Chapter 5

SABLE

I must have said something wrong because his face contorted into a deep frown.

"That is not what your file said." His voice had dropped an octave lower. "Madame Lior's file stated that you had experience."

He leaned forward and tapped something on the document in front of him.

"The file you submitted with your job application states that you are twenty-three." He looked up at me. "The form you filled out with Madame Lior stated that you were twenty-seven. Which is it."

I didn't fill any form, at least not with my own hands.

"I just turned twenty-three," I said.

He cursed under his breath. When our eyes met he pulled the file back and tucked it under the cabinet with the decisive movement of a man closing a subject permanently.

"Forget I asked you anything." His jaw was tight. "You were right. That night never happened."

I sat there trying to understand what exactly had changed.

"I'll compensate you," he said. "How much would you like?"

I stared at him. "What?"

"How much—"

"Stop." I shook my head. "Compensate me for what exactly?"

He went quiet for a moment.

"I've never... I don't have experience with.. " He paused. "I can't give back... I can't restore it. But I can compensate you."

I felt my cheeks go warm. I pressed my lips together and looked at my hands in my lap for a second before I looked back up at him. "It was my choice," I said. "It wasn't that important to me."

Silence reigned between us like a fluffy cloud with none of the pleasantries.

"I have a meeting in twenty minutes," he said, and just like that the professionalism was back. "Two potential partners who I will be pitching a new development to. A capsule based compound targeting hangover prevention. It is still in production but the pitch is ready. You'll be in the room with me with your clipboard and pen, you are expected to take notes of everything and you do not speak unless spoken to and you do not offer opinions. You strictly follow my lead. Understood?"

I had already uncapped my pen.

"Understood. Should I get them coffee when they arrive?"

His eyes narrowed a little.

"The only person you bring coffee to is me," he said. "Every other person in this building has their refreshments handled by someone else. That is not your responsibility."

I couldn't help but wonder if that sentence carried a whiff of possessiveness or just job clarity.

"Yes sir."

The door opened and my neck turned toward it instinctively.

A man in his late twenties stepped through with platinum blonde hair pushed back from his face and green eyes that swept the room.

"I knew it," he said, looking at Alaric. "You were holed up in your office."

"Manuel." Alaric's voice was even. "I wasn't expecting you back in town so early."

"I wasn't planning to be. Until Christina called me this morning and mentioned you were distracted. Mumbling something about some girl." His green eyes slid to me with the unhurried interest of someone who had just found the answer to a question he hadn't known he was asking. "And now I see."

I lowered my chin slightly and managed a sound that was supposed to be a greeting and came out as a squeak.

"Hi."

"Well," Manuel said, still looking at me, "aren't you going to introduce us, Alaric?"

"She's off limits." He responded flatly.

Manuel rolled his eyes, he reached across the desk toward a document on the far edge, leaning past me to grab it, and I stayed very still because he was close and he was clearly important and I was the new assistant who had already twisted a heel and been late and disclosed her virginity to her boss all before ten in the morning.

His hand stilled on the document.

There was a sudden shift of energy around us.

He stood up straight and left the document where it was. He neither moved nor turned. I was tempted to ask what had happened.

"Alaric," Manuel said. His tone had changed from easy and casual to bewilderment. He leaned close to me and stared intently at my side profile.

"Manuel." Alaric was watching his cousin with an arched brow. "What are you doing?"

Manuel didn't answer him immediately. He continued gawking at my ear.

"I'm looking at a tattoo right here."

Tattoo?

I didn't have any tattoo.

Just a small mark.

I resisted the urge to reach up and touch the small mark behind my right ear that I had always had. Grandpa had always said it was there when I was born.

I had never thought twice because it had simply always been part of me the way my nose was part of me.

"Manuel...."

"Alaric." Manuel looked up at his cousin from across the desk. "Isn't that the same kind your father — "

He didn't finish the sentence.

Alaric was already moving.

He crossed the office in three strides, took Manuel by the arm, opened the door and walked him through it and pulled it shut behind them with a slam that rattled the wooden bookmark on his table.

I sat in the chair in front of his empty desk with my pen still uncapped and the clipboard still open on a blank page.

“Would it be awful if I eavesdropped?” I asked no one in particular.

Yes. Sable. Eavesdropping is a bad thing. A breach of privacy, you've had that done to you many times so you know how uncomfortable it makes you.

I bit my lip.

But… it didn't count as a breach of privacy when it had something to do with a mark on my ear. Right?

Make up your mind, dude.

I pushed myself off my seat and limped to the door, pressing my ear against it. They were debating heavily but everything sounded disjointed and broken. I pried my fingers inside the little gap between the door and the wall, when a bigger gap was created, I pressed my ear to it.

“It can't be possible? Right?” Manuel was asking Alaric. “Maybe it's just a coincidence. You don't have to.”

He grunted something.

“Hand it over, I have to get rid of her, permanently.”

I peeled away from the door.

Wait… what?!