My Love Or Job

I ran a hand through my shock of kinky roots, letting out a deep exhale. Annoying couldn't quite describe the situation I'd found myself in. I had subconsciously bit my lip till they became a bright red. My reflection off the mirror I had taken from my drawer stared back at me with thorn-sharp eyes that were two pools of black lava threatening to boil over. I took note of the bags that were forming under my eyes and I frowned. This was what you got when you had Seth Mahoney as your assignment editor. In the past three days, I'd barely had ten hours of sleep.

I couldn't say I didn't know why Mahoney hated my guts, but it got to me every time he made no effort to disguise it. He'd had the hots for me since the first day I walked through the frosted glass door to his office with a folder full of stories I was confident were Hunch Spotter-worthy. He had liked the insider information I claimed I had on Ryder Fleming's abusive marriage and was ready to give my hunch a shot. He gave me two weeks to work on the story I had. He explained that Hunch Spotter was not just a speculative tabloid that published celebrity gossip week after week only to have the public figures deny such speculations.

"Well, our focus is celebrity news," he had said, lolling on his cushion seat behind his large desk, his copper eyes anywhere but at eye-level. He had this smirk on his thick, pale lips that irked me. Mahoney could be anything between late thirties to early fifties. He had a U-shaped balding and was running too fast.

"But we make reports based on documentaries. Photos, videos, and audio notes are all what we work with to publish a story," he had added, shooting me a grin I pinned to slap off his face.

I could tell when a man reasoned with his third leg. I could call lust out even if it showed in the most obscure of leers, but Mahoney wasn't trying to be obscure with his interest. He tried to let me know in the way his hand lingered when he shook my hands, in the way he tried to keep the conversation going when he sent direct messages to me under the guise of assigning me to a new story, that he was truly gunning for me. And when I played dumb to all that, he finally told me there was a steakhouse he could meet me at.

It wasn't so much about what he asked, but the confidence with which he asked, regardless of his two-year-old marriage I had only recently learned of, that came off to me as off-putting. So I relished poking holes in that ballooned confidence of his when I turned him down. Since then, Mahoney had gone full jerk on me, assigning me to the toughest stories with the shortest deadlines. However this last one was the worst! Of all the stories he could assign me to, he chose the Other Colors of Snow. And I got the brunt of all things unethical journalism for this assignment.

This was the story that made Celeb Xtra go out of business. It all began four years ago with a headline on Raiden Snow, the wealthiest man in Silicon Valley and chairman of Mays Games. I had only recently moved to California with an inbox full of rejection mails from the Idaho Post and a growing interest in tabloids. Frank Dudley, the editor at Celeb Xtra, ran the story of how Snow was running a sex cult under the guise of summer interns for software development undergrads. Dudley's hunch had come from Snow's offer of a paid internship to five students from UC Berkeley. The only thing was, the interns were all females.

Snow replied with a suit and by the time Dudley was done being the defendant, Celeb Xtra was neck-deep in debt. This Snow, described in the Valleys Gazette as 'the most ruthless exec you'd ever meet', was the man Seth wanted me to run a story on. For the next one month, I'd be playing Hunches' insider at the Snow's estate in Los Altos Hills, with five other female students interning at the billionaire's company. The assignment was to get photos and videos that would make the loudest noise Silicon Valley had ever heard. I was to do my assignment without getting caught.

Snow hadn't always been the keyword of the juiciest click baits splurged all over Silicon Valley's tabloid journalism. In fact, nothing was known about him until a few months before Dudley's publication, until a little more months before Sarah Mays, the founder of Mays Games, kicked the bucket and willed both her business and estate to Snow, a mysterious younger lover of hers. Meanwhile, Sarah Mays' closest associate, Steve Wheeler had looked to be named Mays' successor at the company on the premise that Mays had no children before she finalized her divorce with her husband or after that.

So, it only made sense why Wheeler was distraught by Mays last wishes and why WNDRR Television began prying into Snow's private life since Wheeler became the highest shareholder of the media giant. Now, Hunch Spotter also began turning the beam on Snow because it was a subsidiary of Wheeler's WNDRR Television. Wheeler's grudge against Snow was why there was a need to run a story on Snow in the first place. It was why Mahoney thought he'd finally found a hell for me to burn in.

At the staff meeting that was held this morning, Mahoney, his copper eyes as indifferent as always, had said to me, "You'd take on Snow and that's decided."

I stayed behind in his office when my colleagues left at the end of the meeting so that I could protest getting the Snow story because I had pulled off an extensive cover of Atlas Turner's #MeToo moment only a week ago. I didn't want it. The thought of going to some hamlet in Los Altos Hills was sickening.

"And so, what if your hunch is wrong after all?" I had asked. "I mean Dudley never had facts, he was just throwing allegations about. What if he didn't have any proof because there wasn't any?"

"Well, you could be right," Mahoney had said, crossing his thick hands over his chest. "But you are wrong, Gina. Facts can be created."

I had squinted my eyes at him, eyeing him with unmasked suspicion.

"What do you mean by that?"

"You know exactly what I mean. Snow is a sex predator if management so decides. It's up to you to go along with the decision."

I had glowered at him for hopeless, powerless moments before turning on my heels and slamming his door behind me.

I took a deep breath, let it out and threw back my mirror into the drawer, pushing it to.

"You all right, pumpkin?"

I lifted my head to find Molly standing over my cubicle. It was her cubicle too. She had been my desk partner since I got a job at Hunch Spotter. She wasn't the sort of woman to have necks straining as they turned to have a second look when she walked past, but she was attractive in her own flawed and accessible way. The beads she had for eyes were black and soulful. The round of her face was framed by a shoulder-tumbling, wavy, blonde lob that fell over her right eye, brushing it out of the way, a thing of instinct she did from time to time. The faint smattering of freckles on the bridge of her nose blended so well with the beige of her skin that you'd have to be looking for it before you saw it and her slenderness didn't cheat her out of a near-hourglass shape.

"But it can't be that bad," she added, stepping around the cubicle to take her seat. She had gone out for a break. I lost my appetite in Mahoney's office, so no breaks for me.

"But why does Seth hate me so much?" I asked, wishful as I turned to face Molly.

"You are a black woman for one," said Molly, letting out a snort laugh. I could only crease a little spread across my lips and without taking a glance at my mirror, I knew it looked more like a grimace than a smile. "A black woman that won't let him score a few points."

"But fuck Seth!" Molly whisper-yelled after a pause. "Fuck nine to five! Fuck capitalism, but I'd give anything to fuck Snow though!"

And that was it, belly-deep laughter rose to my throat and exploded throughout the length of the cubicle office space. The steady pound on keyboards from other cubicles thinned as heads began popping to the side to cast warning glares at Molly and me.

Barely containing myself, I said, "I am sorry, guys."

"If you make Forbes thirty-five under thirty-five, you can have me," Molly said, with a wide goofy grin.

I returned my eyes to her, "Can we trade places then?"

"If you can pull it off, I don't mind," she said, beaming. "But I doubt you can. Seth wants you to do this because he thinks getting Snow to sleep with you would be bad enough for you. And who does that? Honey, I'd fuck Snow both ways. In his room and in my story. But listen, I don't think it'd get to framing Snow up. Seth may be as dumb as it gets, but he's never wrong. If he's been informed that Seth runs a sex cult over there, then you got to believe that. All you have to do is get the proof of it and run the story."

"Does it ever cross your mind that we are running a crime syndicate here?" I asked.

Molly shifted in her seat. "This is exactly why Seth thinks he can torture you with this assignment. I really hope you do find filth when you are over there at Snow's cause I know you won't be able to pull sex with him off, but you heard him, right?"

I nodded.

"Management has taken the decision. They want to sink Snow and getting him on tape fucking a college student supposedly interning in his company would do just that. Seth is in charge of handling who does the dirty job. And you know better than hoping you can convince Seth otherwise."

"So, I don't have a choice?"

"You do. Seth wants you to hand in your notice obviously. Cause he knows you are too Jehovah Witness to fuck Snow if it comes to that."

"Can you stop saying that?" I asked.

"What?" Molly returned.

"Stop saying the eff word"

"Fuck, I am sorry," Molly said, giggling as softly as she could. "Fuck! I did it again. Fuck. You should try this Gina. This is truly a fuck situation."

I was quiet for a moment before I opened my mouth in a roaring effort. "Fuck!"

Again, the clickety-clack of keyboards stopped.

I stepped onto the pedestrian trail along the railroad tracks, pulling my trolley bag behind me. I was also wearing a backpack. The Mountain View Caltrain was crowded to the brim, but I cut through the crowd and made my way to View Street where my waiting chauffeur had found parking.

The chauffeur was of middle-height, surely nothing short of late fifties. He looked the part in his plain white shirt, dark pants, matching coat suit and a top hat. He was standing beside a Tesla when I found him and a smile broke out on my lips. I had never been in one before.

The chauffeur took my trolley bag and made for the trunk while I pulled open the back door and climbed into the car. I slipped out of the backpack and kept it on the cushion beside me. I took out my phone from my pocket and headed straight for Molly's private message.

Tesla, baby! You owe me ninety now.

I chuckled as I thumbed the send button, adding a laughing emoji. Molly staked ninety dollars that I would be picked up in a Ferrari. I told her it was going to be anything but a Ferrari. I had been in a Ferrari a couple of times and I really didn't fancy going to the home of the wealthiest man in Silicon Valley in a Ferrari. I believed Snow had to offer something different from all those blind dates I had gone on that ended uneventfully, but the dates were still graceful enough to give me a ride back home. High-end cars were practically the plaything of Silicon Valley's residents and Ferrari was the most common.

Teslas are a great place to think about your future, by the way. I couldn't shake off the thought that the next thirty days would be a very long one month. In a matter of days, I had gone from being a tabloid journalist with Hunch Spotter to a college student of Stanford University interning at Raiden Snow's Mays Games.

In a month of pretending to be a college student, if I couldn't find proof of a Raiden Snow's #MeToo scandal, I would have to create one. The thought of my mother in her Garden City, ID home burned at the root of my mind. I could see her watching the court proceedings when Raiden Snow would turn on me with all of his litigant might. I could see tabloids digging into Gina Howard and ripping her apart. I pulled a grimace at the thoughts and made a go at shooing them out of my consciousness.

The road was clear when my chauffeur, whose name I had learned was Gerald Reeves, steered left onto Alto Verde Lane and a couple yards in, he swerved right onto a paved straight road that led us to a fifty-three-foot automatic sliding cantilever gate. We had only a brief moment to wait before the gate was slid open through a switch in the gatehouse.

Reeves floored the gas pedal once more and we continued down the straight path. Beyond the gate, the path was bordered on either side by a canopy of lush foliage that stretched out to an ultra-modern mansion built of glass, wood and concrete. I peered out the window with saucer-sized eyes as we drove past a mini golf green. Flanked on the right was a plot of a cared-for vineyard, but nothing was as jaw-dropping as the architectural perfection ahead of us.

The closer we got the more daunting the residence looked and without a shadow of doubt, I could tell that the estate sat on a parcel of up to an acre and half or something close to that. So, I asked my chauffeur. "How big is this estate?"

Eyes steady ahead of him, Gerald replied, "Two acres."

"Oh em gee!" I choked out with a bellow.

The estate held a promise of panoramic bay views as it was tucked into close proximity with downtown Los Altos. Okay, this was a twist I didn't expect. I knew Los Altos Hills couldn't be the playground of Silicon Valley's biggest stars all for nothing, but this, this was huger than I expected and I was so ready for the hereafter.

Reeves brought the Tesla to a halt in front of an imposing water fountain which was nine feet of tiered basins, with the water getting pushed up the tiers through a pump and cascading down to a large bottom reservoir.

"We are here, Miss Freeman." Reeves said, cutting off the engine. "Welcome to the Snow House."

Yeah, for this undercover operation I was no longer Gina Howard but Regina Freeman, a 22-year-old software engineering undergrad from Stanford University whose internship application got accepted by Mays Games. I had said my new name a million times to myself and yet, the last name didn't sound like it belonged to me.

My eyes were still glued to the edifice. Reeves opened his door and climbed out of the car. He came round to the back door and pulled it open for me. Without taking my eyes off the Snow House, as if it could all disappear if I shifted my attention even for a moment, I stepped out of the Tesla.