Page 141 of Boss of the Year
Every movement felt surreal, like I was watching someone else go through the motions. Passport? Check. Toiletries? Check. I stared at the towel I’d left on Sofia’s floor. The girl who had stripped naked and offered herself so boldly felt like a stranger now.
Or maybe, I thought as I rolled my suitcase down the hall, she’d never existed at all.
28
INTERLUDE
“Wherethe fuckis she?”
Robbie Esposito, a no-nonsense kid from the Bronx who was easily the best assistant Lucas Lyons had ever had, trembled like the last leaf in an autumn storm.
And Lucas couldn’t have cared less.
For four days, he’d been asking the same goddamn question. Four days since he’d woken up in Xavier and Francesca Parker’s Mayfair flat to an empty bed, the remnants of half-made French toast in the kitchen and some burnt espresso in a Moka pot on the stove. Four days since his assistant had delivered the email sent from Marie, which simply read:
Hi Robbie,
I’m sorry to do this so last minute, but an emergency has come up, and I need to take a leave of absence. Please tell Mr. Lyons that I’ll be in touch next week. If that’s not acceptable to him, I understand that I may have to lose my job.
Thank you,
Marie
Lucas didn’t know what part of the note had infuriated him more—that he was back to “Mr. Lyons” or that she’d sent the note to Robbie instead of him.
In the suite at the Connaught that Robbie had procured for the remainder of their time in London, Lucas prowled while he struggled with mundane tasks like tying a half-Windsor knot or attaching his cufflinks to his shirt. His assistant looked very much like he wanted to burrow into the ground like a rabbit.
“I’m sorry, sir. She hasn’t been answering her text messages. I don’t think she even has her phone turned on.”
These were things Lucas already knew, given that every time he tried to call Marie, the phone went to voicemail. He was also aware that none of her family members knew where she was—although he suspected at least one or all of them was lying. Not one of her irritatingly sharp siblings seemed the slightest bit worried that their sister with a severe social anxiety disorder and probable ochlophobia was lost in the very big world.
Meanwhile, whenever he thought of Marie lost in another subway or making her way through a crammed railway station, Lucas wanted to break something.
Again.
“Do you…do you want to send her notice?” Robbie suggested, and then promptly braced himself like he was genuinely afraid Lucas might strike him.
Lucas stopped by the window. “You mean fire her?”
Robbie nodded weakly. “She did say it would be acceptable in her email, given the circumstances. So, it’s not like she could claim wrongful termination or anything like that.”
Lucas recalled some nonsense about how losing her job would be necessary if her absence wasn’t “acceptable” to him.
Damn right it wasn’t acceptable.
But neither was not seeing her every day.
“Why the fuck would I fire her?” Lucas snapped. “She’s the best chef we’ve ever had, and we literally paid for her to become that very thing for us.”
He hated every word that came out of his mouth. Lies, all lies, distilling Marie down to such reductive traits.
God, she was so much more than a chef.
She was a sister and an aunt and a granddaughter to her enormous, intimidating yet incredibly caring family.
She loved knitting podcasts and something called #crochettok. She laughed at videos of golden retrievers and knew every lyric Taylor Swift had ever written (even though she pretended not to).
She was a mess of contradictions in the best possible way. Outspoken yet incredibly shy. Intuitive yet naïve. Fully aware of some of the ugliest things this world had to offer, and at the same time shockingly innocent of so many of its gifts.
