Page 9 of Vicious Desire (Fallen Royals 4)

“A job?” I go to the window.

Manhattan is encased in a layer of fog this morning. It’s been hovering for a while, but the sun hasn’t been up long enough to burn it off. Dad’s office is just high enough to see over the top of it, so it looks like skyscrapers are jutting out of the clouds.

Like we’re in some sort of mystical world.

I try not to snort. A mystical world of overpriced corporate attorneys and stockbrokers.

Right.

“You can’t just sit home and do nothing,” Dad says.

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

“I’ll call Barb, see if you can do something here—”

“Absolutely not.” I face him. “You don’t want me in the same building. We talked with all your fancy friends about Maine. There’s too much potential embarrassment.”

Dad frowns. “You don’t embarrass me. I’m worried about you and how you’re going to explain—”

“Maybe I won’t go to college.”

It’s just to get a reaction, I think. But he gapes at me, eyes bugging out. His clients rarely see him this expressive.

“Eli,” he warns.

A job.

In a way, it’s exciting. Dad’s been going on and on about me being an attorney for who knows how long, and suddenly the shackles have released from my wrists. I’m free, if only temporarily.

Mom will take the news better than he did. That’s why I chose to confront Dad in his office, with the glass walls and zero privacy.

“Relax, Dad. I’ll find something and reapply for next year. Deadline is months away, and I can reuse bits of my essay.”

He groans. “Sit down.”

For once, I don’t mind listening to him. I sit in one of the metal chairs in front of his desk and eye him.

No one is more surprised than me when he pulls out the chair next to me, angling it closer.

Nice personal touch there, Dad.

“Tell me why you really came back.”

I force myself to stay still. Part of me recognizes that we’re negotiating.

“Why?”

He raises an eyebrow. “If you don’t, I will call Barb and stick you in the mailroom until you turn twenty-seven.”

Barb is a scary lady on a good day, but she makes an excellent head of Human Resources. I have no doubt she’d put me on the bottom level of the company with glee, then pretend to leave me there to rot.

It definitely wasn’t the Halloween prank my friends and I played on her at a party a few years ago that put a sour taste in her mouth for me.

“I tell you, and you give me a month to find my own job,” I argue.

He grimaces. “A week—if the excuse is good.”

I lean back in my chair. “Three weeks for a good excuse. I’d accept a week for a bad one.”

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