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Amara looked at him. He was a statuesque, handsome man with distinguished gray side-stripes in his slightly curly jet black hair and deep bronze skin. He dressed impeccably and had always struck her as the image of sophistication.
But his looks and classy demeanor masked his true, treacherous nature.
Her mouth set in a hard line. “It’s none of your business. Excuse me.”
As she moved to walk around him, he placed a hand firmly on her shoulder. “Are you angry with me, Amara? What have I done to you, hm?”
He pretended to try to suppress a mocking laugh. “Just because we are no longer together does not mean we cannot be friends, yes?”
She jerked her shoulder back hard, his touch dissolving her efforts to stay cool. “Fuck you, Frederik. Fuck you, you know exactly what you did.”
“So I do,” he returned with obvious pleasure.
Damn him, she thought.
“And you know why I did it,” he said. “You knew better than to cross a man like me, Amara.”
She refused to respond, but that didn’t deter him from continuing.
“When I speak, the people, they listen,” he boasted smoothly. “The important people. The people who never would have given you the time of day if not for my endorsement. All the ambition in the world won’t get you funding. I did that.”
He grinned widely, his perfect white teeth flashing in the sunlight. “And you decide to get holy on me when it is time to reap the rewards of our hard work? You do not play the game as I do, and so, you have lost.”
Intense anger bubbled up from inside her like a sour taste. “I haven’t lost.”
He reeked of smugness. “Poor girl. Frederik Orlando always wins. The sooner you know this, the sooner you can try to rebuild what your pride has destroyed.”
“Go to hell, Frederik.” Amara’s right hand trembled at her side as she suppressed the urge to swing up and get one good slap in. She decided against it and forced her way past him, shoving him aside with her shoulder. “And stay out of my way.”
He laughed cruelly as she walked away. The tone of his laugh said he knew something she didn’t. It unnerved her deeply, but she wouldn’t show him that. She’d give him no satisfaction.
She was on the stairs to the second floor of the administrative building before she stopped to dry the angry tears from her eyes.
VISITING DEAN WILSON’S OFFICE WAS always an unnerving experience. He was a pragmatist above all else, and had a tendency to come off cold and uncaring in pursuit of efficiency and progress. He’d been with the university for well over three decades and, for the last five years, had been its Dean.
His office was meticulously organized and cleaned, almost excessively so. Amara always thought that, at home, he must be the kind of man to keep plastic on his furniture to preserve it.
Behind his desk was a massive bookshelf that spanned the entire back wall. Aside from a single, large painting of a university area on each side, the walls were entirely unadorned.
The one piece of opulence in the room was the desk. It seemed cut from a single massive trunk of mahogany, the grooves and decorative vine and flower carvings masterful and symmetrical.
Amara was stunned to silence when, upon entering, she saw Dean Wilson was smiling. It was the first smile she’d seen on him in private, his smiles always reserved as public, ingratiating displays for donors and influential alumni.
His snowy white brow rose, and he motioned to the guest’s chair. “Please, come and sit, Professor Davis.”
His voice was uncharacteristically bright and warm, almost unnervingly so. Her mind immediately began jumping to every conclusion that could be indicated by a sudden shift in demeanor like his, and very few of them were good for her.
It seemed likely that he was being kind to prevent her from becoming too angry or vengeful after he fired her. She wasn’t even sure if she could be upset about such a smarmy approach, considering all she’d already lost in the last few days.
Now, her teaching position would simply be one more thing tossed out the already broken window of her career.
While she sat down, Dean Wilson arranged the papers spread out over his desk into a neat stack and placed them aside. For a long moment he stared her down, no doubt trying to come up with the perfect way to fire her or urge her to quit of her own accord.
His fingers drummed lightly against the table, and he gave a low hum of consideration before speaking. “First and foremost, I want you to know that I have nothing but faith in you, Professor Davis. I am utterly unconvinced by the allegations made against you.”
“Er, thanks,” Amara mumbled, beyond shocked.
“I’ve been a close follower of your work since you arrived,” he continued, “and I’m extremely pleased to have someone so bright and hard-working teaching our students. We’re a meritocracy, here — seniority means little in matters such as these, so don’t worry yourself. That, however, is not why I called you in.”
