s
o excited.
“The employee you’re talking about is a Maxine Grady. She’s been working here for two weeks and her trainer had only excellent things to say about her.
“Alright…” If that was the case, then why did she sound so excited?
“But when I looked into her work history, I couldn’t find any social media or tax footprints for this woman at all. That’s never happened to me before. So, while this is a little out of my depth, I would guess that this has to be a fake name.”
“A fake name.” My stomach sank, and all those fantasies turned to ash on my tongue. I had known she was too good to be true, but that didn’t stop me from being incredibly disappointed by it.
“What do you want me to be about this, Sir? Should we terminate as a precaution?”
“No, no. While I believe in being proactive, but not over-reacting. I’ll see to this myself.”
“Yes sir. Anything else I can do for you?”