As Long as She Needs Me
Chapter One
The Ring
To be a person's personal assistant is to be, of course, her boss. While she trumpeted the orders and wallowed in the recognition, it was he who quietly decided her weekday schedule and predetermined her weekends; who owned all her secrets, orchestrated her life. She was the Dawn of Dawn Books, commander of a quavering staff of dozens of adults; but without his scurrying support and whispered translations she was nothing. She was a cracked figurehead, an empress without clothes, to be mended and swaddled daily, as we do for the least and most powerful of our species. As he did particularly well.
He dodged a herd of tourists outside the Empire State Building and wove a path through the summer traffic. It had been months since he'd wandered the city beneath its bright blue rectangles of daylight, as it was dim at the hour he got to the office, black by the time he left. He hopped over the curb and yanked at his tie, hunching lower and closer to the bobbing heads of pedestrians. Looking harder around their feet. With luck it would still be there, undiscovered on the simm ... read full excerpt from: As Long As She Needs Me ebook
