Total pages in book: 151
Estimated words: 140874 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 704(@200wpm)___ 563(@250wpm)___ 470(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 140874 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 704(@200wpm)___ 563(@250wpm)___ 470(@300wpm)
“No,” I managed to say without choking on my own shock. “No, I’m definitely not all right.”
* * * *
Emma rode with me to the Elwood & Stern offices, because I was a nervous wreck.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “Do you want me to come up with you?”
I shook my head. “No. Your dad is going to freak. I think I just need to tell him this one-on-one.”
“Do you want me to wait here with Tony?” she asked, gesturing to the partition between the front and back seats.
“I’ll get a cab home.” I didn’t know how I was going to be holding up, and I didn’t want Emma to see me fall apart.
I couldn’t believe Deja would risk her job like this. I couldn’t believe I was in this position.
If I told Neil, my best friend would be unhappy. If I didn’t tell Neil, the truth might come out eventually. And Emma had seen it. I couldn’t stand for her to think I was disloyal to her father. Our weird stepmother-stepdaughter relationship was built around me walking on eggshells and her being mildly disapproving. If she knew I was hiding something important from her father, even that would be gone.
One thing I knew for certain was that Holli was going to get hurt. She was an innocent bystander and it wasn’t fair, but there was no way to avoid it. I had to be honest with Neil.
More importantly, I had to be honest with myself. I wouldn’t feel right, keeping what I’d seen a secret. I’d come to hate the way I felt when I was lying or covering something up. I was growing away from that person, and I didn’t want to invite her back in.
Telling Neil was as much for my sake as it was for his.
I hadn’t really thought through the logistics of what would happen once I was in the building. I didn’t know if I needed to be on a list, or call ahead, or what. There were two uniformed guards at the security desk, as well as a man in suit wearing one of those earpieces with the curly cords. It was kind of intimidating.
“Hi, I need to go up to Elwood and Stern,” I began. I sounded like I wasn’t supposed to be there. I wouldn’t let me in.
The guy with the earpiece looked pretty skeptical, as well. “Name?”
“Sophie Scaife,” I told him uncertainly. “I’m probably not on a list or anything. But if you call up—”
He tapped something into the computer beneath the counter and reached for a laminated pass. “Okay, Ms. Scaife, you’re going to go to the second bank of elevators, and Elwood and Stern is on the eleventh floor.”
Okay, that was a little bit cool, to just waltz on in like I owned the place. Or, like my fiancé owned the place.
As I rode the elevators up, I tried to sort through the emotions that were currently nauseating me. The ramped up anxiety, that was a given. The fear that I might have to actually confront Deja one-on-one eventually, I recognized that, too. The anger caught me off guard. I couldn’t remember a time I’d been so frighteningly mad at someone. My heart lodged itself at the base of my throat, and though I was outwardly calm, I had no idea how I was going to react if I saw her.
The woman behind the desk in the Elwood & Stern lobby saw me coming as soon as I stepped off the elevator. I marched up to her as confidently as I could and said, “I’m here to see—”
“You’re here to see Mr. Elwood,” she finished for me. “They already called up. Have you been here before? Do you need me to show you the way?”
“Um…” I looked around. The place was not what I’d been expecting. The walls were a dark gray, with three thin, chrome bands running along them and down the corridors on either side of the reception desk. The carpet was black, and the furniture in the waiting area was black with brushed steel accents. It was surprisingly dark; it must be like working in a submarine all day. “Maybe you should, yeah. Show me the way.”
“I’m Alice,” the woman introduced herself. Her chestnut hair was pulled up in a neat twist at the back of her head, and she was dressed way more conservatively than I was used to seeing in an office setting—but that was because my last job had been Porteras, where high fashion had ruled. Alice’s light gray pants suit and white silk shell seemed almost dowdy in comparison to the stuff Ivanka, the receptionist at the magazine, had worn.
Alice bustled me along down the short corridor to the main office. It wasn’t as dark here; though the decor was the same, overhead halogens on exposed tracks took the place of the inset can lighting in the lobby, and cubical walls in slate divided the floor into six large workstations.