* * * Hayden’s POV * * *
“He’s unavailable right now,” my father’s assistant, Lola, says while picking her pristine pristine teeth with her thumbnail, barely looking at me from her perch behind the glass and steel front desk. She’s a hologram; my father doesn’t tolerate human company.
“Tell him that it’s me and that it’s important,” I tell her, not in any mood to be messed about. I’ve never understood why my father programmed such an unhelpful and difficult assistant.
Lola looks at me as though I am sorry that she has stood in. Her tiny blue eyes filled with resentment; maybe she’s been programmed to hate me. “Look, Hayden. He said he’s busy and doesn’t want to be disturbed. OK?” she says as though I’m still that eight-year-old boy who wanted my father to fix my broken train set. The
