Page 9 of Marcellus: House of Drakos

“I think I’m in love with Niko.”

“Sounds like a personal problem to me.”

“Miss Savannah that’s rude.”

“What’s rude about it? I told you that boy isn’t interested in anybody on his payroll. I told you and all those other models from day one not to go down that road with him. But y’all fall in love anyway.”

“But I know he’ll want me if you put in a good word for me.”

Savannah couldn’t do anything but shake her head.

It was as if every single one of those young models that dawned the doors of that fashion house were certain they could tame the boss and change his unchanging ways.

Savannah tried to warn them. Repeatedly she tried.

But they never listened to her. She was in her late thirties.

She was ancient in their eyes. What, as far as they were concerned, could she possibly tell them that they didn’t already know?

Now it was Charlene’s time to fall for Niko.

She was the newest new face who thought she could get anything she wanted in the fashion world.

There was no doubt she was in high demand.

And Savannah was certain she was thrilled when Niko’s agent contacted her agent.

But just because the world wanted her fresh face, and fashion houses wanted her fresh body, didn’t mean Niko wanted her. But she still wouldn’t listen.

“If you put in a good word for me then he’ll at least consider me. You’re his secretary. He thinks so highly of you, Miss Savannah. You’re like a mother to him.”

Savannah wanted to tell that child a thing or two.

Niko was a thirty-one-year-old man. She was only six years older than him.

Perhaps there were children somewhere that could have babies at six, but she wasn’t one of them.

“I’m nobody’s mother,” she said flatly. And wasn’t going to be, she wanted to add. But that was too depressing to add.

“You know what I mean, Miss Savannah,” Charlene said. “Just talk about me when you’re around him, that’s all I’m asking. Just say nice things about me. Pretty please?”

Savannah was behind her desk that sat just outside of Niko’s office. If Charlene only knew how many other models had walked through that door with similar pretty pleases for her to put a good word in for them too, then she’d see the fruitlessness of her request.

Besides, Savannah knew her place. She might have some serious power of persuasion over Niko in the eyes of those young models, but at the end of the day she was still only a secretary in a fashion house that was barely breaking even since Covid, and that was barely paying her a survivable wage.

She didn’t have it like they thought she had it.

And she wasn’t going to lie to them either. “If you want Niko, that’s between you and him. Keep me out of it,” she said bluntly to the latest model. She thought she was as clear as she could possibly be.

But just like all those other models, Charlene heard what she wanted to hear.

She smiled and hurried away as if it was all good and she just knew Savannah was going to do her bidding.

It was absurd, but that was the world of fashion.

They believed what they wanted to believe.

Which made fashion the land of make-believe.

Which went against everything Savannah stood for.

She often wondered how in the world did she ever agree to work in such a shallow profession in the first place, and stay as long as she had.

Not that she had excelled in it. Eleven years in and she was what she was when she first walked through those doors: a secretary. The secretary to the boss, yes, and the supervisor of the clerical department. But still a secretary.

But less than an hour later, just as she was pulling her purse out of her desk drawer to go get herself some lunch, she wasn’t even that anymore.

“You’re fired,” said drama king Alberto as he stood before her in his too-tight Nikolas Blaise suit with both of his meaty thighs seemingly knitted together and his long, fat hands resting on his thighs.

Savannah was accustomed to his antics. He didn’t like her and she didn’t like him. That was why she continued to pull her purse out of her desk drawer as she looked up at him.

Since he didn’t get the dramatic response he was hoping for, he said it again. “You’re fired.”

Alberto Bulard, the fashion director, was a man of few words, and none were ever encouraging. He stayed true to form as he stood in front of Savannah’s desk. “You are to be out of this office within the hour.”

But Savannah knew she misheard him. She was certain she heard him wrong. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me correctly the first time. The second time as well. Now this is my final time: You’re fired. You have an hour to get out.”

She knew he was a slimy bastard who never liked her close relationship with the boss, but even this was beneath him. “You’re firing me?”

“Finally she gets it. Yes, I am. You work at the pleasure of management.”

“That’s a lie. I work at the pleasure of Niko.”

“You work at the pleasure of management,” he said again louder, causing others in the suite of offices to look at them.

“I am your direct supervisor whether you have accepted that fact or not. But your lack of respect for my position hasn’t changed the fact that I am in that position.

And as your direct supervisor, I can fire you at will.

And I just did. You have one hour to collect your things and go. ”

And with those powerful few words, he literally pirouetted around and walked away from her desk as if she suddenly had the plague.

The aides and models that were coming and going around her were as stunned as she was.

But nobody offered so much as an I’m so sorry to her.

They knew, if they supported her, that could be construed as their nonsupport of management.

And it was management that signed their checks.

They stayed away from her as if they believed she had the plague too.

Still stunned, Savannah quickly phoned Niko. But she had been phoning him for days even before Alberto fired her. And like all those times before, he didn’t answer her call once again. Which was so not like him.

She sat back down at her desk. She phoned HR, but they said they could not overrule Alberto. And Alberto, when Niko wasn’t around, was the man in charge. If he said she was fired, she was fired.

That was bad enough. Having nobody to lean on in such a desperate time was bad too.

But she would soon discover after she collected her purse and boxed up her personal items, a decade’s worth of personal items, it got worse.

For she was not only fired, but Alberto had ordered her to be escorted out of the building by the very security guard she used to joke with every morning as if they were lifelong friends.

Now she was a criminal. Now she was the enemy to him too.

The very woman that stood by Niko’s side from day one, through thick and thin, even taking pay cut after pay cut after Covid, was no longer welcomed on his property.

It was a dizzying downfall. It was an even dizzier betrayal.

She was certain it had to be some elaborate hoax.

It just had to be! But Niko was nowhere to be found, at least not found by her, and because her job made her the gatekeeper to the boss with the power to say no this person couldn’t see him, or yes this person could, there was nobody in upper management who was going to give her the time of day.

But that was the world of fashion. One day you’re in, Heidi Klum often said, and the next day you’re out.

She was out.

She was on her own.

She was pushing forty and unemployed for the first time in over a decade, and she didn’t know how to even process it.

She got into her Mazda, slammed the door, and drove away with tears of shock and fear pooling in her big, sun-kissed bright eyes as if they could not believe what they’d just witnessed.

They could not believe what just happened to her.

But it happened. That bastard fired her.

Now it was a matter of desperation.

How was she going to pay her rent? How was she going to pay her car note? How was she going to survive?

She could barely see the road for the tears.