by Cynthia Dane
I waited until I was alone at my desk before unfolding the note and reading, “She’s gonna kick your ass.”
The torn pieces of the note fluttered into my trash in time for Aiden to enter the office and sit down only a few feet away from my desk.
“Morning, Nat, how’s it…”
I was up and in front of his desk before he could finish his sentence. I was tired of his voice and hearing it every God damn day. If I could have a Thanksgiving miracle, it would be this asshole melting into a nasty little black puddle around my feet so I could personally mop it up and wring him out over the toilet.
Flush, flush.
“You wanna go out?”
He backed away from my aggressive stature. Hell, my words were probably way too direct for him. How many women had ever approached this piece of shit and asked him out?
Whatever uneasiness he felt was lost when he grinned at me. “Why, Nat? You asking me? Finally feeling like having a steady diet of Aiden in your life?”
Gross. I should’ve expected him to say it like that. “Was only thinking that we don’t know each other very well.” I hopped up on the edge of his desk and kept my body turned toward him. My dress didn’t show any cleavage, but I had worn my nicest push-up bra that day. Guess where his eyes lingered as I spoke to him? “Maybe we should go out and have some lunch together. Could be a nice chance to chat and get to know each other a little better… Aiden.”
Guess he liked the way I said his name, because he let loose one of the smuggest smiles I had ever seen a man employ. It was all I could do to keep my breakfast down in my stomach where it did me more good than spewed all over his face.
“Lunch, huh?” He glanced at the clock. “Don’t know if I can wait.”
“It’ll be worth it.” My wink followed me back to my desk, where I sat down and sifted through the small pile of work assigned to me by the office manager. It was our job to keep Mann-Garrett operating while the boss was gone. I didn’t plan on slacking because I had another plan to enact.
Jimmy hustled up to my desk and placed a handwritten note upside down in front of me. She didn’t give me a second glance on her way back to the receptionist’s desk. Her crimson sweater-dress caught Aiden’s attention long enough for me to read the note in peace.
“Your aunt can’t spare anyone on such short notice,” it said in Mandarin. “I’m not qualified, sorry. She’s asking you to stand down.”
Another note for me to rip and toss. I made sure Jimmy saw me do it.
I understood that my aunt didn’t want me getting into trouble, but she didn’t seriously expect me to not go through with this, did she?
Lunch came much too soon. Aiden didn’t waste any time when he came over to my desk, a grin the size of his ego taking over my space.
“How do you feel about Italian? I know a great little place near here.”
What a lazy fool.
Naturally, I played dumb. I didn’t want to risk exposing myself as that person who stalked him and an escort a month ago.
If my plan was going to work, I had to be a lot more careful.
“So!” I said the moment we sat down. I wasn’t going to give my fellow intern any time to start his own subject. I could only imagine how off topic he would get within five seconds. “Isn’t the office pretty great without Brooke around? I have almost forgotten what it’s like to have her breathing down my neck.”
He crossed his arms on the table and offered me a disbelieving look. “Says the woman who did her best to become her.”
“I know what my strengths are. Sometimes imitation gets you far in this world.”
“You’re good at imitating people, huh?”
“I’m good at reading them and guessing what they’re thinking. Brooke was one of the easiest people I ever encountered in that regard. Only took me a couple of days to get her down.”
“Is that so?” Aiden wouldn’t be interrupted by the waitress, whom he waved off when she asked if we needed more time to decide our orders. “What can you tell about me? No, wait. Let me guess. I’m the smartest man you’ve ever met.”
That was sarcasm, and I played it up even though I died inside to hear him even jokingly imply that. “The one thing I’ve always known about you, Aiden,” I folded my paper napkin into a heart, “is that you really, really fancy me.”
“Next you’ll tell me that you’re so hard up for a date since Mr. Mann left that you’re finally noticing me back.”
My heart was only half finished when I glanced up at him. “What about Mr. Mann?”
“Please. Everyone knows that you and him are… were… a thing. I’m not that dumb. I must not be, if I got the same position as you.”
“How did you get it? No offense, but you’re hardly the second best candidate for intern.”
“Now, now, don’t change the subject, Ms. Chen.” This time when the waitress returned, Aiden ordered his favorite calzone while I settled for a salad and piece of house made garlic bread. I would need the carbs to give me the energy for this shit.
The waitress walked away with our orders.
“I want to hear all about you and Mr. Mann.”
“Why? You get off on that, Aiden?” I leaned across the table, my hair shrouding my arms and half my face. I wanted his attention on my lips and breasts. Hey, it wasn’t the cleanest way to get the job done, but when I am a determined asshole, I go all the fucking way. Short of actually sleeping with him, of course. “Because I don’t know if I like to tell my best stories on the first date.”
“So you admit that you were sleeping with him?”
Like my aunt had to be careful how she played her cards, I had to keep mine close to my chest as well. “Is it really sleeping with someone if you’re not allowed to spend the night?”
He repressed the dance waiting to burst from within him – the one that said he knew it all along. “I hear that Mr. Mann and Brooke were once engaged. Is that true?”
“I suppose it’s public knowledge if you look deeply enough… but why talk about Brooke when we could talk about…” I didn’t want to say we or us incase either one sent the wrong message. “Well, you know what I mean.”
“I think you’re the one who gets off on talking about your love life.”
“Is that a problem?”
The waitress brought our waters and finally left us alone for more than two minutes. Good. I needed at least a few to get the information I needed out of him. But I knew I would have to give him some of my own information, too.
“No problem.” Aiden pushed something on his phone and turned it upside down on the table. “There. No distractions. Go ahead and tell me everything.”
I laughed. “About what? Mr. Mann?”
“God, yes. I’m like a girl from your friend group. I want all the deets.” He steepled his fingers in front of his face. “All the dirty ones, specifically.”
“Hmm.” Instinct told me to sit back before his breath got on my face. “Don’t know if you’ve unlocked that treat, yet. Might need to hear something dirty about you first.”
“C’mon. Like you don’t know some dirty things about me. Isn’t that how it works when you’re in the same proximity as someone else for so long? You figure things out about them. Like how I figured out you were blowin’ the boss.”
Wow. He really had no idea, did he? “Being so close to Mr. Mann has taught me some of the finer things of what it means to be wealthy. Such as… well, the women he usually chooses to date. I think you might have similar tastes to our boss, Aiden.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I know about Janelle.”
A flicker of surprise caught us both off guard. “You do, huh? Who is Janelle?”
“An escort that both you and Mr. Mann often keep company. Did you see her hanging around the office and decide you would like a piece of that too? Because I can’t blame you. She’s hot.” The thought of Erica and anyone else now sent me into a tiny jealous spiral. “So how did it
happen? Did you approach her first? Or did she approach you because she’s always looking for clients?”
He chuckled. I may have been a whizz at reading people, but I didn’t know what to make of that chuckle until Aiden spoke again. “I met Janelle because of Mr. Mann, yeah. I also knew how they were related when we started seeing each other. It is kind of a power trip to know you’re banging the same woman as your boss.” His demeanor changed. Was he thinking of how I was going to be #2 on that list?
“Have you been seeing her lately?”
“Why are you asking, Nat?”
“Because I might be interested in taking her place.”
Aiden glanced around the restaurant, cheeks sucked into his mouth. His left leg bounced beneath the table, and his fingers futzed with the tip of his red power tie.
“What is this about, really? There’s no way in hell you’re actually interested in me, Nat.”
“Excuse me? I don’t know what…”
“Cut the crap.” His sneer sliced through me as if I were warm butter. “You’re up to something, and it’s not genuinely seducing me. Why the hell would you bring Janelle up so quickly? Why are you so eager to tell me about your affair with Mr. Mann?” He snorted. “It’s too convenient.” I don’t think I was meant to hear that mutter.
I sat up. Should I play the hand I expertly acquired through this game? I didn’t have a royal straight flush yet. Nor did I have a full house. Not even a four of a kind. Right now I had a high-ranking pair, at best.
Like a convinced poker player, I only needed a couple more rounds to get the winning hand. If I was lucky, I still had the upper hand, but that was really relying on luck I might have overestimated.
Good thing I was one determined bitch.
“You wanna talk about convenient, Aiden?” I could drop my act too. I could drop it so hard that it crashed through the floor like a grand piano unsnapped from its ropes. “How about we talking about how convenient it is that you have this job even though you barely do any work and nobody likes you. How did you make it to the final round of interviews, let alone get hired? You’re a mediocre man of the majority. Does it really come that easy for you?”
“Please. You’re not playing the race and gender card, are you?”
“See? A guy who says shit like that really ain’t shit.”
The barriers went up between us. The Berlin Wall was thinner than our body language, and as graffitied. Good luck to me.
“I have very excellent connections. That’s all I’ll say.”
“Excellent enough to get you an internship you don’t deserve?”
“Apparently.”
“Why the fuck do you even want this job?”
“Honestly?” He slumped down in his seat. “I don’t. This ain’t my dream job.”
“Then what is your dream job, and how does this help you achieve it?”
He bit his lip before running his tongue along both. “Let’s say I enjoy writing. It’s one of my greatest passions. I also love getting the truth out of people who think they can still hide away in their castles and be nobody in a world full of somebodies.”
It hit me. Of. Fucking. Course.
“You’re a reporter.” I involuntarily slammed myself against the back of the booth. “You’re an undercover reporter.”
Aiden half-heartedly offered me a slow clap. “You are soooo smart, Nat.” If I had the energy I had before, I would’ve smacked him across the mouth. “Although I prefer the term ‘journalist.’ I do more than merely report the facts. I craft journalistic pieces of high integrity.”
I can’t properly convey how much condescension dripped from those sharpened canines poking through his lips. Trust me. I wanted to fucking kill him based on principle, not what he actually said.
“Great. Just great.” I turned toward the small aisle where waitresses in their checkered Italian flag uniforms whizzed by with platters of drinks and carbs. “That explains what you were doing with Janelle. You were gathering intel from her.”
“She was so generous with it.
Note to self: make sure Janelle is fired. Sorry, Erica. I know you got a lot from her advice on How to Lady, but the last thing you needed was her turning around and telling a reporter about your lessons.
Also! Fire Aiden!
“How did you get hired?” Out of all the questions I could have possibly asked in that moment, that was the one killing me the most. Think of it from my perspective. This asswipe had been a thorn in my side ever since our first day working as interns. Now I know why his attentions were always on something else. Oh, Aiden had been working. On his story. “Your incompetence at the internship has been so staggering that I thought I was facing the greatest wall of nepotism I’ve ever encountered in my life.”
“C’mon, Nat, no need to make it a race and gender thing again.”
I glared at him.
“But I’ve got my connections. When my editor approved my investigation, he pulled some strings to get me up in the interview process. Like any good undercover agent, I used a fake name. You might be surprised what the media can make true. Like the existence of some business school genius named ‘Aiden Webb.’ After I made it in, I only needed to do the bare minimum to not get fired. Helped that you’re such an ass-kisser and overachiever that you did most of my work for me.”
“Who do you work for?”
“I’m not going to tell you everything, Nat. I’m only telling you this much because, well, at this point I can’t really deny it to you. Besides, we can still help each other out, I think.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I haven’t been able to crack all the shady goings-on at Mann-Garrett. I’ve got a pretty good feeling you know a few things, though.”
“I am so not your source, asshole.”
“I don’t expect you to be. But would you hear me out?” He thanked the waitress for his calzone that he let cool before shoveling into his mouth. “I’m not asking you to give me any information, because I know it’s a waste of my time. Unless you wanna give me some intel.”
I was still glaring at him.
“What I’m asking for is your silence, for now. In exchange, I’ll help you with those pesky mysteries that are tearing our whole poor office apart.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t you want to know who poisoned Brooke?”
“You mean it wasn’t you?”
“Why the hell would I do that?”
“Dunno… because you needed her out of the way?”
“That is a good reason, but no, I didn’t poison her coffee. I probably figured out that she had been poisoned before the bodyguard did, though. She was rough that day she was hospitalized. All I can tell you is that it happened before she even got to the office. It was one of the few days I was in early, because I was following a lead in IT.”
“What lead?”
“That your login was constantly hacked.”
By then, I already knew that it was my aunt hacking into Mann-Garrett with my credentials, but I should have accused him anyway.
“Yes, I want to know who poisoned Brooke’s coffee, but that’s not enough to keep you on.” I leaned forward, my flirtatious demeanor completely shattered but my cleavage still appealing enough to make this shitknob pay attention. “Why, exactly, are you investigating Mann-Garrett.”
“Shit, Nat, I’m not investigating the company… I’m investigating your boyfriend.”
“What do you think you’re going to find? Some kind of exposé?”
“Yes, an exposé. The biggest one to rock the business world since Enron. It’s going to make my whole fucking career, and my career is already pretty great, thanks.”
“But what?”
“Surely, you’ve heard the rumors.” His fork cut effortlessly into his calzone. Cheese pulled against the plate as he lifted the first bite to his mouth. I didn’t have any appetite for my food. “About Eric Mann.”
“Assume that I haven’t a
nd humor me.”
He took two more liberal bites before looking me in the eye again. His lowered voice still echoed in the back of my brain. “The juiciest rumor is that he isn’t a he at all. Eric Mann isn’t only female, but Eric Mann died years ago and his sister has taken his place.”
“That’s…” Genuine disgust clouded my judgment, my demeanor, and my digestive system. Nope. Definitely wasn’t eating now. “Preposterous! I thought you were going to tell me some stupid gay rumor.”
“Yes. That too. That’s the most pervasive rumor about Eric Mann, but what I never anticipated is that he can be both gay and a woman. I think there’s a term for it. Oh, yes, lesbian.” He grinned. “One of my favorite topics, honestly.”
“If you’re such a good reporter, then you should know that you shouldn’t follow such baseless rumors.”
“They’re not baseless. I had enough leads before I approached my editor about the project. More than one close confidant of Charles Mann let slip some details over the years. Everyone knows what a bastard he was even to his own family and employees. There’s no story in that. The story is in what unspeakable thing he did to his own daughter. America will go apeshit.” He continued before I had the chance to tell him what a piece of shit he was. “Although the biggest surprise for me is that you’re into that, Nat. Never pegged you as a dyke.”
That was it. I didn’t care if we were in public. Didn’t care that there was food I could easily upturn. I sure as fuck didn’t care if I made a huge scene that outed what happened there. “How fucking dare you? You’re a monster, you know that? He hasn’t done anything to deserve that kind of attention. Do you know how hard he works for his company? To keep everyone employed with a good standard of living? What kind of hellish childhood he had? What he has to go through every fucking day?”
“Please, Nat.” Aiden continued eating as if he were used to women blowing up at him. “The man’s not a saint. No billionaire is. If he cared about the truth that much, he would let the chips fall and come out already.”
“She doesn’t…”
I clasped my hand over my mouth. Aiden’s eyes widened before his smile revealed itself. “Nice Freudian slip there. So. It’s true. Too bad I can’t use you as a reliable source. I’ll have to keep digging.”