Page 2 of Mister St. James

My alarm jingles, signaling another meeting. I enter the office and see that Aiden is hunched over his desk, sleeves rolled up to the mid-forearm, a blue vein pulsing just beneath the surface of his wrist that I want to trace with my tongue. His glasses glint with the pale white of his monitors, the light painting ghost patterns on his face and he is so consumed with work he doesn’t even notice me standing in the doorway until I speak.

“Mr. St. James, it’s time for the weekly project meeting.” He looks at me from behind the monitor and blinks before nodding and standing. I wait patiently with folders and notebooks in hand, my bag slung over my shoulder.

The whole leadership team crams into the glass fishbowl of the boardroom: six men, two women, everyone armed with laptops and caffeinated beverages. The room is always freezing, an intentional move to keep everyone alert.

I sit in the seat to Aiden’s right, adjusting the chair to a higher height when I catch it. Aiden’s eyes lingering just for a minute longer than respectable. I try to fight the sudden rush of adrenaline that spikes at the knowledge of his gaze, smoothing my hands along my thighs to ground myself.

Ten points for the blouse. I stifle a yawn, more for effect than necessity, and stretch my arms behind me, arching my back. The move is studied, just this side of innocent. If I’m going to be eye candy, I’ll at least have fun with it.

Chapter two

The Assistant

Aiden

Glass, light, and the pulsing blue of projection screens, Precision’s conference room always reminds me of the observation deck in some sci-fi shuttle, minus the promise of adventure or escape. I sit at the head of the elongated table, a ten-thousand-dollar slab of carbon fiber that reflects every executive’s anxiety like a shallow pool. The weekly reports display on the central monitor in twelve-point Helvetica, with each upward blip standing as a testament to my inability to delegate. I built this company on code, control and obsession, brick by decimal by sleepless night. It’s why I’m here, and why I’ve never once regretted not being somewhere else.

Cat’s voice, as usual, derails me in five words or fewer. “Marketing’s projections are…optimistic,” she says, her inflection landing somewhere between dry amusement and the threat of murder. She doesn’t look at me when she says it, she looks at the monitor, at the freshly minted VP of Growth who’s already blushing through his third PowerPoint slide. I focus on the tips of her hair, because she’s wearing that fucking red blouse that makes lesser men stutter.

Her dark, riotous curls kept in an updo that would be a disaster on anyone else, bounce with the motion of her head, and I can’t help but wonder what it would look like down and wild around her face. Shit, I need to focus. Her left hand is already annotating her planner, an endless ballet of half-legible notes in Spanish and curving arrows.

My own notepad is blank. I realize, after three seconds of silence, that I am expected to speak.

“Ms. Vaquer raises a valid point,” I say, keeping my voice low, measured. I watch as Cat lifts her gaze, brown eyes catching mine in the glassy reflection of the tabletop before flicking away as I continue the presentation.

The next thirty minutes arrive and depart in pieces, voices rise and fall, charts are shuffled. The smell of burnt espresso from the sideboard lingers, but it does nothing to drown out the scent of her. My fingers brush the cool surface of the conference table, chilled by the room’s constant air conditioning. Each shift in my seat sends a faint shiver through my legs, grounding me as the conversation pulses around us.

She sits beside me and sometimes I can smell her perfume, a volatile hybrid of citrus and something deeper. The VP of Growth drones on about engagement funnels, the CFO tries, and fails, to steer us back to costs. Cat remains silent, but her eyes are everywhere, tracking errors and opportunities with a predator’s focus. Whenever she moves, I’m forced to recalibrate. The red silk of her blouse flares in my periphery like a warning beacon.

I’ve never mixed business with pleasure. More accurately, I’ve never mixed business with anything at all. The first time I hired an executive assistant, their office was on an entirely separate floor, with a security protocol that made sure they never saw my schedule without a sixty-second buffer. Cat is different. She thrives on proximity and tension. She also makes herself indispensable, which is both infuriating and, in my worst moments, gratifying.

At the hour mark, Cat leans sideways to chase a pen that’s rolled to the edge of the table, and her purse tips over at her feet. Phone, lipstick, a snarl of charging cables. The ordinary debris of a life. But there, between a packet of mints and her wallet, something black and round catches the light.

It was no larger than a poker chip, with the faintest sheen of enamel. It could be any token but I know better. I designed the originals myself, years ago, after a long and reckless night in a club whose name I’ve never spoken above a whisper. I know that obsidian-black coin like I know my own fingerprint, the discrete weight, the beveled edge, the impossible shine. I know what it unlocks, and what it demands in return.

My body goes rigid. The pen in my hand freezes mid-stroke. The numbers on the screen blur into meaningless columns. My throat goes dry, mouth a landscape of salt and heat. I force myself to keep breathing, aware that I have never, not once in my life, lost composure in a meeting.

There’s a first time for everything, I suppose.

I watch Cat scoop up her purse, the motion fluid, practiced. Her eyes meet mine, and for half a second before looking away, the conversation in the room continues as if nothing has happened.

I endure the remaining minutes like a man trapped in quicksand. Every movement calculated, every breath measured against the risk of sinking deeper. Every time Cat shifts in her seat, I see that token, obsidian and slick, like a secret only we share. Only she has no idea. Every time she speaks, the words arrive delayed, as though filtered through layers of static. I try, desperately, to refocus on the spreadsheet, the budget, the thirty-seven action items that have to be resolved by end of day. I cannot.

I clench the pen so hard that the plastic cracks. No one notices except, of course, Cat. She raises one eyebrow, the faintest arc of inquiry, then resumes her scribbling.

By the time I dismiss the team, I’m running on pure muscle memory. The room clears quickly, leaving Cat to gather her things last, as she always does. I want to ask her, demand, really, where she got the token, if she knows what it means, if she’s ever used it. But I say nothing. Words are an admission, and I don’t admit things, least of all to her.

She pauses at the door, glancing back with a hint of a smile. “Will you need me for the Zurich call?” she asks.

“Yes,” I say, and my voice is almost steady.

She nods, then vanishes into the corridor, leaving a faint trace of perfume and chaos in her wake.

I sit at my desk, hands folded, replaying the image of Cat’s open purse and the black enamel token nestled inside. I know what it looks like. I know, statistically, the likelihood of an identical object. Near zero. But I cannot allow myself to trust even my own perceptions; I dig for alternate hypotheses. Maybe it’s a USB stick. A commemorative coin.

I try to work. There’s a contract on my monitor, a multinational data retention agreement that I can normally dissect in thirty minutes. Today, every sentence is a labyrinth. I review the same paragraph three times and still can’t say with certainty what it promises or prohibits. My brain, always sharpest when parsing ambiguity, is suddenly nothing but noise.

Across the glass wall, I can see Cat at her desk. Every time she shifts in her chair, every time she leans in to type or flips a page, I find myself searching for some tell. A scar. A catch in the voice. Anything that would betray a double life. But she is flawless, as always.