Page 19 of Salt Kiss
“That’s the one. Great bodyguard. Got poached by a bossy little peach of a pop star.”
“I think he was smitten,” Nat says. “No way that pay raise alone was enough to leave a rent-free apartment and getting split open like a fence pos—” She breaks off abruptly.
I look back to see Goran has shoved against her shoulder with his.
“Well, it’s a kink club, who wouldn’t want to work here?” she asks, although I don’t think that had been anything like what she was going to say.
We all know about Mark and his bodyguards.That was what Andrea had said my first night in the club.
I am about to ask more, but something about Goran’s red cheeks and the studious way Nat is staring at her laptop makes me shy. And there’s no relevance in the question, is there? Even if Strassburg and Mark had...well, Mark had already made everything clear.
If you’re worried I’ll expect more...
We finish our security prep work for the morning, and I leave for Mark’s floor. I’m joined by Sedge in the elevator, who murmurs a quiet hello and then slips out ahead of me the minute the doors open. The assistant evenmovesin a murmur somehow, his steps thoughtful and wary.
I enter Mark’s office to find him propped on the front of his desk, Sedge already explaining something in a low voice.
“And the total amount?” asks Mark as Sedge hands him a stylus. He is holding out his tablet for Mark to sign now.
“Close to six hundred thousand dollars, sir.”
“Not bad for an afternoon’s work,” Mark says, signing. “And imagine how happy our friend the congresswoman is going to be when her committee will be in the spotlight for the next six months.”
“I don’t have to imagine, sir. She’s very active on TikTok. Will there be anything else?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” Mark says, and his eyes slide to me. They drop once, quickly, to my mouth, and it’s like a fist to the stomach.
Oh God.
How am I going to get through this first full week without embarrassing myself?
Three days later,I’m sitting in an office in Baltimore while Mark meets with someone in a corner suite. There’s a TV playing a financial news channel, and even though the sound is muted, the chyron at the bottom declares that Wall Street’s been rocked by the news that a weighted blanket company’s latest product—a blanket that gently vibrates as you use it, something that went viral immediately and smashed sales records—apparently has a tendency to catch fire while its users sleep. Worse, the companyknewabout this before the product launch and failed to disclose the risk. The talking heads on the TV are going wild about it, waving their hands—and interrupting each other if the fragmented captions are any indication. There’s talk of recalls, potential bankruptcy. A congresswoman has already sworn to investigate it—the same one I presume Mark and Sedge were speaking of the other day.
I glance down the hall to where Mark is, the suite door firmly shut, and I quickly pull my cell phone from my suit jacket pocket to confirm my suspicions.
When Mark emerges from the meeting thirty minutes later and stops in front of the TV, there’s an amused quirk to his eyebrow.
“You knew about it, didn’t you, sir?” I say later in the car on the way back to DC. “You knew when we visited their offices on my first day.”
“The company’s former COO is a member of Lyonesse. Last year, his payment was information about the blanket and anticipated sales, so I invested. This year, his payment was that they’d lied about the safety tests, so I sold my shares. As did any member at Lyonesse who’d invested with them.”
“So the visit...?”
He stretches his legs, crossing them at the ankles. “I wanted to make sure the CEO knew it would be pointless to fight this—or to punish the former COO.”
“Was the former COO the one who leaked the safety results?”
A quick exhale, like a laugh. “No, that was me.”
“Why?”
“Why leak it? You don’t believe I’m passionate about consumer safety? Tristan, I’m wounded.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” I say, and that earns me a press at the corner of his mouth.
“No, you’re not, but I rather think you would be if I were really hurt, which is good of you. But alas, you are right to suspect my motives. I wasn’t happy with how they’d treated their COO—my club member—before he quit, and I felt a little vengeful on his behalf. It’s a happy accident that people are safer in their beds now.”
“I suppose giving your friend in Congress a nice soapbox was a happy accident too, sir? And the extra six hundred thousand dollars?”
