The Velvet Guillotine Continued

Cassie stood motionless in the middle of her kitchen, naked, water dripping from the ends of her wet hair onto the heated marble floor under her feet. She stared out the window and could see the steam heat rising from the streets as the hot summer rain poured down.

Lost in her thoughts, she jolted when she heard the screaming kettle doing what the scalding shower couldn’t. It cut through the silence of her apartment, sharp and unforgiving, growing louder with every second she ignored it. Demanding her attention and action. Funny how everything in her life seemed to work that way now, she thought.

Back in her body, she pulled down her favorite cartoon mug of the golden girls that didn’t go with her sleek new apartment. She had little reminders of her old life all around to keep her centered.

Her new apartment sat forty floors above Manhattan, high enough that the city noise disappeared into a quiet hum and was only broken up by the sound of an ambulance. High enough that people below stopped looking like people and started to look like blurred moving lines.

She used to hate these building and the people who lived in them. Executives and trust funders in their glass towers who looked down on the world they claimed to understand. Now she was one of them, sort of. The thought made her stomach twist and had her grabbing the ginger chamomile tea to calm her stomach and her nerves.

The apartment was beautiful, objectively so. Floor-to-ceiling windows, white stone countertops, furniture selected by someone who knew what wealthy people were supposed to look and live like. Expensive enough to look simple but she knew the throw on the couch was half a month’s rent in her previous life. A life she only stepped away from less than a year ago.

Back then, she’d been sharing a shitty two-bedroom apartment with three other women and convinced herself that an amazon box was a decent enough coffee table. Now she had rooms she barely used, books she didn’t pick out, clothes she’d never wear.

The black envelope, with her simple signature of agreement inside, changed everything. Her mother’s debt had disappeared quite literally overnight. Her brother’s last name stopped being a liability.

Cassie Logan stopped being the woman Chicago had whispered about, now she had become someone people wanted in the room.

Maybe that wasn’t true, maybe she’d always been someone worth having in the room. Maybe Tanya had just been the first person powerful enough to show her that reality.

The kettle screamed louder, and Cassie moved to grab it but paused when she caught her reflection in the glass. She barely recognized herself. Not because of the new hair Tanya insisted she chop and color, or the apartment, or even the money.

Because no matter how long she stood under that shower, no matter how scalding she made the water, no matter how hard or how many times she scrubbed her skin raw…

She could still feel his hands around her throat. Still smell the cleaned glass and metal of that boardroom. Still see the blood on his face dripping down on to hers. She could still feel the scratchy conference room floor through the blouse she’d thrown in the garbage along with her other clothes she quickly stripped off as soon as she got home.

Looking down at her now clean hands, she could still feel his skin under her fingernails. Even after washing and scrubbing them six? Seven times? She stopped counting after the water swirling down the sink stopped turning pink.

Cassie laughed quietly, a strange empty sound in her empty kitchen. How dramatic. Isn’t that what Tanya would say?

Remembering less than an hour ago, they were sitting in the back of a black car, Tanya was pristine and perfectly composed. One leg crossed over the other, long red nails tapping against the screen of her phone while Cassie sat next to her with bruises blooming and bright red blood stains on her silk white blouse and face. It felt like they were leaving a dinner meeting, not the scene of whatever the hell tonight had been.

“You’re taking this harder than necessary.” That was what Tanya had said.

Not coldly, that was the worst part. People always mistook Tanya’s lack of panic for a lack of feeling. After a year of working with her, Cassie knew better, Tanya felt everything because she thought of everything. She just didn’t waste her time performing through it. Still, Cassie had stared at her in shock.

“Harder than necessary?” She said.

Only then, only when Cassie’s voice cracked, did Tanya look up from her phone, locked it and looked at her.

“He attacked you, Cassie.” The glow from the passing streetlights moved across her face.

“You didn’t create that.” Tanya paused, “You revealed it.”

She went back to typing on her phone. As if that settled it, as if that erased the sound of his rage. The chair hitting the glass, feeling the shards scrape across her face. The moment she realized Tanya had been right. Not about the company or about the deal, but about him.

The kettle continued to shriek, Cassie finally turned off the burner. The silence fully rushed in as she made the tea without thinking. She didn’t really like tea, but Tanya did, so of course it was fully stocked. Even her relaxation lately felt like a test.

Cassie went to her big couch and wrapped herself in that thick blanket, curled into the corner, and pulled her knees up to her chest. She watched the steam rise from the cup, she gave a little smile as she saw the poorly drawn comical faces of Blanche, Rose, Dorothy, and Sophia looking back at her. Judging her? Before she could begin judging herself, she looked around the room and out the window.

Outside, New York kept moving. That was always the strangest thing about life-changing moments. The world never had the decency to stop and pause with you. Someone was getting engaged tonight. Someone was making a poor decision at a bar tonight. Someone was ordering overpriced sushi and complaining about the delivery fees. And somewhere, a man who had been named a genius twelve hours ago was watching his little part of the world, his empire, collapse.

Because of her.

No. Not because of her. That was the important distinction Tanya and the Velvet Guillotine, she liked to call this secret society of women, drove into her. The guillotine didn’t fall on innocent men. It waited, patiently and quietly. Until they willingly placed their own necks beneath the blade and tugged the rope by their own damning decision.

Cassie wrapped both hands around the mug and waited for the guilt, for the regret. For that small voice inside her that used to apologize when other people hurt her. But nothing came. And somehow, that scared her more than anything else. Because two weeks ago, she still believed there were lines she would never cross.

Two weeks ago, she believed she knew exactly who she was and how to control her story.

Two weeks ago, Cassie had walked into Tanya Wilson’s office and was given another envelope. She should have known, nothing easy came from Tanya and an envelope.

Two weeks earlier

Cassie hated that nobody understood her job, mostly because she wasn’t entirely sure she understood it in the realm of corporate labels either. Her official title was Senior Strategic Partner, Office of Tanya Wilson COO. It sounded important and expensive. Like something a consulting firm created when they wanted to bill a client $800 an hour but couldn’t and maybe wouldn’t explain what they did.

Her mom asked her about it all the time. Was she operations? Sometimes. Strategy? Often. Executive communications? When necessary. Mergers and acquisitions? Recently, yes. The truth was simpler, but she couldn’t share it openly.

Cassie went where Tanya told her to go. She solved what she wanted solved and watched what she wanted watched.

A year ago, that would have terrified her, but now she understood something most people never learned. Power wasn’t always the person standing at the front of the room. Sometimes, power was the person sitting quietly in the corner, taking notes everyone forgot existed.

She had built most of her career around being invisible, underestimated, and ignored, by design. She wanted it that way. But Tanya taught her how to use it for power. Through Tanya, and the freedom she gave Cassie to action how she saw fit, she’d become confident over the last year in her abilities and trusted her own decisions.

Cassie’s office was three floors below Tanya’s, not because hierarchy demanded it, Tanya hated hierarchy.

“People obsessed with being close to power rarely know what to do with it once they get there,” she told Cassie once.

No, her office was distanced from Tanya because she knew Cassie needed space and solitude to do her best work. So, when Tanya’s assistant, Margaret, messaged her that she was needed upstairs, she happily grabbed her notebook and laptop. Cassie’s weapons of choice.

The elevator opened onto the executive floor, and Cassie stepped into that familiar quiet.

She used to think executive floors were quiet because important people needed quiet to focus. Tanya had taught her otherwise. They were quiet, if the right people were leading, because the loudest decisions in the world were usually made by people who never needed to raise their voices.

Tanya’s door was already open, that was the first sign something was different. Tanya Wilson did nothing accidentally and that door was always shut. She waved at Margaret who was on the phone, and she gave Cassie a wink and nod to go on in.

She stepped inside, and saw Tanya standing by the window overlooking Manhattan, dressed in all white and her hair swept up, holding a glass of freshly brewed iced tea. Red nails tapping against the crystal with that same rhythm, that same warning she remembered from when they first met.

Cassie looked to the desk. On top of a small stack of files sat an envelope. A black envelope. Cassie stopped, and Tanya turned. Of course, Tanya noticed her pause.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Tanya said raising a perfectly sculpted eyebrow.

Cassie looked at the envelope and took a steadying breath, “No.”

A small smile crossed Tanya’s face, “No?”

“I’ve seen that.” Cassie said a little less shaky.

The smile grew on Tanya’s red lips, “Good.”

Cassie walked further into the office and sat in one of the buttery leather armchairs in front of the desk trying to ignore the envelope.

Looking over at Tanya who was clearly measuring and waiting for Cassie’s next response, Cassie spoke, “I thought these envelopes were only for choices.”

“They are.” Tanya said taking a sip of tea.

“And whose choice is this?” Cassie said, returning the same measured gaze to Tanya. She’d grown to like these little games with her, but the nerves were still very present.

“Yours.” Tanya said, placing her glass on a side table and folding her arms in front of her.

Cassie said nothing. Tanya broke into a full smile, looking pleased. She always looked pleased when Cassie remembered silence was an answer.

“You’ve gotten better at that.” Tanya said walking toward her desk.

“At what?” Cassie said.

“No longer feeling the need to fill space because someone else made you uncomfortable.” Tanya said taking the seat next to Cassie, almost like they were friends.

Cassie rolled her eyes, but with a breath of relief exhaled.

“You brought me up for a performance review?” Cassie smirked.

“No.” Tanya said and picked up the envelope. “I brought you up because I need you to decide if you’re ready for your next role, it’s a bit meatier than the others.”

“I have a role?” Cassie said with a jolt of excitement.

“No, you have a title.” Tanya said handing her the envelope.

Cassie didn’t open it, “What is it?”

“A company.” Tanya sat back in the armchair.

“Very specific.” Cassie sassed.

“Patience.” Tanya leaned toward her desk and picked up a remote. With a click of a button the glass wall to the side shifted and a screen appeared.

Cassie recognized the logo immediately, everyone did. VelocityAI.

The company that had spent the last five years convincing the world they weren’t just building artificial intelligence. Their big PR plug was that they were building the future.

Their founder, Darren Vale, was everywhere. You couldn’t walk the streets without seeing his face on a magazine, hearing him on a podcast, or seeing him on some conference stage on social media. He was the billionaire genius who promised to change humanity with AI for the better. Weren’t they all.

Cassie stared at his picture, “I thought we liked him.”

“We?” Tanya said arching an eyebrow

“The world.” Cassie waved her hand.

“The world likes a good story.” Tanya said leaning back into her chair

“And you don’t?” Cassie asked reaching to get the real ask out of Tanya.

“I prefer reading the footnotes.” Tanya said looking at the screen again.

And there it was, the reason Tanya scared people. Not because she knew more than everyone else, but because she cared enough to look and find things people ignored.

Cassie smiled and reached and grabbed the top folder on the desk. Opening it she saw VelocityAI’s financials, org charts, projection reports, layoff announcements. Names of those laid off, there were thousands. Her smile faded.

“He cut almost half the company?” Cassie said shocked.

“Forty-three percent.” Tanya corrected.

“Revenue issues?” Cassie asked, knowing the answer was no with the glance at the quarterly financials.

“No.” Tanya said simply.

“Market pressure?” Cassie said, reaching for insight.

“No.” Tanya said, looking at Cassie.

“Then why?” Cassie asked closing the folder

Leaning forward, “Because he wanted to prove he could.”

The room went quiet.

“VelocityAI was originally created to make people better at their jobs. Faster research, better accessibility, quicker decisions, bigger money. Removing tedious work so humans could do the things humans were actually good at.” Tanya said

“And now?” Cassie said leaning back into her chair, gazing at the folder still in her hands.

“Now, Mr. Vale believes humas are the tedious work.” Tanya said waiting for Cassie’s response.

“That’s insane.” Cassie said looking up at Tanya.

“No”, Tanya said, “That’s ego.” Somehow that sounded worse.

“You want to buy him to get rid of him?” Cassie asked.

“We’re trying, my company has the most funds, the bigger name, better brand, and further reach. We set it up so it wouldn’t even be a question for Mr. Vale to agree to.” Tanya said looking back at the screen with Darren Vale’s face on it with a hint of disgust.

Cassie knew when Tanya said ‘we’, she didn’t mean this company and their board. No, ‘we’ was the Velvet Guillotine.

“And he won’t sell.” Cassie stated.

“He won’t sell to me.” Tanya said.

Cassie understood, “Because you’re a woman.”

Tanya smiled, “Careful.”

“What?” Cassie asked.

“Men like Darren are smarter than that.” Tanya looked at Cassie waiting for her to connect the dots.

Cassie frowned, “He’s not going to say it out loud.”

“Exactly.” Tanya said with a smile of approval, “The dangerous ones rarely announce themselves.”

Cassie looked back at his photograph, the charming smile, the expensive suite, the perfectly manicured hands, a very carefully crafted image.

“What do you want me to do?” Cassie asked.

Tanya tilted her head, as if the question disappointed her, “No.”

“No?” Cassie asked in surprise.

“That’s the old Cassie asking,” Tanya paused, waiting for Cassie to look up, she did, “The old Cassie waited for someone powerful to hand her instructions.” Another pause. “The woman I hired looks at the information and tells me what needs to happen.”

Cassie hated when Tanya did this, mostly because she was usually right. She looked back down at the folder. Thinking of the company, the employees, the technology, the damage.

“You don’t want me to help you buy VelocityAI.” Cassie said, Tanya waited, “You want me to find out if it deserves to be saved.”

Tanya smiled that fox smile that Cassie loved, small, dangerous, proud even. “And?” She said.

Cassie looked again at Darren Vale’s photo, then opened the folder and saw the thousands of names with numbers next to it, their salaries, benefit plans, 401ks, HSAs. All the money he’d be saving. He’d turned people into numbers, loyal careers into efficiencies, and people’s lives into a business strategy. She closed the folder and picked up the black envelope.

“I’ll need access, his calendar, I need to be in his leadership meetings.” Cassie said standing.

“Already approved, done, and expected.” Tanya said standing as well.

Cassie paused, “He knows I’m coming?

“Yes. You have a meeting at 1pm today.” Tanya smiled.

“As what?” Cassie asked.

Tanya picked up her phone as it buzzed, already moving to the next thing, “To him?” Tanya said as she looked down and started typing, “A consultant.” Moving to her desk and opening her laptop she began typing.

Cassie waited, “And to you?”

Tanya’s nails tapped once, twice, then stopped, “To me?”

She looked up and smiled slowly, “My investment.” Nodding her head towards the door she turned back to her laptop picking up where she left off.

Knowing that was her dismissal, Cassie grabbed her things and left the office, closing the door.

Margaret, Tanya’s assistant, already had her purse and jacket and smiled up at Cassie as she handed them to her.

“Go get em honey.” She said with a wink and made Cassie smile.

Taking more confident steps than when she entered the office, she texted the company car to meet her outside, they were heading to Darren Vale’s offices.

Let the games begin she thought.

To be continued…