“Did you tell anyone at work about this?”
I shook my head vehemently causing my curls to bounce. “Absolutely not. And give him the satisfaction? Hell no. He’s trying to run me off. And it’s not going to work.” I shoved my hands through my hair and dragged it into a messy ponytail. “After what he did. Let his brother make me the scapegoat for his crimes. Pretend to care about me, all the while he was helping to frame me. He’s the one who should be run off.
"All right, what was it like?"
I ran my tongue over my bottom lip, my body swearing that I could taste him there, feel him there like an imprint. "I don't know. It felt familiar, I guess. I didn't think it was possible, but he's better than he was."
Miriam whooped and did a little dancing jig in her lotus pose. "Oh my God. That is hot. Hot things never happen to me. Does it seem like he’s going to play fair with this client or dick you over?"
“He’s already dicking me over. He’d barely let me get a word in edgewise when we were in the meeting with the client. I felt like I was just arm candy. And then when we were leaving, he tells me that the real meeting with the decision maker won’t be until later. He had me spinning my wheels all day trying to get a crash course on the client in record time, and he knew it would be unnecessary. Though, knowing him, he’d have left me adrift if I hadn’t prepped.” I slumped back against my new love seat that had been delivered that evening. “I can’t win here.”
Miriam placed her glass down on my coffee table none too gently. “Oh no, you don’t. You got the surprise of a lifetime sure. But he wants you to run scared and give him what he wants. You aren't going to do that.”
“But what am I going to do? One day with him, and my nerves are shot. I’m exhausted.”
“That’s because you’ve been playing fair.”
“You're getting this look on your face and it worries me.”
“This is my plotting face. Oliver Wexler unsettled you today. I have ideas on how to get him back. “
“How do you propose I do that? I love this job. I don’t want to do anything to jeopardize it.”
“You won’t. I work in Human Resources at Basleton Tech. There’s a lot of shit you can get away with.”
“I dunno. It’s not really my style. I feel like my good work will stand for itself.”
“If he ever lets you show it off. That meeting sounds like a nightmare.”
She did have a point there. If Oliver was going to be uncooperative, then I was going to have to find a way around him. “Okay, what do you have in mind?”
"You have to have a plan. You know, something more than outshine and run circles around him."
"I just feel like I don't know enough about him. I'm going in blind. How does he know the Lords? He's not just some regular employee. How did he go from the Oliver I knew to where he is now?"
"All right, so let's find out."
I frowned at that. "Like, what do you mean, find out?"
"Let's find out. There's so much information about people out there on the internet. Maybe he's someone's nephew. You know how these rich guys are, and these guys are like the richest of the rich. So let's just figure it out."
"The last thing I want to do is investigate my bosses."
She gave my hand a pat. "It’s not exactly investigating. We're just going to poke around a little bit. Besides, it will give you ammo. You're going to run circles around him, but you need information on your boy Ollie, who his friends are and what he's been up to. You also need to be, well, yourself. Total rock star on top of it all. Arm yourself for battle, girl."
Miriam was right. I needed to prepare because I was going to do battle.
Oliver
A loud crack sent the billiard balls rolling into their disparate holes, and I frowned down at the pattern in front of me. It wasn't terrible, but not the best I could have done either.
As I assessed my next shot, my mate Liam took a swig of his beer as he leaned against the wall of his flat. Liam was that bloke. The one you never really knew what he did for his money. I knew he'd grown up with money, but I also knew his folks had disowned him. Exactly who paid for his flat and his somewhat extravagant lifestyle, I had no idea. And he never gave away any clues.
When you were tapped to join the Elite as we all were, you were given access to your pledge pod’s secrets to a point. So I knew Liam’s family had disowned him. Given who they were and what they’d done, he was better off without them. But the intricacies remained a mystery to me and our other pledge pod member, Alex.
Alex, like Liam, had grown up with the silver spoon in his mouth. But unlike Liam, his family still very much wanted him in the loop. Family business and all.
And sadly, they both knew about my brother. They knew that Max was a thief and a con man, that he’d been to jail. But that was barely scratching the surface. There was so much more they didn't know and I very much wanted to keep it that way.
Liam watched me as he leaned next to a window that showed off the backdrop of London. "All right, so you know her well then?"
"Yeah, you could say that."
"Mate, you're not giving me much to go on."
I wasn’t used to this. Mates I could confide in and shit. The way I grew up, if you confided in anybody it would be used against you later. "She used to date my brother."
Alex whistled low. "The mysterious brother. I already don’t trust the girl. She makes poor choices in boyfriends.”
"Oh, I know. But the thing you need to know about Max is, when he wants to be, he can be charming. And that's the thing about narcissists, they look kind, they look loving, but the manipulation is real. I watched Max do it to me, to Tessa. I watched him do it to Rian.”"
"Your brother's girl, mate. Not wise. Especially not your brother." Liam said, taking another swig of his beer.
"You think I don't know that?"
Alex prowled around the billiards table waiting for me to miss a shot. He’d be doing that for a while. "Do you think he knew?"
"What, that I had a thing for Rian?" I shook my head. "I think he probably suspected something happened, given the way he called the cops on her."
Liam whistled low. "So you told the police she was with you all night?"
I nodded. “I gave her an alibi and pointed a finger at Max. And I pointed out one of his hidey holes. They found evidence of the burglary, so they let her go."
Another low whistle. "Jesus Christ, he knows you sold him out?"
"Yes, but we never talked about it. There was an eyewitness testimony that put him in the vicinity of the stash house, so I got lucky and never had to testify against him. But something in my gut says he knows. That he always knew I’d given the cops evidence against him.”
If I was being honest with myself, I knew he knew. He had to know. But he’d never said. Even before he and Rian started dating, there had been tension between us. He’d resented having to look after Tessa with me away at school.
He made you pay for it though, didn’t he?
"But Max never called you out on it?"