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“I can’t do that…sir. What do you need her for?”
Jacob sighed. “You don’t get to know that. I pay your wages. Let me have her. I’ll double your pay. Is that what you wanted?”
“No. Sir. It was not what I wanted. I’m guarding her. Please remove yourself and your men.” He flicked his gaze their way. “From our vicinity.”
Jacob didn’t move. “You want to be fired? This behavior puts you in my seriously bad books, if you carry through.”
“Back off,sir, unless you want me to call for CNC security.”
Finally, he backed away then strode off down the corridor with his men—they gifted Cassius with a few backward, dirty looks.
No guns were allowed in here, but if there were, I’d bet on them being drawn and maybe fired during that conversation.
“Thank you, Cassius,” I said quietly.
“You’re welcome.” He shrugged then looked straight at me. “You know I wouldn’t let harm come to you.”
“Yes. I do.” I’d said that with sincerity and honesty. More honesty than I’d applied to many things recently. It made me think about what I was doing and what I had done. Maybe it was time for a big change, no matter how perilous it might appear from my side of the equation.
A half an hour later, the doctor returned down the corridor and stopped before us.
Cassius rose, pulling straight his shirt.
“All good?” He propped his cane against Cassius’s chair.
“We had a visitor.”
“Jacob?”
“Yes. He was here, briefly. You too?”
“Yes, but I am guessing he wasn’t happy with you? He wanted information from me, in return for payment, and then when that failed, he threatened me.”
Cassius screwed up his mouth and nodded. “Now that’s my boss.” He faltered saying that and I thought he’d clarify it and say ex-boss. He did not.
“Hmmm.” The doctor swung to me, and I sensed a softening in him compared to before. “Charity, you did something bad.” He paused. “But then so did I.”
He did what? Uneasy, I wondered if he’d agreed to give me to Jacob.
Which was awful of me to think, but how much did I really know him? That was the recurring fucking question. There was blind trust, based on a hunch and a smattering of info, and there was absolute trust based on real-life reactions, on helping you when you were down, and on being by your side when you needed them.
“What do you mean?” I spoke through that mask, and it was so horribly distancing. He couldn’t know my body language.
“You put yourself in danger when I told you not to. You did it in exactly the way we had discussed.”
I winced, then I was shaking my head. “I am sorry. I did do that.”
“Yes. And I hated it. I lost trust in you. Trust. You were tossing that about before—how to trust people and what it meant.” He stood there, broad of stance, hands clasped at his front—a man who was confident in his arena.
I waited. It seemed he had more to say.
“Even so, my anger was wrong. I was already unsettled over something else. My silence and neglect was your punishment, and that would be fine, if I’d explained why. I am sorry I did not. I apologize.”
“Oh.” I was wide of eye behind the mask and feeling so much happier. I was the puppy this time, wagging my little tail. It might be pathetic to some but to me, it was just happiness.
Then I noticed the look of abject awe on Cassius’s face, as if seeing the doctor apologize was a revelation for him. A moment later, his face was wiped of expression, but I had seen it.
This had affected both of us.
