Chapter Six- The Interview

Raiden's office at seven the next morning looked nothing like the hotel suite. It looked like a place where mistakes were corrected.

 

I sat across from his desk in the blouse Talia had lent me, hands folded so tightly in my lap that my knuckles had gone pale. I had rehearsed this moment on the entire train ride over. How I would explain myself or apologize if he brought it up and how I would somehow survive the humiliation of sitting in front of the man I had climbed into a car with less than twelve hours ago and asking him for a job.

 

But luckily he didn't bring it up.

 

He didn't so much as glance at me the way a man glances at a woman he's had. He looked at me like he was looking at a spreadsheet with an error in it.

 

His expression was assessing yet unreadable, already three steps ahead of whatever I was about to say.

 

"Freya Dalton." He called. His tone was different from what it was last night. More stern and stronger.  "Tell me about your background."

 

For a second I couldn't find my voice. I had expected something like recognition or discomfort from him. Even a flicker would have been nice. But no……instead I got a stranger in a tailored suit, pen in hand, waiting.

 

I made myself speak. "I have an associate's degree in business administration and I've worked front desk and admin roles for the last three years. Mostly at a private clinic and also some temp work at a law firm downtown. I'm organized, I learn fast, and I don't need things explained to me twice."

 

"Why this position." Not even a question, really. A demand dressed as one.

 

Because I need money faster than any other job in this city will give me since my mother is dying by degrees and I have maybe six weeks to find a miracle. Additionally, you're the only lead I have left.

 

"I need stable, well-compensated work," I said instead. "I'm reliable under pressure. I understand discretion matters in a role like this, and I'm capable of it."

 

Something moved behind his eyes at the word discretion.  So brief I might have imagined it. He didn't comment, he just turned a page in the folder and I realized with a jolt that it was my application. He had already had it. He had probably already read it before I walked in, which meant every question he was asking me now, he was asking for a different reason.

 

He was testing how I would hold myself together in front of him; sober, clothed and in daylight.

 

"Your last supervisor's contact information is missing," he said.

 

"I can get it to you by the end of the day." I replied quickly. Maybe a little too quick.

 

"Do so." He closed the folder. "This role reports directly to me. It involves long hours, last-minute travel, and evening functions when required. You'll have access to sensitive material be it company or personal.  None of it leaves this office. None of it leaves your mouth." His gaze finally lifted to mine, flat and cool, and for one unbearable second I was certain he was about to say it.

 

last night, my bed, you begging me not to stop

 

I was certain the clinical mask was about to crack open and show me the man underneath it.

 

But it didn't crack. He didn't say a word about it.

 

Somehow that was worse than if he had.

 

I'd braced myself for cruelty, for some sharp-edged comment designed to remind me exactly what kind of woman shows up drunk and desperate outside a stranger's car and ends up in his bed by midnight.

 

I could have handled cruelty. I knew how to survive being looked down on as Silas had trained me well enough for that. What I didn't know how to survive was this: being looked at like none of it had happened at all, like I was simply an applicant, a name on a page or a body filling a chair.

 

Like the night before hadn't mattered enough to even acknowledge.

 

"Do you have any questions," Raiden asked, already reaching for the next folder on his desk and moving past me in his head.

 

I should have asked about salary, benefits or even the hours. Instead what came out was smaller and quieter, the question underneath every other question I couldn't bring myself to voice: "Why are you interviewing me yourself? Don't you have like… people for this?"

 

For the first time since I'd walked in, he stopped, set the folder down and looked at me properly. It was not the assessing look from before, but something with more weight behind it, this look made the hair on my arms rise even from across the desk.

 

"I make it a point," he said slowly, "to know exactly who I'm letting into my life."

 

The words landed somewhere low in my chest and stayed there, humming. I didn't know if he meant the job, or the room upstairs, or both, and I was too afraid to ask which.

 

He didn't give me the chance to find out anyway.

 

"Start Monday," he said, and picked the folder back up, and that was the end of it. No handshake. No congratulations. No smile. Just a man returning his attention to his desk as though I'd already left the room.

 

I stood on legs that didn't quite feel like mine and walked out past the assistant's desk.

 

I didn't know, riding the elevator back down, whether I'd gotten the job because of that night or in spite of it.

 

Was he punishing me by pretending it never happened? Or was he protecting me or simply filing it away somewhere I would never be allowed to see?

 

All I knew was that Monday was four days away, and somewhere behind that cold, unreadable face was a man who had looked at me like I was the only thing in the room worth seeing and had decided, apparently, to never let me know it again.