by Alam, Donna
As in, dangerous to handle.
I can’t help but think of what that very proper exterior conceals.
And I’m not just thinking about his ink. I’m also thinking about his mad sexy-times skills.
I drop my low heels on the bed, swiping my lightweight jacket from the back of the elegant chair, the tactile fabric just calling for the brush of my fingers as I pass. I slide the doors to the balcony open just to breathe in a little of the scant breeze. The sun is shining, and the air up here sweet. All is right with the world, or as right as it can be for a woman in my position.
Stepping back into the bedroom, I shake out my jacket and slip it on. This fine Tuesday sees me swapping my braid for loose hair and my Mango linen shirtdress for a pair of black pencil pants and a sleeveless cream shell. And the jacket, of course.
I slip on my shoes and study my reflection in the mirror.
It’s just a job, I intone, pulling on my lapels. Whatever today brings, it has to be better than waiting tables at the Pussy Cat any day of the week. It’s not like I’m doing anything critical. I’m not brokering peace in Yemen, for goodness’ sake.
‘I can do this.’ My reflection looks back at me, unconvinced. ‘I have a super-hot boss that I’ve had sex with. Things could be worse.’
15
Remy
‘Why don’t I just bend over for you? Right here over this desk. We’ll just get it over and done with here and now, and you can just shove it hard up my ass.’
Stifling a sigh, I allow my eyes to wander around the room. The panelled walls. The elaborate drapes. The mid-century decanter sitting on the credenza near the door. The glass that has already been used today. My gaze slides to my watch. Barely ten o’clock.
‘Because, let me tell you, by my age, I ought to know the difference between being on the receiving end of an enema and being royally fucked over.’
‘Monsieur Hayes, please.’ Pelletier, the newest member of my legal team, uses a conciliatory tone, unused to the brash address of a man on the edge. ‘There really is no need for such vulgarity.’
‘Fuck off and fuck you,’ the American retorts. ‘This is my office, and I’ll say what goes in here. Anyway, I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to him.’
I bring my bored gaze back to the men sitting at the head of the table. The grandson being groomed to take over looks like a Californian surfer. The other points an arthritic finger my way. ‘There’s no way you’re getting your hands on this company. I’ll raze it to the damn ground before it comes to that.’
‘Mr Hayes, I understand your frustration. You requested finance, finance that has been denied to you, and now your operation is in dire straits.’
‘Because you’re in cahoots with the bank!’
To a certain degree, this is true, not that I’ll admit it. ‘I am the solution, not the problem.’
‘You’re a parasite—’
‘Grandfather, stop.’ His hand grasps the older man’s arm, his eyes burning with contempt as his gaze swings my way. Contempt and revenge.
‘You should listen to Hayes, the younger.’
‘And you should kiss my ass. You chop up companies and feast on their bones before swallowing them down. And for what? Just to say Remy Durrand owns the South of France?’
Why stop at just the South of France?
‘You don’t have the funds to pay for the shipment of steel,’ I continue, examining an invisible tear in one of my fingernails. ‘Your workforce is about to put down their tools and walk away because they know, as well as you know yourself, as well as the industry knows, you will struggle to pay them this coming Friday. The media will circle like sharks. Your share price will plummet and along with it, your good name.’ A good name with a dirty past. A past that is entwined with my own, as it turns out.
‘We only need a couple of million to see us through ’till the end of the month and your friends at the bank have nullified our line of credit. You’re strangling us, Durrand. I hope your father is turning in his grave.’
‘I hope so, too.’
‘We were friends, him and me!’
‘I very much doubt that.’
Carson Hayes is proof that God has a sense of humour. Wizened and bent, the man is riddled with cancer and has been for years. Yet my father, as fit and as sleek as a racehorse, was struck down by a common illness in his prime.
I’m sure God is the only one laughing.
‘We had an agreement.’ The old man’s voice shakes with ill-suppressed anger. ‘We shook on it.’
‘I also shook my dick last time I took a piss.’ Next to me, Pelletier stiffens. ‘It doesn’t mean I’m making friends. And then there is the matter of the documents I have in my possession.’
‘What documents?’ His grandson’s gaze volleys back and forth between us, though neither of us pay him attention in return.
‘Photographs. Unsavoury photographs, along with a video, I’m told. One from my father’s vaults. It looks like it was recorded sometime in the late eighties. Maybe the nineties?’ My attention swings to his grandson. ‘It’s hard to tell from hairstyles alone. There wasn’t a lot to go on in terms of fashion, if you catch my meaning.’
‘What’s this about, Grandfather? Blackmail? What does he have on you?’
‘That snake. He gave me that film, and I destroyed it, but not before I paid him well for it!’ His grey eyebrows pull down as his grandson’s hand retracts slowly from his arm.
‘Tell me what he’s talking about,’ he demands. But the older man doesn’t respond. He has eyes for no one. No one but me as I sit on the opposite end of the long table with my legal counsel, who has no idea what I’m talking about but the good sense to pretend otherwise.
‘Those things happened a long time ago.’
‘Did they happen before Monaco created laws? No, I didn’t think so. Pelletier, the paperwork.’ I’m already pushing back my chair as I reach in to the inside pocket of my jacket for my phone. As I leave the room, I spare no time for the thought of the poor girl in the video, splayed out and comatose under a younger version of the old man. Not because I’m heartless but because it happened a long time ago.
Your wealth was built on her suffering. I acknowledge the thought as something beyond my control, pushing it away clinically.
Tell the steel company they can call off their dogs, I type out. Hayes Construction belongs to Wolf Industries now.
D’accord, Everett types back. Congratulations on eviscerating another of the competition. His sarcasm rings loud and clear. He liked the idea of blackmail much less than myself and would’ve preferred to hand the evidence of the young woman’s abuse over to the authorities. But men like Carson Hayes rarely face justice, especially thirty years after the fact. And while I would welcome any attempt to expose my father as the conniver he was as opposed to the paragon of success and philanthropy he sought to portray, blackening the Durrand name would not serve my purpose. Ruining the Hayes company, absorbing it into my own, does.
There’s something poetic about it.
And the girl? Hénri, my security for today, holds open the elevator door and I step in.
Correctly, Rhett intuits the topic has moved on. Already situated on the twelfth floor, according to the dragon.
Good.
You must feel like the dogs bollocks manipulating two people before lunchtime, eh?
What can I say? Today already feels like a good day. I’m just about to slip my phone back into my pocket when my gaze happens on Carson’s grandson and his haughty disdain. Once upon a time, I might’ve been like him. Entitled. Wet behind the ears. Possibly feral. The difference is, I knew what my father was capable of.
Carson Hayes’ grandson, I type out as the elevator doors close. Get me all you can on him. Just in case.
16
Rose
Things could not be worse.
Tuesday of the following week and I’ve yet to set eyes on Remy—seven whole days and not one peep from him! What kind
of fuckery is this? I mean, is he trying to make me expire from sheer suspense? If that’s his endgame, then all I can say is, well played, sir. Well fucking played.
Or maybe he isn’t playing games at all. Maybe he’s placed me in a box marked strictly business. Maybe employing me was just a mistake, and now that I’m here, he no longer thinks about me. Maybe he feels that, in giving me a job, his debt is complete, so he doesn’t need to concern himself with me anymore. And if that’s the case, why am I thinking about him? Gah!
Oh, my God. I’ve been ghosted!
This is why I don’t do relationships—the lesson I was supposed to learn from watching my mother! Relationships are a balancing act of power, and in thinking about him, obsessing over him, I’ve handed control over to him. Not that he knows it. Because he’s not here! Gah!
‘Ça va, Rose.’
‘Oh, hey, Charles.’ I glance up at my co-worker and force a smile. Ride that man like the stallion he is? I don’t know about that, but I’d sure like to hogtie and whip him. Show Remy exactly how much I’ve missed him. Missed him so much, I’m not crazy.
‘Why are you making the face?’ I look up once more to find Charles pouting. And that’s not Charles with a Ch but Charles with a Sh, or Shaaarles as he corrected me on my first day.
‘This is my thinking face.’ My thinking I’d like to strangle Remy face.
‘Non. It is your angry face.’
‘How are you?’ I ask, moving on to Charles’s favourite topic. Him.
‘I would like to say bien,’ he says, dropping his Louis Vuitton messenger bag to the desk and almost knocking over the framed photograph of Loulou, his precious pet spaniel. ‘But living with the man you love, ’oo no longer love you, it makes my ’art ’urt.’
It takes me a moment to discern his response, though the way he dramatically clasps his hands over his ’art, I mean, heart, helps.
‘Rough weekend, huh?’ We both worked Tuesday through Saturday last week, and while Sunday and Monday aren’t technically a weekend, it was my weekend. Two mornings of late wake-ups and café au lait and croissants on the balcony while staring at the gloriously blue sea. And two days of mooching around Monaco, doing touristy things. I visited the port at La Condamine, people watched from a café at the marina before visiting an old church, the name of which I forget.
‘Ouais,’ he affirms with a nod. ‘Phillipe, he spurned my advances again. I want the makeup sex, but he said no.’ He pouts like a child denied dessert, his oddly cherubic features marred by a frown.
‘That sucks,’ I reply, taking my empty cup for a refill. While French coffee, not to be confused with the much less delicious French roast we get back home, has become my unofficial addiction, I stick to jasmine tea while at work. My mind is already working like a squirrel on speed, no thanks to being ghosted by the man who brought me here.
‘Non—there was no sucking! This is the problem!’
‘Yeah, because you dumped him on Friday, right?’ It’s like The Bold and the Beautiful around here.
I slip out of my jacket, which was a mistake for this time of the year. Draping it over the back of my chair, I then ease my index finger between my throat and my Wolf Industries silk scarf to loosen it a little.
‘Oui, because I see him making eyes at the lifeguard. Like this!’ He blinks rapidly, his perfectly curled silky lashes like the wings of an angry bee. ‘Fils de pute,’ he spits.
I open my mouth to ask him if it’s Phillipe or the lifeguard who is the son of a whore in his estimation, finding myself asking instead, ‘Are you wearing fake lashes right now?’
‘Pfft!’ He gives a perfectly Gallic shrug as if to say what do you think? I think yes, yes he is. ‘I just curl them and wear a little mascara sometimes.’
‘They must rub the lenses of your glasses.’ And annoy the heck out of him.
‘I do not want to talk about this. I am énervé—how you say, pissed! I ’ave my revenge on ’im.’
‘Oh, dear.’ With an indulgent shake of my head, I splash some hot water over my teabag. ‘Can I expect a visit from the police today?’
‘I will not kill him! I still love him!’
‘Okay, so you don’t need help disposing of the body. Good to know. Hey, do you think the prison in Monaco is fancy?’
‘I do not know, and I do not wish to find out.’
‘O-kay.’ Someone has their panties in a wad today. ‘If you didn’t kill him, what did you do?’
‘Phillipe ’as no work today, and I begin late, so I made an offer to make le bacon pour le petit déjeuner—bacon for breakfast, yes?’ I nod. I both understand and agree with bacon. Bacon beats Cheerios any day for breakfast. ‘Bon. I wipe a little grease on the power bouton of his Xbox.’
As he describes his not so dastardly deed, he’s carefully tidying his hair using his reflection in the glass cabinets.
‘Oh, good one. I’m sure he’ll be mildly irritated when he goes to switch it on and finds he has bacon grease on his finger. Zut alors!’ I exclaim, examining my hand in faux horror.
‘No one says this, Rose,’ he chides. ‘Not in France and not in Monaco.’
‘And in America, we’re more likely to take a baseball bat to someone’s car as revenge. It’s a much more effective way to express yourself.’
‘Voyons.’ Let’s see. ‘I think he will be totally pissed when he is playing le Xbox and Loulou keeps sniffing the button and turning it off.’ I snigger as Charles pauses, pulling out his chair, then in a change of direction, asks, ‘What does le livre have in store for today?’
‘So far, the total of today’s requests could pay off the debt of a third world country.’
‘This is le livre.’ Charles shrugs as though to say “whatcha gonna do?” Only with a little more French flair.
Le livre, or the book, often referred to in the most hallowed of terms, is actually an online diary pertaining to the residents of Wolf Tower’s needs. Each apartment comes with a tablet linked to the concierge department computer system, and if they’re away from home when a need arises, well, they can just use the handy-dandy app they can download onto their phone. Anything they need help with, be it a maintenance issue or an item they need sourcing or a reservation they’d like made, they can just pick up their handy tablet and pass the job to someone else.
Pass it off to me, in fact. Or Charles. Or whoever else is on shift. And the concierge desk aims to meet those needs 24/7. And I don’t mean their very ordinary needs, like bread and milk and eggs. I’m almost certain the people who live in Wolf Tower think the food they eat just magically appears. Those who look like they know what food is, I mean. But those items, the most basic of necessities, are usually ordered via the apartment’s housekeeping tablet by their personal housekeeping staff.
The concierge desk deals with a whole other level of needs. We’re told that the most precious commodity available is time, and apparently, this is even more so for the uber-wealthy. And here at the concierge desk, our sole aim is to protect the time of our residents.
We help them get back precious time without the aid of a time machine.
If you ask me, the whole concept is hokum because most people who live here don’t appear to work. Or if they do, they don’t seem to work more than a couple of hours each day. I know this because I spend most of my time on the phone with them or answering their hundreds of demanding and whiny emails. As I see it, my job is to help the rich to spend their vast amounts of money.
Need a last-minute anniversary gift for the wife? Or a I’m sorry I can’t screw you this weekend because it’s my anniversary sweetener to your bit on the side? Then you just pick up the phone to contact me, give me a ballpark figure, and I put in a call to Zegg et Cerlati or maybe Cartier. Or I’ll take myself for a walk along the Place du Casino and do a little window shopping in the high-end stores, and because I’m wearing my natty Industries du Loup scarf, me and non-couture clothing won’t be sneered at in my Zara dress or my Gap pants. I might not be shopping for
myself unless it’s an apple from Condamine Market, but I’m still shopping. It’s also a little time out of the office where I get to wander through streets, soaking up the sunshine as I people watch the portly Midwesterners rubbernecking at supercars to James Bond lookalikes who step from them. It’s kind of like a tourist to trillionaire tour.
But my job isn’t all shopping for the tycoon who needs time like he needs air.
Need a last-minute private jet to take you to Paris for the weekend?
Then I’m your (wo)man.
Desperate for front row seats to La bohéme in Milan instead?
How about a helicopter ride there?
Your wish is my command.
Or maybe it’s a table at the Ivy when you’re in London next week?
Consider it booked.
Or else I might consider joining the unemployment lines. At least, according to Olga, head of the concierge department.
Speaking of which.
‘Charles, you already see to the Petrov’s dog?’ The woman herself strides into the office in her skyscraper heels. And what a delight she is. She never smiles, probably because her lips have so much filler, she can barely close her duck bill, I mean, mouth. Which I suppose is efficient because she never stops complaining—usually about me. I don’t know why, but I am not her favourite person, yet I have no idea what I’ve done to deserve her ire. Although, come to think of it, yesterday she was slightly less caustic after lunch. She must’ve had champagne with her food. Or maybe edibles.
‘I engagé a new dog walker.’ Charles doesn’t move his attention from his computer screen. ‘A male dogwalker,’ he adds meaningfully. ‘Per’aps Alexi can keep on the trousers this time.’ The latter he adds in an undertone.
‘It is not for the likes of you to comment on how our clients spend their time.’ Someone ought to explain to Olga that Ice Blonde is just a hair colour, not a personality type. I’ll bet she was really pretty once, before the intervention of Botox, fillers, and silicone. Other than the flotation devices disguised as breasts, she’s tall and willowy and looks like she’d snap in a strong wind. But her appearance belies a caustic tongue and a will of steel.