Vice

48: Ultimatum

Mr. Vice is engaged. 

The thought monopolizes Natara's mind, bleeding past every other thought in her head. 

Her mind races back to the things she did with him and to the feelings she had and might even still have for him. All the while her eyes remain glued to Laura's ring finger.

She feels so foolish. Of course a man like Mr. Vice is engaged. He's the heir to a huge company. He couldn't ever be with a girl like her. 

That's probably why he didn't seem to take anything that happened with Natara seriously. She was just a toy to him, just a girl he could never be with anyway. She was nothing more than a worthless skank and she'd given in to him. She'd let him take things from her that she would never get back. She trusted him.

In retrospect, maybe she should have known she was being played with all along. She should have known that she was just a crutch to help Mr. Vice to deal with his sadness. She was just some temporary use object to make him feel good when he wanted. 

She didn't mean anything to him, no matter what it felt like to her. No matter the fact that he might have meant something to her. Tears fight to the surface of her eyes and she quickly blinks them back.

"This is all I have to say to you. Straighten up or I will force you to straighten up," Mr. Vice Senior yells. 

He doesn't waste any more of his time in the room. He turns around and walks out, nodding a quick goodbye to Laura. Silence hangs in the room for a few moments. Natara wishes she could fade into the wall behind her. She doesn't want to be the first one to speak after everything that happened. Thankfully, Laura is.

"How exciting, Axy!" Laura's voice is so serenely toned it seems like everything that happened only seconds ago never happened at all. She grabs Mr. Vice's arm once again and pushes herself against it. "What do you think? Should we do an April wedding?"

"No. I don't know. Don't you have to be at work? Go work. I'll be fine. You don't need to be here any longer." Mr. Vice rolls his eyes, prying Laura off of him again. 

She pouts but slinks away from him, heading back to the door and blowing him a kiss before she leaves. Once she's gone, he buries his face in his hands and lets out a sigh. Natara wishes she could leave. Instead, she stays put, not willing to say anything to Mr. Vice after all the things she's heard.

"Natara." His voice sounds frantic. "What are you thinking?" 

She doesn't want to tell him. She doesn't want to say anything at all. 

"Who my father wants me to marry is not necessarily who I want to marry," he says, struggling to sit up and approach her. She backs away, trying to put more space between them. Natara continues to stay quiet.

"There's a reason I've been putting off the wedding for the past three years. She doesn't make me happy. I don't want to marry her," he continues. 

Natara can tell from the way that his voice raises that he's starting to worry. And he is. 

Her silence is making him nervous. 

"I hadn't found anything that even came close to making me happy until-" he elaborates, but Natara cuts him off. She turns her face away so he can't see how red her eyes are getting. So he can't notice the tears beginning to slip down her cheeks.

"Just shut up," she raises her voice, clenching her fists atop her lap. "I'm your secretary. That's it. I don't need to hear about any of this. What does it matter to me if you have a fiancée? What does scheduling your wedding have to do with someone like me? Nothing. It has nothing to do with me. I have a boyfriend, so please don't ever touch me again."

"Natara, stop. Please. I need you," he mutters. His voice is starting to get a little clingy. A little desperate. She can see it in his eyes, too, as she glances at him. 

She looks away again. She knows he saw her crying when she glanced at him. She feels so stupid. His cheeks are dry. He isn't shedding a single tear for her. Natara doesn't know why she thought he would be.

"Clearly you don't. You tried to kill yourself. If you needed me, if I did anything at all for you, you wouldn't have done that. You wouldn't have tried to leave everything. You wouldn't have tried to leave me. I was stupid for thinking I could make you happy. I can't, whether you believe it or not. I can't make you happy." Natara feels her voice rising to a screech. 

She isn't sure she's ever screamed like this in her life but Mr. Vice makes her do all kinds of things she's never thought she'd do before. "I mean absolutely nothing to you, Mr. Vice. And you mean even less to me now. So leave me alone. Forever."

Natara rises from the chair, squarely facing Mr. Vice. She hopes the look on her face conveys just how resolute she is. Even though she knows Jaquie doesn't want her to leave, she can't take it anymore. She can't be here anymore. She can't be anywhere around Mr. Vice. It's just too much.

"If you have any respect for me after everything you've done, after everything you've put me through, then call up Jaquie and tell him I'm no longer needed here," she says, inwardly praying that Mr. Vice actually contacts Jaquie and keeps him from firing her. 

It's the least he can do after everything, she thinks as she turns and walks toward the door, afraid that if she turns back around she might lose her resoluteness and give in to him.

The moment she passes through the door frame, Natara runs out of the hospital and drives back to work.