This was not Rupert’s only residence—he had suites in Tokyo, Manhattan, and Vancouver, a mansion in Madrid, a chateau in Normandy, and for the pièce de résistance a medieval castle on the small Channel Island where he was feudal lord—but the Knightsbridge house was his base in London.
Miss Starkey dwelt in the attic like a business-suited Miss Havisham, sleeping in the once-upon-a-Victorian-housekeeper’s bedroom. Admittedly, this was a step up from the senior domestics, who had bunk beds in the dormer attic. (Never mind the kitchen and cellar maids who slept on bedrolls in the laundry, and paid for the privilege.) But it underlined the uncomfortable reality that in the House of Bigge, if you were not the master, you could only be a servant.
Not that Eve spent much time in her room. Sleep was a privilege reserved for the rich, and as Rupert’s extremely busy executive assistant she could be called into action at any time of day or night to fight fires in her employer’s global empire. Eve had no family life: her father was dead, her brother estranged, and her mother indisposed. She had neither the time nor the inclination to nurture friendships. But in exchange for total devotion to her job, Eve had gained the privilege of power.
Rupert might insist that she introduce herself to callers as his secretary, but she was effectively a corporate vice-president—lacking only the title, the pay, and the stock options. She oversaw operations on behalf of Rupert when he was unavailable. Her decrees carried the weight of her master’s voice, and she exercised his power vicariously, a power that she’d become addicted to. Her borrowed agency made an acceptable substitute for family life for now, and with enough money even cloning and surrogacy would be within reach—the only way she’d ever dare have children. Having a life of her own could wait until she was something more than Rupert’s semi-detached shadow. So it was towards this eventual emancipation, and in pursuit of her own long-term goals, that Eve bent every sinew and dedicated every waking moment of her life in the service of Rupert de Montfort Bigge.
This week Rupert was off on a jaunt to Cyprus, hobnobbing with his tax exile Russian friends and a sketchy Turkish arms dealer or two. Maybe he had already concluded his business and was plotting his next campaign from the fastness of his island castle; or perhaps he was living it up in Monaco. Either way, in his absence Eve reigned in Knightsbridge. So when she got home, she sent the Gammon down to the sub-subbasement with the kitchenware acquisitions and a work order for Sweeney the Handyman—the rack would be absolutely perfect there, as long as it was securely bolted to the ceiling—then she settled down at her desk in the office just outside Rupert’s den. There were emails to answer, memos to approve, and a press release to sign off on—all useful distractions with which to work off her nervous energy. But work was a game she played in boss mode, and all too soon she had caught up with her to-do list and was left staring at her empty inbox with a nagging sense of dissatisfaction.
She phoned the kitchen for lunch and ordered her usual: a salad of mixed greens topped with a modest slab of bluefin tuna and a thimbleful of λ olive oil from Speiron. (Cook had said they were running low, so she dashed off a reminder to Rupert’s valet to pick up another case: at $14,600 a pop it was a steal.) While she ate at her desk, she idly priced her options for blepharoplasty, then checked her rogues’ gallery of Top 100 Richest Female Entrepreneurs for signs of unannounced plastic surgery again.
Closing in on the big three-zero had made Eve acutely aware that her options for leveraging her appearance were narrowing, and it was time to start upgrading her outward presentation before it became too obvious. She’d realized early on that there was an eigenface towards which all female CEOs converged, a strikingly standardized Boardroom Barbie look that those who made it to the top table generally shared. She had actual proof of this: she’d had Rupert’s quants run the algorithms, and they’d spit out the precise ratio of nose length to lip fullness, hips to chest.
The numbers didn’t lie. To make it to the top it wasn’t necessary or even desirable to be supermodel-beautiful—stereotypes could bite you, unless you were a pop star or came from serious inherited wealth—but if you didn’t have the good fortune to start out mind-buggeringly rich, you absolutely had to have the Look that coded for female executive authority. Eve intended to become the ultimate executive. She had already jettisoned any shred of her personal life that threatened to hold her back; her ears and breasts and cheekbones were just more skin in the game she was playing. Now she spent her surplus income on plastic surgery. Her objective: to become the face that launched a thousand investment vehicles.
She wouldn’t be Rupert’s amanuensis forever.
The desk phone rang while she was collating reviews of superstar plastic surgeons. Focus shattered, she glared at it for a moment: but switchboard had a little list of people who could handle level 2 through 4 calls while she was unavailable, which meant that it must be a level 1, which basically boiled down to Rupert or the Prince of Wales or someone of equivalent stature. She twitched her headset mic back into position. “Afternoon, Boss!” she chirped brightly. “What can I do for
