Page 3 of Release Me

I blink rapidly to dispel the tears of frustration trying to pool in the corners of my eyes. “What?”

“You don’t have any experience as a waitress.”

At no point during this exchange did I see him look at my resume, but his comment—which just so happens to touch on another one of my insecurities surrounding this damn job—suggests that he’s read it in its entirety. I mean, that wouldn’t be hard considering how fucking short it is. I’d been too scared to go into detail about anything for fear that someone would look too closely.

“I don’t need experience to serve rich assholes expensive food or wine they don’t appreciate and can’t even pronounce.”

What I don’t say is that I’ve been serving rich assholes for years now. On my back. On my knees. On their laps while their friends watch. Taking orders and handing out plates won’t be hard, complicated or demeaning, and that’s enough for me.

The corner of his mouth twitches, and I can’t tell if it’s some kind of nervous tick or the start of a condescending smile meant for me.

“Guess we’ll find out, won’t we, Miss. Hendrix?”

He sticks around long enough to soak up my shocked expression and leave me with the distinct impression of his superiority. Then he’s gone, walking back towards the entrance where he was heading before my apparent lack of attentiveness interrupted his day. I watch him go, noting the luscious sweep of locs fashioned into a ponytail at the nape of his neck. They hang past his shoulders, landing somewhere along the broad span of the top of his back. He doesn’t turn back to look at me, which makes me feel like he found me as unremarkable as my resume. It stings even though it shouldn’t, even though since the day of the accident I’ve relished in the absence of the male gaze.

“Interviews have already started,” the woman from the front desk calls out to me. Her tone is flat, censorious, and exactly what I need to get moving again.

The hallway outside of the conference room is packed and buzzing with energy. I find an empty seat that keeps me on the edge of everything, far from the women who are here because they believe a job at a high-end restaurant will lead to them marrying one of the wealthy men who frequent it and further still from the men who think this job will put them in a position to sleep with their female co-workers. While everyone talks, trading stories about the places they’ve worked before and what it would mean for them to get to work for some guy named Sebastian Adler—I remain quiet, channeling all my energy into staying in my seat. Into pushing down the words of the man in the lobby that told me something I already knew to be true: I’m being stupid.

This plan to run and hide and try to carve out a new life somewhere in between is stupid. Trying to get a job as a waitress when all I am, all I have been since the day of my college graduation, is what the monster I’m running from made me.

Worthless fucking whore.

That was his favorite line. His go-to. The one he reached for when he wrapped his fingers around my throat or stole my breath with kicks to my ribs. When I was with him, in the grips of his unending terror and threats, I managed to convince myself his words weren’t true, but here, in the real world, they are my gospel. A toxic deluge that has marked me, stained me, made it so nothing—the clothes, the freedom, the luck the women I met at the shelter in Florida told me I have—is enough to make me into something different, something better.

Even the man in the lobby knew it. He sniffed me out, marked me as ignominious within seconds of knowing me. And it’s the recollection of the pity in his eyes when he looked down at me that pushes me to my feet, convincing me to go home and save myself the embarrassment of walking into this interview with a torn resume and broken pride.

Everyone in the hall turns to look at me, but only the woman at the open door of the conference room addresses me directly. “Nadia Hendrix?”

“Yes, but I’m—” I pause, unsure of what I’m about to say because I don’t know whether I’m going or coming.

The woman looks down at the clipboard in her hand and then back up to me. She’s got a kind face, but her eyes are flared with panic and annoyance. “I have at least thirty other interviews to get through today, Miss. Hendrix, let’s move it along.”

She coaxes me forward with a sweep of her hand that makes someone behind me snicker, and then I have no choice but to move towards her, stepping into the room where it feels like more than my immediate financial security will be decided.

3

SEBASTIAN

She was surprised I knew her name.

I was surprised I could make it out underneath the ragged, torn edges of the cheap paper it was printed on. Even more surprising is the way my brain has chosen to hold on to it. To her wide, soulful eyes with sadness shuddered behind the puddles of whiskey that are her irises. To the way her lip curled with disdain when she called my future customers rich assholes and, in the same breath and with no additional words, suggested I was one of them.

She was right about that.

Growing up as an Adler, a family known for having its hand in everything from shipping to entertainment and media, means I grew up rich, but it was building my own business and constantly having to prove I was more than Everett Adler’s rebellious older son that made me an asshole. My brothers would probably say I was one long before I started Adler Holdings, Inc. That might be true but I’m certain walking into meetings regarding the purchase of multi-million dollar buildings and seeing faces fall because I was there to represent my own interests and not that of my father made it worse.

Back then, everyone wanted to be associated with the institution that is Adleron Enterprises—our family business—but not the burgeoning empire I was building brick by brick. While they’d kill for the chance to point to a building housing a new media imprint and brag about personally negotiating the terms with a titan in multiple industries, they didn’t want anything to do with the man who studied at the titan’s feet. Every purchase, every negotiation, every contract was a fight. A fight to demonstrate my competency and skill. A fight to step outside of my father’s large and looming shadow. A fight to prove I wasn’t just some trust fund kid blowing his money on a feckless plan that would never be successful.

Now that I have proven myself, to my father—who has always been supportive despite being disappointed in not being able to pass the mantle on to me—and everyone else, I’m comfortable admitting that I’m rich all the time and only an asshole when I need to be. And today in the lobby with a stranger named Nadia Hendrix wasn’t one of them. In fact, I’d venture to say I was doing Nadia a kindness—something the wariness sprinkled across her features told me she hasn’t had a lot of in her life. Something any one who works for me will tell you I don’t usually have the time or inclination to extend. Truthfully, I don’t do kindness in my professional life. I do respect and clear expectations. I do wages and benefits well above the industry standard, but I don’t do kindness.

Except for Nadia, I had.

As I walk into my parent’s home, late for our weekly lunch because of the train wreck of a conversation in the lobby, I tell myself it doesn’t matter if I behaved abnormally with her because the instructions I left with the hiring team not to make an offer to anyone without serving experience mean I’ll probably never see her again.

“You’re late.” The words come from the end of the long hallway that leads into the large, open concept kitchen and living room my parents always host us in. I’m in the middle of toeing off my shoes when they find me, and I look up to see my youngest brother, Luca, walking towards me. Even though I’m the oldest, Luca is the one who looks the part. He’s taller and more dense than I am with a bald head and a thick, black beard that stands out against his chestnut skin and makes him look much older than his twenty-eight years of age.

“Kiss my ass.” I pass by him, shoulder checking him just to remind him he’s my little brother not the other way around.

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