How to slay at work, p.23
How to Slay at Work, page 23
Lissa needs to feel, when this is all done, that justice has been served. She needs to think that someone somewhere made them suffer in a way commensurate with their crimes against her personally. This will be her closure. Her chance to move on. If she doesn’t get that then all this is for nothing.
You see, vengeance is about the wrongdoer getting what they deserve. Or at least that is what vengeance should be to any vaguely normal and well-adjusted individual. A month ago, Freya turned on me in that hotel room in Barcelona. That was when I realised the truth about her. It wasn’t enough that Gregory was dead, even though drowning is a frankly terrible way to die. She needed to have been the one holding the knife. For Freya, it was about killing. But, thankfully, Lissa is nothing like Freya.
I could have told her what I was going to do. I could have told her I was going to kill them and buy our freedom that way. But I know how she would look at me, the pain in her eyes as she looks at the woman who replaced the frightened little girl and sees a killer instead. She wouldn’t forgive me. It’s bad enough that I will never forgive myself without losing her in the process. She can never know what happens.
Back when we were still basically children, we discussed the idea of killing them – more than once if we’re honest about it – when the nights were cold and dark and sleep eluded us. And then we went on holiday when we were twenty, to a little hotel in the icy desert of Swedish Lapland. Fuelled by aquavit and the sheer fucking desolation of the place, we plotted the ultimate demise of the two men who had tried to destroy the both of us and very nearly succeeded. But in the light of the morning, we had shrugged off the blanket of our steaming hangovers and made a new plan.
‘We will not stoop to their level. To their savagery,’ Lissa had said. ‘They will pay, but not in cruelty.’
‘How then?’ I’d asked.
By this time Serendipity was a multi-million-dollar business empire. Lissa had looked at me, a glint in her eye. ‘They took what we loved. We will do the same. We’ll destroy their passion. The thing they consider their lives’ work.’
‘Serendipity?’
‘Yep.’
‘How?’ I asked. We spent the rest of the holiday making a plan. One of us had to get a job with the company and I was the one who’d got good enough grades to get into a decent university. The next semester I started to knuckle down and ended up with a first-class degree. A summer of interning helped to make me eminently employable, and eventually I was in a position to try to get promoted up the Serendipity ranks.
I had thought it would be enough: to infiltrate them, become one of them, and then tear it all down from the inside. I revelled in the idea of sabotaging the company and leaving them sitting in the ruins of their empire. In my head the plan took on an almost mythical quality, with Lissa and me standing in judgement over their sins.
It was what got me through the bad times. The days when I wanted to walk out of the building and tell them where they could stick their stupid fucking shitty little job. You know what it’s like, don’t you? To be stretched to breaking point and only hang in there because of necessity. Because you need to pay your rent and your bills and afford to eat, because you want a better future, because you studied too long and too hard to get here and no one is going to bully you, god damn it! Because you deserve to be taken seriously and treated with some respect and you know that if you quit now you’ll only have to start again at the beginning. Since when has a career been an exercise in if you can reach a high enough level before you snap? Perhaps the desire for revenge is what made me strong enough to make it to Bid Manager.
But then I realised who I was really working for. I don’t mean Serendipity, I mean Freya Ellwood-Winter.
Stone cold bitch.
Serial killer.
Icon.
She has showed me what’s possible if you unleash some of the anger. If you allow the animal inside to break free for just a little time. I’m going to kill Liam and Connor and I’m going to revel in the fact it happens by my own hand.
But then I will stuff the predator back into her cage, lock the door on that side of myself. And finally I will draw a line under the girls we were. Laura West and Mel Anders. Lissa and I can move on, leave the past behind us and become the people we want to be. Will I stay at Serendipity? Take advantage of this Women in Power programme and ask for a promotion? Or shall I leverage it to get a better job, take Lissa somewhere different, like New York? We could be proper city girls who live in Manhattan and shop at Macy’s and eat pizza by the slice and bagels loaded with cream cheese.
‘Millicent?’ Connor pulls me back to the present, with a concerned look and a hand snaking round my waist in a way that makes my skin crawl. I force myself not to pull away from him and scratch his eyes out for being so fucking revolting.
‘Sorry!’ I affect a sing-song tone that rings in my ears, mocking me. ‘I was miles away!’
‘It’s a bit much, all of this,’ he says, waving around the opulent room. ‘All this glitz and noise and every woman sharpening her nails.’ He laughs at his own joke and inside I curl my lip. He leans in, his breath tickling the skin on my neck. ‘It’s the same every year. Liam and I joke about this being less Women in Power and more Jealous Bitches in Power-suits.’ He laughs like a braying donkey.
‘Oh I’m sure everyone is here to support each other,’ I say, with a smile.
It makes him laugh harder, and he flaps a hand as if to say give me a moment to pull myself together. It wasn’t even funny. But I guess that’s the problem with men like this; women always laugh at their jokes and their worlds become distorted. Like that time Elon Musk took an actual sink to the Twitter office and said ‘Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in’, like he was a comedy genius and not a weird little kid who had bought the entire fairground because some of the more popular kids told him he wasn’t allowed on one of the rides.
Connor composes himself and then replaces his arm around my waist, turning me round to face a group of women standing in a huddle a few metres away. ‘You see them?’ he asks, not waiting for my response. ‘They’re your competition. The women who stand between you and a seat at the big boys’ table.’
‘Shouldn’t that be the big girls’ table?’ I ask, sweetly.
He doubles over in mirth again. I want to kick him in the balls. ‘You’re adorable,’ he says eventually, straightening back up. ‘They’re all watching, you know?’ he whispers in my ear. ‘Can you tell? They pretend to be chatting, asking each other about their lives, their husbands, kids, cats. Making polite small talk about university and graduate schemes. But all they can think about is how my hand is on your waist, my words in your ear, my attention on you alone.’
‘Why me?’ I ask softly.
‘Because you’re not like them.’
My hackles go up, the hairs on the back of my neck standing to attention. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You’re different. I can see exactly who you are, Millicent.’ He sweeps my hair across my shoulder and I stand stock still, unable to move as his words linger around us.
I want to ask him what he means by that. Does he know who I am? Who I was once upon a time as he kicked dirt in my face. Is this whole thing over before it’s even begun, the plan foiled before I can watch the pain dance in his eyes?
His fingers spider down towards my hip and I hold my breath, waiting for his punchline, for the world to crash around me. ‘You’re vulnerable,’ he says. ‘A fragile doll.’ The way he says fragile makes me feel sick. ‘But you’re also fierce and feisty and brilliant.’ He leans down, his lips just millimetres from my ear. ‘You see now? How your rivals watch?’
I can sense their eyes have turned to me.
‘They’re jealous. I’ve chosen you, Millicent. Because you’re special. Because you’re everything I want.’
‘I…’ I try to respond but he’s so close I can feel his breath on my skin.
‘Shhhh,’ he whispers. ‘You don’t need to say any more.’
I close my eyes, force myself to be strong. He doesn’t know who I am. He’s just a man who can’t help himself. All he cares about is that I’m his chosen one. He never even stops to consider if I choose him in return.
I hate this and I hate him and I hate myself for acting like a simpering bimbo. But haven’t we always done this? Or rather, been forced to do this? Trade ourselves for the satisfaction of some guy who hoarded all the resources and will only share if we compel him to? I look around the room at all the painted women and sub-par men. This is meant to be a business party, a meeting of equals, a collection of some of the best minds in Serendipity. But it might as well be the court of some distant king demanding everyone preen for his personal amusement.
‘This is boring me,’ Conner says, waving a hand around the room. ‘Shall we have a smaller gathering upstairs with just a select few of us?’ He nods his head towards his brother and a handful of others.
‘Getting away from all the people watching sounds like an excellent plan.’ I tell him and he grins at me.
‘Oh yes, I think I’m going to enjoy a more intimate party.’
The way he says intimate is terrifying.
Oh, how I am going to enjoying killing you.
36
Liam and Connor have taken the Grand Suite and it sprawls across the upper floor of one of the hotel wings.
Three bedrooms. Four bathrooms. Cream carpet so thick my heels sink into the pile. Silk upholstery on the multitudinous sofas and armchairs in elegant shades of duck-egg blue and grey. Heavy dark wood furniture with a twist of Scandinavian elegance. Lamps dotted all over, casting soft shadows across the space.
Apparently it’s considered to be one of the most luxurious suites on the west coast. I’d tell you how much it costs if I had any idea, they don’t exactly put the price on their website.
Freya excuses herself to make a call, her eyes meeting mine for a split second. There’s something in the look I don’t quite understand. Sadness? Maybe even longing? I don’t know. But it makes me think of betrayal.
And then I look at the scene through her eyes. Try to see what she sees, think what she thinks. That last part is quite frankly terrifying given what I know about Freya and what I’ve seen her do recently. But here we are, at a private party with the two most powerful men in the company, men who could make or break us.
It hits me, smacking me in the face with the force of a sledgehammer.
How could I have been so stupid?
I’ve been thinking about this like we’re out here to do some vigilante shit. But she has nothing against these men. So why is she here helping me?
She isn’t.
Of course she isn’t. She’s here because there’s something in it for her.
I turn to where she’s standing, watching her lips move as she speaks to someone on the other end of the phone. She catches me watching and turns away slightly. I feel the pieces shift into place.
When I kill Liam and Connor, I will create a corporate storm. These men think they’re invincible, untouchable; they believe they will live forever. I would bet everything I have on them not leaving behind a robust succession plan that transfers power to pre-selected and carefully vetted individuals. It will be a bun fight. And Freya knows it’s going to happen, she’ll already have begun to move her own pieces. How far is she planning on leaping up the corporate ladder in the midst of the chaos? Earlier I saw her whispering in the ear of the current VP of Sales; he would be my best bet as a new CEO, leaving that VP role empty, all ready for an ambitious Freya Ellwood-Winter to slide into.
Fuck!
I whisper it out loud as the puzzle zooms out and the rest of the picture comes into focus.
She’s setting me up.
They will say I’m a lone ranger.
But how many murders will she try to lay at my door?
Lawrence Delaney. Will she suggest it wasn’t an accident? Suggest the German police look at the CCTV of who exited from Starnberg S-Bahn station that fateful evening?
Kai Helve. I didn’t leave the hotel in Helsinki. Struck down by a stomach upset that lasted a full twenty-four hours. But do I have any proof of that?
Jim Handley. I created her alibi myself when I claimed to be her to collect that necklace when he was killed. Where will she say I was?
Ruben Chambers. I was meeting with the Martin twins from C’est Magnifique when he died. But how accurate is a time of death? Is there a way she can say I killed him before I went to dinner?
Cody Gelber and Ethan Donahue and Spencer Balmforth?
Or she could just make sure I’m killed in the crossfire.
It feels like time slows to nothing, the world suspended in a moment that reaches from here to eternity. The temperature drops noticeably and goosebumps appear across my forearms.
I can’t breathe.
Something is about to happen.
I excuse myself from Conner and the others, desperate to find a way out of this mess. Just off the kitchenette I find one. The hand that smashes the glass of the fire alarm doesn’t feel attached to my body; I see it as if it belongs to another, even though the scar on my thumb is the same one I’ve looked at for two decades. There’s a pause as I look at it, marvelling at the exquisite beauty of the puckered skin.
And then the ceiling erupts with a high-pitched beep. Three in a row and then a moment of silence. The three beeps repeat and pandemonium breaks loose.
We congregate outside the front of the hotel, standing on the cobbled driveway beside the fountain, staring up at the cream stone facade with ornate black Juliette balconies.
The air is still hot, the humidity of the summer night high. Around us people are milling about in various states of dress, woken from sleep and hurried outside into the midst of collective confusion. A rumour goes round that someone is trapped inside. That the fire is real. That there’s smoke filling the corridors. Suffocating.
The sound of fire trucks in the distance intensifies the whispering around me.
Connor is pissed off. ‘No one will tell us anything, for fuck’s sake,’ Something akin to a growl escapes his lips. He hates not getting his own way. ‘What are we meant to do?’
Liam comes over. ‘What’s happening?’ He says it like he expects his brother to have the answers.
‘I don’t know,’ Connor tells him.
‘Fucking ridiculous,’ Liam says and stalks off to shout at some poor underpaid person who has no ability to do anything other than listen to him. I feel bad about it, I’ve been that person and I hate that I’ve contributed to making their shitty shift even shittier.
And their night is only going to get worse. There’s a group of guys behind me bitching about how they should have gone to Vegas instead of ‘this shithole’. ‘Heads are going to roll when my father finds out about this,’ one of them says and the others cheer. Pricks.
Ten minutes later Liam is back. He’s angry, I can see it shimmering just underneath his skin. ‘There’s no fucking fire,’ he says.
‘Then why did the fire alarm go off?’ Connor demands.
‘How the fuck do I know?’ Liam replies.
‘I would have assumed you asked?’
Liam huffs and disappears again to find out. Seeing the two of them like this is fascinating. I don’t think I’d really appreciated before that Liam was such a lapdog, literally doing whatever Connor commands as if he were his master. I’ve always put the whole blame for what happened to Lissa at Liam’s door. But what influence did Connor have. What did he tell Liam to do?
‘Some fucker set off the fire alarm,’ Liam says as he returns to us. ‘The firemen say it was the one inside our suite.’
‘An accident?’ I ask, innocence personified.
Liam shrugs. ‘I don’t know. But whoever it was has ruined it all. What a fucking disaster.’ He motions around himself to us standing in front of the hotel. It’s completely melodramatic; it’s hardly the end of the world. Besides, if I was right, he was going to die this evening. We all were. Not that his reprieve will last long.
Half an hour later, an announcement is made that we’re allowed back inside. But the party atmosphere has gone.
‘I’m going to head to my room,’ I say loudly, making sure Freya hears me as well.
‘You want to continue where we were?’ Connor says, his eyes hungry.
‘We have a long day tomorrow,’ I remind him, trying to inject a little flirtation into my voice. I want to get away from him but I can’t piss him off. ‘But perhaps in the evening?’ I raise an eyebrow and he grins back. ‘Maybe somewhere a little more… fun?’
‘Fun? Do you have somewhere in mind, Millicent Brooks?’
The pricks moaning about Vegas have given me an idea. A way to take control of the situation and put myself on the front foot against Freya.
I was going to try to be subtle, but I’m too tired to play games. I lean closer to Connor, eyes locked on his, and bite my bottom lip softly. ‘Well, I have always wanted to go to Vegas.’ I raise my voice slightly as I say Vegas, making sure that Liam hears.
‘Oh yeah! Vegas, baby!’ Liam shouts, stretching his arms out like the fucking messiah. I think he may have taken a bump of something, there’s so much nervous energy coming from him. I knew he’d like the idea of a Vegas trip, he’s been rumoured to have a problem with gambling, but it’s hardly uncommon in his circle.
‘Well, I guess we’re going to Vegas then,’ Freya says. She shoots me a quizzical look and I shoot my own message back. One that tells her this is a good thing: an opportunity for us both. But really it’s because I need to keep one step ahead of her. Control the narrative. Avoid becoming a victim here.
As we file back inside the hotel, I look behind me to the people still milling around out front. A flash of auburn catches my attention and my heart snags. He’s facing away from me, but the man reminds me so much of Kieran, the same broad shoulders and small waist, similar height, one hand running through his hair.
