by Cynthia Dane
“Sister, huh?” The waitress stepped back in surprise. “So who does that make this lovely young lady?” That was directed at me.
“I’m the sister-in-law,” I said. So happened I had a silver band around my left ring finger. Didn’t usually wear my favorite ring on that finger, but when I saw the rainbow flag on the window, I decided to create an even more iron-clad cover. “Eri… Elaine and I have been together for a year today!”
“Wow! So happens we have a special discount on all our pies for anyone celebrating a birthday or anniversary. I highly recommend the rhubarb, by the way.”
Nick and I ordered without much hesitation. It was Erica – excuse me, I mean my wife Elaine – who stuttered over the menu and needed to be told what the hell a BLT was. At least I didn’t have to explain a quiche to her.
Spending the day with her like this made me feel like I was dating another person. It was hard to remember that this was the same woman who raced Lambos around country club tracks and lauded me with more money and attention than I could handle. Even with Nick alongside us for most of the day, I still felt like I was the one looking out for her. The one scaring away the demons only she could see in the shadows. The one taking the lead down the street and even going as far as pulling her wallet out of her pocket so she could pay for those crepes I insisted we get. Nick looked on, his professional demeanor slowly crumbling as the day continued. He started with that coy countenance so many young bodyguards put on to show that they’re still a relatable guy, even though you’re paying them to literally protect your life. But even he couldn’t keep the façade while watching his boss completely lose her confidence over the course of a day.
Nick wasn’t shocked by Erica’s existence. The only thing that truly shocked him was seeing someone he didn’t recognize. I have to admit, I barely recognized her, too. She kept her hood up whenever we were outside and she almost refused to hold my hand even though nobody was looking at us.
“Are you okay?” I asked when we got in the back of the Audi. Nick readjusted the mirrors after spying on an old woman trying to cross the street.
Erica tightened the hood around her head. “No.”
Nick asked us if we wanted to go anywhere else before heading home. I told him to go ahead and take us back to the city.
So much for this.
The only time she said anything was when she remembered to call back one of the businessmen she would soon meet. Listening to her go from that shaky voice to the confident demeanor she always projected in the business world knocked me back in my seat.
“Good. Make sure you have your assistants bring those reports. I don’t want to find out tomorrow that we were wrong by half a percent like last time. That cost me millions.”
She hung up and called someone else.
Most of the two and a half hours back to the city was spent like this. I bundled up in the corner of my seat while my girlfriend put on her male persona. It didn’t take me long to realize she did it on purpose, too. Not only did it prepare her for business that night, but it woke her back up after a debilitating afternoon on the coast.
Never thought I’d put those words together, but there they were.
“We’re here, boss,” Nick said. He pulled into the driveway leading up to Mann Manor, bypassing the front gates with a wave of his hand and coming to a complete stop at the first checkpoint. This caught my attention because it usually happened the other way around.
“You guys back for good tonight?” the checkpoint guard asked, leaning through the driver’s seat window and speaking almost too low for anyone but Nick to hear.
“Until Mr. Mann needs to head back out for his business meeting tonight.”
The guard shot us a sympathetic eye. “Smith is pissed.”
“Was hoping we’d get back before he started his shift.”
“Someone tipped him off that you took the emperor without his clothes on. Have fun.”
“Let me deal with Sherman,” Erica said.
Sure, she sounded good when she said that, but we both knew the truth. As soon as we entered the manor, Margot offering to take our coats, we were dead fucking meat.
“Erica!” Sherman’s voice boomed down the stairs and rattled the crystal chandelier above our heads on the grand floor. “What the fuck!”
Sighing, Erica asked Nick to fill out that day’s excursion report. He glanced between his boss and his supervisor at the top of the stairs.
“Wait here.” My girlfriend put a half-hearted hand on my shoulder before jogging toward the staircase. She and Sherman disappeared around the corner, hot breaths on their lips.
I turned to Margot, who remained irate that nobody wanted her damned cucumber water. “On a scale of one to ten, how pissed is Sherman?”
She gave me her wryest smile. “A healthy twelve, Ms. Chen. But I’m used to it.”
“Christ. Don’t tell anyone you saw me go up there.”
“I only see what my boss tells me to see.”
“Awesome. She didn’t tell you to keep an eye on me, did she?”
“Not at all, Ms. Chen.”
Good. That meant she didn’t see me when I blatantly tore up the grand staircase right in front of her. The last I saw of the foyer was Margot offering the cucumber water to Nick and scoffing when he refused.
It didn’t take me long to find the altercation of the year. Unable to hold back their mighty need to hash out their bullshit, Sherman and Erica had taken things to one of the receiving rooms at the far end of the hall.
“The fuck did you think you were doing?” Sherman didn’t lower his voice. The same voice that could easily travel across a field and scare the shit out of an unsuspecting trespasser. I didn’t have to see him through the doorway to know he was more imposing than that night he made me sign those NDAs.
“I was out having a nice day with my girlfriend.”
“Dressed like this?”
“You make it sound like I’m wearing a slinky dress and have my tits hanging out. I’m not even wearing makeup. Nobody recognized me.”
“They could have!”
“But they didn’t.”
“For the love of God, Erica, what would have happened if someone papped you?” Rustling and a few beeps brought his phone out of his pocket. “It’s bad enough I had to see this from last night!”
“What is that?”
I chanced peering around the doorway. Erica scrolled through some photos on Sherman’s phone before turning away.
“Everyone knows you’re fucking your intern. This is all over the God damned internet. There are at least three losers I’ve traced grainy camera phone videos back to, and each one of them refused to take them down from social media unless you pay them a grand each. Don’t worry. I’ve already worked it out with your PR agent, who is pissed as fuck at you too.”
Erica crossed her arms. “Men fuck their interns all the time. I’m already clearing it up with HR, if it bothers you so much.”
“Are you stupid? Have you shat your brain out your ass? Because I can’t believe you’re saying this shit right now. You. Can’t. Go. Out like this!”
If I knew nothing else about their relationship, I would have sworn that Sherman was my girlfriend’s father. That’s how he talked to her. That’s how he treated her when her presumed safety was on the line. I know heads of security and even middle-tier bodyguards deal with a lot of shit, but in the years since that night, I have never, ever heard someone talk to their billionaire boss like Sherman talked to Erica.
It angered me. True, encapsulating anger that burrowed deep in my gut and threatened to burst from my chest like I was Sigourney Weaver at the end of Alien 3. The only thing missing was a core of fire waiting to swallow my martyred ass.
At the same time, I understood. He wasn’t just mad at her from a security standpoint. That was desperate, unfettered concern brewing in his voice. Every time he looked at Erica, who continued to refuse to make eye contact with him, I shuddered. Because that was the same
look I would have given her had I been in that situation.
“I can go out however I please,” Erica muttered. “You know what I do Saturday mornings. The subject of those dresses in my closet came up. I… I decided that it was time to try going out as myself. No costumes, no dressing up… no theatrics. I have to do that tonight as it is. Do you know how taxing it is to enter a drag king contest every fucking night?”
“Did you decide that, Erica? Did you really? Or did that girlfriend of yours suggest it and you went along with it because all of your common sense leaves you whenever you fuck her?”
“Don’t talk about her like that!”
“For God’s sake, Erica! Look at yourself! Ever since you started listening to your cunt more than your head you’ve lost all focus! You can’t continue like this! You can’t be this risky! If the wrong person finds out the truth, you’re finished! Say goodbye to your company, too! Say goodbye to all of this!”
“Maybe it’s time.” Erica couldn’t keep up with his anger. Every time he pushed her, she pushed back. “I’m tired, Sherman. I don’t want to do this anymore.”
“You don’t have a choice. It’s too late.”
“You sound like my father,” Erica spat.
“Don’t insult me like that. Seriously.”
“You do, though! You’re so invested in this lie that you don’t even see me as a person, do you? You see me as someone in costume. You see me as a woman first! You always have!”
“Isn’t that what you want? Jesus, Erica! You’ve spent the past ten years hiring hookers to teach you how to be female! You keep telling me you don’t know who you are anymore!”
“I don’t! I don’t fucking know! You’ve never understood that!”
Their screams ebbed into silence. By that point, I was well out of sight, aside from Margot who quietly walked down the hallway with only a glance in our direction. She disappeared into Erica’s chambers and soon popped out with a bag full of dirty linens.
“I’ve never understood…” Sherman grunted as if Erica was the one who insulted him. “You’re kidding me, right? I’ve been here your whole life! Whenever you needed something… whenever you needed anything…”
“Please, stop.” Erica sighed. “Yes, Sherman. You’ve always been there. Even without me asking you to hang around, you’ve been here. I’m grateful for that. I know I can trust you with my safety and to put up with my shit. But that doesn’t mean you understand me.”
“How…”
“For years I’ve been trying to tell you that I don’t know who I am. It’s not as simple as me saying that I’m a woman, that I’m a lesbian, whatever. Even if you took away the veneer we build around me, even if the world suddenly accepted that not only was I born with a vagina, but I’ve been pretending to be my brother since I was five years old… who am I? I worry every fucking day!”
Sherman’s demeanor softened. “I know it’s been hard for you.”
“It hasn’t just been hard. It’s been killing me for years. Natalie is the first person to fully accept what I’m going through. She doesn’t want me to keep pretending like Brooke did. She doesn’t treat me like I’m some fragile lady made of glass like you do.”
“I’m sorry, Erica. I don’t mean to. It’s… ever since that night…”
God, was I going to have to hear about the affair they had?
“Yeah,” Erica said. “Ever since prom night.”
He put his hands on her shoulders, steadying her as she swayed back and forth on her feet. “That was the night I vowed to always be by your side. What they did to you was monstrous. If I could turn back time and punch your father in the face…”
“Yet you did his bidding.”
“I know. I’ve been killing myself over that ever since. But you need to understand, I didn’t have the power back then like I do now. I was a kid.”
Erica sniffed. Oh, no, was she crying again? “All the therapy and money in the world can’t help me. I just wanted one weekend where I could go out with my girlfriend and be whomever I felt like. Last night I wanted to be Eric. Today, I wanted… well, I’m not sure what I wanted. I was so paranoid all day. It was my first time going out in public in these pants and without my breasts slammed against my ribs. If Natalie and Nick weren’t with me, I would’ve imploded.”
“Nick and I are going to have a nice, long talk.”
“Don’t get mad at him. He did exactly what I ordered him to do.”
“At any rate, we need to talk about this girlfriend of yours. I’m concerned that she might be more trouble than she’ll ever be worth.”
“If this is about my poor decision-making around her…”
“No, Erica. It has nothing to do with you and everything to do with her.”
There went my pride again, thrown on the front line without any warning. Whatever. I was willing to march in there and defend myself if need be. After all, I was prepared for him to start disparaging me as if I were some tart Erica picked up at the night club, instead of the perfectly acceptable girlfriend material who started working at Mann-Garrett over a month ago. I’d like to see him try to argue that I wasn’t the best girlfriend Erica could ask for!
“My sources have definitely linked her appearance and the rise of security breaches.”
“What are you talking about?”
Yeah, Sherman, what the fuck were you talking about? Was he implying that I was up to no fucking good? The only fucking I was up to was with Erica! Like I had time for corporate espionage or sabotaging the company!
Wait… were those things going on? I had no idea.
“The data hacks began right around the time she was hired. Doug from IT handed me some papers earlier today that confirm her login was traced to at least three of the hacks before someone wised up and figured out how to use throwaway logins. IT has fixed that loophole, by the way. I took the liberty of firing the former tech on your behalf.”
“So someone stole her login… that shit’s always vulnerable after the first week.”
“She also visited your mother yesterday.”
My heart stopped. So did Erica’s, based on the look on her face.
“She what?”
“Received a call right after she left. They wanted to know if she should be added to the clear list. They had an email from Brooke giving her permission to go. You really shouldn’t have given her that much clearance, Erica.”
“Brooke did what? Why would she be sending Natalie to see my…”
“I spent most of this morning at the hospital going over a lot of things. That was one of them. She didn’t even try to deny it to me.”
“What the fuck! Why are they talking to my mother! Maybe I shouldn’t have taken Natalie on as Brooke’s temporary replacement…”
“It might not be temporary, Erica. Brooke is really not looking good. She’ll live, but…”
“But what? It’s food poisoning, right?”
Sherman slowly shook his head. “She was poisoned-poisoned. Someone spiked her coffee Monday morning. It was slow acting enough that she didn’t need to be hospitalized until later that night. By then, whoever did it made sure that the trail would be thrown off them. Who can go back and figure out who poisoned someone at seven in the morning?”
“Poisoned? Who the hell would poison Brooke?”
“Someone who wanted her out of the way so they could get more shit done.” Sherman showed Erica something else on his phone. “There have been double the amount of data breaches this week. I think Brooke was catching on even before IT, because she spends more time in your emails and documents than they do.”
“This is insane. Surely you’re not suggesting that Natalie has something to do with this!”
“I have no concrete proof. If I did, I would have already taken her out.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah, he’s the only one who can save you if whomever is doing this digs too deep. Whoever is hacking you is doing it from the inside, and they’re looking for something spe
cific. I just haven’t figured out what yet. If it were numbers, future business dealings, shit like that… they’d already have it. Obviously we still need to find them. Before they discover something else.”
We all knew what that meant.
“It’s not Natalie,” Erica was quick to defend me. “She would never.”
“How do you know that? You’ve only known her for a month, and we both know how smart and quick-witted she is. It would be easy for someone of her intelligence to get as far as she had, especially if she’s seducing you.”
“Don’t you dare suggest that she’s using me. You haven’t seen her like I have.”
“I know this is hard for you to stomach, Erica. I know how much you need someone good for you in your life. But you need to trust my gut. Something is up with Ms. Chen. I know I told you that I took last night off for my wife’s birthday, but I was actually having dinner with an old contact from training and making a few overseas phone calls. Namely, to Taiwan.”
Erica remained silent. Me? I was also silent. Silently fuming.
“Her father’s the vice president of a national banking corporation based out of Taipei. A quick Google search will tell you that, of course, but what it won’t tell you is that he has ties to the local Triad fringe groups.”
“You’re lying.”
“Why the fuck would I lie to you? Damnit, Erica.” Sherman continued to shove the information on his phone in her face. “Look at this. One of the main ways that group makes so much money is through hacking and account manipulation. Oh, and don’t forget the healthy side of bribes and blackmailing they do. My sources tell me that at least two billionaires in Taipei and one in Singapore deposit half a million every month into one of the leaders’ accounts. Blackmail for something. I don’t know what. I don’t care. But if she gives them an in – and God knows we have enough weird rumors covering up the truth around here – you can not only say goodbye to your secret, but it will be in the hands of the fucking Triad.”
“So basically you’re saying Natalie is working for them through her father, and she’s the one who poisoned Brooke.”