Red Game

Chapter Three

The next time Jane ran into Dante, it was when he showed up at her design firm a few days later.

He didn't talk to or acknowledge her, instead engaging in a quiet conversation with a secretary. She'd leaned over in her chair until she nearly fell off from eavesdropping. It bugged her how bad she needed to know why he was here. She couldn't ask her coworkers; they knew she worked for Judith Slaying but not that their rivalry with The Vigilantes extended to her. Revealing that bit of information would be embarrassing and less than professional.

Steam was shooting out of her ears when Dante came into the office twice the following week, her frustration multiplying  twofold. She made a bet with herself: if he came in a third week, she would ask why.

He came in a third week, and so she did.

Dante had evolved to shooting her a glare when he glided past the front doors, or perhaps she had started the glaring thing first. He walked briskly by her desk after speaking with the secretary, so her window of time to act was slim. She meant to say "Hello" or "What are you doing here?" but couldn't force the words out and ended up just grabbing the sleeve of Dante's shirt.

He was brought to a halt, his attention snapping to Jane. She never got used to how unsettled the eye contact made her, how all the nerves connecting her spinal cord to everywhere else seemed to snap with electricity.

"Hey," she said. The word sounded like it had been dragged out from her painfully. She refused to feel embarrassed about their last encounter, in which she'd been very in her cups.

"Hey," Dante returned. He was just looking at her, not pulling away. She extracted her fingers from his shirt, wiping her hand on the side of her skirt beneath her desk.

"I see you keep coming in here," (probably a stupid thing to say, now he knows how easy it is to irritate you), "Why is that?"

A smile tried to fight its way onto Dante's face, amusement sparking behind his eyes. "I don't see how that's your business."

"Well, because," (she hated when he made even a slight point), "you're in my building."

His eyes widened and he looked around. "You own this property?"

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "I work here, and I want an answer. Why do you keep coming in here?"

"For someone who hates me, you want to know an awful lot about me. Why I'm somewhere, what I'm doing," he said and leaned forward, propping his elbows on the edge of her desk. "Controlling me." Jane poked at him with a pen, knocking his elbows off so he was forced to stand up straight.

"I keep my friends close and enemies closer," she retorted.

His eyebrows flicked up at the word 'enemies'. Had she really called him that aloud? She repressed a blush; he deserved to know what she thought of him.

"Okay, while this conversation has been riveting, I've to go," He turned away and started to leave.

"You didn't answer my question," Jane said.

"Goodbye," he replied over his shoulder, already halfway to the door.

Once he was gone, Jane's curiosity got the better of her and she approached the secretary Dante usually talked to. She gave the woman, Bridgette, a honey-sweet, beauty pageant smile.

"Did you see the man who was just in here?"

Bridgette looked up at Jane over the rim of her black cat-eye glasses, raising an overplucked brow. "Dante Stern?"

Jane nodded. "Why does he keep coming in here?"

Bridgette sighed loudly—whether at the question or the answer—one couldn't tell. "All kinds of reasons," she replied with a shrug, the polka dots on her blouse jumping.

Jane remembered why she rarely engaged in conversation with the secretary. It was like pulling teeth. "And some of those reasons are?"

Bridgette flipped through a notebook and plucked a few sticky notes from around her messy workspace. She spent every Friday evening organizing it for it to end up like this by Monday. She didn't even work weekends. "Let's see...at first it was to return the clothes you let The Vigilantes borrow at their last show, which I told him they could keep—" Jane huffed; she really shouldn't have done that, and it wasn't just The Vigilante's show—"then to ask for sheets of some fabric I've forgotten the name of and I don't believe gets shipped to London or anywhere in Europe...every time since then, he's been asking for a new stylist."

To Jane's knowledge, The Vigilantes didn't have a stylist in the first place. "Thank you," she said, confusion audible in her voice. She walked back to her seat before Bridgette could continue the conversation.

The events of the morning followed Jane the rest of the day, causing her to lose focus and prick her finger when altering a dress for Virginia. Maybe Dante Stern had legitimate reasons to be at her office, but the legitimate reasons seemed to be nothing more than poor excuses to bother her.