Knocked Up By the Russian Boss by Bella King
Chapter 16
IVORY
With my laptop gone, I’m nearly climbing the walls with anxiety regarding my lost homework assignments. I could just go buy a new one, but the other one had all my assignments mapped out by due date and grade impact.
It took days to coordinate, and with my tendency towards procrastination, my work would never get done if I was left to fend for myself against the mounting stresses of the end of the term. Next semester’s classes depend on my ability to excel in my current ones.
My father has invited me to come to his house for dinner tonight, and I know I can probably just use his laptop to finish my work, or at least start some of it over again. I can’t depend on the school to be understanding of my circumstances, especially if they assume I was involved in the murder of their golden boy Chad.
I love my father, of course, but he’s just so … shallow. Everything he says and does has to relate to his political success in some form or another, lest he pitches a fit and ruins the night for everybody else.
For somebody who has everything he could ever want for centuries over, he sure does have a complex about not being the center of attention. I’m sure that if he heard me say that, he would chastise me and claim that my college has brainwashed me into feeling guilty for being successful.
As I’m getting ready for dinner, I choose a dark velvet dress and one of my more expensive perfumes. My father wasn’t involved in raising me much growing up; always too busy on the campaign trail. Because of this, he doesn’t view me as an adult, and he treats me as such. I feel as though I’ll be reminding him for the rest of my life that I’m a grown woman.
My father sent a car to pick me up, and it’s been humming away outside for twenty minutes while I’ve gotten ready. They can wait. I’m pretty sure they get paid by the hour anyway.
I’m still not quite finished with my hangover. These damn things seem to last longer every time, but I manage to quell my headache with another round of pills and a cold glass of water before I’m driven to the estate.
On arrival, walking through the main door of the huge estate feels stilted and formal, even though I grew up here. The service staff is always so quick to greet me as if I’m the ambassador of a hostile foreign country who will shoot you in the face if you don’t kiss my ass enough.
Meredith, my father’s new wife, teeters on her pink stilettos toward me as I enter the foyer. She’s hardly five years older than me, but she loves to pretend I’m her full-blown step-daughter.
Her meticulously styled blonde hair is gathered in the back of her head in a braided bun as if she’s standing up at a wedding instead of having dinner with her geriatric husband. Her excessively tanned skin contrasts loudly with the bright pink of her dress, matched perfectly with her shoes to the point that I doubt she wears them with anything else.
“Hi, sweetie! How was the town car? Was it alright?” Meredith chirps, leading me into the dining room as if I hadn’t lived here for eighteen years before she moved in. She gestures towards the outside, and the square cut of her wedding ring makes her finger look like it’s fatter than all the rest. She would probably kill herself if she gained enough weight to outgrow her wedding ring.
When we enter the dining room, my father is already right at the head of the table being served despite there not even being a place set for Meredith or me yet.
“Ivory, how are you doing?” he says, getting up from his chair in anticipation of me walking towards him for a hug instead of meeting me halfway. I do love him, but he’s so oblivious.
“I’m alright. Still a little shaken up from what happened,” I reply.
One of the in-house servers rushes over to me and sets a place for me at the table, nearly shaking as she apologizes for daring to be so late. I assure her that nothing is wrong, but she appears apprehensive and uncomfortable regardless.
“Right, that poor boy. You know, his father and I were talking about trying to set you up,” he says as he cuts into a bloody steak. “We thought you two could be a massive power couple.”
The thought of dating Chad makes me want to retch, even despite his recent death. He was an awful person, but he expressed interest in politics at some point in the not-so-distant past, which made him an instant golden child to my father, completely devoid of responsibility for his actions and untouchable in the eyes of the law.
“Yeah, okay,” is all I can say. Meredith picks at a salad that has been presented to her, clearly a part of some crash diet that she believes will change the whole trajectory of her life. Just ten more pounds, and then her life will be complete.
“I mean, it’s just devastating what happened, and you know that the news media is going to try and spin the whole situation into some kind of witch hunt against young men like Chad,” he continues, despite my complete lack of interest in discussing the situation further. “It’s like a minefield out there for us men.”
Meredith nods her head in firm agreement, giving me another reason not to move on from my curt disdain of her. She would chop off her own arm and give Osama Bin Laden a handjob with it if it would win her the approval of the greater male populace.
I refuse to respond. A short woman by the name of Anita slips a plate of food in front of me, though I don’t feel well enough to eat after such a nauseating topic of conversation.
“I need to do some homework while I’m here. I left my laptop in my friend’s car, and she’s driving to Colorado right now,” I lie. None of my friends would ever drive their own cars more than a hundred miles, but I couldn’t think of anything more believable on the spot.
“Oh, well, that’s fine, do you need another one? That one was almost a year old. There are definitely better models out there now,” my father says between sips of bourbon. His inference that a one-year-old laptop is somehow unusable reminds me of how far removed he is from the real world.
He clears his throat. “You know, sweetheart, I really think you should be careful about who you talk to regarding the situation with Chad. His father is out for blood and is trying to track down the names of anybody who attended that party. So just … be vigilant, okay?”
My blood runs cold. What could his father be trying to accomplish? Is he going to silence the victims of his son? Is he going to go after the guys who started the fight? Would I be implicated in the murder somehow?
I remember Maxim, how he came to check on me, how he told me he would try to get my laptop back from the police. If I’m in trouble, would I want to have someone like him on my side? I’d certainly feel safer, even if he is a little bit shady. The idea of him protecting me in the face of danger warms me all over.
I’ll heed my father’s warning, but only because I have a way to do so. Without Maxim, I’d be little more than a sitting duck. My father might warn me of the dangers that loom, but he wouldn’t do much to protect me. He’s too concerned with politics and apparently trying to hook me up with detestable men.
I dab my lips with a napkin despite not having eaten anything. It’s time to excuse myself and get to work. Homework won’t do itself.
