Page 18 of Vivacity
A sickening blend of anger and moral outrage curdles in the pit of my stomach. I don’t know which accusation bothers me more: that I’ve been building a stealth stake—buying their stock in the open market—while pretending to play nice, or that I’m launching this takeover bid because I’m on some kind of power trip.
Calling me power-hungry is frankly a lazy accusation and a clear sign that Montague doesn’t know me at all. It’s a sloppy leap from seeing someone leading the charge to assuming they’re in it for the glory. Glory is overrated. It’s not worth its price, which is visibility, and expectations, and vulnerability. You’ll never see me court any of those things—especially the latter.
Control, on the other hand, is worth it every single time. When you’re calling the shots, then, and only then, can you relax. I don’t do this job for status. I do it to avoid being at anyone’s mercy, to ensure that things get done properly and that the lights stay on.
Sometimes, it feels as though the wheels will come off this gilded chariot my father has passed onto me, that it will careen off into the night, dragging the thousands of people who depend on it along for the ride.
I suspect I’m as terrified of crashing the damn thing as I am resentful of being made to drive it in the first place. And if it goes off the rails, it’ll be my name on the wreckage.
It’s only when I finally stagger upstairs around eleven, brain hurting from the endless scenario analysis it’s insisted onspitting forth all evening, that I get a chance to check in on Jamie. He’s spreadeagled face down on his bed, fast asleep and fully clothed. He’s had a huge growth spurt this year—he must be five eleven or close enough. His bedroom blinds are still up, ensuite bathroom light still glowing, and the room stinks of burgers. Beside his bed lies the debris of an abandoned Shake Shack delivery, including the milkshake I categorically forbade him from getting. Fuck’s sake.
Teenage boys are pigs. Perhaps I should have discontinued the Kingsley family tradition of schooling us at Westminster School and opted instead for a boarding school. It might have knocked some basic self-discipline into him.
I gather up the various grease-streaked cardboard receptacles and place them by his bedroom door before lowering the blinds and turning off the bathroom light. I manage, with some difficulty, to extract the tangled duvet cover from beneath his prone body and cover him with it.
He stirs slightly, his face in profile and mouth slightly ajar, and a rush of love rips through my body, so great it almost brings me to my knees. I place a hand on his head and let it pass lightly over his mop of light brown hair. I can still see his two-year-old self in his sleeping face.
When he was tiny, the terror of keeping him alive may have been a visceral thing, but it was also straightforward.
The terror of fucking him up is, in many ways, far more suffocating.
Unbidden, the words his headmaster spoke at the last parents’ event come to mind.
Parenting a teenager is tough. In many ways, they need far less physical care than we’ve been used to giving them during their younger years. But it’s when they withdraw the most that they require the most emotional care.
Reluctantly, I remove my hand lest I wake him and instead pull the duvet further up over his shoulders. At least when he’s asleep my brand of care won’t threaten to destroy the very essence of who he is.
CHAPTER 10
Sophia
My new workplace may be soulless, but I have to admit it has a certain stark beauty: the benefit of joining a hotel empire known for its sleek, minimalist aesthetics.
The secret to successful minimalism, of course, lies in the quality of the fixtures and furnishings. Take that lovely, obliging slab of marble upon which my new boss railed me last week. I suspect no expense was spared in procuring that. I suspect a thousand slabs of Italian marble were inspected before Ethan’s designer pronounced that one just right for her exacting client.
It’s the same with everything else in this cavernous office suite. My office is next to Ethan’s with a convenient interconnecting door. The white bookshelves are empty, something I intend to change quickly, and the sculptural glass-topped desk has been buffed to an inch of its life. No grimy fingerprints here. It’s empty aside from a sleek monitor, wireless keyboard, and phone console: all top of the range.
Everything is perfectly tasteful, frightfully expensive, and utterly bland. The only flash of interest, of colour, in this place will come frommoi.
No problems there.
It makes me all the gladder that I’ve chosen to wear my new Roksanda dress. It’s a ruthlessly tailored confection of candy pink with a red-lined cape thingy. Never let it be said that I’m a believer in understatement.
My day is off to a good start. I nailed Connections on the Tube with zero errors and smugly sent my results through to Athena, my Connections nemesis. That she made an error—it looks like she fell for the red herring—has made my morning all the sweeter. We may be besties, but we’re disgustingly competitive with each other on an intellectual front, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. In any case, it’s a nice win with which to start my first day on the job, and it feels auspicious.
When I sashay through the connecting door to greet my new lord and master, he looks every inch the king of the underworld. Hades himself had more flair than this guy. Today he’s in a palest grey shirt and dark grey trousers. Not a speck of colour. Not a hair out of place. And, much as it pains me to admit it, he pulls off the exact same design rule as his office does: when everything is this high calibre, there’s no need for details or distractions.
Because he’s fucking perfect, even if he’s positively vibrating with stress.
‘Good. You’re here. Shut the door so we can get the most important thing out of the way first.’
Fun fact. When Camille polled the seraphim recently, she found that every single one of us had some sort of sexual encounter with our new bosses before lunch on the first day of our employment. These billionaires are as hungry for sex as they are for money and power, it seems.
And I’m so up for it. I’m so up for being his sexy stress ball.
He strides towards me, hands in his pockets, gaze fixed longingly on my mouth, and I allow myself to drink in his austere beauty. He’s all eyes and jaw and cheekbones, haircombed carefully off his face and his shirt collar, with its single undone button, the perfect frame for his Adam’s apple and the hollow below. His shirt is tailored so perfectly to his torso that it makes me think this guy never allows his weight to deviate by so much as a pound. He probably monitors it with the laser focus of a jockey or a boxer.
The certain knowledge that getting naked with him is in my near future is an anticipatory pleasure so great it takes my breath away.
