Love's Inferno

Chapter 10 - A Scramble for the Skylight

Dante

"You brought him here?" She was whispering, frantic and accusatorily.

"Yeah, he's the tech guy from Google." I folded my arms and watched as panic coloured in her features.

Another knock on the door.

She bolted and flew past me so quickly I would've missed it if I blinked. I looked at the door amused, she was lying. Shiloh September thought she could lie to me successfully. I was humored, truly. My initial assessment of her was correct; she was ballsy - stupid but ballsy- and I respected that. I wasn't sure what I would do about it but I respected it nonetheless. It's not infrequent that people lied to me but it was an infrequent occurrence that they did so to my face. People lied for an assortment of reasons which were usually unremarkably predictable and almost always linked to self-interest. People lie for power, access to power or in the interest of gaining proximity to it but the thing about power is that it's corrosive, difficult to maintain and like a drug highly addictive. It's this addictive quality about power that makes fiends of its users - deluding them into thinking that they have control over it and the ability to sustain it. It's in this delusion where people often slip up and I lie waiting.

But this was different. Shiloh stood to gain nothing from lying to me which made her motives deviant and I resisted the urge to speculate as to why she would. I was quickly beginning to understand that she was far more complex than I initially gave her credit for. I had hand-picked the shoes on display and she had been so obviously thrilled until she wasn't. I had all the data, I had planned meticulously and she deviated from the script. She wasn't even remotely happy about it which I'd say hurt except that it fascinated me...right after it irritated the ever-loving shit out me. The woman never did what I wanted her to. She never responded in a way I anticipated which made her an enthralling, bewitching anomaly. I shot McCarthy a text, letting him know I was just on a confidential call and would let him in shortly.

I followed her, no longer in need of McCarthy to confirm the inkling of a suspicion that I had; she knew who I was. Who I truly was and not just who I pretended to be. It was weird, the relief that washed over me at the idea that I no longer needed to hide from her. I wouldn't be close to her, I couldn't afford to but I didn't need to perform an exhausting aspect of my identity that I'd perfected over the last decade. I could unmask myself without concern because she wasn't afraid even with the information she had about me, the ideas she would've surely developed in response to the available information. And I knew she wasn't afraid- I had received ample tongue-lashings since she had found out this morning and none of them had been carefully worded. Sure they were inventive and at times scathing, but none of them were engineered and painstakingly curated.

When people feared me, or conversely revered me, there was always a microscopic- almost imperceptible- adjustment in their behaviour towards me. The reverence (or fear) acted like a cancer, spreading and infecting every interaction until the relationship was riddled with inequities and disfigured by unspoken expectations. Despite knowing who I was now Shiloh had made no such amendments. The cancer of fear, albeit justified, had not spread which is why I was confused when I looked for her in the lounge and found myself alone. I scanned the space and followed a faint noise coming from the bathroom. I pushed open the door and found her dousing her face, fully, beneath the open sink. She jumped when she noticed me standing, admittedly smugly, in the hallway but any self-congratulatory musings screeched to a halt when I saw the sheen of sweat that had developed soaking through her shirt.

"Is he in here?" she whispered reaching for her glasses with a shaky hand. Why was she afraid of him given what she knew about me.