The Billionaire Heir Called Me a Freeloader, I'd Bankrolled His Family for 600 Years novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: Access Denied
Eleanor's card is dead and her office is being emptied for Camille, until the rooftop gardener saves the orchids and hands her tea. On Camille's desk is the parcel number of the land under the tower.
The next morning I scanned my card at the executive elevator and the reader flashed red.
Two short beeps, and then the screen: ACCESS DENIED.
I had used that elevator every day for eleven years.
An employee elevator opened beside me, and three young people stepped out of it into the lobby.
They saw me and went quiet.
"That's her," one of them whispered. "The one Camille called out at dinner."
"They already disabled her card," said another. "What is she still doing here?"
I walked to the reception desk.
The receptionist looked at my card and then at the counter.
"Ms. Clifford, Camille had security revoke your executive access at eight this morning."
"And the regular elevators?"
"Still open, for now."
I thanked her. None of this was her doing.
I took the regular elevator to the top floor.
When the doors opened I heard furniture scraping across the marble.
Four cleaners were pushing carts out of my office.
They were loading my orchids onto the carts, pot by pot, with the soil still wet.
The antique tea set I used every day sat in a cardboard box on the floor.
I had commissioned that set from a porcelain maker in 1760.
The lid of the teapot had a new chip on its rim.
Camille stood in the middle of my office with a tablet, pointing.
"All of this goes. It smells like a storage unit in here. Bring in leather sofas, and order a desk in ebony."
She turned and saw me in the doorway, and her face lit up at once.
"Eleanor. You're early."
She walked over in her high heels.
"Geoffrey thinks my office is too small for client meetings. Yours sits empty most days, so I'm putting it to use."
She looked down at the box.
"I'm sorry about the teapot. The cleaners are careless."
I picked up the lid and ran my thumb along the chip.
I said nothing.
A cleaner rolled a cart toward the service lift, and the cart tipped.
Three orchids slid off it.
A man's arm caught the whole load before it hit the floor.
He wore a green work jacket, and there was dirt under his nails.
He was the rooftop gardener, and he had been there four years.
I knew his face and had never learned his name.
"These don't go to the dumpster," he said to the cleaners. "They go back where they were."
He lifted two pots at once and carried them toward the garden door.
Camille's smile changed.
"Security," she said into her tablet. "There's a man in the executive wing who isn't on the access list."
Two guards came out of the lift.
The gardener didn't stop walking.
"He is on my list," I said.
Camille turned to me.
"Eleanor, you don't have a list. As of this morning you don't have authority over anything on this floor."
"I have authority over the garden," I said. "I always have."
"The garden is part of the building."
"Then call Geoffrey and ask him to say that in front of me."
She took out her phone and looked at it.
She put it away.
"He's in meetings," she said.
The guards looked at each other and stayed where they were.
I picked up the box with the tea set in it.
"Keep the office today," I said to Camille. "I'll be on the roof."
I carried the box through the garden door.
The gardener had set every orchid back in its row, and he was watering the last one with a can.
He looked at me and then at the box in my arms.
"It chipped," I said.
"Gold can fix that. I know a woman in Brooklyn."
It was the longest sentence I had ever heard from him.
He went to the little table by the door, picked up a white cup and held it out.
Steam rose from it.
"You missed yours this morning," he said. "I kept it hot."
I took the cup.
It was the tea.
It had been him every morning for four years, and I had never once looked to see who left it.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Rowan."
"Thank you, Rowan."
He nodded and went back to the watering.
I stood there with the cup and looked through the glass wall into my old office.
Camille had left the door open.
She had gone to take a call, and her folder lay open on my desk.
On the first page was a parcel number I knew by heart, because I had written it on a deed a hundred and twenty years ago.
It was the land under the tower.
Across the top, in red ink, she had written: Brandt closes Friday.
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