Heritage (The Slendervale Series Book 2)

by Sean Mannette

  Francis De La Poer was sitting on the far edge of his desk, his back to Adam; straddling him with her head over his shoulder was his wife Esmeralda. The two were still mostly dressed, not that Adam would be able to see much from his vantage point even if they weren’t. Francis sat still, muscles tense beneath a blue suit almost identical to the one Adam was wearing, if a finer fabric. Esmeralda, impossibly balanced with only her knees on the desk, was slowly and tantalizingly raising and lowering her body on his. Adam took all this in within a single moment. Esmeralda’s eyes flashed up to meet his.

  Adam felt himself drawn into the room by the intense fire behind those eyes. Her red mane cascaded down Francis’ back as she craned her head over his shoulder. She rocked with each thrust downward, her whole body responding in perfect motion like an expert jockey. Then, the room seemed to dim as the sun slipped behind a cloud, and Esmeralda De La Poer closed her eyes, her movement stopped.

  Adam stood with his gaze transfixed, but took a single, slow step backward. As he did, Esmeralda began to move again.

  She quickened her pace, letting out a hissing gasp as she slid down on her husband. The green in her eyes shifted up, hiding behind their heavy lids. Her motions became more frantic as her husband let out a deep, quick moan. Adam could feel the air in the room drop, plummeting to uncomfortable depths as he stood outside the heat of their love-making.

  Esmeralda’s panting grew quicker and sharper in time with her motions. Something haunted her expression. She made Adam think, for all her grace and deadly beauty, of kind of snake strangling Francis in its terrible coiling grip. The unblinking and solid whites of her eyes only served to unnerve Adam even more.

  He stumbled backward, away from the terrible and erotic scene which had been revealed before him. As he stepped completely out of the frame of the door and retreated into the hallway beyond he felt firm flesh behind him.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Adam,” that overly-peppy and shallow voice greeted him in a whisper that seemed all the louder for it. Adam whirled around to find he had bumped into Alisha. She grinned wickedly at his surprised expression. “What were you doing?” Her voice still had that same uplifting tone, but her expression was filled with malice.

  “The d-door,” Adam stammered, feeling the blood rise hot to his cheeks in his shame. “It was open.”

  “An open door is an invitation,” she chirped in a mocking and superior tone.

  Adam wondered what would happen, an innocent panic rising within his breast. Considering the troubles that had befallen him over the course of the last several days he found himself almost welcoming it.

  “It was an accident. I’m sure Francis will understand.” His voice didn’t sound anywhere near as confident as he would have liked for it to, but he saw the disappointment in her expression with his emphasis.

  “I guess we’ll find out.” Her voice had somehow lost none of its annoyingly false vibrance. She gestured toward the hallway and started off down it. Adam followed her silently, trying to calm his clammy hands and banish his boyish sense of shame. He had only been in the doorway for a handful of moments, and yet that had been enough for Alisha to catch him.

  The two of them progressed past the alcove which housed both the elevator and a door to the stairwell, down the hallway which stretched off to the right. Down this hallway the lights grew brighter and harsher, and they finally stopped at what was clearly a modern office break room.

  There was a full-sized fridge set against a lower counter, on which a small, hopelessly outdated microwave. Hard plastic chairs on steel legs surrounded circular tables haphazardly. The place smelled faintly of cleaner, and the light from the fluorescent bulbs was reflecting off the floor so brightly that Adam could almost feel a headache.

  Alisha poured herself a cup of coffee from a full pot on the counter and settled into one of the chairs. Adam took a seat opposite her without helping himself to anything. Without so much as a glance at Adam, she opened the black leather valise she carried with her and produced a newspaper. She flicked through the pages while the silence weighed heavier and heavier on Adam’s mind.

  “Are we just going to try again in a few minutes?” Adam finally asked after several moments of listening to the rustle of the paper.

  “Not to worry.” Alisha’s voice sounded chipper through the paper. “Francis will collect us when he is ready. You never know how long they’ll be.” This was said with what sounded like a smile, but she had never bothered to look up from the paper, so Adam couldn’t be certain.

  More moments ticked by, uncomfortable and harsh in Adam’s mind. He glanced around the room, eyes darting from object to object, but could find nothing to pull focus from the disparate thoughts that leapt through his mind. He hated waiting.

  “Could you stop that?” Alisha’s voice was critical.

  Adam looked back to her, wondering for a brief, paranoid moment if she could hear the thoughts jumping around in his skull. She relaxed her arms, peering over the top of the paper.

  “The bouncing. It's shaking the table.” Adam glanced down, realizing that he had been bouncing his leg. He heaved a sigh, placing a firm hand against his leg as if forcing it to stop. It was silly but a habit he had learned was successful in school.

  Alisha rested the open paper on the table and reached into her bag. She produced a brightly-colored tabloid with a photograph of two entwined celebrities on the cover.

  “You should bring something to read.” She said, tossing it to him. “We get a lot of downtime.”

  “Really?” Adam inquired as he turned it right side up and began idly flicking through it. The thought wasn’t a bad one to him, but he hoped that most of his downtime would be spent in an office of his own rather than a waiting room. Alisha’s dark ponytail bobbed up and down over her own paper.

  “It's why they pay us the big bucks.” Adam was almost startled that she had actually used sarcasm. Then his mind wandered, unbidden, toward what she had said. Alisha had been the one to introduce him around the office, but he had little idea of what she actually did for Francis. He understood that she had a large hand in running his day to day affairs, but that was about all he was certain of. He expected that such a job might have been a bit more intense.

  Adam also realized he had no earthly idea what the proverbial pecking order was. Was Alisha his boss? A kind of co-worker? Did she report to him? Did the same departments and corporations which reported to her also report to him, or was it more lateral? Adam hadn’t the slightest clue.

  Then, something in the paper caught his attention. He had known it was a tabloid when Alisha had handed it to him, but had paid little attention to it. The article in front of him was a critical piece that detailed an investigation of The Heritage Group.

  Not only are the majority of donations to the Heritage Group spent on the payment of huge corporate salaries; there are also a number of concerning facts regarding their foreign aid. Last year the U.S. Government entrusted the Group with close to 28 million dollars in foreign aid funds to help distressed communities in the Middle East. It was transported across the Atlantic, in cash, in a shipping container. On June 23rd, only two days after this money landed on Iraqi soil, it vanished without a trace. The Heritage Group has not been able to produce any accounting for this nor have they come forward with any information regarding the theft of millions of dollars of taxpayer money. Furthermore, the Heritage Group has repeatedly denied my requests to comment on the disappearance of the funds.

  Susan had tried to talk with him many times about the Heritage Group, Adam recalled. He supposed he hadn’t been a very good audience. With a pang in his heart, he scoured the page at the top of the article. Susan’s byline was just beneath the title. Next to it was a picture of her wearing a pinstripe suit with shoulder pads. Susan’s arms were crossed, and her chin was jutting forward in what was clearly a power pose.

  He had asked her not to write the piece, Adam recalled, when she had first told him about it. One of
the officers at the Rotary Club was Vice President for a department of Heritage, and Adam had been furious at the scandal she might cause him. Susan had gone on to show tables and graphs depicting how little money the Group had actually distributed from their relief funds. She had droned on and on about legislation that they had supposedly dabbled in, and legal gray areas they had exploited. He remembered calling her crazy when she said that the Group was using their genome project to conduct secret research on behalf of the Government.

  Adam felt a lump forming in his throat. In his mind, he could see Susan pulling out interview notes. She had gotten a former military scientist to talk about it with her, as a background source. They had fought about it for almost an entire night. She had been trying to show the public what a corrupt organization was doing, and Adam had only been thinking about himself. He had insulted her, questioned her, and when things had really escalated he had told her that no one read her paper.

  Susan was the real deal. He never could understand what got her to pursue a career for a tabloid when she could have been making better money and better connections at a more established paper. It was one of the only things he agreed with her family on.

  Adam knew now, suddenly clear-minded in his guilt. No reputable paper would have let her write something like this. The Heritage Group was too well established, had too nice a public relations firm to let a big-name paper get away with something like this.

  Susan had the heart of a crusader. Its was the same thing that had brought her to the Tower. And while she had worked tirelessly to expose some of the worst monsters the human race had to offer, Adam was busy trying to cozy up to them. He wished, for a brief and desperate moment, that he could have worked with Francis back then. A man like him would have cleared all concerns away from Susan’s work. Francis could have helped her, Adam fantasized. Together the three of them could build up a business, a real business, and clean up the mess that fed on the underbelly of capitalism.

  The sound of clicking shoes woke Adam from his daydream. Esmeralda De La Poer haunted the door frame that led into the humble break room, looking entirely out of place. Not a hair on her head could make a similar claim, despite the activity of the morning.

  She smiled a breathless smile down at Adam and Alisha. Adam could still see her, in his mind’s eye, wrapped around Francis with her eyes rolled back in ecstasy. The thought made him want to run from her as much as it made him want her.

  “Francis is ready for you,” She murmured, her words carrying enough projection in the empty tiled room to be easily heard.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Adam sat comfortably in the stretch limo with Alisha across from him. He didn’t realize it, but the tension that had been building in him over the last several days had eased from him the moment he had gotten into the car. His worries and fears about his wife, the dreams, and other strange recent events melted away.

  He was enjoying the glimpses of Slendervale he caught as they rolled on. The distance would have been a short one to travel by foot, but due to traffic and the prevalence of one-way streets Adam found himself taking in much more of the city than he had anticipated. He vowed to himself that he would start taking walks around the city; perhaps at dusk, to avoid the summer heat. That way he would have a chance to really take in the city, and the history, that was Slendervale.

  “But he has a board seat for one of our largest real estate competitors, and good relationships with the city counsel. Francis wants this handled today, if we can resolve it, so he can prepare the necessary course if we have to fight them on it.” When Adam finally turned to Alisha, he was actually beaming.

  “What?” He asked, without an attempt to conceal his joviality.

  “Have you been listening to a goddamn word I’ve been saying?” Alisha snapped irritably.

  “Sure. We’ve got a meeting downtown.” Adam was still sunny, despite her venom. It was like their roles had been reversed, Adam thought. He watched the sun sparkle off the well washed windows at the tops of the skyscrapers. She had lost all of her usual false charm the moment they had stepped off the sidewalk.

  “Look,” she said. Adam did. “I know you’re excited to finally have a seat at the big kids’ table, but there’s more to this job than martinis at lunch. We are extensions of Francis, trusted to represent him. The whole of our mission, our enterprise is at risk here. So don’t. Fuck. That. Up.” She placed a fiercer emphasis on her final three words. Adam was momentarily taken aback. She didn’t seem the type to lose composure easily.

  “What’s our mission?” Adam asked, genuinely curious. He had almost no idea of their work, scope, or reach. Alisha smirked with the condescension that the elite always felt was their prerogative to throw in Adam’s face.

  “World domination.” She stated gloatingly, gauging Adam’s reaction. When he didn’t say a word she continued. “Just like any company. Doing that means making friends of your enemies and enemies of your friends.”

  Adam pretended to ponder her words as an excuse to catch another glimpse of the city. He was captivated by the sheer number of people rushing around in pursuit of their own unique goals. It all sounded a little much to Adam. Francis wanted what everyone wanted, just a little bit more. There was always a bigger yacht or a better beachfront summer home. But this aggressive, winner-take-all jargon was the kind of thing he had seen all too much of in sales, and not the kind of thing he would have expected from Ivy Leaguers and certainly not from someone as relaxed and calm as Francis was himself. He didn’t indicate any of this out loud, as Alisha was clearly in a bad enough mood already. Instead he soaked in the city, recharging his desperately spent emotional batteries.

  They continued the rest of the way in silence, but Adam could feel the tension that Alisha radiated. He guessed it was nerves over the upcoming meeting. Everyone dealt with stress in their own way, but Adam couldn’t see what the fuss was about.

  The driver pulled into a small circular driveway that was absolutely dominated by the building behind it. It was tall, taller even than the Tower. Adam couldn’t see any identifying features aside from the address. He surmised it was some kind of large office building, the kind that rented whole floors to various businesses at exorbitant prices merely to give a facade of wealth. Even so, Adam was impressed.

  He opened the door, almost opening it into the chauffeur who had emerged to do just that. Adam apologized in his awkward way as Alisha proceeded into the building without pause. He followed, and had to power-walk to keep up. Once he was in the lobby and faced with a large desk that held several assistants, Adam came to realize he had absolutely no idea where he was supposed to be going. Thankfully, Alisha took the lead.

  A security guard directed them to an office on one of the higher floors, and offered to escort them. Adam’s breath caught in his throat as they boarded the elevator, but he strove to keep the appearance of fear from his face. The elevator ride passed in silence and without incident. He found himself in tow behind Alisha and the security guard, admiring the seamless blend of opulence and modernity in the halls around them.

  They entered a conference room housing a long table, and a short, fat, balding man stepped up to shake their hands with his clammy palms.

  “Adam, this is Albert Gillman, the current VP of Fundraising for Heritage Group.” Adam gazed down at the man suspiciously, the article written by his wife freshly on his mind. He wondered if Gillman knew who he was, or if he was even aware of the article.

  “Please,” he said by way of introduction. “Call me Gill.”

  Adam couldn’t help but compare this man to Francis as small talk was exchanged. Gillman’s appearance did nothing to combat the suspicions Susan had planted. He was exactly the type of man Adam would expect to see on the news in front of a Congressional ethics committee. His pale blue eyes were never focused in one place too long, darting around with an abundance of nervousness. His shirt was wrinkled. Adam couldn’t imagine this man standing in the way of a man like Francis. He cou
ldn’t imagine him standing in the way of a small dog.

  “Well, Gill, I understand you’re turning down Aid America Now this year. The city is wild with rumors.” Alisha’s voice was heavy with expectation, but still none of her usual joviality. Adam was surprised. He understood if she was short with him, but that kind of greasy charm ought to be turned back on in the presence of the man that Adam assumed that had come here to sway.

  “I don’t know where Francis gets his information, but it’s correct. This year they will have to make due without me. There are some personal matters that require my attention more locally.” Adam almost felt dirty just listening to Gillman’s words slip over him. Alisha took a long step toward, balancing between the movements tantalizingly slowly. Her bold motion clearly set Gillman off his guard.

  “Is the Red Dragon a personal matter? I assumed you had quite capable agents who could stand in for that.”

  “W-Well yes, naturally. B-But there are… Influences.” Gillman stammered out, unable to meet Alisha’s eyes.

  “You’re afraid I might push one of your men away. Gillman, I am disappointed.” Her voice registered more tedium than disappointment, but Adam wasn’t about to intrude.

  “L-Last year. The Remington.” Suddenly, he thrust his great chest forward. “You stole it from me. Bribed my assistant, the auctioneer, everyone. My wife is still beside herself.” Adam couldn’t contain himself anymore.

  “Are you kidding me? An auction? We’re here to buy Francis’ decorations?”

  The atmosphere in the room rose with their tempers, and suddenly Adam glimpsed the secret inner fire that had made Gillman a worthy enemy of his master.

  “The Red Dragon is not a decoration!” He blustered. Alisha chimed in when Gillman said ‘decoration’. Gillman strode around Alisha to confront Adam. He stared up at him with his frog-like face, his heavy brow almost leaping off with indignation.