Eleven ◑ The Visitor

Lucille had never wanted to wallop someone as much as she wanted to wallop Jamie for saying that shit. And this desire only increased tenfold when Cade perked up with purpose.

Uh-oh. Lucille's unwilling accomplice was officially in trouble.

With his hands balled into fists, Cade marched towards the door, yanked it open, and stomped right through. His strides were long and heavy, reaching an almost threatening level as he bursted through the hallways.

While Clifford and Jamie remained in the conference room, Lucille bounded after Cade, prepared to kick him in the groin or paralyze him with magic if he ever tried to harm Justin.

"Cade," she said soothingly, "Cade, don't be rash about this. You don't know for sure that he's—"

"I know that," he replied through gritted teeth, his eyes flitting around the hallway. "I just want to talk to Justin and clear things out."

"By the looks of you, you don't want to just talk," she pointed out.

He bared his teeth in a menacing smile. "I wouldn't just talk if I get proof, so Justin better have an explanation for this shit."

On that happy note, he burst out into the lobby, his body arranged in what seemed like a fighting stance. He looked just about ready to throttle Justin.

However, Justin wasn't at the front desk. He was in the room behind the actual desk, the wide space where they kept old equipment and all sorts of useless stuff.

The door that lead to it was ajar, and Justin himself could be heard humming inside.

Naturally, this made Cade pause and let out a bit of his tension by taking deep, steadying breaths. His body relaxed a bit, and Lucille could almost hear him trying to calm himself down. It appeared to have worked, because his walk was visibly less thunderous upon entering the room.

Deciding not to rely on this visible decrease of temper, Lucille followed him closely.

Justin was oblivious to it all. He had his back turned to them. He was rifling through a cabinet of old files, with Air Pods jammed up his ears. His feet were tapping along to whatever music he was listening to, and he himself was murmuring lyrics.

"Justin," Cade said loudly. The other man didn't even flinch. "Justin." When he only continued doing his thing, Cade boomed, "JUSTIN!"

He jumped and dropped all the files on his lap, causing them to cascade on the floor. His face went pale when he saw Cade. Immediately, he got to his feet and snatched out his Air Pods. "Cade, I'm so sorry. I know I shouldn't be listening to music during work hours, but—"

"I don't care if you listen to music until your ears bleed." Cade seemed to be at the end of his tether. "What I care about is how you fucked up my meeting with William."

Justin's face went blank. "Huh? What meeting?"

"Don't play dumb!" Cade's voice reverberated inside the room. "You're the only one who touched the laptop before the meeting. You're the one who put that gang bang porn in there!"

"What?" Justin looked aghast, then he let out a snort of laughter. "Gang bang porn, like, what the hell?"

If Cade was angry before, it was nothing compared to what he was now. His face was as red as a brick wall, and the color was already creeping down his neck. He was grinding his teeth so hard that Lucille was waiting for any of them to crack. They didn't, though. None of them did. The only thing that Cade did crack was his knuckles, which was a bad sign.

There was no other way to put it: the dude was livid. He was beside himself with rage. He was at the brink of firing Justin on the spot or beating him up into a pulp. Or both.

And that might actually intensify the damage that Lucille had done to his career so far.

Imagine it. Today, his reputation as a boss had been forever marred by a video of people doing the devil's tango but with more flavor, so to speak. But what would blow things off the roof was if he actually lashed out and punished an innocent employee when everyone thought that he was the one to blame. It would be too perfect, and Lucille would be done with this mission.

However, as much as Lucille wanted to be free of this shit and move on with the rest of her life, she just couldn't let Justin get punished. She knew perfectly well that his involvement was her doing, and even though he'd been nothing but eager, she wouldn't let him get into any kind of trouble.

Well, shit. This sympathy thing was new. She'd never felt anything like this for the ones she'd used as baits before, but she felt that it was only right.

"Cade," Lucille called again, this time injecting a bit of her magic into her voice to get him to obey her. "Cade, come now. Don't be irrational. Justin, don't laugh. This is a serious matter."

"I'm sorry," Justin immediately said, now looking sheepish. "It's just that . . . What happened?"

Cade didn't look capable of explaining calmly, so Lucille took over and recounted the whole event to Justin. All the while, she was trying hard not to crack a smile, especially when she got to the video part. As she progressed, Cade looked more and more sulky. All of Justin's humor was vanishing too.

"But that's crazy," he said when she finished. "Cade, you know I'll never do that, much less know how to do that. Besides, doesn't the conference room have cameras?"

For a moment Lucille's heart stopped. Goddamn people and their technology. She waited for Cade to say, "Oh, yeah! The cameras!" but thankfully it didn't come.

"No," he said instead. "We don't put cameras in the conference room. That's the rule. People could use that against us and leak everything we discuss. But now I wish I did keep cameras."

"So what now?" Lucille asked, masking her relief with concern. "What are we going to do?"

"I'm going to have an investigation conducted," Cade replied, much calmer now. "I will find whoever did this and make sure he or she ends up in jail."

◑≡◑≡◑≡◑

Lucille wasn't scared. She was nervous, though. And worried.

Okay, she was kind of scared.

The trifecta of familiar feelings she didn't want to be combined. But now, they're all at the pit of her stomach, gurgling and just threatening to bust out.

The thing was, she used to be so perfect at this revenge stuff. All her plans had been fast, effective, and rewarding. Now, they were slow, unsatisfying, and ridden with holes and uncertainties. She used to be methodical in doing this, pragmatic. Now it seemed like she was getting her emotions get in the way of otherwise simple plans.

What if they manage to trace back that virus shit to her? What if they threaten to have her thrown in jail? What would she do then? Leave to another state, another part of the world where she'd have to start over? Would she even have time for that, when the candle was slowly melting every day. . . .

"Miss Lucille?"

Startled, she looked up and found herself standing by the elevator, the entire view of her penthouse. And blocking her way was Agnes, who was wearing oven mitts for reasons Lucille didn't want to know.

"Oh, hi." Lucille sounded like she was acting in a very bad movie. "What's up?"

Agnes winced. "You've been standing there for a minute."

"Right." Really? Wow, Lucille was really out of it, huh? "I'm so sorry. It's just that I had a fun day at Paradigm and I—"

"Shh," Agnes suddenly said, rushing to cover Lucille's mouth. "Be more sensitive."

"About what?" she whispered. "I'm sensitive."

"About her."

Agnes stepped aside to reveal someone else in the sitting room. It was no other than Mia Beckett, sitting by the couch with an ice cream tub in hand and a box of tissues beside her. Her eyes were red and swollen, her cheeks blotchy. She was still sniffling, oblivious to the fact that the other women were staring at her. Her shoulders were shaking as she sobbed into a tissue while spooning mountains of ice cream into her mouth.

"What happened?" Lucille squinted. "Is that my ice cream?"

"Yeah, I gave it to her," Agnes said, biting her lip in worry. At Lucille's reproachful look, she added, "She's a minor! I can't give her the whiskey."

"Fine. But why is she here?"

"I think you need to hear it yourself."

Lucille stepped inside, not bothering to tone down the clacking sound of her stilettos against the uncarpeted part of the floor. Mia snapped into attention. She rose from her seat, her face slack with dread and shame.

"I'm sorry," she warbled even before Lucille could get within three feet of her. "Miss Lucille, I'm so sorry."

Lucille's heart wrenched for the girl, but she didn't show her sympathy first. She needed to hear the unvarnished truth. "Sit down and tell me what happened, Mia."

"I got tricked again," Mia replied. "I let him trick me again. I slept with him, and now he's acting like he doesn't know me."

"Oh, no." Lucille groaned. "Mia. You can't be serious."

"I'm so sorry." She broke into tears yet again, collapsing against the couch while covering her face with her palms. "I'm really, really sorry. I didn't know how it happened. It's like I wasn't even all there."

A lump formed in Lucille's throat. "Did he force you?"

"No," Mia said quickly, shaking her head. "He called me up on Saturday night. And I came."

"In more ways than one, I hope," Agnes put in. Then she withered under the stern glare Lucille had just flashed her. "Sorry. Carry on."

"And what did he say?" Lucille asked. "Did you guys talk it out after you . . . did things?"

"No." The word escaped Mia's lips in a bitter rush. When she lifted her head, she basically emanated distress. "He left all my messages on seen after I went home the next morning. He used me again and I just let him."

"Oh, darling." Lucille hugged her. "You should've known better, but I understand how tempting it could be, to keep coming back to things that are familiar, to return to the man who made himself more than familiar, more than anything good in the world combined. . . ."

Lucille faltered. Her throat closed up. Hell, for a second right there, she was sure she'd spoken out of experience.

"Don't worry, we will get him," Agnes said, sitting on the couch and hugging both of them. For while they just stayed there, huddled together, then Agnes broke the silence by whispering to Lucille, "How's the porn, by the way?"

Mia broke off. "What?"

Lucille shot Agnes a glare, but she ended up giving in to Mia's expectant look. Sighing, she provided the young girl a quick rundown of their plan. It was quite gross when the details had to be told vividly, but Mia seemed to be unbothered by it. In fact, the whole porn thing seemed to have cheered her up.

"Oh." She began to laugh when Lucille got to the part where Cade was losing his head. "How did it go? Did he just shrug it off?"

"Nope. It went well, as you could imagine." Lucille took the tub of ice cream and scooped some up. "He's conducting an investigation, though."

"Like he's ever going to find out," Agnes snickered. "So cheer up, Mia. Everyone in Seattle will be talking about that for days. Cade will take that to his grave."

Mia laughed at this, and Lucille tried to join in, but there was a strange pinching sensation in her chest. She couldn't decipher it exactly, couldn't point out what it specifically meant, but she was sure that something had just triggered her old memories.

And now she was feeling the forgotten emotions that came with them.