Page 79 of Ricochet

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

A young girl in uniform appeared, eyes cast down, hair made up perfectly.

“Green tea. Crushed mint. One sugar.” Gloria retired onto the fainting couch as she waited. The skyline was vast and beneath her.New York City.There was so much green if a person looked in the right spots. Right now, she saw parks and water, exquisite architecture.

Bringing people to this meccawas a gift. Their other options were horrible: starve to death in a village, be raped and pillaged by God knows who or what in countries that were in the news nightly. What was the opposite of the angel of death? “Gloria Astor.”

Her lips curled. The woman appeared in the doorway, silver tray in hand, eyes cast down.

“Careful or the service will fall.”

She righted her hands, using Gloria’sassessment as permission to enter, and brought the small china teapot to the heirloom side table and set the silver tray without the slightest clatter. Good, the girl was learning. And to think, she could be slurping from a river instead of working in the most powerful city in the world.

“Now, the tea,” Gloria instructed.

Steam rose from the delicate glass, and the scent of steeped green tealeaves with the hint of rose hips and mint kissed the air. The nameless girl let a sugar plop needlessly into the cup, and Gloria sliced her with cold disapproval. “That will be all.”

“Madam,” she whispered.

Gloria arched an eyebrow. “Yes?”

“There’s a call waiting.” She bowed, stepping away as though Gloria might lunge from her chaise and whip her back to the shipping freighter from which she’darrived.

But a call?Her glance slid to her cell phone, knowing it hadn’t rung. The suite phone took only the most important clients who needed to discuss imperative matters, the type of calls that couldn’t be run through her boards of directors or C-level executives paid far too much in their perks and bonuses when they had no idea what went on in the Astor corporate conglomerate.

Gloria pickedup her tea cup and inhaled the serene scents that melted her worries and centered her mind then sipped her barely sweet, steaming-hot drink.

Two sips and one long cat stretch later, she slipped off the couch and glided to the desk in the far corner of her sitting room. The barely-used phone waited for her, and with it, all the excellent business opportunities that had come from it.

She liftedthe pearl handle, carefully pushing coiffed hair from her ear. “Yes, hello?”

Silence.

Annoyance took her. She sank into the plush chair, agitated that she might wait for the caller. She took off her earing and laid the large ruby on the desk. Then she tried again, “Who’s there?”

“It is you.” The quiet voice of a young woman came through the line, clear as the sky that overlooked the city today.

Gloria’s brow furrowed. Of all the people who had this phone number, none were women, and none were young. Again, none would dare speak to her in that tone, accusatory and exhaustingly uninformed. It was almost too tiring to have this conversation. It sounded like someone she’d saved who had a deluded version of what their life could’ve been like. Even more tiring, it could be any number ofactivists who found reason to protest her, hating her corporate wealth and powerful empire, and yet having no clue what they’d likely despise. If they truly listened, they would have no choice but to agree with her.

There was a twinge of a Midwestern accent—but mixed with a hint of an exotic twist to her letters that even years of servitude might not be able to rid a person of. “You’re betteroff, my dear.”

“I’m sorry?”

She rolled her eyes. “You have an idealized vision of what could’ve been, and you’ve forgotten. Maybe too young or dumb, or even…” She flicked her wrist. “Hopeful? To remember what or where you came from.”

“You have no idea who I am.”

Gloria could’ve written the script. “Yet you’re all the same. You forget what you’ve been given and what you’ve avoided.”

“You’rejustifying what you do?”

Why did she bother with these petty conversations? The ones who fought the system, who avoided their destinies—they were the ones who never made it through her process and couldn’t be saved. They’d have never made it anyway, wherever they came from or wherever Gloria sold them, not with that attitude. “You sound older. You’ve been here for some time now.”

“You don’tknow—”

“In the real world, there are jobs in sales. Are you familiar?” The gaping silence proved that perhaps she was not. “And most sales boil down to numbers. Ten leads could equal one sale.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” the woman snapped.

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