CHAPTER TWO : THE INTERVIEW
1512 Words
The Ashford Industries building was exactly as grey as Maya had predicted.
Forty floors of deliberate, expensive, architectural grey rising out of the London skyline like a statement not a warm statement, not an inviting one, but the kind of statement that arrived in a room before you did and was already sitting at the head of the table by the time you got there.
Eloise stood outside it for exactly twelve seconds.
Not because she was nervous.
Because she was memorizing.
The entrance. The security. The cameras three visible, two she'd identified that weren't. The receptionist visible through the glass who had the bearing of someone who had long ago made peace with the fact that her entire professional existence was to make other people feel small before they got upstairs she walked in.
The lobby was grey marble and cold light and the specific silence of a place that had been deliberately designed to remind you that you were smaller than the building. A place that said without saying anything do you have an appointment?
Eloise walked to the reception desk like she'd been there a hundred times.
The receptionist looked up. Looked at her. Did the specific assessment that receptionists in buildings like this do a top to bottom inventory that lasted half a second and communicated a full paragraph.
Eloise looked back at her with complete serenity.
"Eloise Barker," she said. "Two o'clock."
The receptionist typed. Checked. Typed again.
"Thirty fourth floor," she said. "Someone will meet you."
Eloise smiled pleasantly.
"Lovely," she said. "Thank you so much."
She walked to the elevator.
Pressed thirty four.
In the mirrored doors she checked herself once cream blazer, dark trousers, hair pulled back, the particular expression she'd practiced that morning in the bathroom mirror. Not warm. Not cold. Somewhere precisely in between. The expression of a woman who was exactly what she appeared to be.
She was nothing of what she appeared to be.
The elevator opened.
A young assistant was waiting nervous energy, clipboard, the look of someone who had been briefed extensively on how this afternoon was supposed to go.
"Miss Barker?"
"Yes."
"If you'll follow me"
"Of course."
She was taken past a row of offices all glass, all visible, all occupied by people who looked up briefly as she passed and then looked away. She catalogued faces without appearing to. Filed names she recognized from three years of research against the faces that matched them.
She was shown to a waiting room.
Four other women already sat there.
All of them beautiful. All of them poised. All of them radiating the particular anxiety of people who very much wanted something and were afraid they wouldn't get it.
Eloise sat.
Crossed her ankles.
Looked at her hands.
The woman to her left leaned slightly.
"Have you been waiting long?"
"Three years," Eloise said pleasantly.
The woman blinked.
Eloise smiled and looked back at her hands.
She was called in last.
She'd expected that.
Last meant he'd already seen four other women. Last meant he was tired and ready to decide. Last meant he wasn't at his most guarded.
She'd asked to be scheduled last.
The assistant had seemed confused by the request.
She hadn't explained.
The office was large and cold and furnished by someone who had confused net worth with warmth and never thought to correct the misunderstanding. Floor to ceiling windows. A desk that cost more than most people's cars. Bookshelves that held actual books she noted that, filed it away.
Damien Ashford stood at the window with his back to her.
She'd studied his photographs for months. Had his face memorized the way you memorize something you need to recognize in the dark. But photographs she understood immediately were entirely inadequate preparation for the specific quality of stillness he carried in person. It wasn't the stillness of someone at rest. It was the stillness of something coiled. Deliberate. Controlled so completely that the control itself had become invisible.
He turned around.
Grey eyes.
Of course.
He looked at her the way she imagined he looked at quarterly reports thorough, unhurried, and at the end of it, entirely unimpressed.
She looked back at him the way she looked at things she was planning to dismantle with patience, and precision, and the particular calm of someone who already knew how it ended.
"Miss Barker."
His voice was unreasonably deep for someone standing that still.
"Mr. Ashford."
She sat down without being invited to. Not with aggression just with the natural ease of someone to whom the chair had always belonged and who was simply returning to it.
Something moved in his eyes.
Gone before she could name it.
He sat across from her. Opened a folder her application, her background check, her carefully constructed history and looked at it without looking at it. He'd already read it. This was assessment.
He was assessing her.
She was assessing the painting behind his left shoulder which she was fairly certain was covering a safe.
"Your family," he said. "The Barker name."
"Yes."
"There's a history there."
"There is."
"With this family specifically."
She met his eyes.
"I'm aware," she said simply.
He studied her. Looking, she imagined, for anger. For agenda. For the tells that people carry when they want something badly enough to be dangerous.
She gave him nothing.
She'd been practicing giving nothing for three years.
"This arrangement," he said, "requires absolute discretion. No emotional complications. No questions about matters that don't concern you. No interference in Ashford business of any kind."
"Of course."
"The duration is fixed. Six months. Not a day longer."
"Understood."
"At the conclusion you will sign a comprehensive non disclosure agreement and we will have no further contact."
"That suits me perfectly."
Something shifted in his expression. A fraction. Almost nothing.
Almost.
"You're not going to negotiate the compensation?"
"Is there room to negotiate?"
"No."
"Then there's nothing to negotiate," she said.
He looked at her for a long moment.
"Do you have questions?"
She considered.
"One," she said. "The advertisement mentioned the ability to navigate high society without incident." She tilted her head slightly. "How do you define incident?"
"Causing a scene. Drawing unnecessary attention. Creating problems where none need to exist."
"Wonderful," she said warmly. "Then we have absolutely nothing to worry about."
He looked at her.
She looked back at him with the open, pleasant expression of a woman with nothing to hide.
He had very good instincts she could see that. The kind that had been sharpened by years of rooms full of people trying to manage him. His instincts were telling him something right now.
She watched him decide not to listen to them.
"You're hired," he said.
She stood. Smoothed her blazer. Picked up her bag with the unhurried ease of someone concluding a perfectly satisfactory meeting.
"Lovely," she said. "I'll see myself out."
She walked to the door.
Paused with her hand on the frame.
Didn't turn around.
"Mr. Ashford."
A beat.
"Miss Barker."
"Your waiting room," she said thoughtfully. "The grey. Was that a deliberate design choice or did someone simply run out of ideas around the third floor and nobody felt comfortable bringing it up?"
She didn't wait for an answer.
The elevator doors closed behind her.
She stood in the mirrored box going down and allowed herself exactly five seconds of something that was not quite satisfaction but lived in the same neighborhood.
Then she opened her bag.
Took out the notebook.
Drew a small door next to the Ashford name.
She was in.
She called Maya from the pavement outside.
Maya picked up before the first ring had finished.
"TALK TO ME."
"I got it."
Silence.
Then
"EHNNNNN—"
Eloise held the phone away from her ear.
"ELOISE. You got it? You actually... HE SAID YES?"
"He said yes."
"TO YOU? To Eloise Barker walking into his house and—"
"Maya."
"I'm processing! Give me a moment I'm PROCESSING." A sound of movement. "Okay. Okay I'm calm. When do you start?"
"Two weeks."
"Two weeks." Maya breathed. "Two weeks and you'll be inside. Inside the house."
"Inside the house," Eloise confirmed.
A long pause.
"Eloise," Maya said quietly. All the performance gone. Just her voice. "Are you okay?"
And there it was. Underneath all the noise and the jollof and the running commentary that. That was Maya. That one question asked quietly when the moment asked for quiet.
"....I will be," Eloise said.
Which was not the same as yes but was the most honest thing she'd said all day.
"Okay," Maya said. "Okay. Come over. I made food ."
"You always cook ....."
"It's a gift Ellie. Some people are given talents and mine is cooking and emotional support and I don't question it I just show up."
Eloise started walking.
"I'm coming," she said.....
her mind filled with dangerous thoughts and a full late night planned ahead of how the Ashford's are going to burnt down their name their legacy EVERYTHING but is it worth it....??
- Writer
