I leaned against him and for a long moment, let him catch me, but then his phone buzzed, and it was Nix, and Jezebel came to shoo Dirk out because I still needed to rest from my traumatic injuries, poor thing, and with that, she pushed him back into the house, while he looked back at me, something so soft in his eyes that it made me want to melt into a puddle of ice cream.
36
VILLAIN
As soon as he was gone, I straightened my back and went to find Felicia, who was sitting in the kitchen with Minx.
“I wondered if you could help me with some hacking,” I said, feeling incredibly awkward. If she went rogue, she could use everything I gave her, passcodes, scans, to take down Haversham, but for some reason I didn’t care that much. It was asking for help that felt so weird.
She rubbed her hands together. “I brought my hacker glasses, chica. Let’s do this. Vamanos, Jezzie, tienes data to plunder.” She gave a villainous laugh while Minx shook her head while she stayed where she was, carefully painting her nails cherry red.
Two hours later, we were deep in the bowels of Haversham Corp, in the center of half a dozen screens in Jezebel’s safe room, the one with the semi-automatic rifles.
“So, these lists you gave me to double check against Haversham, they’re all tied to this corporation here, funded by a few mysterious entities that will take time to track down, but since we know that Dirk’s supposed to be the one you get to give you these things, we’ll assume that he’s the octopus head withdozens of other tentacles coming out that we won’t worry about. So, I’m seeing a lot of movement as Dirk compiled all of these together, and then there’s this other corp that’s been after it, but failing because Dirk’s so clever and manipulative, and also has prior positive relations with all of these US-based companies. I don’t see a correlation, why your grandfather wants these companies specifically.”
“I do,” Jezebel said right behind both of our backs, and we jumped, shrieking. At least Felicia did. Jez pointed at the center screen and at a line at the bottom. “I know this company, know the tech, know the price on the market for anyone who can steal it. It’s a good price if you’re into that kind of thing.”
I turned to look at her. Was she into that kind of thing? Stealing tech might balance out her liberating slaves thing.
She shook her dark-brown hair back and gave me a smirk. “You’re looking at me so suspiciously. I personally intervened once or twice to keep that particular tech secure.”
“Didn’t know you were interested in renewable energy.”
Jezebel shrugged. “It’s just one of the many times tech gets bought and buried by the big dogs. If this tech was owned by Haversham, it would be quietly killed so that this company,” she said, pointing at the old energy company, Powersurge, “Could continue its worldwide domination, power for pollution and let’s jack up the prices, because the renewable energy company was heavily invested in by all of Powersurge’s competitors.”
“Aiee, chica, you start talking corporate warfare, and I want to eat a churro. So stressful.” Felicia tapped a few more buttons, and I got to see the picture, Haversham, the segment that Philippe was directly over, was invested heavily in this takeover, and if it went through, would prove incredibly lucrative to Haversham corp, beating me out of the running for my efforts with Clint. Speaking of Clint, he was one of the key playersin the whole deal. He had a healthy number of shares in my grandfather’s main company.
I rubbed the back of my neck, because the timeline was so close, this coming weekend for this deal, and my cousin, asking me to get Dirk onboard, that wasn’t for Haversham, but for him, because he wanted to win control of the entire company, which he would do if he succeeded in the merger. Lying scum. He was only giving me a week to seduce Dirk to the dark side, or keep him occupied so that he couldn’t finish his negotiations and keep the renewable energy competitor afloat.
With my stocks in Haversham, I almost had the power to crush Philippe’s deal, but not quite, not unless I had Clint’s help.
My heart beat faster, and I felt nauseous, more than nauseous as I put my face down on the desk.
“You okay, chica? You need a churro too, right?” Felicia asked, patting my back.
“It’s so soon,” I said, feeling the weight of the world crushing me. Is this what heroes felt like all the time, going up against the supervillains? Indigestion wasn’t the worst of it. I’d been thinking that I’d have time to enjoy being with Dirk, that I could hold on to him as long as he let me, but instead, it was days, and I had to get moving if I was going to do what I had to do. Would my body let me face Clint and persuade him to help me? I actually ran to the bathroom at the thought of getting out my bondage gear to whip Clint back into line. Yeah, my body wasn’t going there again. How else could I get Clint to help me? I had no idea, but I had to try.
The rest of the morning was spent lasering in on precise numbers and percentages while Felicia ordered lunch from somewhere that had good churros. After a lunch that passed in a blur of numerical columns and sugary fingers, I had all my ducks in a row, at least the ones that weren’t quacking hysterically at the thought of facing my ex-fiancé again and leaving Dirk.
“You’ll have to fly out tonight,” Jezebel said, running over my numbers with the clinical air of someone who wasn’t invested, but it was a lie if she’d already been clocking this company. I knew she was a supervillain.
“I’ll get you a good seat. What time do you want to go?” Felicia asked, pulling up flight reservations.
“Or you could charter your own jet,” Jezebel said. “It might be more secure.”
The Latina waved a hand around, almost clocking Jezabel. “No, no, because she can’t disappear that way. How easy would it be for her to be intercepted by anyone waiting for something so obvious? No, commercial flight is the way to go, blending in with all the tourists constantly in and out of Vegas. Let’s make you a blonde. Minx can meet you at the airport for costume. Steal Dirk’s bike, the nice quiet one, and she’ll ride it here, where we can all play with it for the next girl’s night.” Felicia flashed me a stunning smile before she created a fake identity for me in a surprisingly short amount of time.
“You do good work,” I said as I watched the process. Jezebel’s safe room was fully equipped for creating fake IDs, even better than Toni’s setup in the evil lair. I got the impression that Jezebel made her own herself, not that she didn’t trust Felicia, but the way she looked at the ID, she was a master checking the work of an apprentice. Scary.
Jezebel handed it to me. “It’s a short time frame, but you can make it work. Because you have to.” There was a warning there. Had she been planning on my stepping up to defend this cause all along? No. No one could be that diabolically cunning. Probably. Terrifying.
I gripped the ID. I’d be on the two a.m. flight to Boston tonight, such a short time to spend with Dirk, not enough time to hold on to the one thing I’d ever really wanted, except for Straw. I took a deep breath. After all of this was over, I’d still have mycello, and I’d have myself. No one would ever own me again. Unless it was the mutual enslavement Dirk had mentioned but couldn’t possibly mean.
I shook my head and took a deep breath. The day wasn’t over yet.
At three pm, I went to Providence.
Horse was surprised to see me if his expression was any indication, in spite of my making an appointment before the Three-Hundred and my sprained arm. I immediately sat in my chair and pulled the cashmere throw over my lap while we stared at each other.
