Page 22 of Boss

“You’re hungry?”

“Aren’t you?” she asked.

He started to eat, but he kept watching her.

“You stay here often?” she asked.

“I’ve made a few trips.”

“You come alone, or with a traveling companion.”

Tarek laughed. “Alone. The room to the left is yours. I’ll take the other.”

“You’re the boss,” she shrugged.

His phone rang again. He looked at it and then her. “Excuse me, get some rest.”He left the table after barely touching his meal, speaking into his phone. Kassidy sat there staring at her steak. She reached for her purse. Her phone was dead. She’d forgotten to charge it. She knew she needed to check in with Daniel and soon. Tarek was right about her fatigue. But for Kassidy it was more of a restlessness. She picked up her purse and walked over to her luggage and dragged it to her bedroom.

Tarek sat on the edge of the bed with no shirt, just his trousers. He tossed his cell phone and leaned forward. His eyes were trained to the patterned carpet under his feet and his thoughts wandered.

Two decades ago his father broke ties with a powerful man in Moscow. That severed relationship crippled the Marshall legacy. His father secured a patent on drilling technique that almost caused an international scandal. And they became the leading pioneers in the industry ever since.

It fascinated Tarek that the old man buried the secrets to his financial gains and loses so deep that not even the media or the government knew them all. Tarek only learned recently about the Kovalevsky connection and the bitter feud between the Russian business Czar after his father’s stroke. It was then he gained power of attorney and access to his father’s attorneys.

The attorneys fed him morsels of information. In his gut he knew there was a lot more. So he set his plans into motion. The meeting was scheduled Kovalevsky’s hot tempered son Yegor in the coldest place on earth.

Tarek heard a door close somewhere in the suite and knew she’d gone to bed. Though it wasn’t night for them it felt as if it were. She would need her rest. And he needed his. Still part of him wanted her company. He pushed up from the bed and began to empty his pockets at the dresser. Tarek stared at his wallet. He picked it up, opened it, reached inside and found the small picture he kept tucked between two credit cards. A tattered old image taken many years ago.

In it a young woman was in his arms. Her raven hair was blown into his face and she was doubled over with laughter. He kept her standing in time for the photographer to snap the image. A picture they took at a carnival in Crystal Beach. She was only nineteen. He was twenty-two. The first and only woman he’s ever loved. After all these years of hating her and himself he’d never parted with the picture. He rarely looked at it. But having it close kept a part of him he knew no longer existed. Tarek stared at her image. He rarely let himself remember her this way. Hating her was far stronger of an emotion. She was beautiful then, before her betrayal turned their lives into a living hell. He tucked the picture back into his wallet and then tossed it to the dresser. He glanced to the door and thought of the woman pretending to be Angela Brown. She was the reason he was thinking of Clarissa again. Women were deceptive, liars, and if a man wasn’t careful they could easily become his biggest weakness. He wasn’t sure what her real name was. His people were continuing to dig for that information. But he’d uncover the truth soon.

Tarek sniffed the bait that night he opened his eyes and saw her sneaking around his room. It took him two weeks to decide what to do about it. He knew the only person dumb enough to try to use a woman to get next to him was his brother Dale. Just as he had with Clarissa, Dale tried to defeat him with his emotions. That was not a weakness his brother could leverage against him any longer. Clarissa’s death forever cured him of the savior role he once wanted to play. He was a predator now. And he put that woman and his own life in jeopardy by sending her to him.

He didn’t know who she was, but soon he’d get the truth out of her. One way or the other.

6.

Kassidy heard a noise. A loud shatter of glass crashed against the wall or the floor. She sat upright in bed. She snatched the sheet back prepared to take flight if need be. The small digital clock next to her said it was three in the afternoon. She waited and listened. The noise never surfaced again. Kassidy eased out of bed and went over to the phone that was on the charger near the door. On the screen she saw several missed text messages:

Daniel: Where are you in Alaska?

Daniel: What job did he give you?

Daniel: Call me ASAP!

Daniel: Kassidy! Why Alaska? What’s going on!

Daniel: I’m worried. Call me. Your phone is off?

Daniel: Call me immediately.

“Calm down,” she mumbled. She didn’t bother to text him back. Daniel never slept. If she started texting he would call and she was in no mood to hear once again how reckless and crazy her decisions were. Or how she needed to stay on the script he laid out for her. She was done with answering to him on this. She was the one in charge.

There was another sound of glass breaking outside of her door. Kassidy plucked her thin sheer robe from her open suitcase and covered the camisole she wore that stopped just past the curve of her hips. She went to the door and opened it slowly. She peeked out. Tarek was on his knees with a towel. He mopped up dark liquid and picked glass from the towel to toss into the trashcan near him.

“What happened?” she asked and left her room.

“Go back to bed,” he mumbled.

“Did you drop something?”

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