I smiled in understanding. “I’m like that, too. I change my habits, depending on where I live. When I was in New York, I was all about the Sicilian pizza and cosmos.”
“Sicilian pizza is a sin. Pizza dough needs to be like a condom—thin, airy, without any unnecessary extras,” Max said.
“Well, sin is delicious.” I shrugged, laughing.
“So is your smoothie. Thanks for that.” Max grinned around the reusable straw I’d put in his drink.
There was a beat of silence as we both took a breath.
“You’re really different, you know,” he said finally. His smile immediately dropped.
I knew what he meant. Ransom had painted him a different picture of me. Difficult, unruly, and rude. I didn’t know how anyone could take Ransom’s word at anything. He seemed to have such a cynical, gloomy outlook on life.
“How so?” I asked gently. I didn’t want to scare Max away. He had the potential to become an ally.
He took a sip from his smoothie to buy time. I waited patiently.
“I don’t know. I just imagined…”
“Someone unbearable?” I quirked an eyebrow, propping my elbows on the surface between us.
“Pretty much.” His ears turned tomato-red.
“Did Ransom have anything to do with this image by any chance?” I tilted my head sideways. I knew I was treading dangerous waters. Ransom was his boss. The security company they worked for had his last name. But I needed to feel validated.
Max frowned, looking genuinely confused.
“What do you mean?”
“Did Ransom tell you that I’m a nightmare?”
“No. Ransom only discusses the technical stuff. That’s why they call him The Robot.” Max’s entire body went into rigor mortis, stiffening. He knew he shouldn’t have said that. My ears perked.
“They call him The Robot?” I asked.
“Well…yeah.”
“Who’s they?”
“Just about everyone in the industry.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s never made an illogical, heat-of-the-moment decision—ever. He’s the most pragmatic creature on the planet. Almost like he’s been wired a certain way. He’s a…you know.”
“Robot,” I finished, satisfied with the fact that at the very least, Ransom’s lack of interest in me wasn’t personal.
Max nodded. “Anyhow. I thought you’d be unbearable because, uhm, I googled you and you seemed kind of high maintenance. Ransom doesn’t talk about clients. Like, at all. He’s insanely professional like that, so don’t worry.”
I wanted to tell him that this insanely professional man had canceled my credit cards, stole my phone, and caused a scene in front of my friends, but by the glint in Max’s eyes when he talked about his boss, I wasn’t going to succeed at convincing him Ransom was out of bounds.
Instead, we sipped our smoothies and Max told me about the time he’d had to smuggle a pop star out of a hotel room in a service trolley.
Max was nice, funny, and engaging. By the time the clock hit ten, I’d grown to like him and wished he’d have more shifts with me.
I still had the war with Ransom to think about, and time was not on my side. Sometime after ten, I stretched my arms and pretended to yawn. “I think I’m going to take a shower and hit the sheets.”
“All right, I’ll be downstairs if you need me.”
“When will Ransom be back?” I asked, standing up. I wanted to know how much time I had to execute my plan.
And another, smaller part of me, wondered where the hell he was, and why it was taking him so long to return.
Max worried his lower lip, thinking about it. “Probably not until the middle of the night. Maybe the morning. I’m set to stay here until nine a.m. But don’t worry, I don’t plan on falling asleep on duty.”
So Ransom was getting some action tonight. Hypocrite. I wondered what kind of women he went for. Tall and leggy? Smart and sharp? Geniuses? Probably all of the above. My sister, Hera, could surpass all of them. Now I was thinking about Hera and Ransom dating, and a shiver ran down my spine.
Weirdly enough, the thought of my bodyguard showering another woman with attention—positive attention, no less—made me feel irritated and uneasy. Though I doubted an asshole like him would take the time to seriously woo a girl.
“All right. I’ll just grab dinner to eat in my bedroom.” I smiled sweetly, flinging the fridge door open and taking out one of the huge raw steaks Ransom had stocked up in my fridge.
It infuriated me that he did not take into consideration the fact that I was a vegetarian on moral grounds. Putting what I considered to be an animal corpse in my fridge was a huge middle finger to everything I believed in.
Covering the steak with another plate, I made my way upstairs, where I stopped by one of the bathrooms to get scissors, before entering Ransom’s room.
It was the first time I’d been in this room since he’d moved in, if I didn’t consider the show-down that happened earlier today, in which I hadn’t had a good chance to take a look at it. I glanced around me, hungrily taking in every detail and filing it to memory. One of the most important strategies of war was to know your enemy.
Unsurprisingly, the room was extremely organized and neat. In fact, almost nothing had changed in its appearance, save for the fact that all the decorative pillows which were previously on the bed were now gone, probably stuffed into one of the closets.
It felt weird, to sniff around a room that was a part of my house. Ransom’s scent clung to the sheets, woodsy and leathery and rich. I opened one of the drawers and found a watch and belt collection. The belts were looped around themselves tidily. The watches were at least 50k a pop. Ransom was minted.
I opened another drawer and found his socks, cufflinks, and underwear. They were all black, all designer, and all brand new.
Next to it lay a gracefully pleated rope. Sorry…what?
Why did the man need a rope?
Trying to convince myself that it was normal, that maybe he needed it for his job （but how?） I shoved the drawer shut. There had to be an explanation. Ransom was an asshole, but he hadn’t given me creeper vibes. And I could pick up creeper vibes pretty well. Experience and all.
Moving to the closet, I found his suits and dress shirts. Snapping the scissors in the air, I got to work. I cut the steak into tiny pieces, then hid them in darkened and discreet places in his closet, where he’d never be able find them. If he loved his meat so much—it was only fair that he smelled like it, too.
I’d never done something so conniving in my life, and I was beginning to feel twinges of regret when the last of the steak pieces was tucked into a corner of the carpeted walk-in closet.
This was stupid. The man was actively ruining my life, and all I’d done was a harmless prank to make his clothes smell bad. It was infantilizing.
I advanced toward his laptop, which was sitting on his nightstand, and flipped it open. It needed both a fingerprint and a password to allow access. Dammit. I put the laptop back on the nightstand, wondering if Ransom was having sex with another woman right at this moment, and flipped open his briefcase. There—voila—I finally found something interesting. Paperwork. About me.