The Boss(hole) by Penelope Bloom
Juliette
Coleton Central took up the top six floors of an eighty-story building in Manhattan. In many ways, the branch of Coleton was my father’s pride and joy. It was where he directed all the feelings and energy a normal parent would’ve given their children. Fittingly, the night of the masquerade ball was my first time seeing it.
The place stirred up unexpected feelings in me. I was glad I had a mask to wear to stop Adrian from being able to read the pain in my features.
We took the elevator to the top two floors of Coleton Central, which had been temporarily converted for the party. The place was lavish. Geometric lines seemed to be a theme of the decoration, from the patterns on plush rugs to even the way little slits of lights zig-zagged across the ceiling. The centerpiece of the large room was a dizzying expanse of windows with a breath-taking view of New York City.
I pictured my father standing there in the quiet hours of the morning with his hands behind his back, filled with pride.
“You okay?” Adrian asked. He was wearing a white mask that covered his eyes and nose, which forced all my attention on his ridiculously perfect jawline and mouth. I barely noticed the crowded room full of masked guests until then. I’d been so distracted by the room—by being here. A man in a suit was playing a piano. Leave it to my father. I imagined he’d had the piano brought in by crane—probably forcing him to temporarily remove the huge windows. It would’ve been an excessive, insane expense, and he was probably enjoying bragging about it to everyone here tonight.
That’s what happened when men had billions of dollars. They had to get creative to find new ways to waste their money, and the more excessive the waste, the more impressed their friends would be.
“I’m fine,” I said.
“Fine is code for not okay,” Adrian said. He put a gentle hand on my arm, guiding me to stand by the large windows where the crowd was thinner. “Talk to me.”
I shook my head. I didn’t want to admit what I was feeling. It felt childish to be jealous of a building, if that’s what I was even feeling. But I could see Adrian’s eyes behind the mask, and I felt comfortable with that gaze that had intimidated me so much when we first met. There was a freedom in the way he looked at me. It felt like unconditional acceptance, which was something I didn’t think I’d ever experienced before.
“I guess I’m just seeing another side of my father here. All I ever saw were the glimpses of him storming through the house or glaring over the dinner table every few weeks. But this is where it really happened. Where he really was, I guess. It just makes me wonder if the real him ever actually left this place, or if it was always here, you know?”
Adrian pulled me closer, hugging me to his chest. I had on a backless black dress and a white mask that covered most of my face except for a little section of my mouth. His hands felt good against my bare back. I wished I didn’t have the itchy mask on for just a few minutes so I could sink into the embrace and let his comfort bleed into me.
“We can leave,” he said simply.
“This is a work thing for you.” I pulled back, frowning up at him even though he probably couldn’t see the expression through the mask.
“And you’re personal to me. That matters more than work.”
My breath caught. The Adrian Terranova I’d known so far didn’t think anything was more important than work. As much as the sentiment flattered me, it also scared me. He was near the finish line of a ten-year race. I didn’t want to be the reason he tripped at the end. I admired his goal, and I agreed with it. I wanted to see him finish this.
“No,” I said. “You were already making a sacrifice bringing me here, and I’m not going to make you drag me home. I can handle it. It’s just strange being back in this world. I’d probably recognize half of these people if they took off their masks.”
“You’re absolutely sure you want to stay?”
“One hundred percent.”
Adrian smiled. “Okay, then come with me. Tonight, you’re playing my girlfriend.”
“That’s going to be a tricky place to try to get my mind, but I’ll do my best,” I said, voice dripping with sarcasm.
“And,” he added. “Your job is to pull me out of conversations when I give you my signal.”
“What’s your signal?”
“I’ll say ‘um.’”
“That’s it? What if you say ‘um’ by accident?”
“I don’t say anything by accident,” he said.
I rolled my eyes as I followed him back into the crowd of guests, but still found myself smiling. It felt good to have a job again. To be Mr. White’s assistant, in some form. Except now I guessed I was Mr. Terranova’s assistant, even if nobody here knew him by that name.
I got to cling to his arm and follow him as he made his way around the room. For a man I’d initially seen as an impersonal rock, he was surprisingly good at this.
He touched people on their shoulders and forearms in a natural way that got them smiling early. He asked about kids and friends, remembering names in a way that seemed supernatural. He had to have only known some of these people for days at most, but he was asking about nieces and cousins or family reunions people had coming up.
I could see now how he’d climbed so quickly everywhere he went. Adrian could be an absolute charmer when he wanted to.
I nudged him after we finished talking to a large group of people that were still chuckling from a joke Adrian had told. “Where did that come from?”
Adrian shrugged. “I’ve had a lot of practice at this. When people give out promotions or assign new team leaders, they tend to pick people they like. You’ve got to have a good track record of getting the job done, but they’ll forget about the quiet one who nails every assignment. This is a necessary evil,” he said. “Be a cold prick to the ones who work under you. Charm the ones above you. That’s the recipe for endless promotions.”
“How do you remember all those names?” I asked.
Adrian grinned, then turned his body to block his hands from the view of most of the room. He produced a small stack of notecards. Each was crammed with tiny handwriting and appeared to be a list of names with various facts. I looked at one and saw a family tree, favorite investments, department, political affiliation, and marital status as well as the fact that the man was apparently having an affair. There was even a note that the man had a dentist appointment tomorrow but was deathly afraid of getting his teeth worked on.
“Wow. I can’t decide if I’m impressed or creeped out.”
“Those emotions aren’t mutually exclusive. Why choose? If you’re wondering, the answer is ‘no.’ I didn’t stalk these people. I paid someone to do it for me.”
He nudged me with a small smile, then took me toward a pair of tall men. Adrian continued his rounds across the room, and I found myself absolutely mesmerized by seeing him in his element. I’d seen him behind his desk barking orders at me. I’d seen him berating employees. But this. This was where Adrian wove his real magic, I realized.
“Donald,” he said, laughing even though nothing funny had been said.
Both men still laughed, smiling at the infectiousness of Adrian’s smile and laugh, even behind the mask. “Good to see you,” Donald said, gripping Adrian’s arm and shaking his hand firmly.
“Listen,” Adrian said a few minutes later, as if he was sharing a candid secret. “I know getting the team to agree to change direction is going to be like pulling teeth, but we can handle it. You know what I say about dental work? Sedate the shit out of me and get it over with.”
Donald looked curious. “You know, there’s nothing I hate more than the dentist. I’ve never considered sedation.”
Adrian nodded. “They’ll do it even for a routine cleaning at some places. You can just call up and ask if it’s an option.” He shrugged, as if he didn’t realize how relevant his little factoid was to Donald, who had a dentist appointment tomorrow and was terrified. “Obviously we can’t give the web design team laughing gas, so we sedate them with bonuses. Nobody complains right after they get a bonus.”
Donald nodded. “We’ve got extra money in the coffers right now. There’d be enough to pull that off, certainly.”
Adrian nodded, and I had a feeling he knew exactly how much “money was in the coffers”. He gave Donald another friendly squeeze on the shoulder, then smiled. “If anybody asks me, it was your idea.”
Donald laughed richly. “You’re good people, Adrian.”
I could see from the glint in Donald’s eyes as we left that Adrian had completely won the man over. He’d probably go to war for Adrian if he ever needed it.
“You’re incredible at this,” I said.
Adrian fixed his tie. “But it builds up an appetite.”
“There’s a table with some appetizers over there.”
“I was thinking more about the all you can eat buffet,” he said.
I looked around. “I don’t see one of those.”
Adrian stepped closer. He put his hands on my hips and all the internal fireworks went off at once. My body’s reaction to him was instinctual. One touch and I was primed and ready to go.
“Is that a good idea?” I asked.
Before he could answer, a tall, broad man I recognized with or without the mask approached us. Almost everyone else was wearing a simple mask to cover the space around their eyes and a fraction of their nose. It was hardly a disguise and more of a decoration. My mask, I hoped, would function as a complete disguise because it covered much more of my face. I still had to fight the urge to lift my hands to my face and cower
“Mr. Coleton,” Adrian said, sticking his hand out for a handshake.
My father ignored the gesture. “I didn’t realize you would bring a friend,” my father said. He had a cold, craggy voice that was also soft enough to force people to quiet down to hear him. I always noticed how much power that understated voice gave him. Every word could feel like a threat, and nobody doubted he had the means to carry out any promise.
“This is Sandra,” Adrian said. It was the name we’d agreed upon, along with a backstory that we both knew so people couldn’t trip us up if it became an issue.
My father nodded. “Why don’t the two of you join me upstairs? I flew in my favorite chef from Tokyo. He’s cooking some wagyu steaks for us. You two need to try it, it’s delicious.”
“That sounds wonderful,” Adrian said. But he sounded stiffer than he had before. He was worried just like I was. I don’t think either of us had wanted to rub shoulders with my father for an extended period. Passing as a stranger behind a mask for a brief conversation was one thing but surviving a sit down meal without giving myself away would be another task entirely.
We went upstairs and moved away from the murmur of voices on the lower level. There was a half balcony section overlooking the party below. A chef had a cooktop set up where several men and women were sitting on stools with plates in front of them. People wordlessly moved and cleared three seats in a row when they saw my father approaching with us.
I winced when my father decided to sit right beside me. He was wearing a black feathered mask that covered his eyes and almost none of his long, hooked nose.
The chef set down some sizzling cuts of raw, marbled meat in front of us on the cooktop. It crackled, immediately releasing a delicious scent. He followed the meat with a few knobs of butter, which he tossed on the cooktop and followed with a pile of vegetables.
“So,” my father said. “I’ve heard from people I trust that Adrian here is very picky with his women. The rumor is he hasn’t so much as dated in years. I wonder what magical charm a creature would need to have to seduce him?”
I smiled. I did my best to modify my voice just enough that it wouldn’t sound faked but would hopefully fool my father. I’d practiced this with Adrian, but in my panic, I used a British accent instead of the slightly sultrier voice I’d worked on.
“I was in the right place at the right time,” I said.
“What part of England are you from?” my father asked. “You’ve got quite the unusual accent there. It sounds a little posh and street rat at the same time.”
I started to sweat. I knew my father well enough to know that almost nobody ever got something past him. He was shrewd to an absolute fault.
I could do this.
“We moved all around when I was a young… bloke,” I said. Dammit. I suddenly wished I’d watched way more British TV dramas. I could feel Adrain as tightly strung as a bow beside me.
My father’s mouth twitched into the suggestion of a smile. “I see. And how did you find your way to the States?”
“I interned for a business leadership program.” I made sure to pronounce “program” more like “pro-grum”. To my untrained ear, I sounded very British, but I could see the suspicion in my father’s prying eyes. “It wound up getting me connected to a man who was able to fly me over for a summer interning at Coleton in North Carolina. It went well enough that I decided to come make the change permanent.”
“So you worked for Adrian at his North Carolina position?”
Shit. We’d specifically talked about not letting that little fact come to light and I’d just handed it to him.
“No, actually,” Adrian said. “She didn’t land the job with Coleton. She got hired at a place across the street, and we kept running into each other at the coffee shop between both buildings.”
That was good, I thought. But my father regarded Adrian icily. “When I ask someone a question, I expect the person I ask to answer. Don’t interrupt us again.”
My skin went cold. This was bad. My father suspected something and he had just risked pissing off Adrian. I halfway expected Adrian to burst out angrily, but I was surprised to see he looked completely calm and collected.
“Well,” I said. “I think Adrian liked me because I had a head for business like he does.”
“Is that so?” my father asked, laughing. It was clear from his tone that he thought the idea of a woman being able to contribute anything meaningful in his world was a grand joke.
“She’s brilliant,” Adrian said, risking my father’s wrath.
My father stared him down. I’d seen that stare a thousand times, and it always ended with the person on the other end studying the ground in defeat after a few seconds at most. But Adrian held his gaze, refusing to back down.
After several long, uncomfortable seconds, my father laughed again. “You’ve got balls, I’ll give you that.”
As if some silent test had been passed, my father relaxed and started working on the fried bread appetizer the cook had set in front of us. The bread was broken into little chunks and drizzled with a peach-colored sauce and a dark, sticky sweet sauce.
Adrian met my gaze, then winked. He slowly stirred up a conversation about business, and I listened in utter amazement as he worked his magic again. Except this time, it was my father he was charming, and I couldn’t remember ever seeing anyone make a good impression on my father.
“It was honestly genius,” Adrian said, wiping his mouth with the napkin and setting it down. “That was when I knew I wanted to be a Coleton man. Any company with that sort of leadership was where I needed to be.”
My father sat up a little straighter, looking pleased with himself. “The business world isn’t so different from the animal kingdom. Some people don’t see that. They think there’s room for us all to co-exist. But at Coleton, we are the lions. We use the carcasses of their failed businesses to grow more dominant. We will take any advantage we can to keep expanding and increasing our grip on the market.”
Adrian nodded, even though I could imagine the rage he probably felt boiling inside at that sentiment. “Exactly. It’s too bad Pulse is still out there.”
My father’s lip curled. Pulse was Coleton’s main competitor. They were a similarly minded company that had branched out into hundreds of submarkets. At the moment, they weren’t as large as Coleton, but they were growing faster than Coleton was and I’d heard my father rant about wanting to take them down dozens of times.
“Pulse is nothing,” my father said.
“I agree. But I know a guy who works there near the top. By the end of this month, they will be publicly traded.”
My father scratched his chin. “You’re sure about this?”
“Positive.”
“Does your friend know anything about how happy the shareholders and board of directors are with the leadership?”
“I’ll find out for you, Mr. Coleton,” Adrian said.
My father clapped him on the back, flashing a rare smile. “I think you and I are going to get along just fine, Adrian.”