Always Alchemy: The Ever After Book (Alchemy #6)

33. Audacity Preview

ATHENA

When Anton Wolff’s name lights up on your phone’s display, you don’t turn it down.

For a variety of reasons.

I pause the documentary I’m watching— Winter on Fire , about an uprising in Ukraine a decade ago. It’s compelling and confronting in equal measure. Mr Wolff is guaranteed to provide some light relief.

‘Anton. Hello.’

‘Hello, Athena. How’s tricks?’

I can hear the smile in his voice as he drawls my name, and I swear to God my entire body breaks out in goosebumps. I’m a dog whose owner is clanging a bell and offering me a tasty chicken treat.

‘Still turning them.’ I set down the remote and sit up straighter, shifting in my cashmere cocoon. The sofa is a nest of Loro Piana blankets and throw pillows, all presents from Steve Goodall—the man I currently work for—who is a thoughtful and generous gift giver .

He chuckles. ‘That’s my girl.’

I would like to clarify at this point that I was never actually in love with Anton while I worked for him—not entirely, anyway. He was merely my billionaire boss who, at more than twice my age, commanded me and used me and consumed me, rendering my seven-figure salary the second best thing about working for him.

Not something I can say about my current boss.

Alas, that’s not to say Anton can’t have my nipples hardening with a phrase like that’s my girl , because the things I used to do— willingly —to earn that phrase in that particularly filthy, intimate tone aren’t easily forgotten.

‘How’s monogamy?’ I ask. It still smarts that he kicked me out as soon as his now-wife, Genevieve, rolled over for him. One Wednesday, he sidled off to Cannes with her and his number two, Max, for a recce of her sex club, the one he was investing in, and by the following Monday morning he was grinning and sun-kissed and telling me, kindly but firmly, that our gig was over.

It made for a hell of a nightmare trying to pass things over remotely to his new EA, that’s for sure. And, while it’s the nature of the job, it can sting.

‘Bloody amazing,’ he says in that cheerful, larger than life voice of his, and I know that this particular instance of that’s my girl is a figure of speech and nothing more.

I have to admire his total commitment to this relationship. Genevieve may be his fourth wife, but this one is here to stay. That fact was clear to me as soon as I laid eyes on her. As soon as he lured her into his office and got Max and another colleague to rail her while he let me get him off, I knew that man’s heart was toast.

Along with my job .

‘Glad to hear it.’ I clear my throat. ‘What can I do for you, Anton?’

‘I have a potential position for you,’ he says, and I roll my eyes.

‘I have a position, thank you. And I don’t need a pimp.’

‘Goodall keeping you overflowing with orgasms, is he?’

The derision in his voice is clear. Steve is a thirty-something, socially awkward nerd who runs an innovative hydrogen fuel cell company. I took the role to learn all I could about the renewables sector and because the salary was exceptional. It’s easy money in a fascinating space, and the fact that I have to fake it every Monday, Wednesday and Friday when Steve fucks me, missionary-style, on his office sofa, isn’t a huge deal.

‘That is precisely none of your business.’

It really isn’t, and he knows it. He also knows that I’d never allow any indiscretions where my employers are concerned, ironclad NDAs aside.

His voice softens. ‘Look. I know it isn’t. I’ve just—I’ve got a mate who could use someone exactly like you in his life, and I wanted to at least make you aware of the opening. You’re far too shrewd a businesswoman not to have an eye on the market at all times.’

I sigh. ‘Who is he?’

‘You know I shouldn’t tell you without an NDA.’

‘Your call. But you called me , remember? And you know I would never repeat our conversations.’

‘His name is Gabriel Sullivan. Gabe.’

I frown, trying to place the name. ‘Sullivan…’

‘As in Sullivan Construction. He’s recently taken over from his old man.’

Oh. Now I understand. Sullivan owns half of the London docklands. They’re an enormous Irish construction company going back several generations. They went public a few years back, making the family billionaires several times over.

‘Does the son run the public company?’

‘No. He runs Rath Mor, the family’s investment vehicle. They’ve got assets of over eight billion. They kept a lot of the land. His brother runs the construction side.’

‘So it’s a private wealth fund, basically?’ I’m familiar with this concept: families so wealthy that they don’t go to a Swiss private bank like most normal rich people, but manage their assets in-house like a proper investment firm.

‘Exactly. Do me a favour. Look Gabe up.’

‘Okay. Give me a sec.’ I reach across and pull my MacBook onto my lap, typing Gabriel Sullivan into the search engine.

Holy fucking shit.

‘He’s not Steve Goodall,’ Anton quips.

‘He most certainly is not,’ I murmur.

A guy stares back at me from the array of corporate and Getty images the search throws up.

Black hair.

Black eyes.

Unsmiling.

Cheekbones that could cut glass and ramrod-straight posture.

In most of them, he’s wearing some variation of a suit and tie, or suit and unbuttoned shirt.

But as I scroll, one photo catches my eye.

I click into it and Google serves me up the following headline in the financial section of The Telegraph .

Gabriel Sullivan is to leave the priesthood and take up the helm of Rath Mor Asset Management. His father, Ronan Sullivan, is due to retire this September .

It’s a formal shot, but boy does it hit differently from the others. Gabriel is standing in the nave of a beautiful old church, arms folded and smile absent —so far, so on-brand—in basic priest’s garb. He has on a black shirt and trousers and a simple white dog collar. Around him, the space dances with fragments of colour, courtesy of the sunlight streaming through the church’s stained-glass windows.

I lean in to study the image. He’s arresting and grave, this man of the cloth, and he is hot as fuck . So hot, in fact, that the little frisson of pleasure I’ve felt at speaking to Anton is instantly forgotten.

How does a man go from that —a sense of vocation so strong that he’s willing to subjugate his most primal desires in favour of a life of service—to paying up for sex on tap?

And what type of enigma does that make him? Do his former sacrifices explain his interest in the kind of solution only Seraph can provide, or do they render it wholly inexplicable ?

Presumably, he once believed in the sanctity of the vows he took. In their ability to hold him and cleanse him and behallow him.

Presumably, that covenant promised him a celestial array of eternal, exalted rewards in exchange for renouncing any earthly worship of money and sex .

Yet he now wants to use his unlimited supply of the former to pay for an unlimited supply of the latter.

There’s lapsing.

There’s pivoting, even, in one’s belief system. One’s moral code.

But this guy’s one-eighty must be giving him whiplash.

‘You’ve gone awfully quiet,’ Anton drawls. ‘Like what you see?’

‘Hang on.’ I stare at the unsmiling eyes of the man in the photo. ‘Are you honestly suggesting you want me to fuck a guy who used to be a priest? ’

‘ Used to be being the operative words. He’s a layman now, and you’d better believe he needs some stress relief. We signed him up to Alchemy, but the poor fucker’s too exhausted for all those late nights. One of the cleaners stumbled across him at four in the morning the other day—he was out cold in one of the private rooms. I don’t know who was more traumatised. Anyway, he needs more of a full-service solution.’

I’m silent, weighing my options. On the one hand, I don’t like to turn over my employers too often. It doesn’t look good on one’s CV. On the other, my agency Seraph, a discreet outfit owned by Anton and specialising in employees like me, could place me at a dozen different places tomorrow if I wanted to. CV optics aren’t really a priority.

‘Come on,’ he says in a wheedling tone. ‘Just meet with him. If you’re happy with Woodall, then fine, but I’d like to see you have your cake and eat it. You’re my OG Seraph girl, you know you are.’

‘I’m your only Seraph girl,’ I point out. Anton may have founded Seraph, but he didn’t make his first hire—me—until after he’d extricated himself from Marriage Number Three, and he met his wife only a few months after I started. ‘And don’t try to use words like OG . You’re far too old. It doesn’t work.’

‘I’ve got teenage kids,’ he retorts good-naturedly. ‘I’m cool.’

‘You’re really not.’

He really is. For his age, anyway.

‘What do you say?’ he persists. ‘If the tall, dark and handsome billionaire doesn’t float your boat, you can scurry back to Steve and his godforsaken offices in—where is it? Swindon?’

‘Reading.’ In a retail park, no less. It’s godawful.

He laughs. ‘You don’t belong in fucking Reading, sweetheart. Say the word and you could be back in Mayfair where you belong, with a disgustingly handsome man fucking you senseless every day of the week. The guy was celibate for a decade, God love him. Imagine how much lost time he’s got to make up for.’

I chew the inside of my cheek.

Imagine, indeed.