"What's this Saturday again?" he asked. He never remembered his social schedule. Celine took care of it for him.
"It's the Women Against Violence Foundation. You didn't forget, did you?"
He didn't answer. Instead, he switched his attention to his desk, reached for the stack of folders near the corner, and flipped the top one open just to keep himself busy. He hated these types of charity events, but they were necessary for his political future.
Celine walked to the edge of the desk, stopping exactly a foot away—her signature distance. "I'll be wearing the midnight blue Versace," she supplied, each word polished and neutral. "The one you said you liked. If you wear the navy tux with the silver cufflinks, we'll match."
He grunted out an affirmative.
"Then it's settled."
He didn't answer. She retreated, heels tapping a countdown to silence.
When the door closed, Caius slumped in his chair, suddenly aware of how stiff his neck was. He looked up at the security monitors. Nothing was out of the ordinary.
21 kimmy
The apartment was still, except for the distant shushing of pipes in the wall. Someone in the building was either cooking or taking a shower.
I worked in the dim glow of my laptop's screen, the rest of the room thick with dark. I knew I needed to turn on the light, but I was on a deadline to submit my findings to the client and getting up from my chair seemed like a Herculean task that would derail the outcome.
Tonight, the living room, which doubled as my office, smelled like Merlot. The wine glass on the table was half-empty. I'd been on edge these past few days because I hadn't heard about any development in Caius Valmont's public image. The media only had positive things to say.
I also had this absolutely irrational need to hear from Operative Seven and the silence drove me nuts. He had no reason to reach out. In fact he'd be breaking protocol. Still, the quiet, unadventurous evenings made everything dull.
I had a cluster of sticky notes on the desk, each one a tiny, hand-drawn square of work hell.
Get RSVP counts from the caterer.
Call the floral vendor to find out the prices.
Confirm venue hours.
Pay Brynn for logo work she did last month.
Sometimes, when I couldn't find the right designer on short notice, I asked her, but now that she'd been low-key bugging me about the results of my conversation with Lena, I didn't want to contact her.
You can't discuss this with any of yourfriends.
I felt all sorts of emotions; guilt, dread, anxiety, to desire for this entire debacle to go away soon. It would have been so much easier to talk to Brynn if she wasn't the one who'd introduced me to Lena or had witnessed my drunken meltdown at The Crypt that night.
Besides, she knew the names of all three. She could probably guess something was happening and I was ignoring her because of that something. I felt bad. I was a bad friend.
That's why, instead of calling her, I chose the email. I attached the receipt and the payment date and kept it dry and professional.
In the space beside the sticky notes, a nest of charging cables curled around the base of the lamp that I needed to turn on.
The burner was always there, even when I pretended it wasn't. It looked out of place—a cheap prepaid model, off-brand, the kind you'd buy with cash at a drugstore if you wanted to disappear or contact someone just once.
I checked it a few times a day, mostly out of habit.
I was in the middle of cropping a post for a new campaign—zoomed in on the ribbon-cutting photo—when the phone vibrated.
It wasn't loud, just a brief, mean shudder. The screen lit up with aCustomer Servicecontact.
The ripple of adrenaline was instant and overwhelming, like being poked in the stomach by a stranger. I stared at the phone until the first buzz stopped, and then it started again, more urgent, as if it already knew I was at the edge of a panic attack.
I answered. "Yeah?"
