12 Ch. 12 Name-calling

The car garage was a dark and dirty place. The clicking and clacking of dress shoes and heels filled the empty concrete building.

Click

Clack

Click

Clack

Their even breaths filled the empty space between the clicking of their uncomfortable shoes.

whoosh

whoosh

whhhhhooooossssh

whhhhhooooshhhhh

"My name is Marcus." Mr. Keliel said loudly to the silence. Ms. Peaks nodded in understanding. He let the pause drag out waiting for her response. He grabbed her wrist from behind. She turned towards him involuntarily. She fixed her gaze at his perfectly tied blue tie. He raised a brow at her. She sighed and looked away, turning her head to the left.

"Lila. But you already knew that didn't you?" She finally looked at his face with a glare. His face had brows raised in confusion. Caught off guard,

"What?" he croaked. Her glare got stronger forcing him to let go of her wrist. Gathering himself he stood up straight. "To what are you referring? Why would I ask your first name if you had already told me?" He made his face stony reflecting her own glare. He looked intimidating like that but Lila knew he was lying. After all she had seen the papers herself.

"You already know everything about me, because I saw the paper on your desk this morning. So stop lying, please."

"Lying?!" Marcus snarled in disgust. The word was dirty and foreign and certainly NOT a word to ever be associated with him. "What paper are you talking about? All I know about you is what Vivian said over the phone and what my ex-assistant said." Lila faltered in her argument. Her face fell, into an expression of thought. Ex-assistant? That must have been who wrote all those notes. Suddenly she realized at her old job Vivian's assistant always looked over new people for hire's resumes and only gave Vivian the necessary and important details. High executives never had enough time to go through all that paper work, they had more important things to go over. She looked up at Marcus's angry face and realized her grave mistake. She took a step back in fear and bowed to him dipping below his waist even. The bow was deep and sincere.

"I am so sorry Mr. Keliel," Her breath hitched as the tears spilled over her lashes and splashed on the ugly concrete ground. "Please don't fire me. I've worked so hard for this opportunity it means the world to me I was even considered, but-"

"I'm not going to fire you, Lila." He shouted cutting her off. Her eyes widened as fear with the strength and force behind his shout. "In all honesty," he paused sighing the anger seeping out of his body and pooling at his feet on the floor. "You're the best assistant I've ever had. I gave you 46 tasks this morning and you completed them without complaint and more quickly than anyone else I know could have. No one, even my last-real-assistant made it that far into the test. You actually passed my test, the first to ever do so." She looked up her tears receding,

"It was all just a test?"