He imagined that Anya’s shadowed body tensed, but that might have been his mind playing tricks.
He went through the remaining slides, all of which were included in the folders he was about to give them, and ended on the last slide which said Questions.
“Anybody?” he asked, raising the lights.
Elliot, codename Beckham for his resemblance to the soccer star, looked smug but didn’t raise a hand.
Likewise, Liz, codename Ariel for a gymnastic aerial move, just shook her head.
But, of course, Anya hesitantly raised her hand.
“It says in the rules that if we see a client or coordinator in public we should not engage or communicate in any way.”
“That’s correct.”
“Is that across the board?”
“What do you mean?”
“What if we recognize you, or Sabine, or Merrill? Do rules apply to them as well?”
“You aren’t likely to see us in public,” he said.
“All the same, what if it happens?” she insisted. She had a gleam in her eye, which made him think she was asking about something else.
“The rules are the same for anyone connected to Cavendish, whether it’s a consultant, a coordinator, or an executive.”
“What about… fraternization?” she asked.
This time, he couldn’t stop the frustrated look he shot her.
“Like… familiarity between consultant and coordinators or clients or… other people.”
“She’s asking if we can hook up with other Cavendish staff,” Elliot interrupted, leaning to look at Anya. “Right? That’s a good question, ‘cause there are some very sexy people here. Right in this room, even.” He chuckled, looking at him boldly.
“It’s discouraged,” he answered, knowing there were no definite rules about that since all the executives at some time had hooked up with consultants. “Here are folders with the presentation printouts as well as your codename. Open the portal and enter the name and the seven-digit code attached to it.”
They all opened their folders, paging through as if browsing for furniture.
“Do it now,” he demanded in a hard voice, and all three hands fluttered, finding the card with their codename and tapping their phones. “Cards, please,” he said, holding out his hand to collect the codename cards. “Your pass card is in the back of your folder and has already been activated on our system. Are there any other questions?” It was a question, but his voice sounded so challenging he was sure nobody would risk one.
He was right; they all just looked at him with wide eyes.
Sabine took back control of the meeting and introduced Kensley, freeing him to leave.
* * *
He climbed out of the cart back at the command center, going up the elevator and swiping his wristband to access his private elevator.
Once he was in his lair, he stripped off his jacket and flung it on the couch. He made his customary tonic and lime and stood looking out of the huge glass windows.
Below and to the right was the compound. He was halfway through his drink when he saw movement through the trees. He knew the new consultants would take the back road around the estates to their quarters, and when the golf cart broke cover by the manor, he tracked it.
Everything else he had to do—setting up codes and getting the facilities manager to switch the recruits from the compound units to their new living spaces—could be done remotely.
Yet here he was with his virgin “gin and tonic,” watching her fucking golf cart.
He turned away in disgust, slumping on his couch. He reached for his folder, which he hadn’t looked at in days.
It held the business plans for his MMA gym. His purchase of an old warehouse in upstate New York closed last month, but he’d converted the tenants to a month-by-month lease until he was fully free to execute his plan.
The day when he could put all his focus on it was getting closer. Honestly, now that Yuki had her own goals in sight, he could break the news to her about leaving and sell his shares back into the company. She wouldn’t be excited about it, but now that her own plans were unfolding, she’d be distracted.
But that was the thing right there. He had an itchy feeling at the base of his neck, the way he used to back in the old days in Kyiv.
When something didn’t seem on the up and up, or a situation was about to turn bad, his neck would itch. There was something Yuki wasn’t telling them. He didn’t know if it concerned Anya, or her father, or the whole plan, but he sensed something, and he didn’t like it.
So he would trust his senses and hang around for a while. See if Yuki’s plan to lure Makkeido worked. See that Anya pocketed some cash and headed off to med school. That the plan ended there, as Yuki said it would. Because something in her eyes that day, the way she’d zoned out, said maybe that wasn’t it.
He finished his drink and his thoughts drifted to Anya.
Hanging around would also mean finding out if the decision to be Anya’s evaluator was more than a few words thrown around a meeting table. It seemed too good to be true and would not at all supply the information that an evaluation was supposed to provide.
He glanced at his laptop on the coffee table. He knew Anya had her haptics test. He was the only one in security who had full access to the video of her test and the results. Other than random curiosity in the early days, he’d never accessed any tests.
He closed the folder on his lap but didn’t move. It wouldn’t help. Watching or reading anything related to Anya would just draw him deeper into whatever this fascination was. Maybe he should look at this from a different perspective.
Whatever this thing was, this urge, maybe it was some form of penance for wanting to walk away from his promise. Maybe this was his ultimate test, to resist the thing that tempted him to stay.
He flipped open his folder again but had to work hard to drag his eyes away from the laptop.
13
“This is a fucking… Dream. Come. True,” Elliot said.
Oops, I’d better think of him as Beckham, Anya thought.
Beckham leaned back and roared from beside her in the golf cart. “I mean, we’re getting paid to fuck people. In fucking Fantasy Island. For a couple grand a pop!” he exclaimed, threading his hand through his hair as if to keep his head from exploding.
Anya didn’t make eye contact, worried the fact that she would be making five times what he would might shine through.
“I’m just glad the universe is rewarding my fondness for sex,” said Liz/Ariel, waving the folder from the front seat. “Did anyone else get a strong positive for feet?”
“I got hands,” she offered, giving Ariel a half smile.
“You guys,” Beckham interjected, “I got strongly positive on fucking everything. I’m a sex animal. Plus, fifty-nine percent bisexual, which means I’m more than halfway to gay, I think. Which explains a lot.” He laughed. “Honestly, everyone in the world should do that haptics-suit-thing and then get counseling on how to be okay with the report. It would solve a lot of bullshit in this world.”
“Agreed,” she murmured.
“I’ve got nothing but white wine in my fridge,” Beckham went on, “so if you drink something else, why don’t you grab it and come over to my place. We need to fucking celebrate!” He yelled the last word at the top of his lungs.
They all agreed, and after hopping off the cart, Anya grabbed two of her Yerba Matte iced teas and headed to Beckham’s place.
They gathered around his kitchen island, Anya holding her tea, Ariel holding a Rockstar, and Beckham holding the neck of a bottle of wine.
“To us, and to the discovery of a good kind of underworld. Praise be!” They clinked their drinks together and drank, Beckham downing half the bottle.
“So what is the story with Saigo?” Ariel asked her.
“My card said it means ‘Last,’ but I don’t know what the significance is.”
“It sounds Japanese,” Beckham said, grabbing his ta
blet. “They don’t make it easy to find the button, and it’s heavily restricted, but I did figure out how to get to the Internet on this thing.”
After a few taps, he read from the screen.
“Saigo. Meaning, last. Saigo no. Meaning, the ultimate. So you’re either the end of everything or the best of everything. Talk about a double-edged sword.”
“My name said it was a version of aerial, as in an aerial in gymnastics, which makes sense,” Ariel said.
“I shouldn’t have to explain that I’m named after the hottest guy in sports, only after every Italian soccer player ever.”
“What do you guys think about the mixer this weekend? Or that our first clients will be evaluating us?”
“I think it’s fucking awesome,” Beckham said. “The sooner the better. I’m just wondering if it will be a guy or a girl.” He waggled his eyebrows and shook the collar of his tailored shirt comically. “That’s exciting.”
“I’m super curious about what our Engagement Package will say. Will we be role playing? What will we wear? I’m nervous but mostly excited,” Ariel said, sipping her Rockstar. “I think.”
Beckham tapped his tablet again, flipping it around to show them.
“Nothing in the Engagement folder yet. Soon, though. I mean, the mixer is this Saturday. That’s not a lot of time if we have to find something to wear and get into a role.”
“Maybe,” Anya thought out loud, swirling her drink in the bottle. “Maybe it’s a test of us as who we are. Or how we react in a situation where we’re actually getting paid for sex. I mean, that’s got to be a mind fuck for some people, right? Maybe they ease us into other things down the road.”
“Yeah,” Beckham agreed, turning it over in his mind as he drank. “Maybe they reevaluate us after a year.”
“What’s on the schedule for tomorrow?” Ariel asked.
“Let me look. I’m assuming we all have the same thing. This says ‘Meet with Security for off-site condo keys at 11:00 a.m.’”
“I can’t believe we get our own place out of all this. Nobody I know will believe it.”
“They’ll never know, since we can’t tell anybody,” Anya pointed out.
“They just don’t want strangers sniffing around. We can probably hint at it without giving anything away,” Ariel said with a shrug.
“I don’t know. St-Pierre seems like the kind of guy you don’t want to cross.”
“No,” Anya agreed, remembering Trevor’s beat-up face and Dimi’s hard words in her basement suite. Regardless of how hot she thought he was, she didn’t want to get on his bad side.
They finished their drinks and then scrounged up a dinner from all of their fridges, meeting back at Ariel’s place. Then the other two wanted to watch a sitcom, and Anya said she was too tired and left, walking next door in the twilight.
When she got into her place, she noticed an envelope on her counter. Saigo, it read. Inside was a set of keys and a note.
In a lovely script, it read, Congratulations on joining Cavendish Club! A car will collect you at 8:00 a.m. and take you to your new residence. Your belongings from your basement suite have been packed up and delivered, and your contract with your landlord has been terminated. Best, the Cavendish Team.
At the bottom of the envelope was a silver bracelet, two bits of chain attached to a narrow silver bar. Out of curiosity, she walked to the front door and swiped it past the gray box outside. The lock clicked in response. Cool.
She returned to the counter, looking at the thick card with the message. Was there a reason she was being singled out from the other two? They were meeting with Dimi, or one of his managers, to get their keys. Would they all be in the same complex? Why was she leaving earlier?
She slid the card back into the envelope and tucked it into the back of her yellow binder. She pushed away from the counter and gathered up her belongings. She might as well get ready for tonight.
* * *
Anya’s driver took her another thirty minutes north, putting her close to ninety minutes away from her basement suite on the edge of the U District.
They pulled into the short driveway, and she noticed a large van parked in the driveway next to her. Cleaning people were traveling back and forth between the van and the two neighboring units with buckets and vacuums. Units for Beckham and Ariel?
“Your unit was already good to go,” her driver said, acknowledging her unspoken question.
He carried her bags to the door of the single-level unit and made sure her bracelet swiped her in then tipped his ball cap and left.
As promised, neatly packed boxes of her belongings were stacked against the wall in the entranceway. She couldn’t relax until she checked every box and found all her books, mentally marking them off in her mind. My babies. In the last box, a white banker’s box, she found the last of what she cared about.
“Babushka,” she murmured and after a moment refolded the flaps over the wooden box.
Breathing easier, she took a look around.
She’d thought her temporary apartment at the compound was nice, but this was heaven. Not approaching the opulence of any of the houses on Cavendish Estates, but definitely the nicest living quarters she’d ever been in.
She walked a few steps to the living room. The floors were actual hardwood, dark and lush. The furnishings were minimal but stylish. The couch and chairs had the look of real leather, and the rug under the coffee table had a lovely geometric pattern in various shades of charcoal.
Again, this condo was an open floor plan, so the living room led to the kitchen. The cupboards were stocked with light gray ceramic bowls, and the cutlery had a wonderful weight to it. Although not flashy, everything had a luxe feel to it, make her feel out of place. Especially in her casual T-shirt and jeans.
There were two bedrooms. One was outfitted as a study space, with a desk and a computer all set up. Her laptop sat off to the side.
The other bedroom was the master, with a puffy bed that stood higher than her waist. She backed up and then ran, diving and disappearing as the down comforter sucked her into its fluffiness.
She rolled over to see the chandelier overhead, which made her roll her eyes. She wanted to take pictures of everything, just so she could remember this really happened one day in the future when she was a struggling intern no longer working for Cavendish. But she worried that, given their advanced security systems, anything that showed up on her phone would get her in trouble.
She padded into the en suite, gaping at the sunken tub. With jets! Right away, she flipped on the faucet. This was something she’d never experienced, and she was going to use every inch of the tub, the bathroom, and this whole condo today if it killed her.
She stripped out of her clothes and stepped into the tub, sitting on the ledge beside three glass jars. Each one held a different color of salts, blue, pink, and green. She smelled all three and decided on the green one. It smelled like pine trees and flowers. She used the tiny silver scoop to throw a few generous helpings under the pouring faucet. The steam carried the heavenly scent, and she slid into the hot water.
She tried the jets but after a minute didn’t like the roaring sound. She got out of the tub to hunt around until she found some bubble bath.
She drained some of cooled water and refilled the tub with hot water and, now, bubbles. Glorious! I can almost understand some people’s obsession with wealth.
She was just settling under the bubble layer when a strange trilling sound came from the bedroom. She wrapped a thick towel around her body and investigated.
Standing in the middle of the room, she listened. Nothing. Then, across the hallway, motion caught her attention. Something was flashing on the computer monitor.
She crossed the hallway into the room and tapped the mouse. The screensaver disappeared and a field asking for her CC Password popped up. She ran back to the bedroom to grab her phone and open the Cavendish app. She’d meant to look up the code there, but the computer chimed with the message Ope
ned by Cavendish App and an email inbox appeared.
There were two emails. One said Welcome to Cavendish and the other said Engagement Packet attached.
She sat on the office chair and opened the welcome email first.
Welcome, Saigo!
We hope you find your new accommodation comfortable. If there’s anything you need, you can reply to this email and add “Facility Manager Request” in the subject line.
Your first event will be a Cavendish Mixer this Saturday. The theme is Masquerade Ball. Attendance is mandatory. Dress is formal and a mask is required.
If this is a staff event for you (unpaid), you’ll receive a Staff Event Packet in a separate email. If this is a consulting event for you (paid), you’ll receive an Engagement Packet in a separate email.
Thank you.
Cavendish Team
Anya closed the email and opened the second one. It was blank except for the attachment.
“This is it,” she said out loud. Her hand hovered over the mouse, as if the next click might release a plague. “No. This is it.” Enthusiasm overtook her nerves. “This is the solution to my problems.”
She clicked on the icon and opened the file.
Engagement Amount: $10,000.00 USD
She covered her mouth. Unable to sit, she spun the chair around and jumped up. At the doorway, she turned, but even from this distance the number was clear: $10,000.00.
She burst into tears. This was real. This wasn’t a wild promise a strange woman made in a coffee shop. This was going to dig her out of debt. No, this would let her make her first payment for med school, which was due next month. She could pay her debt once her future was paid for.
Her sobs lasted ten seconds, which was long for her. But the burst of emotion cleared her mind. She strode back to the computer and sat down, needing to know exactly what was expected of her on Saturday.
Disciplined Page 11