Page 5 of Unleash Hades (Ungoverned Spaces #5)

Calissandra

Laurent Media Offices, New York

M ornings were peaceful, as I made my way to work.

The crisp air outside the penthouse would give way to a muggy New York City summer. The concrete would become unbearable.

As was habit, I started my morning by seeing Rafe - giving him a full platter of last night’s dinner, along with a glass of juice and a hot chocolate with vitamin protein powder stirred in.

He was a man who, as far as I could tell, lived in the alley beside our building.

Polite, and quiet, he often sat on the bench outside, as if he was waiting for something, or someone.

I started feeding him nine years ago. At least one good meal. Now he was a part of my day.

“Morning Rafe,” I said as I turned the corner. Rafe held a winter trench coat closed at the collar. He leaned away from me a little and smiled.

“Morning Mrs. Davenport,” he said.

I had never given him my name, but he’d heard the doorman call me that once, and had used it ever since. I never chose to correct him. I never corrected anyone, even though I preferred the name Laurent.

After handing him the food, I got up to walk away.

“Keep your head clear!” He called out, in lieu of a farewell.

He was a bit like a fortune cookie or the astrology report. His morning phrase would always affect my day and seemed strangely prophetic.

I’d need to make a mental note to give him a pair of Richard’s discarded shoes when we threw out last year’s things.

The bustling office hummed with life. I drew a lot of comfort from that. In the noise, in the shuffling of people.

The sensation that someone was watching wasn’t as profound because someone was always watching here. Friends, enemies, supervisors, colleagues. We all watched each other like hawks. It was the nature of the business.

Colleagues in the industry weren’t friends… except for Gavin.

The Irishman was a silver-haired man who had grown up in a time before MacBooks. He increased his knowledge of them as the technology developed to feed his insatiable thirst for information. It didn't matter what kind of information. He just wanted it all. His brain was a processor in itself.

I slipped the USB drive towards him on the desk, and without looking, he grabbed it and placed it in his jean jacket.

“How are you? About the Kaliningrad thing…” He said, a little too loudly as one of our colleagues walked down the aisle. His bright colored ascot preceding him, long before I saw his face.

Lucien Bellamy.

“Coucou Gavin!” Then to me, he nodded. “Calissandra.”

I nodded, in lieu of a greeting, because he didn’t deserve words.

“Boss lady is too good for a normal greeting?” Bellamy lifted a single, elegant brow. He rested his arm on the half-wall dividing Gavin’s cubicle from the others and looked down at us from above his creamy, pink ascot.

Who wore an ascot in this day and age?

His jacket had orange paisley stitching, and a lining of sunset peach.

It was far too bright for New York City and far too brazen for this office, which lived in navy blue, black and gray wool.

The satin sparkle of his shirt matched the glint in his eye, and the topping on this creamsicle - the real cherry on top - was an undeniably gorgeous face and triangular, muscular body that was all too much for one person to take in.

“Well, I can tell when I’m not wanted.” He flicked his non-existent long hair over his shoulder and stuck his nose in the air.

Then he stopped and sniffed.

“Is that pomegranate I smell?” He sniffed again, leaning over the partition towards me. “Is that you Gavin? That cologne is divine.”

Bellamy gave a slight, approving smile, then winked.

The pomegranate smell was me. It was the favorite fruit of a certain Legionnaire from my past, and I wore it for some ill-thought sentimentality. A reminder that happiness could exist in this world for others, even if not for me.

Bellamy turned, and walked away, his hips swaying with his waistcoat as he moved.

I looked at Gavin and rolled my eyes. “Holy Hades, the man’s insufferable.”

“He’s a good journalist,” Gavin said, noncommittally. “He might be a bit strange but he’s sharp, that one. It’s why he keeps giving you a run for your money.”

Gavin looked around us, his head pivoting like an owl as he surveyed our surroundings.

“If you consider fashion, and celebrity gossip as journalism, then maybe…” I said, after we determined that the place was empty now.

“Don’t be unkind, young lady,” Gavin’s thick accent grew thicker when he was lecturing, I swear.

“The Korean Celebrity trafficking ring was worth that Laurent Prize you two always compete for. The piece he did on the Russian clubbing scandal?” Gavin brought his fingers to his lips and did a chef’s kiss. “Truly great work.”

“If you say so,” I said, feeling heat go up my neck, to my ears. “Though the Russian clubbing scandal was only because he was sleeping with what’s-her-name.”

“The oligarch’s daughter? Yes,” Gavin nodded. “They were quite the cute couple at the MET. They wore matching capes. Did you see that?”

Yes, I had. The two of them had kissed and gushed along the red carpet, with matching embroidered capes that, when photographed side by side, formed the image of two bodies lusciously intertwined.

In that same evening, he was photographed getting a lap dance from a Miss World Idol winner, while his arm lay seductively over the shoulder of some venture capitalist who had his tongue in Bellamy’s ear.

That was the way he got his stories.

I would never acknowledge that he did good work.

But yes, Gavin was right. Bellamy was a good journalist and his stories were poignant, well written, with a slight flourish that I envied.

I hate-read every damn thing he’d ever written.

It was an obsession. I wanted to relish in his failures, but never could because he was just too damned good.

“I’ll take a look at the contents as soon as I can,” Gavin’s eyes scanned the room again to see if there were eavesdroppers. Determining that there were none, he leaned towards me. “Can you give me an idea of what tipped off your suspicions?”

I couldn’t say that I had nursed quiet suspicions for over a decade.

My husband thought I was too dumb to know how to read the signs. I could tell when stocks weren’t flourishing. I read the reports that said the value of my shares - our shares - in Laurent Media crashed to the ground.

Then, all of a sudden, they would rise again. The downward trajectory of the little line would suddenly tilt up, fast. A full recovery like our sick company got a shot of penicillin.

It happened again and again, as Richard, CEO, made disastrous decisions. One right after the other.

“How rich do you think I am?” I asked Gavin.

His bushy brows knitted together, and he flinched at the rude question. He looked at my clothes, then shrugged. “I mean…”

I dressed casually, all things considered. I shopped at the Paramus Mall and not with private shoppers because I found the expensive luxury quite… distasteful.

“I don’t mean me, as a person. I mean… me and Richard, as a unit. How rich do you think we are?”

“Gates, Bezos, Baas…” he said with a small chuckle. “ That kind of rich.”

“Let them eat cake type of rich?” I said, leaning toward him, and bringing my voice down.

“No doubt,” he said, all humor in his green eyes.

“Have you seen some of the choices Richard has made as CEO?”

Gavin almost blushed. It had been an unwritten rule to not discuss Richard’s disastrous ideas.

He had given in to the need for money when condoms, dating sites and alcohol companies came knocking. It turned out that no one wanted their hard-hitting news interspersed with bouncing tits.

After a story about the ill-treatment of gays in Iran was broken up by sexist “be a real man” beer commercials, we became a bit of a meme.

“I have,” Gavin said with a nod.

“Shouldn’t we be struggling more than we are?”

“Well, Richard probably has some other accounts. Investments, the like.”

“We do!” I nodded because I had looked into that. It had been my first thought.

I would have let it go, had it not been for the sinking feeling in my stomach and my general hatred of my husband.

“It doesn’t even come close with the rise in our net worth.”

“Rich people are never transparent about their finances,” Gavin shrugged. “It’s how you guys avoid the IRS.”

“Yes, but this is different,” I said. “I have access to all our accounts and there is a continuous stream of income - a suspiciously large one - that I can’t explain. It has no source, no explanation…”

“I’m thrilled to always be in the pursuit of truth and justice,” Gavin said, with a smirk.

“But you know, sweetheart, that if you do this, you and your boys will lose out too.” He pursed his lips.

“There’s not much I wouldn’t tolerate to make life good for my boy.

Are you sure you’d want them to lose out on this? ”

I had thought about it hard. Would I stay in bed with the Devil to make my boys happy? That had been her choice, and it had killed her.

“From where I sit,” Gavin said, “Richard Davenport is a peculiar, but loving, husband and father. I know you don’t like him, but…”

He let the rest of his sentence hang in the air.

I understood his point. Why be the one to rock the boat when things were going so well? But he didn’t know. He didn’t see the blood swirling into the drain. He didn’t see the children waiting for a mum who would never come home.

“As a mum, I want my boys to know that it’s important to be good and do good,” I said the words I had told another little one years ago. A little girl who was grown but occupied my every movement in small ways. “We’ll land on our feet, either way, my boys and I.”

I wiped my face, willing myself to come back to the present.