AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I’ve had to fight even harder with my father to stay in New York recently. Each step forward is a new negotiation. It’s an exhausting climb, and I’m still nowhere near the summit. I’ve got so many bodyguards around me I can’t breathe out without one of them inhaling it, but maybe,just maybe, it’s all been worth it.
“Don’t be nice to me, Rob,” I warn, my voice going all husky and revealing. “I haven’t had nearly enough coffee to jitter past my sleep-deprived emotions. If you say anything else, I’ll cry.”
He scrunches up his face in mock disgust. “Gratitude accepted. Tears are not. Now, go help Ivy find me a story.”
15
ELLA
Ten minutes later,I’m sliding into the passenger seat of Ivy’s Honda Civic in the parking lot downstairs. The windscreen is fogged-up and the heater’s going full blast, but she turns it down the second I close the door.
“What did he say?”
“Told me he has gallstones, but that he wasn’t going to fire me anytime soon.”
She throws her head back and laughs. “Thank fuck for that. Not about the gallstones, though. They suck. So, I messaged that contact in forensics, but he can’t meet until Thursday, so I figured we’d swing by theHelios.We can score a couple of Bloody Marys in the bar and an interview with the manager at the same time. Well, maybe I can… You can watch on piously. I know your bloodwork isn’t so great right now.”
“At eight in the morning?” I say, pretending to look shocked.
She grins and reaches for the stereo. “If it’s on the house, I’m drinking it. Even if it’s tap water.”
While she navigates out ofThe Eagle’scramped parking lot and onto a side street, I check the mirror out of habit for the two familiar black SUVs. As predicted, they slot effortlessly into the traffic, three vehicles behind us. I used to have one private bodyguard, but things didn’t turn out so well with him, so now I have three.
I try not to make a fuss about it, just so long as they keep a subtle distance at work. At home, they occupy every apartment on my floor, and I need to check in at least two times a day with my parents. It’s claustrophobic existing in such a protective bubble, but if it’s what I need to do to keep living a semi-normal life, so be it.
We turn left at the next block, heading east towards 59thStreet and I find I can’t stop thinking about what Rob said. I don’t know whether to be mad at my mother or hug her to death for what she did. All I know is I need this job like air, and if her influence helped make it happen, I need to swallow it up and continue proving I’m worthy of it.
It’s been a whirlwind few months since I dropped out of NYU and Thalia married the World’s Most Unsuitable Man, like she joked about doing when she was sixteen in a bedroom in the Hamptons.
The crazy thing is, she did it for me.
She did it because of a tape... Ten whole minutes of stolen, dirty, black and white footage that caused cartel earthquake tremors around the world.
My stomach twists in knots whenever I think about it, so I throw it in a box next to another box from a birthday long ago that I try not to think about at all.
Fortunately, what started out as intense hatred between Thalia and Santi Carrera has grown into a once in a lifetime love affair, the sort I used to dream about having for myself one day. I’ve never seen her as happy as she is right now, and she deserves every picture-perfect moment of it.
“Swanky AF,” I hear Ivy mutteras she parks the Civic alongside three black marble steps flecked with gold, leading up to the entrance of the hotel. The huge doors are tinted the same color, with an elegant, gold-embossed ‘H’ for ‘Helios’etched across each glass panel.Even the valet and the doormen are wearing smart black uniforms fringed with gold, making them look like Soldiers of Hospitality. One steps forward to open her door the second she switches the engine off.
“The Independentrated this the best hotel in Manhattan last month,” she confides, grabbing her iPhone from the dash. “More like the most expensive… They charge thirty bucks for a bowl of olives in the bar. I did a piece here the night Senator Sanders was re-elected. The afterparty was as insane as the décor.”
I bet it was.
Reluctantly, I think back to my eighteenth birthday and the lavish party that he and my family had thrown for me that night.
“The Press was chucked out at nine, but the bar didn’t close until six the next morning.”
“And now they’re pulling dead bodies out of their hotel suites.” I gaze up at the building with an uneasy feeling inside me. Something about this place is pinching at my chest and leaving bruises.
“Welcome to theHelios, ladies,” purrs the doorman. “How may I help you with your stay?”
A little white lie and ten bucks later, we’re standing at the front desk and putting in a polite request to speak with the manager. The exquisite black marble has followed us up the steps and into the lobby, and now we’re swimming in a lake of it.
Ivy was right. The décor inside is far more sophisticated than the usual hotel glitz, where gold and glass is vomited everywhere in a bid to sell ‘exclusivity’. It’s tasteful without being bourgeois. Refined without being unwelcoming. Even the pictures on the walls have a post-modernist subtlety about them, and they’re all featuring horizons and suns in various stages of the day.
“Ms. Sanchez… You asked to see me?”
The hotel manager, Mr. Addaman, steps out of his office looking as smooth and stylish as the rest of his establishment. His gaze slides from me to Ivy, quickly assessing that we’re neither rich enough to be a guest, nor submissive enough to be a potential employee, thus making us a potential threat.
