4: Elise

I FOLLOWED Gian out of the offices towards the elevator banks, and due to the argument, we were both quiet. 

No one else was there, so the clacking sound of the heels of my stilettos as I walked across the floor echoed between us. It somehow made me feel as if I was being castigated for daring to disobey Gian about the dress. 

We didn’t exchange words until we’d reached the end of that hallway, where the discreet and private elevator for family members and VIPs was located. 

It was also what a current date would use to visit him in the office. 

And boy, she could still feel the trauma of what happened when his last ex came to visit him.

Or, more like, she managed to sneak in through the guards to get up here.

I’d secretly nicknamed Gian’s ex-dates. 

I called them Ex’d, for ‘ex’ and ‘date,’ because he’d never ever gone past dating since I started working here. 

In fact, no one could tell me if he’d ever had a girlfriend aside from that first and last one when he was still at school. 

That was controversial, and I thought that was the only reason why it was even heard of. It was because it produced one scandal after another until the very last, tragic one. 

But anyway, the ones that I was at least aware of, and I’d actually met, remained friends with him post-dating. 

And more than friends. Gian might have mastered the art of the poker face, but the girls did not. 

My staff and I witnessed when they do the office version of the ‘walk of shame’—walking into his office immaculately, coming out dazed, flushed (especially around the lips), and walking a bit wobbly-like. Plus the rumpled hair. 

And one time, there was a bra cup a little bit sideways. 

But they were all smiling in wondrous bliss.   

Gian was a professional but clearly not a saint. 

I’d been here more than a year and these happenings were far-in-between for me to call him a jackass. 

He’d never acted like one, either.

 Even on a day when another one bit the dust, he’d come out of his office as if he’d been serenely mulling over new financial sheets but was called to a meeting.   

And as I’d already said, those women looked happy, so what could I say? I didn’t have any business saying anything at all.

Except for the last one.

Her name was Shiela and Gian dated her from the end of last year to the beginning of this one. 

He stopped going out with her in January. And since then, she’d hounded him with calls until she got blocked here in the office. 

Yes, I was instructed to block all numbers she used from our phones.

But Shiela wouldn’t give up. 

When she couldn’t get through me or my assistant Janet, she somehow got through the security and reached the floor using Gian’s private elevator.

But when she came down that day, she was escorted by grim-looking guards and red-faced Jason, pale as paper.

That day was the worst that ever happened to me here. Thinking about it could still put the flush of anger on my cheeks.

Shiela was beautiful, a spoiled rich brat, and her grandmother was close friends with Madam Soniah. You wouldn’t really expect a woman with that background to behave like she had no refinement.

“I know what people are saying! Don’t you dare deny it! He must fuck you in the office behind locked doors!”

“Madam Soniah and Shiela’s grandmother are still friends, right?” I asked as we waited for the elevator car to arrive.

His face couldn’t get any darker as I reminded him of this.

He knew. He’d seen the guest list for the party then.

The lift finally arrived and the doors slid to the sides. He let me in first before he followed, the ultimate gentleman. 

I was careful not to show my back, and thankfully he did not reach out to hold me like he would usually do because he was holding my bag.

In our silence, while the car slid down its chute, I couldn’t help but remember more of that day…

So, the bitch did manage to sneak up and demanded to see Gian who was in a meeting during that time. 

Yes, it sounded cliché, but it was the truth. There was an important contract signing for a merger of the marketing of two different small businesses that VerraCom managed to procure a week before. Everyone knew that no one disturbed this kind of meeting. Even his mother wouldn’t. 

So, as far as I was concerned, Shiela could do cartwheels and back flips right in front of me, but she would get no Gian.

So, I said, No Gian for you, baby. Go home now.

Not exactly, of course, but something to the effect of me talking to a three-year-old. 

The result was she cussed, cursed, and vilified me from my hair strands down to my toenails in a screech that carried over the whole, shocked floor.

I stood there and endured long minutes of the dirtiest accusations I had heard in my entire life just so she couldn’t get through. 

I secretly suspected she was high of something then because she was simply not in a lucid state of mind. 

I endured because nothing was true in what she was screaming about. Surely, no one else believed her. They were so dirty, so trashy, and even if my identity was a secret because it was what the elders wanted, I had been honest in my relationship with the people I worked with in the office. 

Shiela was so occupied with her screeching and I was guarding her like a hawk that we both didn’t notice that Gian was there.

And when we both saw him…

Nooo… he wasn’t screaming. 

One look at him and it was like a tantrum switch was turned off and Shiela abruptly stopped. 

Gian’s face was so dark when he ordered the woman to his office, using the coldest voice I had ever heard from him. It drained the blood from Shiela’s face. 

And then she started crying and made pathetic excuses for why she was acting like a crazy person.

“I’m sorry that I said those th-eeeee-ngs! She wouldn’t let me see you… She wouldn’t let me see you and I love you and I can’t live without you, Gian. Ple-eeee-ase… I know you love me, too, Gian… Please come back to meee!”

Gian pulled her from the floor to his office without a word while the insane woman moaned and groaned like she was being overcome by a seizure. 

After just a few moments, the elevator spewed several of our security people, and a trembling and quiet Shiela was escorted back to the elevator and out of the building. 

She looked so shaken up that I wondered what Gian did to make her look like that in such a short time. 

But I was glad to see that it looked like we would not be seeing her for a long time, if not ever.

I expected to be called next. I obediently went inside his office, confidently expecting he’d be grateful and he would apologize for what happened out there.

Well.

I was scolded down to my bone marrow. Can you believe it?

He was so angry at me because if Janet had not run to him to tell him what was going on, he wouldn’t have any idea we’d been attacked by a mental case.

Yup.

That’s what he said about his ex.