by B. B. Hamel
He was constantly searching for something, partying and drowning himself in the next new thing. That explained the scandals he was constantly getting into. It wasn’t that he was a bad guy or something. In fact, Carter was one of the strongest, best men I’d ever met. But because of his constant need for more and something else, he was getting involved in things that maybe didn’t play too well in the media. He was a playboy because it was easier to be a genius playboy than to be a boyfriend or a husband.
I didn’t know if that was changing with me. I genuinely doubted it. Maybe he was interested in me right now, but I had no clue how long that was going to last or what it really meant. I was his latest toy, the thing that brought him pleasure in this moment, and I had no illusions about where this would end up.
I hoped that wasn’t the case. Maybe I was silly and naïve, but there was still part of me that hoped he was really changing and growing up. I knew it wasn’t likely, but I hoped anyway.
He seemed to really care about my safety, at least. I couldn’t imagine how much money he was spending on these security guys, but it wasn’t a small amount. He even hired this quiet guy to personally watch over me, my very own bodyguard, although I told him not to.
Of course he didn’t listen. Carter only listens to himself. Maybe I could change that too, but I doubted it.
Maybe I didn’t want to change that.
The day slipped past, lazy and slow. Nothing new happened, no frantic phone calls, no drones, nobody stalking me, nothing. I almost even forget what was going on and felt like a normal college student home for the summer again.
But then I’d remember that I was having some sort of messed up affair with my fake stepfather, and then I’d remember all of the other stuff.
I didn’t have it too bad. There were probably a million girls that would have traded places with me. A couple weeks ago, I would have gladly done that, but not anymore. Not after everything that had happened, not after how Carter made me feel.
My mom came home around five-thirty, although she said Carter was still stuck in the office. She came to my apartment with me and started cooking while I showered off and got changed into fresh clothes.
I found her at the stove when I finally came out of the bathroom.
“How was work?” I asked her.
“Same old,” she said, smiling. “How was your day?”
“Oh, you know, the usual. Got followed by a strange man and then attacked by a drone.”
She nodded. “Of course. Don’t forget the decapitated dog.”
“Robot,” I corrected her. “It was a robot. A really, really convincing robot.”
She laughed. “Come here, keep an eye on this, would you?”
“Sure.”
I walked over and took the spatula spoon from her hand as she went over and started chopping vegetables.
“What are you making?”
“Arepas,” she said. “They’re like fat tortillas that you cut open and stuff.”
“Looks really good.”
“Flip those in a few minutes.”
I nodded, looking at the food. It had been a while since Mom and I cooked dinner together. When I was growing up, she was constantly trying new things, and I was always pulled in as her little sous chef. I could julienne carrots before I was eight, which was probably a little absurd, but she felt that cooking is a skill everyone should have.
“How are things with you and Carter?” she asked.
I groaned a little bit. “Mom, let’s not.”
“Come on. I want to know.”
“No, you don’t.”
She sighed. “You never tell me about your boys.”
“You never tell me about your girls,” I pointed out.
“Oh, please. You don’t want to hear about your gay mother’s love life.”
“I’m curious. You haven’t brought someone around in a while.”
“I’ve been busy,” she said softly.
I frowned and watched her chop for a second. I knew she’d been busy because of me, but she was never going to admit it. Maybe this whole fake marriage thing was a part of her scheme to finally get a personal life. It was hard enough being gay in America, let alone a single gay mom. That was part of what drove Dad away, all those years ago. Mom came out to him and he just up and ran away, leaving me and never looking back. I didn’t want to know the bastard, but he made her life so much harder than it had to be.
“Does he make you happy?” she asked suddenly.
“That’s a hard question to answer right now.”
“It shouldn’t be.”
I thought for a second. “Without all of the noise around us, yeah, he does.”
“And he’s good to you.”
I nodded. “He’s good to me.”
“Carter is a good person,” she said, carrying some onions and peppers over to the frying pan. She tossed them in with a satisfying sizzle. “He’s just distracted by all that life has to offer.”
“Boys and their toys,” I said, laughing.
“Something like that. He has a brilliant mind, but he doesn’t know what to do with it. I think he’s bored most of the time, and I think most of his media stunts have been ways to keep the boredom at bay.”
“Maybe,” I said, fascinated. Mom had never talked about her employer so much.
“Just be careful. He changes his mind a lot and quickly. I don’t want you to get attached and have him . . . “
“Leave?” I asked. “Like Dad?”
“Something like that.” She smiled at me. “Flip.”
“What?”
She nodded at the pan. “Flip.”
“Oh.” I quickly flipped the two arepas. They were a nice golden brown on the other side.
“It’ll be okay,” she said, putting her hand on my shoulder. “Carter might not seem like it, but he knows what he’s doing. I trust him with all this.”
“If you do then I do too.”
“Just be careful,” she said, and went back to chopping.
The conversation moved on to more normal things, but I couldn’t help but keep thinking about what she had said about Carter. She seemed genuinely in awe of him, extremely complimentary, but her warning mirrored exactly my greatest fears about him. I worried that I’d get too close and he’d get too bored.
So far, he hadn’t justified that worry at all, but he did have a pattern in the past. I just kept wondering if I really thought that I was any different from those other girls he was with before me. Maybe in that he was my stepfather, however fake, but otherwise I was completely normal and boring as far as I could tell, or at least compared to those girls. He dated models and actresses and musicians, there was no way he was interested in a boring normal communications major like me.
As we finished cooking the meal, there was a knock at my door. I cleaned my hands on a towel and quickly went over as Mom set the table. I opened it and was surprised to see Carter standing there.
“Good evening,” he said, leaning toward me, kissing me quickly.
“Hi,” I said. “My mom’s here, we were just putting dinner out.”
“I know. She texted me.” He grinned.
“Oh, did she?”
We walked into my apartment together and Mom was smiling. She kissed Carter on the cheek.
“Did you get that brief finished?” she asked him.
“Mostly. The idiot Chinese interpreter didn’t understand some of the nuances in the second clause, so I had to go back and change them.”
“We’ll find someone better next time.”
“I like Wu, she just doesn’t get patent law, especially not American stuff.”
“I understand.”
“Stop it,” I said, and they both stared at me. “No work talk. I’m serious.”
They both laughed and we all sat down around the table. Mom handed out the arepas, already cut open to form a little pouch on the inside. We filled them with veggies, cheese, pork, whatever we had out on the table. It was absolutely
delicious.
Eating with Carter and my mom was almost surreal. They talked to each other like real friends and Carter seemed like a normal, down-to-earth person. He was definitely toning down the asshole attitude big time for her at least. I didn’t know what Mom was up to warning me away from him and then inviting him to dinner, but I felt good sitting in their company, laughing and talking.
Carter talked about growing up and starting a company, and Mom told embarrassing stories about me. That drove me crazy, but I couldn’t really complain. I had a smile on my face the whole time even when she talked about the night I decided to turn myself into a Smurf.
“So she comes downstairs, covered in blue marker,” Mom said, laughing, barely able to talk. “I’m talking covered in it, but because she used a marker it was all streaky.”
“Like a blue zebra?” Carter asked.
“Exactly!” Mom cracked up. “Okay, okay, so she comes up to me and says, ‘Look Mom! Gargamel is going to eat me!’ It seriously took me twenty minutes before I understood what she was saying.”
I blushed but smiled. “I don’t remember any of this, even though she’s told that story a million times.”
“How did you clean her off?” Carter asked.
“Just soap and water and a scrub brush. Took way too long but god was that funny.”
We leaned back in our chairs, smiling and feeling the warmth of a genuinely close and comfortable friendly moment. There was a few seconds of silence before Carter finally sighed.
“Well, I hate to ruin the good mood, but we all need to talk.”
Mom raised an eyebrow at me and I just shrugged. “What about?” I asked.
“Our situation. We all might as well be involved in the discussion now since it affects all of us.”
“I wonder why,” Mom grumbled.
Carter ignored her. “Bruce Walker is behind all of this, and I’m betting that Cox is helping him. I assume Bruce offered Cox a lot of money. He recently stole a lot of papers and notebooks from me, which is both good and bad.”
“How is that good?” Mom asked.
“I can press charges if I can prove it, but I doubt we’ll get to that stage.”
“What are you planning on doing?”
“Right now, nothing,” Carter admitted. “We all need to lie low for a while, or at least until Bruce makes his move. Eventually he’s going to do more than just demand my resignation through threatening letters. I suspect he doesn’t want to embarrass the company, so most of his threats are empty.”
“How can you be sure?” I asked.
“I can’t be, but it’s my best guess. Why not just publish what he has instead of threatening me? That would destroy me well enough.”
“Good point,” Mom said. “He’s probably looking at the longterm survival of the company.”
“He wants to control it, but he wants to make sure it’s profitable still. He won’t shoot himself in the foot.”
I nodded. That made sense to me. This Bruce guy sounded like an asshole, but his self-interest meant that he couldn’t destroy the company by smearing Carter while he was still involved with it.
“So we sit and wait?” I asked.
“Exactly. I suspect it’ll happen soon.”
“I don’t like it.” Mom’s face looked stressed.
“I know you don’t. But we need to know what we’re dealing with before we can make any moves or make any real plans.” He pushed his chair back from the table and stood. “I should get going. Thanks for the dinner, you two.”
We all stood and exchanged goodbyes, but the moment was tense. Carter bringing up Bruce and the threats brought the good mood down. I knew we had to talk about it, but I wished we had some more time to enjoy that peaceful, happy moment.
I walked with Carter to the front door. “Are you okay?” he asked softly.
“I’m fine. You’re the one that just had dinner with me and my mom.”
He grinned. “You’re my two favorite women in the world.”
“I’m sure.”
He kissed me quickly again. “I have work to do. I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“You will,” I said.
“Good. Tell your Mom thanks.” He turned and walked off.
I watched him go, wondering what the hell was going to happen with all of this. From what I could tell, Bruce and Cox, assuming they were working together, had all of the cards. All of the pressure was on Carter. I didn’t know what he could possibly do to get us out of this mess.
He seemed calm, though, calmer than I felt. Even talking about it didn’t seem to ruffle him much, and he had every right to be pissed as hell. He was being attacked by people that he thought were his friends, or at least people that he thought were loyal. Bruce Walker was never his ally, but at least they worked together for the good of the company.
Now he was being forced out of the job he created, the world he built. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what he was going through.
As I walked back into the apartment, I decided that I was going to try and help him relieve some more stress the next time I saw him.
24
Carter
Just like I thought it would, the call came the very next morning. It was maybe a bit sooner than expected, but I knew they were going to get in touch sooner or later. There was just no other move to make.
“Hello, Carter,” Bruce said.
I frowned, leaning back in my office’s chair. It was around eleven in the morning and I was just thinking about lunch when my cell rang. It said the number was unlisted and unknown, and though I don’t normally answer calls from unrecognized numbers, I was in unusual circumstances.
“Calling from a pay phone?” I asked him.
“Something like that. Though I’m not sure those exist anymore.”
“They do. They’re just uncommon.”
“Well. I didn’t call to discuss phones.”
“I bet. Called to blackmail me some more?”
There was a short pause and then Bruce chuckled. He was one smug son of a bitch.
“Yes, something like that,” he said.
So, he was confirming it. He wasn’t even bothering to deny that he was the one behind the letters and the threats. He must have been very, very confident, that piece of shit.
“What do you want?” I asked him.
“Come upstairs,” he said. “Floor twenty-eight. It’s empty right now. We’ll talk.”
“Why—“
But he hung up the phone.
I stared at the line then dropped it on my desk, sighing. I didn’t know what was waiting for me upstairs, but I knew that I couldn’t put it off. I opened a drawer in my desk and took out a small handgun, slipping it into the waistband of my suit. I smiled to myself ruefully. I always wanted to carry my gun for good reason, but now that I had to, I wished I didn’t need it. Life was funny that way.
I wasn’t a fucking gangster. I wasn’t a fucking killer. I was just a man that built a company and knew what he wanted. I wanted to control what I made with my own hands and I wanted to fuck my stepdaughter. I wanted her to no longer be my stepdaughter one day, hopefully soon.
I didn’t want unreasonable things.
I stood, adjusting myself, then left the office. “Hold my calls,” I told Evelyn as I walked past. Briefly, I wondered if I should let her know what I was doing, but I figured it was best to leave her out of it. At the end of the day, Evelyn and Emily were innocent of everything. I was the one that they wanted, and so I was the one that should shoulder all of the burden. I wouldn’t put her in any more danger than was necessary.
I got into the elevator and rode it up, trying to control my nerves.
This was the moment I had been waiting for. I was finally going to speak face to face with Bruce, the bastard that had been harassing me. We were going to hash it out, and I was going to figure out what my final move had to be. After this, I could plan.
But part of me thought he was just going to try and throw me out of a wi
ndow. Killing me would make all of his problems disappear, though murder investigations could be a real pain in the ass. Still, I knew Cox, and if anyone could get away with murdering me in this building, it was him.
I shook my head, marveling at how easily I could imagine someone trying to kill me. I never thought things could get this low, but they had, and I suspected they could get lower still.
The elevator doors dinged, pulling me from my thoughts. I stepped off and looked around at the empty, half-built office. Plastic sheeting hung from the bare rafters and partially deconstructed cubicles filled the space. There was trash on the ground, mostly papers and files.
“Bruce,” I called out.
“This way,” he answered. I headed toward his voice. It was coming from the north side of the building near the windows.
I saw him standing there, silhouetted by the outside sunlight, Cox by his side. I felt anger flare up inside of me. I couldn’t believe Cox would be here, willing to show his face, that traitorous piece of shit. He had to have some measure of shame left inside of him, but apparently not. Apparently he was okay just standing there, his face flat and normal as always, not showing a single emotion.
I stopped in front of the two men and crossed my arms, waiting for them to speak.
The arrogant bastards watched me for a minute or two, staring me down. Cox had no expression on his face, neither happiness nor embarrassment, just his normal cold blankness. The man had worked for me for years and he should feel like a snake, but he wasn’t showing it. I hoped he was stewing on the inside, that piece of shit rat bastard.
“So, you’re here,” Bruce said finally. “I wasn’t sure you’d show.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“You know what we have on you.”
I shrugged, “One more scandal won’t matter.”
Bruce laughed, shaking his head. “You’re insane, Carter. This isn’t just some small scandal. This is you fucking your stepdaughter. You’ll be destroyed. Nobody will touch you after this.”
“Maybe,” I said.