Authors: Claire Adams
“I love you too, sweetheart. Take care of
yourself.”
“Mom, I love you, bye!”
I hung up with a smile still on my face
and tears in my eyes. I still couldn’t believe what my dad had done to her. I
had no idea where he was now, what he was doing, if he ever thought about us.
He left us to take care of ourselves and I started working at the age of
fourteen, while my mom tried her best to fend for us, living paycheck to
paycheck, while dealing with her heart condition. It all motivated me to work
hard and excel in college so I could become a successful loan officer and give
my mom all the things she deserved.
This was exactly why I could never let
Zayden Sinclair get into my head again. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath
with new reserve.
The flowers had to be returned.
---
I walked into the loan officer’s desk
feeling nervous. This morning Stacey had helped me dress up in her black suit,
so I looked confident and mature enough to handle the situation. I had hoped
the attire would kill the moths in my stomach, but no such luck so far.
“Hi, I am Aria,” I said, offering my right
hand.
“Wilson.” His handshake was curt. “Take a
seat, Aria. You’re one of the tellers here, correct? I see you whenever I walk
in through the front.”
I nodded.
“How long have you been working here?” He
was looking at his computer screen.
“Just about three months. I worked at
State Park Bank for almost two years before that.”
“As a teller?”
I wanted him to get to the point.
“Yes, sir,” I said meekly.
“And you’re still in school?”
Why was he asking me these questions when
he was obviously looking at a document that told him all the answers? Mr.
Wilson was not helping the moth situation in my stomach.
“Yes, at Southern Eastern. Junior year.”
“Really?” He finally looked at me with
raised eyebrows. “It says here that you have only been in college for two
years.”
“Yes, but I had excellent grades in many
AP classes so I had a whole year transferred over.”
“Impressive.” It didn’t sound like a
compliment, for some reason. “Do you have any other jobs besides this one?”
“No, just the bank. But I work insane
hours, so it’s practically two jobs,” I laughed nervously. He was not amused.
“I see,” he said and typed something on
his computer.
There were a few minutes of silence during
which the moths in my stomach participated in an intense war. I was just about
ready to throw up. This loan was my only bet— the only way I would be able to
pay for my mom’s surgery without dropping out of college. The future of my
entire life depended on whatever this Wilson guy was typing on his computer.
When he finally looked up, my heart was
pounding.
“Here’s the thing, Aria,” he said without
a single expression on his face. “You seem like a smart girl with a very
promising future. However, between your college tuition and loans and your own
living expenses, and just this job to sustain yourself – even if it is, as you
put it,” he paused to make air-quotes, “‘practically two jobs,’ there is just
no way you will be able to handle a loan for 60,000 dollars.”
My heart fell, and I could feel my eyes
start to prickle.
“But I will be out of college in a little
over a year.” My voice was shaky. “And I will have an excellent job, I assure
you, and my situation will change completely.”
“When that happens you can reapply for the
loan.” He actually looked a little apologetic.
“I need to pay for my mother’s heart
surgery.” I don’t know why I said it. Studying to be a loan officer, I knew
that there was nothing Wilson could do personally. His reasoning was completely
sound.
“I’m really sorry to hear that, and I wish
the bank could help you out, but right now there is nothing we can do.”
“I understand.” I did. That didn’t stop me
from wanting to run into the bathroom and bawl my eyes out. “Thank you.”
My face was swollen and covered in tears
by the time I made it back to the teller’s booth.
CHAPTER
4
ZAYDEN
She was crying. Crying women made me
uncomfortable. My mother knew this so well that I didn’t remember the last time
I saw her without tears in her eyes. At first it was about my dad’s death, so I
used to try and make her feel better, but slowly it became directed towards my
dad, in bitterness. At first I didn’t understand why she would speak of her
dead husband as though he were some sort of a monster, but snide comments here
and there about how I was handling my billions and it all started adding up.
She couldn’t believe that he hadn’t left a single penny in her name, which made
no sense to me at first either, but eventually the truth came out: she had been
cheating on him for years. With his lawyer. Who also happened to be one of his
best friends. He tolerated it while he was alive because he loved her or some
nonsense of that sort, but apparently this “love” thing was not that big of a
deal because he found a way to get back at her from the grave. It made me hate
her for a little bit, which added to the endless crying, but she was still my
mother and I found a way to tolerate her. I bought her a giant house in
California, thousands of miles away from me.
Why was Aria Roberts crying? I debated
whether to go over to her and what the implications of that would be. There was
no question about the fact that I wanted her body, but approaching her at an
emotional time might suggest I wanted more. That I cared about how she was
feeling. Well, maybe that’s exactly what she wanted; maybe believing exactly
that would be what broke her restraint. I got a strange feeling in my gut that
I didn’t understand. I was the master of manipulation. I messed with women’s
emotions all the time. The hint of moral fiber had to be because she was
crying.
I shook my head and trotted over to the
booth. She was the only person there. Her mascara had slightly run down her
smooth, blushing olive cheeks, which made her look surprisingly sexy.
She seemed to be so phased out that when
she noticed I was standing in front of her, she jumped. Quickly wiping her face
with her palms, she said in a squeaky voice, “Good morning, Mr. Sinclair!”
“Liar,” I teased. “It doesn’t seem to be
that good of a morning for you.”
“Oh, yeah, I am sorry about this. I’ll cut
it out before a customer walks in, I promise.”
“Well, obviously, that’s what I came over
here to say.” I was smiling. “It’s okay, Aria.”
That made her burst into a whole new bout
of tears. I guess it wasn’t okay, whatever it was. Completely unsure of what to
do, I told her, “Take a paid hour off. Walk around if you need to, take a
break.”
“I can’t,” she said between sniffs. “Mrs.
Brian won’t be here until noon and Kevin is sick. I’m the only teller on duty
right now.”
“That’s okay, just take some time. I’ll
man the booth,” I heard myself say.
She looked perplexed, but that made the
crying slow down significantly. “What? You can do that?”
“The thing about owning the company, Aria,
is that I can do whatever I damn well please.”
I must have come across strong because her
expression turned into that of slight fear. I tentatively put a hand on her
shoulder, expecting to feel her muscles relax; instead, I felt them tense.
“It’s okay. Just go for a little bit. It’s
not a request.”
“Alright, alright,” she said, starting to
sniff again. “I’ll just take a walk around the block and be back soon.” She
pointed towards her face. “No more of this after that. I promise.”
The minute she walked out, I felt myself
get angry. What the fuck was I doing? Teller in my own bank? To get into a
girl’s pants. She better be worth it when I finally made it in there. I was
working way too hard for this otherwise.
I even wanted to punch the young guy who
had just materialized in front of me.
“I need to deposit a check,” he said.
I pointed towards the front exit. “There’s
the ATM Machine. They take checks these days. And by these days, I mean the
past ten years.”
He looked terrified and strutted out. I
was lucky I was the CEO of the company and never had to work customer service.
---
When Aria returned a half-hour later, her
make-up was freshly painted on, with no trace of the crying fiasco on her face.
“Thank you so much and I am so sorry!” she
exclaimed.
She should be. It was the worst half hour
of my goddamn life.
“Don’t worry about it! But if you really
feel that bad, you can make it up to me by telling me what’s bothering you.”
I wasn’t sure I cared for the answer, but
that seemed like the right thing to say.
She scrunched her nose like she wasn’t
sure it was a good idea but eventually said: “My request for a loan got turned
down. My mother recently had heart surgery and without insurance she owes the
hospital 60,000 dollars. She can’t apply for a loan herself because my family
is still recovering from a bankruptcy.”
Well that was easy enough. I could take
care of that right away. I didn’t want to make it so easy though.
“Who was the loan officer you spoke to?”
“Wilson. I don’t know his full name.”
“I will talk to him.” I chose my words
very carefully, making sure not to make any promises I couldn’t keep. Or didn’t
want to keep, more like.
Her face visibly changed colors and her
eyes widened. “You can do that?”
“What did I say about owning the company?”
She jumped and for a second it looked like
she was going to hug me but changed her mind.
“Oh my god, thank you so so much! You can
get him to approve the loan!”
“That’s not what I said.” I spoke slowly.
“I said I would talk to him.”
Her face fell. “Oh, of course – I am sorry
I didn’t mean to-”
“It’s okay. Try to cheer up. I’m sure we
can work something out.”
I walked back to my desk and called the
loan office. “Wilson, please.”
“Mr. Sinclair! To what do I owe the
pleasure?” The guy sounded absolutely thrilled to be getting a call from the
CEO of the company. This could be so very easy if I wanted it to be. But a very
different idea was forming in my head altogether. I would rather this be fun
than easy.
“Why did you turn down Aria Roberts’ loan
request?”
There was a short pause. “I’m sorry, sir,
it’s classified-”
“Do you like your job, Wilson?” I spat.
“Do you enjoy having somewhere to go to every day and getting a nice fat
paycheck at the end of the month?”
“Yes, of course! I am sorry, sir. The
situation was completely out of my hand. As you know, we run all loan requests
through a software that processes applications and calculates risks. Aria
Roberts’ risk was almost a 100 percent. She has no savings, spends all her
money from the job paying for college and even though her credit is pretty good
for her age, she simply does not have any assets or any kind of solid
foundation. Not 60,000 worth anyway.”
“I see.”
“However,” he said a little too quickly,
“ultimately I call the shots, and I can change the shots I called if you want.”
Is that what I wanted? No. I wanted this
to be fun. This was going to be too much fun. Aria Roberts had no idea how much
fun we were going to have together.
“What I need you to do is to send Aria an
email letting her know you heard from me today, and that you explained to me
why her loan could not go through.
Make
it very clear that I tried to get you to change your mind, but the system
simply did not allow for it, so you were personally writing to apologize to her
for the inconvenience. Copy me in the email.”
“But, sir-“
“You said you liked your job. Is that
right?”
“Of course. Would you like me to add
anything to the email?”
“That will be all for today. Thank you.”
---
I finished drafting up the document and
briefly considered running it by my lawyer, but decided against it, more for
Aria’s sake than my own. If she was going to agree to this deal, I might as
well have her feel comfortable about it. I looked at the bouquet of red roses
that had been returned to my office that morning and grinned. One down,
twenty-nine to go. After today it probably wouldn’t take twenty-nine days
before I got to screw her. After printing the document, I removed a rose from
the bunch and placed it over the pile of papers on my desk.
I picked up the phone to call Aria. It was
game time. I watched her answer the phone, looking somber.
“South National Bank, how may I help you?”
“Come into my office. Mrs. Brian seems to
be doing quite well by herself over there.”