Episode One: Look Back in Anger (5 page)

“He’s been loyal. He’s worked hard.” She scowled as Arles paused his spinning long enough to glare at her, and then resumed it, no doubt just a desperate attempt to irk her dad. Dad had certainly punished them both often enough for doing the same thing when they were children.

“He’s lost us significant amounts of money. He’s lied. He’s embezzled. And worst of all, he’s been caught. If he’s very lucky, we’ll be able to arrive at some sort of agreement which won’t result in him being a prison bitch.” Arles took her moment of tongue-tied silence to flash his teeth in a broad, sharkish grin. “Ever see
Oz
, Sammy?”

She had no words. All thoughts flew right out of her head like bowling pins struck by a speeding train. For several heartbeats, she could do nothing but wait, staring at her father’s bowed head, waiting for the vehement denial she was sure would come. But it didn’t, and he wouldn’t even look at her. She knew she should be mad, disappointed, perhaps even shouting, but she just couldn’t muster it past the fear rising in her throat.

There had to be something they could do. Arles had said they could make an agreement, hadn’t he? Why else would she be here? He wanted her to negotiate. “So you’ve reported him? You’re sending my father to jail?”

He shrugged and waved a dismissive hand. “I thought about it, but I’m not so certain that’s the best for the company…or the family. Not yet anyway.”

“So what is?”

“Well…” He got up from his chair and paced around the desk, his hands settling on his stepfather’s shoulders. Her dad visibly jerked at the touch, the mock display of possessive concern clearly making the older man’s skin crawl. “Seeing Father dear in chains, while amusing, just seems a bit callous. It would also cause me a great deal of trouble and effort that I’m not all that interested in. After all, he can’t have much more life left in him, right?” He gave her father’s shoulder a pseudo-playful nudge. “Am I right, old man? Clock’s seriously ticking now, isn’t it?”

What a monster.

“And what if we decide to fight this? To take it to court? Countersue for extortion and emotional distress, and—” She wasn’t sure what all they could sue for, or if they could sue at all, but the idea of rolling over made her sick. “And whatever else our lawyer thinks of?”

“Wonderful!” Arles was clearly enjoying this all far too much; this was obviously just another game to him. “Though you do realize you’ll be on your own until you prove him innocent, yes? Your father is broke; he owes this company so much money he could never possibly hope to repay it. Even his house belongs to Colfter. So fight it, if you want. I suppose he can come stay with you for the next several years that he’s penniless; that is assuming it ever reaches an end.”

She took her gaze from Arles—it was far too painful to look on all that arrogance—but as her eyes fell on her father, she found watching him struggle with the situation hurt even more.

“I’m being fired for incompetence.” Dad’s voice was weak and riddled with guilt. “He’s threatening to freeze all my assets. There is nothing I can do.”

So that was it, then. Arles wasn’t giving them any alternatives. She shouldn’t have expected anything more from Arles Colfter. The spiteful boy had grown into an equally bitter and spiteful man. “We’ll fight it. I have a little money saved up—”

“I’ll keep you tied up in court for years.” The bastard cut her off again, and this time her fingers found and wrapped about the glass paperweight. If he wasn’t careful, she was going to ruin that vicious grin. “You just don’t have the money to outlast me, Sammy.”

“You’re unbelievable.” She ached to throw that apple, but she didn’t. Instead, she squeezed her frustration against it until her knuckles showed white with the strain. “He can’t get away with this, Dad. There has to be some way to fight it.”

Her father shook his head.

“Not familiar with the term
evil corporation
, are you, love?” Arles was so pleased with himself, so bordering on giddy, that Sam wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d broken into song right there. “There is no way to fight this. I’ve been working on this for near a decade. I have the power now to back it up. If I want, dear old Dad will be living out of a box on the corner of Fifth and Main by the end of the week.”

Tears burned at the corners of her eyes; this was all too impossible. “You’re horrible.”

“Really? I’m the horrible one here?” He laughed as he slipped behind her. Then he knelt to scoop up her crumpled brown bag where it had fallen and dropped it back in her lap. She hadn’t realized her breathing was becoming labored again. “Just think of me as Godzilla, then, rioting through the pathetic sham of your happy little world.”

She refused to faint again, fought the dizziness and the darkness that encroached on her, though she could feel it pushing for control. “But he has worked
so
hard. He’s earned the right to retire with a little grace. Do you have a heart at all?”

“Of course I do, Sammy. That’s why I’m here. You’ll thank me later.”

“Thank you? You’re delusional. Dad shouldn’t have to worry about being homeless after all the years he’s put into this company.”

“Funny you should mention that. I just happen to have brought…options.” He rose from his kneeling position to tug four pamphlets out of the jacket she now wore. He then set them each upright in a neat row on the desk. “Shady Acres, Willow West, Northern Pines, and Southbridge retirement communities. They all have openings.”

Her father began to cough. She thought at first he was choking, and it got her out of her chair and to her feet, but then his voice boomed so savagely two of the four folded brochures toppled over. “I’m not going to an old folk’s home!”

The shout didn’t seem to faze Arles; if anything, he looked blissful. “Oh, but why not? Think of all the executive decisions you can go on bungling right up until your inevitable death rattle.” He paused to gather the pamphlets and feather through their pages as he carried on. “Yogurt or custard with your midday meals. Checkers or bingo. This one takes a group of good boys and girls to the museum twice a year.” He lowered the papers a bit to peer at Sam almost seriously. “They have constant medical care too, so Sammy won’t have to be following you around in your walker stuffing your pills down your throat. Or rushing out into the rain to see to your every need. You are fed, clothed…and they even wipe your ass for you if you feel like being a perverted old bastard.”

Sam and her father stared at him in unified horror.

“Look!” Arles flashed a smile and flipped one of the papers around for them to see. “This one has a pool.”

She set that apple down before she did something stupid, though the notion to replace it with one of the pens lying there to jam in his eye socket was so tempting.

He tossed the remainder of the brochures at his stepfather with a dramatically weary sigh. “Is it just me, or am I the only one committed to making this work?”

“I am not going to a retirement home!”

Sam found herself trying in vain to calm her father down, rubbing his shoulders, and praying Arles would just leave before the old man ended up in an ER, over a nursing home.

“Yes, I know. Far be it from you to unburden your family,” Arles said. “We’ll all just continue to carry you until we can’t tell if you are an arthritic windbag or just a gaseous corpse.”

Sam couldn’t recall the steps it took to bring her to face him, but her hand collided with his jaw in a swing that made her shoulder throb. She’d have to wonder where the courage for such a thing came from later. For right now she obviously wasn’t thinking. She’d just…reacted. “You will
not
speak to my father that way.”

It was the first time since she’d arrived that Arles had looked shaken, surprised, and perhaps even wounded. The shocked pain in his eyes was quickly replaced by something far rarer and much more frightening. She’d won the full attention of his barely contained rage. “Are you going to stop me?”

She swallowed the knot in her throat, her sudden unexpected burst of courage waning under the intensity of his stare. Damn that apple for being on the other side of the desk! “If I have to.” To show him she meant it, but mostly to assure herself that she could, she cocked her hand back to strike him again.

This time she was almost thankful he interrupted her. “Sammy, you got your one freebie. You hit me again, you are going to pay for it. Don’t make the mistake of thinking me a gentleman.”

“Like there’s any chance of that.” She lowered her hand, though only by a fraction, and her fingers curled into a proper fist. Things were certainly about to get real ugly…and Sam had the sneaking suspicion it was going to be mostly
her
face if he decided to return blows.

Just as Sam was quietly thanking God that there was such a thing as reconstructive surgery, her father’s voice called her down. “This has gone on long enough. Just tell her your proposition.”

She lowered her fist a bit more and peered at her father with a raised brow. Why hadn’t he mentioned this before? “What proposition?”

She hadn’t lost Arles’s attention; he was still glaring daggers at her, snarling even as he spoke. “Oh, that pleasure is all yours. I just get to watch.”

“What proposition?” She stood there a long moment, looking back and forth between them as her heart slowly began to sink. “Well, somebody tell me what’s going on.”

Her father appeared all the more stricken. His pain translated so easily into her own panic it was like they were psychically linked, and he just continued to drag it out as he gestured back to her chair. “Sit, Sam. I’ll explain.”

“I’ll stand. What’s going on?” She edged away from Arles, and soon he wandered his way over to the window, giving her much-needed distance.

“Arles and I… We discussed this before you arrived. He gave me only one option to keep my job, to make an attempt at fixing the things I screwed up, and to stay out of prison.” He sighed…and took a long drink of water.

Sam exploded. “Spit it out, Dad, please!”

The old man procrastinated another moment, closing his eyes and shaking his head with trembling grief. “He wants you, in exchange for settling everything.”

She blinked, her voice shrinking into an unsure squeak. “I don’t understand?”

“My mistress. Whore, if you prefer.” Arles did have such a lovely knack for making things gut-wrenchingly clear. “Indentured…slave. Period of time…indefinite. He’s
giving
you to me to save his own ass. Do you see what you’re dealing with now?”

She was happy that chair was so near, for had it been so much as another foot away, her bum would have gone splat on the marble floor. As it was, she fell into it, staring incredulously at both of them. “Are you both completely insane?”

“Shall I take that as a no and contact the proper authorities to come get the old bastard?” Arles didn’t move from the window, didn’t come nearer to rub salt in the wound; her smack had obviously left him brooding and content to bite at his playthings from afar.

“People’s lives aren’t for bartering. People can’t be traded like that. I have a life. You can’t just take that away because it sounds like fun. And…this is illegal.” Shaking now, she directed her scowl on her father and his pleading gaze. “You can’t really want this?”

“I don’t,” her father said. “He’s a bully, you know that. He’s always had it out for you. I don’t know what to do. It seems our only option.”

The brief notion to correct him struck her.
She
had options; she could walk out of here right now and continue her life as usual. She was not the one who broke the law; she was not the one who couldn’t manage money. Technically this wasn’t a
we
problem. The throbbing pain in her chest that came with him looking at her like that, the burning spike behind her eye no doubt brought on by her rising blood pressure, that was what took away her options. “This is crazy. Things like this don’t happen. This isn’t an option; it’s insanity.”

“No, it’s not an option. Not really. You come with me now, or we go to war. I’ll win. You know that.” Arles left the window, meeting her gaze as he walked past the both of them and stalked toward the door. “I’m going to my car.”

“Good riddance,” she said, but once the words left her mouth, the aftertaste was alien on her tongue. She hadn’t meant to speak.

He paused, looking past her to meet her father’s gaze pointedly. “If she isn’t there in ten minutes, I’ll call who I have to, and this ends the hard way.”

She could only stare as he left her to debate the madness, and the alternative which was too painful to bear. She had ten minutes to decide everyone’s fate. There was no telling what exactly Arles meant by
slave
, what he intended by this whole scheme, but
mistress
and
whore
she understood well enough, and she had no intentions of becoming either to anyone. Despite that, she couldn’t let this thing happen to her father; he just wouldn’t survive it. He needed her. He
always
needed her.

It was all too much to consider. She didn’t even like to make decisions about breakfast in ten minutes…

To Be Continued…