Ignite Me (The Annihilate Me Series) (7 page)

“It is
beautiful,” she said.

“I can’t even
imagine owning something like this.”

When I said
that, she cocked her head at me, and her green eyes—set off by her bright
blonde hair, which was swept up into a tight chignon that accentuated her high
cheekbones—softened.
 
“Not
many of us can,” she said.
 
“It
does, after all, cost four hundred thousand dollars.
 
But here,” she said as she lifted the
necklace from its velvet interior.
 
“Why don’t we try it on you and see if it suits you.”

“But it’s not
meant for me,” I said.

“And it’s not
often that women like us have an opportunity to look at ourselves in a mirror
wearing something like this.
 
May
I?”

The clock was
ticking—I seriously had no time for this—but then I had to wonder
if trying on the necklace was part of the inspection process.
 
Since I didn’t know for sure, I allowed
Sophia to put it on me.

“You have such
a lovely long neck,” she said as she placed the cool necklace against my
skin.
 
“Not unlike Jennifer
herself.
 
I’m assuming you’re new at
Wenn?”

“Today is my
first day.
 
I’m Ms. Blackwell’s new
personal assistant.”

“Her new
personal assistant?
 
I see.
 
Well, then, you really do deserve the
opportunity to see yourself as a princess, don’t you?
 
Even if it is only for a moment.”
 

Before I could
respond to that, she moved my hair to one side, snapped the clasp shut, and
then gently lifted my hair so that it fell back down my back.
 
“Now, how about if you turn and have a look
in the mirror there on the table.
 
This should certainly brighten your day.”

Why does she
think that my day needs to be brightened?
 
Obviously, she knows Blackwell and perhaps has her own issues with
her.
 
What other reason could there
be for her being so kind to me?

When I looked
into the mirror, the necklace took my breath away, which Sophia caught at once.

“You’d think it
was made for you,” she said.

“It’s
stunning,” I said.
 
And then I
smiled at her.
 
“Too bad it isn’t
mine.
 
But one can always dream, I
suppose.”

“New York can
be a place filled with dreams just waiting to come true.”

“That hasn’t
exactly happened to me just yet.”

“But who’s to
say that it won’t?
 
It did, after
all, happen for Jennifer.
 
And for
countless other men and women in this city.
 
So, let me take this off so you can get
on your way.
 
Would you like a final
look?”

“I’m afraid I
don’t have the time.
 
And the
necklace looks fine, at least to my eyes, so let’s just wrap everything up and
see if Ms. Blackwell agrees.
 
I
really do need to go.”

When we were
finished with the sale, she put the box in a Tiffany bag and arranged for
security to walk me to my car.
 
“Assuming you have one,” she said.

“I do.
 
And given what I’m carrying, that’s not
such a bad idea.”
 
I stood up to
shake her hand again.
 
“Thanks for
making me feel like a princess, Sophia.
 
That hasn’t happened often in my life.”

“It was my
pleasure,” she said.
 
“Now go and
rule the day as one.”

*
 
*
 
*

When I left
Tiffany, it was with a massive bodyguard at my side, who walked me through the
crowds of people walking along Fifth to the limousine Zack had waiting for me
at the curb not far from Tiffany’s doors.

“Thank you,” I
said to them both as I stepped through the door Zack held open for me.
 
“And please tell Sophia that she made my
day.”

The bodyguard
merely nodded at me when I said that and walked away as Zack quickly got into
the front seat, started the car, sliced into traffic, and began the trip to Le
Salade on Park.

“How did that
go?” he asked.

“The woman who
helped me actually put the necklace on me.
 
I can’t remember when I’ve been treated so well.”

“You have to
know that by doing that, you’ve cost us time.”

“I apologize,”
I said.
 
“And I swear that it took
only a minute or two.”

“A minute or
two might just ruin us,” he said.
 
“So I need you to be prepared to hustle when we make that salad of
hers.
 
Because if we’re not back
within the hour, I can promise you that both of our heads will roll.”

The guilt that
overcame me at that moment was significant.
 
“I’m sorry,” I said.
 
“Blackwell asked me to inspect the
necklace, and since I haven’t done anything like this before, I wasn’t sure if
putting it on was part of the process.
 
I should have declined.”

“We’re not out
of the game just yet,” he said.
 
“Look ahead of us—a string of green lights.
 
We might just make it.”

CHAPTER
SEVEN

And we did make
it, at least to Wenn’s entrance, and with four minutes to spare before the hour
was up.
 
After hurrying across the
lobby with the bag from Tiffany in one hand and the bag from Le Salade in the other,
I stepped into one of the elevators as a group of people exited.
 
When they left, I hit the button for the
fifty-first floor, and closed the doors shut by punching another button to
speed up the process.

During my
ascent, the elevator stopped countless times—over and over again—to
the point where I became so frustrated, I wanted to scream.
 
When the elevator finally approached the
fifty-first floor, it slowed to a stop, and I knew in my gut that my time was already
up.
 
As the doors slid open, I
looked down at my watch.
 

My hour wasn’t
only up—I was now five minutes late.

She’s so going
to have my head for this
, I thought.
 
Why
did I ever tell her that I was never late?
 
I should just leave now, sell the jewels, and get out of Dodge.

With an
overwhelming sense of trepidation, I left the elevator and hurried toward her
office, passing people who looked quizzically at me as I left them in my
wake.
 
My heart was racing.
 
Sweat beaded across my brow as I
approached her open door.

When I entered
her doorway, she looked up at me with a flick of her head, and I could tell by her
sour expression that I was in for it.

“I’m sorry I’m
late,” I said.

“You should be,
because you are late, which I believe you told me was an impossibility for
you.
 
And yet here we are,
Madison.
 
Late.
 
Explain that to me.”

She was baiting
me for an excuse—she
wanted
me to make an excuse—so I
decided not to make one in an effort to give her less kindling for the fire she
was clearly trying to create between us.
 

“I have none,”
I said.

“Really?
 
Well.
 
If there is no excuse, I’m not sure
where to begin, or what to say—other than that I’m disappointed.”
 
She eased back in her chair and looked
at me as if I were her prey.
 
“You
should have been here with the necklace and my lunch five minutes ago.”

“I can promise
you that I tried my best.”

“Did you?”

“I did.”

“I need you to
close the door right now, Madison—for your own good.”

And here it
comes.
 

I felt my
stomach sink, and for a moment, I thought that I might be sick.
 
Was she going to fire me over this?
 
I’d just quit my other job to become her
assistant.
 
The fifteen hundred
dollars I’d managed to save was a joke when it came to the cost of living in
this city.
 
I had bills to pay, food
to buy.
 
Even worse, I’d just spent a
significant amount of money on an outfit I couldn’t afford in an effort to
convince her that I was the right person for the job.
 
Unless I found another position quickly,
she could ruin me financially if she let me go, which made me feel at once
claustrophobic and desperate.
 
I
closed the door behind me, and when I turned back to look at her, I saw that
she had leaned forward and folded her arms on top of her desk.
 

“If you tried
your best to get back here on time, then why did you spend time trying on a
necklace that isn’t yours and was never meant to touch your skin?” she asked.

So, there it
was—Sophia had sold me out.
 
But why?
 
She’d been so nice
to me, it didn’t make sense.
 
And
how had Blackwell ever found out about any of it?
 
Had Sophia called her?
 
Or had she called Sophia wondering where
I was?
 
I had to believe that it was
the latter, if only because my first instinct about Sophia was positive and
true.
 
I couldn’t have been that
wrong about her, could I?

 
“You asked me to inspect the necklace,” I
said.

“Which never in
a million years meant trying it on so you could pretend for a few moments that
you were a princess.”

And there it
was—that word—princess.
 
The same word Sophia had used when she’d said:
Her new personal
assistant?
 
I see.
 
Well, then, you really do deserve the
opportunity to see yourself as a princess, don’t you?
 
Even if it is only for a moment
.
 
And then there was what I had said
before leaving the store:
Thanks for making me feel like a princess,
Sophia.
 
That hasn’t happened often
in my life.
 

Obviously,
Sophia
had
relayed what I’d said to Blackwell.
 
And I had to wonder—had this
entire thing been planned between them in advance?
 
Had Blackwell wanted to see if I’d
decline Sophia’s offer to put on the necklace?
 
Did she think I’d get some sort of
perverse thill from putting it on?
 
With Blackwell just staring at me now and waiting for a response, I knew
I had to think quickly on my feet and be honest with her before she decided to
be done with me completely.

“Sophia asked
me to try on the necklace to see if it suited me.
 
I told her that the necklace wasn’t
meant for me, but she nevertheless insisted, so I let her put it on me thinking
that perhaps I might be able to tell if there was something wrong with the way
it laid around my neck.
 
When you
asked me to inspect the necklace, I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant.”

“You could have
asked.”

“I didn’t want
to look like an idiot.”

She rolled her
eyes at me.
 
“And look at how well
you’ve succeeded at that. . . .”

And that made
me bristle.

“I’m sorry, Ms.
Blackwell, but I’m not an idiot.”

“You don’t
say?”

“On the spot, I
had to decide whether trying on the necklace was part of the inspection
process.
 
After all, you gave me no
specific instructions about what to even look for when it came to inspecting a
piece of jewelry, and since I’ve never been asked to do anything like that, I
had to wing it.
 
But you are
right—I should have asked you what you expected from me.
 
And you’re also right when it comes to a
certain comment I made.
 
I come from
a working-class background, and when I looked at myself in the mirror, that
necklace did make me feel like a princess, as corny as that word
sounds—though it should be noted that Sophia is the one who used it
first.
 
Not me.”

“I couldn’t
care less who used it first.
 
What
all of this comes down to, Madison, is that on your first day on the job, I
gave you two tasks to complete in a reasonable amount of time. . . .”

“A reasonable
amount of time?” I said.
 

“That’s
right.
 
Reasonable.
 
I could have done each within an hour
because trust me on this, girl, I have done so countless of times before.”

“In the middle
of the day?
 
When traffic is at its
worst?”

“With
ease.
 
And yet you blew it by five
minutes.
 
Some lackeys might think
that being five minutes late to anything isn’t a big deal—but I’m here to
tell you that, for me, it’s a very big deal.
 
And do you want to know why?”

“I do.”

“Because as I
told you when we first met, I loathe inefficiency.
 
Worse, because you were late, you’ve cut
into my lunch hour, which I won’t have.
 
Ever.
 
Today, I tested
you—and you failed.
 
Keep it
up and we’ll be having a parting of ways.”

“I’m sorry that
I’ve disappointed you.”

“I don’t have
time for apologies.
 
Just consider
yourself on notice.”
 
She held out
her hand.
 
“Give me the necklace.”

I handed her
the bag, which she tossed onto the table behind her.

“Now, my
lunch.
 
And let’s both say a silent
prayer that at least you came through with
that
for me, because at this point in my day, when I usually need to stab something,
it’s better if my fork lands in a pile of lettuce rather than a person,
wouldn’t you say?”

Feeling as if I
had already been forked by her, I handed her the other bag, and then she just
looked up at me.
 

“Do you expect
me to remove the salad on my own?” she asked.

She’s worse
than any story I ever read about her.

As upset as I
was, I did my best to conceal how I was feeling and carefully removed the
large, clear plastic container that was inside the bag, along with two sealed
smaller cups, one of which had olive oil in it, and the other of which
contained balsamic vinegar.
 

“I was going to
pour each on the salad for you at Le Salade, but it’s so hot out right now, I
was afraid that by the time I got back here, the greens would have become
wilted and saturated with the liquid.”

“Well,” she
said.
 
“At least you were thinking
there, even if there is a chance that the greens—especially the
spinach—have become shriveled-up versions of their former selves at this
point.
 
So, for your sake, let’s
hope that isn’t the case.
 
The
cover?”

I removed it
and felt a flood of relief when I saw that everything appeared fresh and
crisp.
 
Meanwhile, Blackwell
inspected the contents.
 

“Too much
buttercrunch, not enough roquette, so keep that in mind.
 
Otherwise, the salad looks surprisingly
fine.
 
Who would have guessed?
 
And since you apparently need
instruction, why don’t you pour the oil and vinegar on for me, and I’ll tell
you when to stop so you’ll know exactly how I like it going forward?”

“That would be
helpful,” I said.

“Yes,” she
said.
 
“I suppose it would, wouldn’t
it?”

When I was
finished, Blackwell glanced up at me.
 

“Close the door
behind you when you leave,” she said.
 
“For the next forty-one minutes—not the hour you’ve robbed me
of—it’s just going to be me and this salad.
 
And then I’ll open my door to let
everyone know that I’m back on for the day.
 
Intercept any calls—I’m not to be
disturbed, even by those on the list I sent to you earlier.
 
If Alex or Jennifer need me, they have
my direct line, so don’t worry about them.”

“Of course.”

“And Madison,”
she said when she removed a fork from her desk drawer and pierced a heap of
roughage with it.
 
“You’re likely
thinking that I’ve just been unnecessarily hard on you, but I can tell you that
I wasn’t.
 
I have very high
expectations from everyone I work closely with.
 
You are no exception.
 
As I said yesterday, mistakes will be
made, so consider this your first, princess.
 
Try not to make another.
 
Now go so I can eat.”

*
 
*
 
*

When I left her
office and closed the door behind me, I felt alone and unnerved, and I was
trembling from our exchange.
 
There
was a moment when I felt certain that she was going to fire me.
 
And I had to wonder—if this is how
it was going to be with her, maybe it would have been best if she’d just axed
me right then and there.
 
Because
that kind of abuse was uncalled for.

Suck it
up.
 
You came here to win.
 
There are opportunities for you at
Wenn.
 
Just stick it out with her,
prove her wrong, and don’t get distracted for any reason.
 
This is your chance, Madison.
 
Make it happen.

After my little
subconscious pep talk, I walked over to my desk and heard my computer ding as I
sat down.
 
I looked at the monitor
and saw that there was an IM waiting for me.
 
“I’m sorry,” Brock wrote.
 
“I’m afraid that’s just who she is, but
I can tell you that it will get better.
 
It’s not going to be easy at first, because that just
isn’t
who she is—but I know that
you can do it.”