His Absolute Assignment - Elise's Love Story: The Billionaire's Continuum (#1) (A Contemporary Romance Novel) (4 page)

I turned to leave and head back towards my own office, but just as I stepped to the side I bumped into someone.  They shoved past me, practically snarling at me, then stared at me with a look of annoyed anger.

"Excuse you," the woman said.  "Do you mind watching where you're going?  Some of us don't have the luxury of being able to waste time by bumping into people."

"I'm... I'm sorry," I stuttered, stumbling on my words.  "I'm sorry, Ms. Hamilton.  I didn't mean to.  It was an accident."

Alice Hamilton, Director of Information and Technology.  She was in charge of managing the data network within Landseer Enterprises.  Not just the computers, information, and security network in Landseer Tower, but all of those things within every system in every Landseer establishment.  Hotels, hotspots, casinos.  She'd reluctantly set up Jessika with a UNIX upload system for direct access to various online retailer's paperback, hardcover, and e-book servers, but in the end we'd decided to use different methods.

I wasn't sure, but I thought that bothered Alice.  She didn't seem like the sort of person to appreciate someone disregarding her work or her methods.  Granted, she hadn't actually been the one to set up the entire thing; she'd just managed it and made sure it happened.  But... she still seemed angry about it for whatever reason.

And now she was angrier still.

"Fool," she said.  "You've wasted too much of my time.  I don't know why I expected an actual apology from the likes of you.  I don't know why he puts up with you.  The incompetence in this building is mind boggling."

She meant Lucent.  I knew what they said about me, and usually I didn't care, but something about her tone right now really frustrated me.  Yes, so, Lucent and I were involved.  We had a relationship with one another.  Maybe it wasn't the most normal of situations, but who was she to shove her nose into it?  Who was anyone?  It was Lucent and I who could decide what we were doing.  We were adults, plain and simple, and...

Alice Hamilton stomped off, ignoring me.  Oh well.  I didn't actually care enough to explain anything to her.  I didn't want to associate with someone like her.  She was one of the higher ups in Landseer Enterprises, somewhat on par with Lucent, but that didn't mean I needed to like her.  It didn't mean I needed to do anything with her.

Forcing myself not to stumble and tremble because of my rage, I put one foot in front of the other, placing all my thoughts into moving instead of seething with anger, and I walked down the hall and back towards my office.

I didn't want to be an angry person.  I thought I was usually a happy person.  I didn't know why some people needed to be so mean, though.  They could just be nice, right?  Or, at least disinterested.  I didn't do anything to her.  I bumped into her, yes, but that wasn't a reason to be rude about Lucent and I.

I tried not to be angry, but it didn't work.  I needed to get a drink, a soda.  I wanted to drink the entire bottle in one gulp and feel the bubbles pounding down my throat and into my chest, washing away the nervous frustration digging into the pit of my stomach.  I wanted to go see Lucent and to tell him, but I couldn't do that.  I couldn't just run to him whenever I had a problem.  I couldn't just...

I made my way towards one of the quieter break room areas so I could get a soda from the vending machine and sit down for a moment.

After I calmed down and returned to my office, I immediately sat and continued writing my story.  The incident with Alice Hamilton had bothered me so much that I felt some searing desire to write more.  Not just more, but better; everything.

She thought she was important?  Yes, well, maybe she was, but that didn't mean I wasn't important.  Maybe lots of people thought of me as "that girl that Lucent is doing dirty things with," but I was quite a bit more than that.  First off, we weren't just doing dirty things, we were falling in love, over and over again, every day.  Yes, perhaps there were dirty things involved, like him ordering me to give him a blowjob in his office as punishment for me intruding, but I thought that was fine.  We were monogamous.  We could do what we liked.

These thoughts, this frustration, gave me fuel and passion to write something wonderful and show
Ms. Hamilton
she was dumb.  I wasn't sure how one thing correlated to the other, but I didn't really care at the moment, either.

I wanted to write.  I needed to.

"I don't understand.  I..."  My brain overloaded, forgetting how to function.

"We're surrounded by storefronts and office buildings, that, if you hadn't noticed, shut down for the day hours ago.  This was the only, and nearest, place with a light on, and the door was open.  There's nowhere else."

"We're trapped?" I asked.

He nodded.  "Quite."

"You're Lucent Storme," I muttered again.

I realized then that I was sitting on a bean bag in the children's section of the library, a book beneath my breasts, propping them up for prime viewing pleasure, with my skirt... with my skirt...

I jumped up and away from him, bouncing to my feet.  Pulling my skirt back down to my knees from its previous lascivious spot hiked high up my thigh, I tried to present myself with some appropriate appearance.

Lucent merely smirked at me.  "You know who I am, but who, might I ask, are you?"

"Elise," I murmured, affectedly shy all of a sudden.  "Elise Tanner."

"A pleasure, Miss Tanner," he said, holding out his hand.

"Mr. Storme," a man said, speaking to Lucent through the internal phone system at Landseer Tower.  "There's been an incident with Mrs. Landseer's office..."

Someone had broken into Jessika Landseer's office, vandalized it, and left slander and hate writ in capitalized, bolded letters all across her laptop screen.  The document claimed her a whore, repeated over and over, crisp and clear.

Word of the incident with Mrs. Landseer's office reached Lucent shortly after it happened.  First he heard about it from Henry, the head of security, and then he heard about it from Asher Landseer, himself.  Presumably Jessika wanted to solve the problem on her own, but it seemed trickier than that.  The directors and the CEO held a meeting to discuss the matter, but nothing was finalized.  Something bothered him, though.

Alice Hamilton's audacity astounded him.  Did she really expect anyone to agree with the security measures she deemed necessary?  He didn't want to call anyone an idiot if he didn't have to, but tapping into every laptop computer's internal webcam and microphone seemed more than a bit excessive.  This wasn't
1984
or some apocalyptic dystopian communist regime, it was a corporation and a business.  Certainly they could do
something
, but something that drastic seemed completely unnecessary.

A part of him wanted to believe that Alice Hamilton was ignorant to the effects her scheme would cause, but another part wondered if it was part of another scheme.  Lucent, admittedly, had a bad habit of paranoia at times.  He found it difficult to trust others, except in rare circumstances, and he disliked board conference meetings most of all.  A facade of democracy was well and good, but when people from multiple different departments that had almost nothing to do with one another tried to perform decision making and problem solving together, it rarely resulted in adequate or useful solutions.

It wasn't Lucent's decision, though; it would never be his decision.  It suited him fine, to be honest.  He didn't want to be anything more than a supporting member of Landseer Enterprises.  Or, more accurately, he supported Asher Landseer, and Jessika, as well.  Everyone else in the building and the company was certainly wonderful, and he harbored no hatred or ill-feelings towards them, but it wasn't his duty to protect them.

Most of them, at least, with a few exceptions.

He smiled, taking a rare break, remembering Elise.  She was amazing to him, always new and vibrant in so many different ways.  He saw her, saw her every day in fact, but each time seemed exciting and intimate.

He adored her.

Sometimes he wanted to do terrible things to her. 
Good
terrible things, but not the sort of things that any proper young lady should generally find herself doing.  The memory of her on her knees earlier returned to him, when she cupped his balls in one of her hands while she stroked up and down his shaft with the other, and licked and sucked at the head of his cock with her mouth and her plump, kissable lips, and her salacious, insatiable tongue.  It was glorious.

She'd been writing something.  Supposedly a story about excessive manual stimulation and squirting, but that's not the story he saw.  In fact, he was quite intrigued by what he'd read, though she didn't appear to be very far along with it yet.  How far would she go, he wondered?

He remembered it easily, remembered their time together in the library.  He'd gone for admirable reasons, and yet he felt like a wretch for intruding upon her sanctuary, too.  What had she written? 
Trapped in a library during a blizzard, Elise finds herself forced into isolation with Lucent Storme, the untoward magnate who's rumored to have more than a few forbidden desires and darker passions. 
Yes, that sounded apt.  He hoped she continued the story, as well.

Would she put in the scene that happened that day?  It was one of the most memorable moments of his life, and he thought about it often.

By all means, Miss Tanner
, he'd said then. 
Don't let me interrupt you.

With a soft, uncertain whisper, she had replied. 
What?

Continue.

The memory made him smile.  As much as he would have liked to relive the past with fond admiration, he didn't have the time at the moment.  Unfortunate, that.  Something about Mr. Landseer's final statement during the meeting left him feeling uneasy.

Asher didn't intend to do anything about the break-in at Jessika's office.  No added security measures, no extra fortifications.  Mr. Landseer planned to investigate further, but beyond that he offered no insight into what Landseer Enterprises would be doing.

What bothered Lucent about this was what if one of the culprits, or at least one of the people acting as the catalyst behind the incident, was in the conference room at that very meeting?

Landseer Enterprises had a fairly recent poor record of incidents involving the board of directors.  Lucent's predecessor caused quite a stir with the media, and Jessika Landseer was involved with the scandal in a different way, too.  It struck him as oddly horrifying and symbolic that the man who was Director of Public Relations before him had ended up causing so much reputational harm to Asher Landseer and his business.  Granted, it was mostly repaired now, through various active and passive efforts.  Many in the media took to deflective tactics, though.  Harsh and unfair, yet not entirely unforeseeable.

This current incident seemed like a part of that.  Perhaps not directly related to Solomon Royce, ex-Director of Public Relations, nor directly related to Jessika Landseer, but related nonetheless.  Whomever had broken into her office knew exactly what they were doing and why they wanted to do it.

What, then, had they stolen?

Supposedly nothing.  Supposedly Henry and his security team went through the office and found everything fine, though in obvious disarray.  Mrs. Landseer didn't think anything was missing, either.

Lucent was almost positive something had been taken, though.  If not a physical object, data from her computer, or something less tangible and evident.  Floor plans?  Maybe something more obscure and obtuse?  If the goal was to remove Jessika's comfort and make her feel uneasy in her surroundings, that could allow further progression to take place in accordance with these feelings and emotions.  In essence, perhaps causing her fear, anxiety, and paranoia was intruder's goal?

There was a lot to think about here, a lot at hand, and at this current point in time Lucent doubted he could do much more than prepare.  Glancing towards his laptop, he readied himself to perform some preliminary cautionary investigations into a few points of interest he thought might contain pertinent data for the future.  Once he finished that, he needed to meet with Mr. Landseer to discuss his disapproval of his final statement during the conference meeting, and then he would resume his daily duties and go home.

Everything should work out fine.  It just might take a little longer than a day or two.  Within the week he thought he'd have a good idea about the resolution of this issue.

Someone had broken into Jessika's office.

I stared at my computer, reading the last line I'd written over and over again, barely understanding it.  I wasn't even sure if I'd written it, to be honest.

It sounded good in my head before I asked it, at least.  "I think I know what question I want to ask you," I said.

My story about my time in the library wasn't important at the moment, though.  What worried me was that I'd been to Jessika's office earlier.  When I was there, I hadn't seen signs of anyone having broken in.  It must have happened shortly afterwards.

I briefly wondered if I was a suspect, then?  Alice Hamilton would have seen me there, but she obviously saw me walking away.  Was she vindictive and bitchy enough to blame it on me, though?  I hoped not, and no one seemed to indicate that was the case.  Granted, all of this information was second-hand, not from the immediate source, so I couldn't have known what anyone thought.  Jessika didn't say anything to me, either.  I'd planned on going back to speak with her about her email, but I couldn't now.

The Landseer Tower security team was going through her office for some sort of investigative measures and that part of the building was off limits at the moment.  Someone had come by to inform me of that a bit ago.  When I asked after Jessika, they said she was gone for the day.  I was planning on leaving soon, too, having worked rather hard, writing nearly 11,000 words, but maybe I should stay?

For what, though?  Um... just because?  With Jessika gone, I was the only Landseer Publishing writer left in the building, and I felt like maybe I was supposed to be in charge of something.  Not that there was anything to be in charge of, but who knew?  Also, if I left now, was that suspicious?  I didn't want to seem suspicious, because I hadn't even done anything except walk past her office.  I mean, yes, I opened the door and peeked inside, but I hadn't really gone in.  My head had gone in, and maybe a little of my arm and one of my feet, but I hadn't done anything.  I hadn't vandalized it.