Stepping back into the bedroom, I shake out my jacket and slip it on. This fine Tuesday sees me swapping my braid for loose hair and my Mango linen shirtdress for a pair of black pencil pants and a sleeveless cream shell. And the jacket, of course.
I slip on my shoes and study my reflection in the mirror.
It’s just a job, I intone, pulling on my lapels. Whatever today brings, it has to be better than waiting tables at the Pussy Cat any day of the week. It’s not like I’m doing anything critical. I’m not brokering peace in Yemen, for goodness’ sake.
‘I can do this.’ My reflection looks back at me, unconvinced. ‘I have a super-hot boss that I’ve had sex with. Things could be worse.’
15
Remy
‘Why don’t I just bend over for you? Right here over this desk. We’ll just get it over and done with here and now, and you can just shove it hard up my ass.’
Stifling a sigh, I allow my eyes to wander around the room. The panelled walls. The elaborate drapes. The mid-century decanter sitting on the credenza near the door. The glass that has already been used today. My gaze slides to my watch. Barely ten o’clock.
‘Because, let me tell you, by my age, I ought to know the difference between being on the receiving end of an enema and being royally fucked over.’
‘Monsieur Hayes, please.’ Pelletier, the newest member of my legal team, uses a conciliatory tone, unused to the brash address of a man on the edge. ‘There really is no need for such vulgarity.’
‘Fuck off and fuck you,’ the American retorts. ‘This is my office, and I’ll say what goes in here. Anyway, I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to him.’
I bring my bored gaze back to the men sitting at the head of the table. The grandson being groomed to take over looks like a Californian surfer. The other points an arthritic finger my way. ‘There’s no way you’re getting your hands on this company. I’ll raze it to the damn ground before it comes to that.’
‘Mr Hayes, I understand your frustration. You requested finance, finance that has been denied to you, and now your operation is in dire straits.’
‘Because you’re in cahoots with the bank!’
To a certain degree, this is true, not that I’ll admit it. ‘I am the solution, not the problem.’
‘You’re a parasite—’
‘Grandfather, stop.’ His hand grasps the older man’s arm, his eyes burning with contempt as his gaze swings my way. Contempt and revenge.
‘You should listen to Hayes, the younger.’
‘And you should kiss my ass. You chop up companies and feast on their bones before swallowing them down. And for what? Just to say Remy Durrand owns the South of France?’
Why stop at just the South of France?
‘You don’t have the funds to pay for the shipment of steel,’ I continue, examining an invisible tear in one of my fingernails. ‘Your workforce is about to put down their tools and walk away because they know, as well as you know yourself, as well as the industry knows, you will struggle to pay them this coming Friday. The media will circle like sharks. Your share price will plummet and along with it, your good name.’ A good name with a dirty past. A past that is entwined with my own, as it turns out.
‘We only need a couple of million to see us through ’till the end of the month and your friends at the bank have nullified our line of credit. You’re strangling us, Durrand. I hope your father is turning in his grave.’
‘I hope so, too.’
‘We were friends, him and me!’
‘I very much doubt that.’
Carson Hayes is proof that God has a sense of humour. Wizened and bent, the man is riddled with cancer and has been for years. Yet my father, as fit and as sleek as a racehorse, was struck down by a common illness in his prime.
I’m sure God is the only one laughing.
‘We had an agreement.’ The old man’s voice shakes with ill-suppressed anger. ‘We shook on it.’
‘I also shook my dick last time I took a piss.’ Next to me, Pelletier stiffens. ‘It doesn’t mean I’m making friends. And then there is the matter of the documents I have in my possession.’
‘What documents?’ His grandson’s gaze volleys back and forth between us, though neither of us pay him attention in return.
‘Photographs. Unsavoury photographs, along with a video, I’m told. One from