“How’s your mom coping? Any comment on her health?”
I swallow the vitriol sitting in my throat and let Green’s doormen shove the prying media away.
The automatic doors close behind me, and despite all the garish grandeur of Green’s lobby, I’m instantly claustrophobic.
If Green is a pandemic of greed and corruption across the globe, then this shiny office is the rotting epicenter of it all, the sparkling jewel in my father’s empire.
Myempire now.
Though, hopefully not for long.
I nod in response to a few overly cheerfulgood mornings, drumming my fingers on my thigh and willing the elevator to hurry up.
Sonya, my publicist, appears beside me, the cloying scent of her perfume scratching the back of my throat. “Ah, Alex. I was hoping I’d catch you.”
I search the immediate vicinity for an outlet to ram a fork into but come up short. “About?”
“Your press conference for tomorrow. I thought you might want to speak a little on your family at the end.”
Apparently all six elevators are stopping at every floor this morning. “It’s a business conference.”
“I know, but it’d be great for your image. Family man, a united front, even with what’s going on with your father.”
I press the call button three more times, like that’ll do anything. That goddamn reporter has me well and truly rattled. “Would using Andre Jackson from Insider Weekly’s head as a bowling ball be good or bad for my image?”
“Alex, it’s a great opportunity to reassure the shareholders that whatever is going on at home isn’t going to affect—”
The elevator finally arrives, and I hit the button for the penthouse floor and wait until just a sliver of her face is visible between two silver doors to say, “I’ll have Jacqueline put a call in your diary later.”
I slump against the mirror, exhausted before the day has really begun. The claustrophobic metal box fires me unnaturally high in this glass monstrosity of a building, but my mood remains somewhere in the basement garage.
Still, I straighten my collar, smooth the cracks in my mask, steady the shake in my hands, and think of the seven women I do it all for.
The doors slide open after what feels like an age, spitting me out in front of Jacqueline’s desk. It’s quiet on the top floor, thankfully, just the sound of my hammering heart working overtime in my chest.
I rap my knuckles against the desk, an annoying habit of my father’s that I’ve somehow absorbed. “If Sonya emails you about a publicity call—”
“She already has. She’s coming up at three thirty.”
Damn it, these people work fast. “I’m busy at three thirty.”
Her eyes drop to my calendar, open on her laptop screen. “With?”
“I have to …” I rub the back of my neck. “Pick the lint from between the keys on my keyboard?”
“A noble attempt,” she says, handing me a coffee. “Enjoy your meeting.”
Great.
Jacqueline is a short, chaotically dressed woman in her late thirties, and though I like her very much, she genuinelysucksat her job.
I interviewed twelve people for this position, and eleven of them were ruthlessly organized assistants with a résumé an inch thick. It felt more like they were interviewingme. With their sharp stilettos, predatory glances, and scarlet fingernails that lingered a little too long on my forearms, they reminded me too much of the women I’d find my father taking out for wholly inappropriate dinners.
Then Jacqueline rocked up, perfectly on time but covered in kids’ stickers. My background check told me she has three young children, living in an apartment in Queens. She looked like a deer in headlights—how I felt inside. She was as lost as I was, but when I asked her the final question, she squared her shoulders beneath her ill-fitting blazer and said,I’m not sure, but I just know we’ll figure it out.
She put so much faith in those words, my daddy issues and I just couldn’t say no.
And she makes a great double espresso.
