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“Or the sofa by me,” I hedged, not really getting what was going on.
“Maybe.”
I left, but my mind was still on the conversation. Was it the physical contact he wanted?
The text I received confused me, but I did as Melissa said since I trusted her. She was a sloth demon who had worked for me for… A while. She was under Lewis and handled a lot of logistics, including most of my personal life tedious bullshit. The best part of that?
She got to feed off of it.
Yeah, really. She was a delicious woman who fed off the laziness of bureaucracies. While the rest of us avoided the DMV and places like that, she loved to go there and have a free buffet. They were places full of too many people who didn’t give a single fuck about their jobs or performance anymore and simply cashed their paychecks.
So… Sloths.
She’d go get a full feed and then use her power to make people hop to whatever she needed. She was the epitome of efficiency, and she was honestly one of my favorite people solely for that reason.
She was also loyal and a sweetie so yeah, it was easy to be won over by her.
“What am I missing, darling?” I asked as I came through the portal.
She chuckled, glancing up from the piles of everything surrounding her on the folding tables. “This is currently the headquarters of Heavenly Properties. We’re all in agreement that if we’re going to expand, we need to do it right and get another headquarters built. That takes time. For now, this is what we have and it’s well protected and we can spread out.”
“This isn’t good for your back,” I worried, taking in her setup. “Are the old farts making you do everything paper again? We need to be digital and—”
“I actually prefer it for this sort of thing because it’s always one agency or another that needs a certain page of something, and then I can have them all grouped as I want,” she interjected. “Not all of our brains function in 1s and 0s, Jasmine. Some of us like labeled files and color coding. A quick file name in a short folder can be limiting when there’s a lot of nuance.”
I held up my hands in surrender. “You do you, boo. Just tell me what you need and how I can help.”
“That makes you the perfect boss,” she purred before grabbing a chair and pulling it closer to me. “Are you really okay with this? I know Lewis was pushing for us to be promoted, but taking all of us at once seems—”
“I think it will be fine because you’re not just dropping us and bailing. You’ll be around to answer questions and look over newbie shoulders.” I gave her a look not to even say otherwise. We both knew she would. “And I am sorry that your career has been more stagnant than you would have liked.”
She snorted. “That was a few of the guys, and Lewis being sensitive to how volatile everything can get around him. I’m fine. Everyone was fine. There were a lot of changes, and people are inherently greedy, seeing the opportunity for more. If you pulled in people for positions instead of promoted from within after being loyal for so long, yeah, I would have been peeved.”
“Validly.” I was glad when it was clear she was settled with it.
She picked up her phone from the table and frowned. “Elijah is texting me asking how many properties you personally own. He wants to win a bet. Do I want to know? Do you want me to answer?”
“Is it over twenty? I think if you tell him that it will be enough to win and show the people he was talking with that I’m overwhelmed and unable to be the adult in my life.”
She snorted. “It is over twenty, and you’re not able to be the adult in your life because you’re the superhero in everyone else’s fucking life. People need to stop being petty with you and just help you.” She smiled when I sat down in the chair that she offered. “And on that note, I don’t want to give up taking care of your personal properties.”
“You’re busy enough to—”
“Jasmine, you saved my life from a fucking hell that I was completely sure I would die in,” she rasped, focusing hard on what was in front of her. “Let me do this so you can keep your focus where it needs to be and save more. I can’t do that. I’m not built for that. I’m built for this. So please, let me do my part because I value what you do. And you go be the superhero.”
“Thanks, Issa.” I leaned in and kissed her forehead. “Call him and put it on speaker. Tell Elijah whatever.”
She looked at me as if I was playing with fire but did as I said. “She has over twenty. Does that win whatever bet is going on?”
“No, that’s not it. How many? Let her see the list and tell me how many she has even been to,” he instructed.
“Weren’t you going to sleep because you were in such a bad spot?” I drawled.
“She has sixty-two and—”
“I do?” I asked, blinking at her. “Really? Since when?”
“A while,” she chuckled. “You haven’t picked up any new ones lately as you’ve been too busy with work and ISLE and saving the world. Our world especially.”
