Into My Arms - Lia Riley Page 0,2

empty eye ceaselessly staring.

Aleksander Zavtra: Clear Monday.

My jaw drops. I moved heaven and earth to arrange some of these meetings—the governor’s chief of staff is being flown into SFO on the company Learjet—and now poof! My brilliant effort is gone, erased without so much as a please or thank you.

Beth Jacobs: Are you sure?

I hit SEND and hold my breath. This is the first time I’ve ever directly questioned him, but good to double-check, because this is out of character. Z never cancels anything.

Another ping.

Aleksander Zavtra: And I need you tonight.

Immediately followed by:

I mean, to come back to the office. Ten o’clock.

I stare at my computer with mounting confusion. Something is going down, but what? No office rumors are circulating of anything afoot. Ugh, it’s not that I have big Friday night plans. Both my closest girlfriends, Talia and Sunny, are going to be holed up with their respective boyfriends all weekend as per usual. Still it would be nice to assume I did have something approximating a life.

But that’s not what I say because pretending to be professional is what keeps my paychecks coming. Besides, all I have planned is working on my proposal for next week, the one I’m submitting to the Zavtra Tech Ideas Circle. Besties is my app idea. It’s like Tinder, but for women to find friends, inspired by my own lack of a social life and because oddly, there is nothing like this on the market. Every other offering is too clunky. I really think Besties has a shot at…

Oh God, there’s that feeling again, the warm flash on my back as if someone’s gaze bores through the security camera. I can think about Besties later. For now, during working hours, Z owns me, body and soul.

Beth Jacob: I’ll be here. Anything else?

There is a delay, long enough that I figure he’s moved on to bossing someone else around. I’m reaching for my phone to get a head start on canceling the long list of meetings when there’s yet another ping.

Aleksander Zavtra: Ten o’clock. Do not forget.

Because why? I blow out a frustrated breath. What the heck is going on?

There are times, like now, when I have a mad impulse to hike up my pencil skirt, shove my thong to the side, bare myself to the camera, and slide my fingers over my pussy to try to elicit a reaction. Good or bad, I don’t care. Just a sign that a human exists behind those doors, a person made of flesh and blood.

I might be a minion, but I still matter.

I hate that he sits behind those doors and never invites me in.

I hate Katya, his oversized meathead bodyguard with the dragon neck tattoo.

And I hate his fish.

Yeah, I might hate his fish most of all.

Koroleva swims in a floor-to-ceiling tank, trapped like me, except she is a platinum arowana, and according to Siri, the most expensive aquarium fish in the world. My first day on the job, I got an immediate PM from Z.

Do not touch the fish.

Not “Hello and thank you for filling in as my personal assistant after the last one fled with no notice and in a flood of tears.”

No “Let me provide you with an explanation of why I am asking you to move from the marketing department to an administrative role you have no experience or training in.”

But when the company’s god issues a command, who am I to say no?

And when said god orders you not to touch the fish?

You don’t.

But who touches a fish? The idea would never have even crossed my mind.

Until now.

Hmmmm.

Imagine being a fish worth close to a million dollars. I suppose I could try and steal her and sell her, then quit this job and move to a tiny island in the Caribbean, but “Eccentric Billionaire’s Beloved Fish, Seven Figures,” would be a hard Craigslist ad to place unnoticed.

Guess I’ll adjust Z’s schedule instead. And come back again tonight.

Head meet desk.

* * *

When I swing by home, there is lube on the coffee table. What the…? Gross. The cap is open and gel dribbles down the side like the tracks of an invisible snail. This Costco-sized bottle is suitable for a week at the Playboy Mansion or a Roman orgy, not a two-bedroom apartment in Palo Alto.

My roommate must have heard me fumbling outside for keys and beat it like Michael Jackson to his bedroom lair. That is, after beating it on my couch, which I’ll have to leave behind because there’s