Bethany shrugs. “How should I know? I’m not one of your dodgy accountants. Go ask them.”
“The accountants who all report to my brother? What an enlightened idea. I need to give her half a million pounds, but she can’t know who I am or where the money has come from. I don’t trust her to not tell Damir who helped her.”
Or break under his questioning.
My PA gives me a baffled look. “Why do you want to give her money?”
“That’s none of your business,” I say coldly. If I do nothing and something happens to Miss Alders it will be one stone too many laying heavy on my conscience. I just want to get on with my work but instead I’m suddenly burdened with integrity I didn’t fucking ask for.
She thinks for a moment and then shakes her head. “If you’ve gone soft on her why don’t you just tell Damir you’ll cover her debt?”
“Do you really think my brother will allow me to use my money, that he likes to tell me is his money because I work for him, to pay a revenge debt?”
Bethany wrinkles her nose. “Oh yeah. Your brother is an asshole. I forgot.”
An asshole. Assholes glass you in the pub. Key your car. Cut you off on the motorway. My brother is enriched uranium-level psychopath. “There aren’t many ways that a student stumbles over half a million pounds.”
“Let her work it off on the pole, then.”
In one of Damir’s own strip clubs, she means. I believe that’s his plan for her, watching her slave away in one of his seedy strip joints for a decade until he’s ruined her life. They’re popular clubs and strippers who work there of their own free will probably clean up. But a stripper forced into it and wearing her vulnerability night after night for all to see? She’d be bullied by the girls and patrons alike and taken advantage of night after night until she’s a hollow shell of self-disgust.
“Look on the bright side, sir. Once she’s a stripper you can go and get as many lap dances from her as you like.”
I flick my gaze up at her. “I wish I could replace you.”
“But you can’t, because no one but me can put up with your surly ass. Can I have an advance? One that doesn’t actually come out of my next pay check?”
Bethany can have anything she wants if she can make Miss Alders go away. And she needs to go away, fast. I’ve wasted enough time thinking about her. “Come up with a way to solve this problem and you can have this month’s pay check twice over.”
She considers this for a moment, and then perches on the edge of my desk and says in a breathy voice, “Why don’t you be her daddy?”
“Her what?” I deadpan.
“Her daddy. You know, her sugar daddy. You give her a fat allowance in exchange for a couple of dates a week and a blow job when you’re feeling lonely. I don’t imagine anyone’s sucking your dick by choice. Ciara gives the money to your brother and your newfound conscience lets you sleep at night. Problem solved.”
My expression is still baleful, but my mind is ticking over. It’s a ridiculous idea, though on the upside Damir would never suspect it and drip-feeding Miss Alders the funds rather than trying to give her a lump sum would seem less suspicious to him, as she’d pay him off bit by bit.
But I don’t know Miss Alders, I don’t want to know her, and I have no idea how I would go about getting her to agree to such a distasteful arrangement.
“One of my friends was in the sugar bowl for a while,” Bethany says, and I stare at her blankly. “That’s what sugaring is called, being in the sugar bowl. The girls are the sugar babies and the guys are the sugar daddies. It’s super popular among students, actually. Why slave for hours in a coffee shop if you can make thousands holding some flabby old guy’s hand while he pays for your expensive dinner?”
“It’s a legitimate arrangement? Young women will take money just for going out on dates?”
Bethany gives me an incredulous look. “Well, you’d get to sleep with her, too. That’s what it’s about. You do have sex don’t you, you big weirdo? Or do you, like, pay people wearing stiletto heels to step on your balls?”
“I don’t know why I’m asking you questions when I could just Google all this.”
“Because I’m better than Google.” She puts her hands together in a prayer position and wags them at me. “You tell her that you’ll give her so many thousands of pounds a month in exchange for dates, say two a week, some of which end in sex. You buy her handbags, some Italian shoes, maybe take her away for a dirty weekend or two and give her extra cash when you’ve had a particularly satisfying time. She sees you as a rich dude who wants a pretty young girl on his arm, and you get to pay off her debt.”
Bethany beams at me, proud of herself, but it seems like an awful lot of hassle just to give my brother half a million pounds that he doesn’t need. I have much, much more than that sitting in offshore accounts and despite what Damir thinks it’s my fucking money. I just want to give it to him so I can get on with my life and forget about Miss Alders. He was like this when we were children. Vindictive. Cruel. When he was six and we were still living in Slovenia, one of our nannies scolded him for stealing chocolates from her handbag and he got her fired. But it wasn’t just fired. He wasn’t satisfied until our father screamed at the poor woman in front of all the staff and then kicked her out onto the street, still weeping. Damir smiled ear to ear, watching the nanny sob as she walked away from the house. I’d never seen him so happy. That was when I realized that there was something wrong with my little brother. I didn’t do anything to stop him. That’s how I knew there was something wrong with me, too.
“Well, sir?” Bethany prompts.
Being Miss Alders’ sugar daddy is a terrible idea and I don’t like it but it’s the only one I’ve got right now. “How many thousand can I give her each month? Fifty?”
Bethany gapes at me. “Do you want her to think you’re a cannibal or you’re grooming her for some weird kink? She’ll run a mile. Ten thousand. You give her ten thousand a month, max, and slip her a few extra thousand in an envelope at the end of each date if you want to bump it up a bit.”
I groan inwardly. Ten thousand. At that rate it will take nearly four years for her to pay off the debt in full. Four years of tedious dates and pretending to be her sugar daddy. I don’t have the time.
But maybe it wouldn’t take quite so long if I came up with something better in the meantime. For now, ten thousand pounds a month would appease my brother and keep Miss Alders out of his strip club while I work on a plan to get her a bigger lump sum sooner.
“It’s a good idea, isn’t it, sir? Go on. Admit it.”
“It’s…got potential,” I concede. “But how do I enter into this sort of arrangement with Miss Alders? I don’t know her.”
Bethany flips her long hair over her shoulder and gives me a dazzling smile. “But I know her. I’ll put the idea in her head for you. Classes start tomorrow and Ciara hangs out at a café on campus before every lecture. We weren’t friends but she’s too nice not to talk to me if I sit down at her table. Let me go look up the schedule.”
She turns to leave but I catch Bethany’s wrist, pulling her back. “If you breathe a word of this to anyone you and she are both dead. You know that’s not me threatening you. That’s what Damir will do. He doesn’t want money, he wants to cause her pain, and he’ll hurt anyone who gets in the way of what he wants.”