Chapter Two

      Grace prided herself in excelling under pressure. Most of the biggest fuck-ups in the office landed at her desk, and without flinching she merely forged ahead, coming out on the other side of carnage victorious.

      But, riding the elevator to the thirteenth floor the next morning, she was actually sweating.

      After she’d disconnected with Taureau, after she’d gotten behind the wheel of her SUV and picked up supper, after she’d gone nose-deep into the bath, she’d been calm. She’d actually been proud of herself for performing so well at Taureau’s edicts, and grew unspeakably hot as she remembered how he’d told her to finger-fuck herself.

      She crawled into bed and killed the light and replayed the entire evening for about an hour before pulling out her vibrator. That gravel voice was in her head as she rolled the tapered end around her clit, and she screamed through one climax before plunging the vibe deep and bringing forth another.

      Daylight was a different matter. She opened her eyes and stared at the toy she’d left discarded on the rug by her bedside. It all came back to her in a wave, but she was far from in the mood to relive that illicit encounter in the boardroom.

      I’m going to get fired today.

      As she prepared her coffee, double her usual amount – she had slept deep, but not long – she found herself wondering about Taureau’s mental state. She had never believed that he was mad, like some said. Paranoid, yes, but she doubted anyone would be completely there upstairs if they’d been butchered in their own bed.

      Though he had been the intruder and had instigated their pornographic game last night, by the time she hit the shower she had convinced herself that Taureau had set a trap for her, that he had eased her anxieties with that little spiel about solitude only to bully her into putting on a show, shame her with one last performance, and send the evidence to Caroway.

       But he didn’t bully you into anything, did he?

      And that was the worst of it. If she’d become the pawn of a crazy recluse for one night, there was no one to blame but herself. She’d put herself in this position. From the first quickie in the ladies’ room with that intern to the hard fuck with her Breton-Craig man the day before, she’d screwed around at the office and she had been caught.

      Even if she had enjoyed herself immensely with him, this was all on her shoulders.

      That it was Taureau who had done the catching was irrelevant. She had to accept responsibility and hope that Caroway was generous enough to give her a civil referral. After all, she had been one hell of an assistant when she wasn’t on her back or on her knees for someone else.

      Still, she wasn’t relishing the humiliation that was coming. The thought of sitting across from Caroway, waiting for him to get through his gratitude for her years of service and waiting for the axe to fall on her career and reputation, made her sick.

      Stepping off the elevator onto the thirteenth floor, Grace held her head high. She strode between the rows of cubicles and through the glass partition separating Caroway’s office from the rest of the floor. His door was closed and she could hear his voice as she booted up her computer.

      Her insides were ice as she sank down. She imagined him talking to Taureau, shaking his head as he watched scene after scene of Grace’s hook-ups.

      Ten minutes passed and stretched into twenty. She couldn’t concentrate beyond the murmur coming from behind that heavy door. She scrolled through every email and, when it became clear she hadn’t retained a damn word, marked them all as unread. Then she just sat there with her hands folded in front of her and waited.

      At Caroway’s sudden bark of laughter she jumped, then sat back. The tension in her limbs eased a little. He wasn’t talking to Taureau. Caroway didn’t joke with Taureau. No one joked with Taureau, she’d been told.

      And so what? Now you have to just keep sweating.

      She dug into her bottom drawer and pulled out her Dictaphone. There was nothing on her plate now that the Breton-Craig deal was done, but she couldn’t stand not having something to concentrate on. Transcribing minutes was as mundane as you could get, but she could put all of her attention into following the conversation that flowed into her ear.

      Caroway eventually emerged from his office and chirped his morning greeting. Grace tried her best to return it, but the words came out deflated. Once his back was to her, as he made his jolly morning jaunt to his scheduled meeting, she sagged in her seat and decided that she was doing sweet fuck all that day unless he dropped something urgent on her desk.

      Resigned to playing the waiting game, she opened her browser and clicked in the search bar. Her fingers paused over the keyboard as the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

      As she pressed down on the ‘J’ and a list of suggestions popped up, a spark of rebellion went through her. She swept her gaze around the office.

      Was he watching? If she typed in the name, would he see it? Was he monitoring her computer? Was her work area important enough to monitor? Caroway’s office, obviously, but her little nook? Was there a camera hidden in the smoke detector above her office? Was her webcam wired to secretly feed back to some command central Taureau had set up for himself?

      It wasn’t a crazy notion. Big Brother had nothing on Taureau’s set-up.

      ‘JACQUES ALAIN TAUREAU,’ she typed, and peered at the rows and rows of results that appeared in her browser.

      She clicked on the first web encyclopedia page. Nothing too salacious here, but she still read through the section of his early life with interest:

       Jacques Alain Taureau was born in Ottawa, Ontario.

       His father, Dominic, was the son of a lobster fisherman and a schoolteacher from Mont Carmel, New Brunswick, near Shediac. Dominic worked on the lobster boats from the time he was twelve to fifteen, at which time he left home for Moncton and then Montreal. He returned a decade later with an education and began work in Saint John for a politician, and eventually won his seat as a Liberal MP. During his time in Montreal, Dominic married socialite Theresa Werner. Dominic and Theresa had one child, Jacques.

       Jacques grew up in Montreal and spent his summers in Mont Carmel, spoiled by his mother and groomed by his grandfather to take over the family airline, but when he was a teen his partying ways led him to drugs and alcohol. He barely made it through university and dropped out of grad school. Famously described by his father as a ‘disappointment’ during the 1997 Federal election, Taureau frequently made headlines due to his multiple arrests, outbursts of violence, and trips to rehab. In April 1997, Taureau was arrested in in Simcoe County, north of the Greater Toronto Area, when his vehicle was pulled over for speeding. Marijuana and heroin were discovered on his person. He was sentenced to probation and required to undergo compulsory drug testing.

      There was a small photo inlaid with the text: Taureau’s mugshot.

      Even wrecked, he wore a panty-creaming smirk and blue bedroom eyes. Grace conjured up what little of him she had seen the previous night, but couldn’t see that arrogant smirk on the man who had ordered her to come for him.

       Throughout most of the strife, Taureau was involved with Bette (Elizabeth) Laurin, whom he met his last year of high school. She and Taureau had a toxic relationship, and her drug use reportedly eclipsed even Taureau’s. Those who knew Laurin described her as volatile when she was high, and during one of Taureau’s stays in rehab she was arrested for domestic assault on Jeffrey Brown, with whom she was having a sexual relationship in Taureau’s absence. These charges were later dropped at Brown’s request.

      The next section dealt exclusively with what Taureau was most famous for: the night almost sixteen years ago when