Their relationship had always been lopsided. Him the earnest but poor son with the missing father. Her the glamorous daughter of two well-known London reality stars. She’d had millions of biomedia followers prior to her birth. Meanwhile, he only had a couple of thousand in his twenties. And at least eighteen hundred of those were people who’d heard he was dating Dyana.
He’d been lucky she’d agreed to his spontaneous proposal in the first place. Luckier even that she took him back after he’d shown up at the door of her posh London flat. They’d been meant to share that flat. They’d chosen it together and there’d been quite a lot of back and forth with Dyana insisting he shouldn’t have to pay her rent on a condominium that her parents were planning to gift her as a graduation present.
But he had insisted, and they’d settled for her paying for his vacation. Only for him to disappear completely before popping back up with a fantastical story about receiving an unexpected invitation to intern with the Greek trillionaire, Damianos Drákon. Unfortunately, he hadn’t been able to contact her to tell her what had happened. Non-disclosure and all that.
It was true but also a lie.
He still hadn’t told her that his apprenticeship hadn’t been voluntary. More like a sort of hypnosis, which he hadn’t been able to resist even though he had never met Damianos Drákon prior to the night he was called to his Greek island.
He also hadn’t mentioned how serving him had been a weirdly perfect fit. Cooking, organizing, assisting, driving cars, arranging…all of the natural talents and random skillsets Max had acquired over the past two decades had suddenly converged to make him perfect for this particular job. Even his two years as head boy of the gardening club had been called upon. For the Greek trillionaire’s main estate had sat upon grounds comparable to those of a palace of old.
Before their trip to the States, Damianos Drákon had even allowed him to sit in on many meetings. Trillion-dollar deals and he’d been the one taking notes. Max would have given anything for such an opportunity when he was completing his MBA at Oxford.
Back then he hadn’t been able to score an apprenticeship with the firms where you had to have a particular kind of parent who either worked there or knew someone who did. Unlike Dyana’s first job as an analyst for Sotheby’s, his entry-level job had been just that. Little more than grunt work at a low-ranking investment firm. No trillion-dollar deals. He’d have to work his fingers to the bone for at least another decade or two to gain the access he’d been given by Drákon over the past few months.
But he hadn’t told Dyana about that. He also hadn’t told her about the bodies he’d literally buried. His father’s. Then the body of a gatekeeper he’d watched take his own life. True, he had not enjoyed the grisly tasks. But he hadn’t known either man. Not really. He’d dug both graves coldly. Unable to cry or even get upset. It was as if his tear ducts had been turned off along with the part of his brain that allowed him to process emotion.
But save for those two distasteful events, working for Damianos Drákon had felt akin to a biological destiny manifested. Like an inherited way of laughing or a preference for chocolates over jellies. As if he’d been born to it.
He didn’t miss serving Damianos Drákon. He refused to miss serving him. But sometimes there was an emptiness inside of Max. A hole that really should be filled, but not with any of the jobs he’d come across during his daily searches. A feeling hanging over him that he really ought to be doing something. But couldn’t.
And a few times…a few too many times, he’d think about that bio-call from North Dakota he’d received. And he’d wonder why. Why had Drákon called him to him, only to let him go? Why had the woman called him, only to hang up?
No, he hadn’t told Dyana any of that.
She wouldn’t have understood. Just as she wouldn’t have understood if Max tried to explain where he really had been.
The service…the bodies…the master who’d sprouted dragon wings at one point…the black American woman who’d transformed into a wolf…being set free so unexpectedly.
If not for the costly plane ticket and the entry-level job he’d lost due to his failure to show up for his first day of work three months ago, he would have thought it a fever dream.
And even if Dyana did understand, Max was not sure he could have told her.
He was free, but the invisible cuffs were still there.
No, her announcement did not come as a surprise.
Max had known for weeks that Dyana was growing increasingly unhappy with him. He’d been pensive and quiet since his return. And though he tried in the bedroom, he’d become prone to losing erections. He always made sure she came when he couldn’t rise to the occasion. He’d gone down on her for heroic amounts of time, however long it took. But it wasn’t the same as their university days when they hadn’t been able to keep their hands off each other.