The Softest Chains

The lobby of Montreaux Capital smelled like money and I needed money so bad I could taste the copper in my teeth.

Sixty-two percent above market rate. Insurance that covered my dad's care with no waiting period. I'd run the numbers seventeen times on the bus and every version said the same thing: shut up and take the job. So here I was. Marble floors, twenty-foot ceilings, a secondhand blazer I'd re-stitched twice because the dollar store was out of black thread, and a bag full of notebooks crushed against my ribs.

Nobody looked at me. I was furniture shipped to the wrong building.

"Maren Voss?"

I turned. A woman about my age, taller, broader through the shoulders, grinning at me with a lanyard that read THESSALY ADAIR, LEGAL COMPLIANCE.

"Thess," she said, sticking out her hand. "I'm your orientation buddy. Corporate speak for 'I'll show you which bathroom isn't a goddamn biohazard and which vending machine to kick when it eats your money.'"

I shook her hand. "Both vending machines?"

“Both. But the left one spits out a free Diet Coke if you hit it right, so there’s a silver lining.” She punched the elevator button. "C'mon. HR's on six. Forty-five minutes of signing your soul away."

"Sounds fun."

"Oh, it's bullshit. But it's air-conditioned bullshit, so..." She shrugged and leaned against the glass wall of the elevator. "What d'you know about this place?"

"Private equity, forty-two billion across six funds. CEO is Cael Montreaux, third generation. CFO is Dashiel Crane, recruited from Goldman." I paused. "And you have a vending machine crisis."

"Christ." She stared at me. "You did the homework."

"I do the homework on everything."

"Yeah, we're gonna be friends." She was grinning again. "I can already tell you're gonna be a pain in my ass and I'm gonna love every second of it."

HR was forty-five minutes of paperwork, a key card, a laptop I didn't need, and a parking spot I'd never use because I didn't own a car. I signed everything with my own pen. First day, and I still didn't trust theirs.

My phone buzzed on the way out. Bina, Dad's morning nurse: He ate half a bowl of oatmeal. Good day so far. Half a bowl was the good days now. I sent a thumbs-up and shoved the phone in my pocket before the math could start again.

Thess walked me to my desk on fourteen. Open plan, glass walls, the East River outside floor-to-ceiling windows. She dropped into the chair across from me and kicked her feet up.

"Alright. Ground rules." She held up a finger. "One, the coffee on this floor is garbage. I'll show you where the good stuff is on nine. Two, the Thai place on Fifty-Third is better than the cafeteria and half the price." She paused. "That's it. Everything else you'll figure out."

"What about you? How long've you been here?"

"Three years. Legal compliance, which sounds fancy and isn't." She watched me set out my notebooks. "So why'd you take this gig? And don't give me the brochure answer, I get enough of that from recruiting."

"My dad's sick. ALS. He was a mechanic for thirty years and now he can't hold a spoon." I lined my pens up next to the notebooks, black for work, blue for personal, the red one on top. "The salary here covers his care. That's it. That's the whole story."

"Shit, Maren." She said it low and flat, not pitying. "That's... yeah. I'm sorry."

"It is what it is."

"Dental plan's decent too, if that helps."

"It doesn't."

"No." She picked at a thread on her lanyard. "Guess not." Then she straightened up and tipped her chin toward the far end of the floor, where a corner office sat behind dark glass. "Listen, you'll want to know about him. Montreaux. The son, not the old man." She stopped picking at the thread. "He's... I don't even know how to... he's a lot."

"A lot how?"

She opened her mouth and then closed it, because the air on the floor had just shifted. I can't explain it better than that. A pressure drop that rolled through thirty people at once, and I felt it in my chest before I saw the reason.

Cael Montreaux was crossing the floor forty feet from my desk, coming out of a conference room with two men in suits half-jogging to keep pace. I'd seen his photos online and they were useless. He was tall, sharp, dark hair cut close, wearing a charcoal suit that didn't move when he moved. He didn't nod at anyone, didn't smile. He walked and the two men beside him adjusted their pace to match his without even noticing they were doing it.

Then his eyes found me.

Grey, or blue, or whatever shade sits between those two. I couldn't tell from forty feet. But they had stopped scanning the room and locked right onto my face, and his head turned just enough to keep me in focus as the rest of him kept walking, and the whole thing lasted maybe two seconds and I didn't breathe during either of them.

Then he was gone, through a door at the end of the floor, and my hands were white-knuckled on the edge of my desk.

"Yeah," Thess said behind me, her voice low. "That."

I swallowed. "Does he... does he always do that?"

"Do what?"

"Look at people... I don't know, like..." I couldn't finish the sentence.

Thess shook her head. "No. He doesn't."

I let go of the desk, opened my red notebook, picked up my pen.

Day one. Something about this place doesn't add up. The salary is too high.

I didn't write about him. I had seventeen problems and not an inch of room for an eighteenth. But Thess was still there, and her grin was gone, and when I looked up she leaned forward and dropped her voice:

"Be careful with that one, Maren. He sees everything."