Chapter 2: THE INTERVIEW
1034 Words
The shouting started before I got through the door.
I was still at the reception desk, pen in hand, signing my name when it came down the hallway.
"Who approved this? Somebody in this building approved this and I want them standing in front of me right now!"
The receptionist's smile didn't move but her eyes did. A man in a suit came around the corner walking fast, phone to his ear. Then two women behind him, same speed. Then another with a laptop held in both hands. Everyone moving in one direction. Away.
I capped the pen and took a seat.
I had told myself on the bus ride over that I was ready. I had his photo from three different articles. I knew his reputation, knew the company, knew the estate's history better than people who had actually been inside it. Four years of preparation sitting in my bag next to my credentials.
Then he came around the corner.
He wasn't looking at me. He was talking to the man beside him, one hand cutting through the air, jacket open. Then the other man peeled off through a side door and Aiden Kross looked up and saw me.
He stopped.
I looked back at him and didn't move.
He walked over. Up close he was worse than the photographs and I was annoyed at myself for the half second it took me to remember why I was there.
"Ms. Hale."
"Mr. Kross."
"You've been waiting."
"Ten minutes," I said. "It's fine."
He held my gaze for a second then turned. "This way."
I followed him past the conference room where three people sat in complete silence staring at a spreadsheet. Past offices where everyone was suddenly very busy. Into a small room at the end with a round table and two chairs.
He sat. I sat across from him. He put my application on the table and looked at it then looked at me.
"Your father's name was Daniel Hale," he said.
My stomach dropped straight to the floor.
I kept my face exactly where it was. "Yes."
"He worked for my uncle."
"Eleven years," I said. "Yes."
"And you still applied for this position."
"I need the work." I held his gaze. "Whatever happened between our families isn't something I can pay my rent with."
He leaned back and said nothing. Just looked at me.
Most people talked when he did that. I could tell from the way he waited, comfortable and unhurried, like he already knew the silence would do the work for him. I kept my mouth closed and looked straight back at him and that was when it happened. He leaned forward slightly, just enough, and his eyes moved across my face the way they had moved across my application. Slow. Methodical. Looking for the thing I wasn't showing him.
I didn't look away.
He did.
One fraction of a second and he covered it immediately, picked up my application, looked back at the page. But I saw it. He had been searching for a crack and hadn't found one and it had thrown him and he didn't want me to know it.
I filed that away and said nothing.
"You're not angry," he said.
"I didn't say that."
"You're sitting very calmly for someone whose father died with nothing because of my uncle."
"Would you prefer I wasn't calm?"
He said nothing.
"I'm angry," I said. "I've been angry for six years. But I'm also sitting in your building because I want this job and walking in here making it about my father wasn't going to get me that. So yes. I'm angry. And I'm professional enough to keep those two things in separate rooms."
He looked at me for a long moment.
"The archive is forty years of personal and professional records," he said. "Most of it isn't organised. You'll be cataloguing from scratch. Some of what's in there is sensitive. I need someone who understands the difference between doing their job and overstepping."
"I understand it," I said.
"You're sure."
"Mr. Kross." I kept my voice even. "I'm not here to dig through your family's business. I'm here to organise documents. That's all."
I knew I was lying with full confidence.
He picked up my application one more time. I watched his eyes move across the page and thought about the 1987 folder sitting somewhere in that archive. My father's name on documents Edmund Kross had spent years burying. Everything he told me from that hospital bed with his hands thin on the blanket.
Find them Mara. So you know the truth existed.
"Thursday," Aiden said. "Eight o'clock. Ask for Clara at the front desk. Don't be late and don't touch anything you haven't been assigned." He stood. "And Ms. Hale."
I stood. "Yes."
"I know exactly why you're here." He said it quietly. No heat in it. Just a fact sitting on the table between us. "Don't make me regret letting you in anyway."
He walked out.
I stood in that small room with my heart hitting my ribs and my hands completely still at my sides. He knew. He already knew and he still said yes.
On my way out a woman stopped me in the doorway. Diane, second floor operations. Told me he came down to the archive sometimes, that the last two people didn't make it past ten days, that I should do my job and not give him a reason to look twice.
I walked out into the room and took out my phone.
I made sure to look around and ensure nobody was watching me then I looked at my screen, A message was sent to me four minutes ago while I was still sitting across from him in that room.
"You found what you were looking for in 1987. So did we. Thursday, Ms. Hale. We'll be watching."
I stood on that pavement and read it three times.
I had spent four years thinking I was the only one who knew what was buried in that archive.
If they ever notice the reason why I a
pplied for this job I'll be a dead person in few seconds.
- Writer
