She’ll be my target for these couple of weeks and then she’ll beg me to let her go.
Little Miss Bitch will wish she’d turned around and ran the moment she saw me in my office.
I impatiently wait until she’s engrossed in the file again, then I lift my phone and press the button that connects me to her.
A slight jump lifts her shoulders and she purses her lips before picking up. To give her credit, she sounds welcoming. Soft, too. “Weaver & Shaw, Daniel Sterling’s office, how may I help you?”
“Are you finished with the contract?”
She stiffens visibly, steals a glance at me through the shutters, then stares back at her desk. “I’ll be done with it in a few.”
“A few isn’t a time frame. You should’ve been done with that ten minutes ago. Just like you should’ve brought me coffee three minutes earlier this morning. If my lunch is also late, don’t bother coming back. Are we clear, Ms. Adler?”
She pauses for a few seconds, probably to get her bearings. She’s clenching one of her fists on the pile of papers and grabbing the phone so tight, her knuckles look white.
It must be so humiliating to go from being the queen bee of the school to becoming an assistant. To go from wearing name brands and putting on premium perfume to buying cheap clothing from the store.
She was the type of bitch who walked all over those weaker than her with her designer heels while carrying her Dior bag. The type who smiled but never meant it because she excelled at being a fake, ugly monster who looked sweet like peaches but was rotten on the inside.
Considering what I know about her, I’d have sworn she would’ve cracked by now. She would’ve called me a “bloody idiot” like she did back then and walked out.
Her pride comes before everything. Even when she fell from grace and her mother was no longer in the picture, she never lowered her head or acted like a victim.
Never.
So the fact that she’s been keeping up with my ludicrous commands and harsh treatment is strange, to say the least.
It’s almost as if it’s not the same Nicole from back then.
“Yes, sir,” she says after a while.
My chest expands, then constricts in equal measure. I shouldn’t be feeling this fucking conflicted about the way she calls me “sir” when I intended to break her down with it, but fuck me, I’m not used to it.
Not one bit.
And I’m not sure whether that’s a good or a bad thing.
“I need that file in five minutes. If there are any mistakes, you’re fired.”
I hang up and pretend to focus on the screen of my computer. I can see her from my peripheral vision snapping the phone in place and glaring at me.
When I lift my head, she tactfully slides her attention back to the files.
I retrieve my phone, then I send her a series of tasks via text, separately.
Go to the IT department and get me a tech.
I need the draft for the Miles contract in thirty minutes.
Lunch in sixty minutes.
Another coffee in eighty minutes.
Book a meeting with Judge Harrison today.
Cancel golf this Sunday and come up with a good excuse.
Prepare a birthday gift for the mayor’s son.
Another coffee in two hundred minutes.
Any failure to perform these tasks and you’re fired.
She clenches her fist every time her phone dings or vibrates. I continue doing it on purpose to distract her.
What? I said I would play, not that I would play fair.
I toy with her, scattering her attention every few seconds. She has to check the phone, then go back to the document, flip back a page, look at the phone again, and so on.
Her cheeks turn red and I swear she’s about to stand up and storm in here—or storm out.
Before she can do so, the door to her office opens and my friend, Knox, appears in the threshold.
We both came from London after secondary school, even though I’m one year older than him.
Knox and I studied law together at Harvard, passed the bar together, and got into Weaver & Shaw at the same time. He specializes in criminal law, though, because he loves dealing with criminals.
He’s a freak like that.
Recently, he was the counsel of one of the parties in a public trial that got the media’s full attention. It had his own personal drama involved as well, but he came out of it even stronger than before. The fucker.
Anyway, Knox never knocks, but he also rarely pays attention to my assistants.
Today, he does.
My friend pauses at the threshold and gives Nicole a once-over. Since he came to our secondary school right after she left, she doesn’t recognize him.
But he recognizes her.
Perfectly so.
In fact, a sly grin paints his lips as he stalks toward her.
I stand up, letting my phone fall to the desk before I march toward the door. The moment I open it, I hear the sadism in Knox’s tone. “My, my, who do we have here?”
“Excuse me?” Nicole asks incredulously.
“Knox,” I call his name with a coolness I don’t feel.
He gives me a mischievous grin. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your new…blonde assistant?”
I don’t miss the way the fucker emphasizes the word “blonde” and I’m about to use his tactics about “how to get away with murder” against him.
Nicole, however, seems confused more than anything else. All her earlier irritation has disappeared, too.
I grab Knox by the shoulder. “You, come with me.”
He reaches into his jacket, retrieves his card, and puts it in front of Nicole. “My name is Knox Van Doren. Call me if you need anything, Ms.…”
“Adler,” she says. “Nicole Adler.”
“And the mystery woman finally has a name.” Knox smiles wide like a bloody twat and I resist smacking him upside the head and revealing my reaction to the whole situation. “Call me.”
Before she can grab the card, I swiftly lift it and bark at her, “You have five minutes for that report.”
Then I pull Knox with me into the office and lower the shutters, blocking her and her slightly bemused, slightly frustrated expression out of view.
After clenching and unclenching my fist, I face Knox, who’s made himself at home and is sitting on the sofa.
His legs are spread wide and he has his arm thrown nonchalantly over the back of the sofa. That fucking grin is still plastered on his face that’s begging to be punched with a professional boxer’s strength.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Me?” He feigns innocence, searching behind him for someone else. “I haven’t done anything except for introducing myself ever so casually.”
“Stay out of this, Knox.”
“Afraid your mystery girl will choose me? Oh, wait. She’s not a mystery anymore. Her name is Nicole and she’s a bombshell.”
“First of all, fuck you. Second of all, this has nothing to do with you, so go wank the nearest pole.”
“Thanks for the image, but I’m going to have to decline. I’m happily engaged and don’t need your disgusting methods.”
“Congratulations for being a twat. Now, can you screw off, please? Some of us have to work.”
“Didn’t seem like it when you were watching her like Radiohead’s “Creep.””