The Debt 3 (8 page)

“Nice, ‘aint it?” Max asked her.

“Stunning,” she said.
 
“This is Club Alpha headquarters or
something?”

“Or something,” he said, breathing
heavily out through his nostrils as he walked, leading her down the
hallway.
 
He opened the doors at the
far end, and led her into a smaller room that seemed like a library or study of
some sort.
 
There were ornate bookcases
all along the walls, more fancy paintings, another huge fireplace, and various
armchairs, desks and tables meant for study.

There was nobody in the room, however,
and Raven’s heart started to race.
 
She swallowed, feeling like she wanted to run.
 
“Could I use the bathroom?” she asked.

“I can’t let you do that right now,” Max
said, his eyes turning on her like a predator’s, cold and without pity.

“I can’t even go to the bathroom?”

“No,” he said, gesturing to a chair
nearby.
 
“Why don’t you have a seat?”
he said.

“Okay,” she replied, not knowing how else
to respond to his refusal.
 
So she sat
down and crossed her legs.
 
She felt
a little dizzy, faint, and tried to ignore the intense pressure in her bladder.

“You know, I wish it didn’t have to be
like this,” Max said, pacing a little in front of her.

“Like what?”

He turned and glared at her.
 
“You got the cushy gig, you know?
 
Any girl who works for us would have
given a fucking arm and leg to be with Jake Novak on tour.
 
But what do you do, you go and fuck up a
choice situation.
 
I knew you’d be
trouble from the minute I laid eyes on you.”

“I didn’t do anything,” she said, trying
to meet his relentless gaze.

He sneered at her.
 
“No, of course not.
 
Little innocent Raven Hartley never does
nothing wrong.
 
Not you.”

“I don’t appreciate how you’re speaking
to me right now.”

“So what?” he laughed, contempt written
all over his face.
 
“What the fuck
do I care if you appreciate it?
 
Do
you know what kind of trouble I’m in because of you?
 
Huh?”

She swallowed again.
 
“I…I really need to go to the bathroom.”

He bent down and pointed a thick finger
in her face.
 
“You’ll fucking sit
there until you’re told you can go.
 
I don’t much care if you piss all over the seat.
 
You sit and wait for the boss.”

The boss?

Just the way he said it made her
afraid.
 
Who was the boss?
 
Could he be any worse than Max
Mendez?
 
She didn’t want to even
think about that possibility.

“I’m sorry I got you in trouble, Max,”
she said, finally, as Max stood near her chair, hands clasped in front of him,
waiting.

“Yeah, yeah.”
 
He sighed.
 
“That’s the game, baby.”

“I’m doing the best I can.”

He glanced at her briefly,
then
went back to staring straight ahead.
 
“Well I hope for both our sakes that you
start doing a heck of a lot better.
 
Because if not, we’re both going to be in a world of trouble real soon.”

Raven’s stomach knotted, tightened, and
her bladder ached.
 
She re-crossed
her legs and waited, trying to keep herself calm.

There was a buzzing from her purse and
she took out her cell phone.
 
A
message had come through from Jake.

Where
are
u?
 
Just knocked on your door
.

She sighed.
 
What to tell him?
 
Certainly not the
truth.
 
And then it hit her,
an easy lie.
 

I’m with Sky.
 
I’ll let u know when i’m free.

She typed it quickly and put the phone
away.

Max glared at her from the corner of his
eye.
 
“You better leave that phone
in your purse when the boss comes in, or I’ll take the whole thing and throw it
in the fucking fireplace.”

She ignored him but her body was shaking
from fear and anxiety.

A minute later, the doors opened again,
and then a slender man walked into the room with a friendly smile on his
face.
 
He was
maybe early forties, handsome in a regular guy sort of way, dressed in a vest
and tie
,
dark slacks, gleaming shoes
.
 
He was very put together in an
understated sense.

“You must be the famous—or should I
say infamous—Raven Hartley,” he exclaimed, still smiling, offering his
hand to her.

She shook it, noticing his grip was soft
and his hand was clammy.
 
She took
her hand away as soon as possible.
 
“Hi,” she said.
 
“And you
are?”

He grinned.
 
“I’m just so glad to meet you, finally,”
he said, dodging her question.
 
He
shot a cold glance to Max.
 
“Thanks,”
he said, his tone changing, becoming harsh.

Max’s head seemed to go down, like a
whipped dog.
 
He started walking
toward the doors, leaving without so much as a backward glance.
 
He shut the doors behind him on his way
out, leaving Raven alone with the boss.

“Call me Scott,” the boss said, smiling
once more, pulling over another chair and sitting down just a couple of feet
away from her.
 
He crossed his legs
and straightened his tie.
 
“I hope
you understand that we brought you here today for an important reason.
 
Not just to scare you,” Scott said.

“I guess I don’t understand,” Raven said
softly.
 
“I’m confused.”

Scott leaned forward, smoothing his tie
again.
 
“You see, what you’re doing
right now with Jake Novak—it’s very bad for business.
 
We can’t have it.”

“Can’t have what?”

Scott’s smile faded.
 
“Can’t have you in the news, acting like
his girlfriend.
 
This isn’t in the
contract,
it’s not part of the program.
 
You’re putting us in a very awkward
situation.”

“But Jake is the one who asked me to do
it, and I was told to always keep the client happy,” she replied.

Scott didn’t seem to like her using their
words against them.
 
“Keep the
client happy, yes, but that only goes to a point.
 
Discretion is the ultimate goal here,
Raven.
 
Would you like a drink?”

“No thank you,” she said, but Scott was
already out of his seat and walking over to a table nearby, grabbing a pitcher
of clear water and pouring it into two glasses.
 

“The thing is,”
Scott
said, as he poured the water, “once the media starts digging into your
background, they’re going to find out a lot of things.
 
Things
that are
bad for you, bad for us, and bad for Jake.
 
We can’t have it.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Raven told
him.
 
“You want me to tell Jake I
can’t be his pretend girlfriend anymore?”

Scott crossed back and put her glass down
on the table beside her, while he took a sip from his.
 
“I want you to do better than that.
 
I want you to leave today—leave
now—and never speak to Jake Novak again.”

Raven thought about it.
 
And then she remembered Skylar and the
help Jake was providing to her.
 
If
Raven simply took off without so much as an explanation, Jake might stop
helping Skylar.
 
“Couldn’t I at
least tell Jake why I have to go?”

“No,” Scott said.
 
His eyes were hard steel, harder and
meaner than anyone, even Max.
 
She
thought that Scott would just as soon snap her neck if she annoyed him enough.

“The thing is,” Raven began, wanting to
tell Scott about Skylar and why she couldn’t afford to burn bridges with Jake.

“I don’t really care what the thing is,”
Scott interrupted.
 
He smiled again,
but it wasn’t real.
 
“You see, I run
a multi-billion dollar business, Miss Hartley.
 
Club Alpha is bigger than you can
imagine, and we have clients wealthier and far more powerful than Jake
Novak.
 
We have people we answer to,
and they don’t ever want to hear our company mentioned in the national
media.
 
Not ever.”

“I’ve never spoken about you to anyone,”
she said.

“But they’ll find out if you keep giving
them reasons,” Scott told her, sitting down and daintily sipping his water
again.
 
“The media is stupid, but
they have this amazing ability to sniff out the truth.
 
They’ll eventually realize how you met
Jake, no matter how hard you try and cover it up.
 
Already they know your name, and they’re
digging and digging.
 
Soon they’ll
find out all about your little mess you got into back in high school.”

Raven’s blood ran cold.
 
Her entire body went numb.
 
“Little mess?”

“Yeah, the one that led you to that nasty
hospital stay for six months.
 
The
little mess that made you
run
away from home, never to
turn back.
 
You think you can spin what
happened to you into some fairytale that makes Jake look like a hero?”
 
He barked a scoffing laugh at her.
 
“The reporters and bloggers and
bloodhounds will see it for exactly what it was.
 
They’ll tar and feather you and Jake
Novak will get hit right along with you.
 
It will end his career.”

She couldn’t believe that Club Alpha knew
about her past.
 
It had been
buried,
all of it, scrubbed from the internet, and her
hospital records were confidential.
 
But then again, none of that would stop a powerful company like Club
Alpha.
 
They could buy and sell her
and she knew it.

“I was a victim,” Raven said, finally,
trying to gather her composure.
 
“Everything
they said about me was
lies
.
 
I was bullied.
 
That’s the point.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,”
Scott
replied.
 

“How am I wrong?
 
I lived it.”

“What you lived doesn’t matter,” he
said.
 
“You must be a bigger fool
than I took you for.”

“I’m not a fool,” she said, standing
up.
 
“And I’m leaving.”

“Sit down before I put your head through
that window behind you.”
 
His voice
was like ice, and she knew he meant it.
 
She sat down immediately.

“So you’re going to beat up a woman?” she
asked him, meeting his gaze.
 
“How courageous
of you.”

He stood up and peered down at her,
unbutton his vest.
 
“My job isn’t to
be courageous.
 
My job is to keep my
clients and investors happy and make us all a lot of money.
 
And I’m not going to let one naïve,
silly little girl ruin an empire.
 
Just so we understand each other,” he said.

“Understood,” she replied, her breath
whistling in her chest.

“You’re to leave this office and outside
a car will be waiting to take you back to Boston,” he told her.
 
“Everything’s been arranged.
 
All you have to do is get inside and
leave.”

“What about the fact that I have nowhere
to live, no money, no job?” she said.
 
“That’s because of you.
 
I
have nothing to go home to.”

“Don’t you worry,” he said.
 
“We’ll get you your little job back,
find you an apartment,
give
you a couple dollars to
tide you over.
 
We’ll make sure you
don’t starve.
 
And all you have to do
is stop speaking to Jake Novak, forget you ever heard his name.
 
No interviews, no telling anyone—I
mean anyone—about what happened between you and him.
 
Forget you ever heard of Club Alpha and
we’ll try our best to undo the damage you’ve done to us.”