Bought By The Billionaire - BDSM 18 novel Chapter 63

“Francis, where…?”

She nods me to the door. “He’s in his office, Mrs Haswell.”

“I wish you’d call me Beth.”

“He’s in his office, Beth,” she smiles. “I don’t think you’re interrupting him.”

Still, I don’t like to just walk in. I tap on the door, but it’s not closed, swinging open under the pressure from my hand.

My Master’s office is huge, open and uncluttered. His desk is large, but not overly so, with room to work on his laptop, or to write by hand if he wishes. In and out trays take up some of the surface, but I know that Francis intercepts a lot of his mail before it reaches him.

One end of the office is occupied by a conference table. Another area is laid out with a coffee table and comfortable seating. A filing cabinet behind his desk stands beside a set of plan drawers, wide and seemingly squat, but not actually so. The large size of the documents it houses simply makes it appear so.

But the main feature of the office is the vast window. Taking up an entire wall, it looks over the City. My Master could have chosen to have a view out toward the sea. Most would have, I’m sure. But he didn’t. As he works, he looks always over the City.

And he’s there, standing with his back to me, legs akimbo, gazing out over the cityscape. In the distance, the sun sinks toward the mountains, casting long light over the panorama, picking out the detail of tall apartment blocks, low houses, the vibrant centre and streaming traffic. A curved sliver of light marks the river, dividing the City in two, flowing past warehouses and dockyards, then onward to the sea. And beyond the river, whole areas either demolished or waiting for it, ready for their rebirth.

“Master?”

He turns, brows rising. “Elizabeth? My apologies. I didn’t hear you come in.”

“I did knock, but…”

“I was distracted.”

“Watching the sunset?”

“As you say." Smiling, he offers me his hand. “Why don’t you join me?”

Moving to stand beside him, I take the hand, his fingers tightening around mine. Fingers laced, we watch together as a sky of blue and opal evolves to rose and gold. The sun drops behind the mountains, high peaks slicing bites from the disk. The long light morphs to long shadows, and gradually the colours fade, the world dusks, then darkens.

Lights flicker on. Blinking awake, floor by rising floor, tall office blocks glow golden, tiny silhouetted figures moving beyond the windows. Far below, strings of fairy lights glide one way and the other, marking traffic flowing one way and the other.

My Master watches, intent.

“When I see you like that, looking out over the City, you look like a man in love.”

His lips quirk and he flicks me a sidelong glance. “Perhaps you're not far off with that.” He gestures out, sweeping over the wide, dark horizon. “She's a Great City, but she's old and tired. She needs help.”

“And that’s what you’re here for.”

He squeezes my fingers. “Come on. Time for home. Early start tomorrow. Will Stanton’s coming.”

*****

The dim evening shadows have been replaced by brilliant morning sunshine, a snap to the air and a sheen over shaded streets where the frost hasn’t faded.

In my Master’s office, he flips open his laptop, then aims a finger at the plan drawers. “A lot of this kind of work is done using computer models and I’ll get that forwarded to you, but sometimes there’s no substitute for having the information laid out in front of you.”

The finger jabs down. “Second and third drawers. You’ll find a lot of what you need in there. Schematics of the City, street maps, service plans and so on.” The finger swings to the filing cabinet. “Bottom drawer. Guides on which areas are demarcated as residential, industrial, retail and so on. Help yourself. Sing out if you can’t find anything. Any questions, Will should be here later this morning. Alright?”

“Just coffee for me, please Ma… Richard.”

Will seats himself, laying his folder on the table. “So, Beth, I’ve brought along what information came to mind, but why don’t we start with you telling me what you need from me?”

I slide a copy of my notes across the desk to Will. “These are my initial thoughts. First of all, I need an idea of where in the City, ideally, you would prefer to base sub-stations to Police Central…” I tick off my points as I work down the list. “… How many officers would each need to accommodate? Do you need the various stations to be the same capacity? Some sort of standard model? Or would you prefer different capacities for different areas…?”

Will listens carefully. Across the table from me, my Master leans back in his seat, a forefinger pressed to his lips.

“What facilities would an individual officer need? And what communal facilities would be required? How much parking and so forth?” I work my way through. “Do you want specific areas to be accessible by car, by motorcycle or on foot. If a call goes out for an officer, what is the required response time…?”

Will raises a finger. “Okay…” He scans my collection of documents. “Do we have a straightforward street map of the City?”

My Master mutters, “Won’t be a minute.” Padding across to the plan drawers, he slides open the top drawer, riffling through sheaves of documents, then slides out a sheet. Levelling it out onto the table, he pins the corners with cups, a sugar bowl and a cream jug; a plan of the City.

“Ha!” Will grunts approvingly. “Richard, can I annotate this?”

“I have plenty of copies. Annotate to your heart’s content.”

*****

I tap a nail at a small area of disused land to the rear of a shopping mall. “How about there? It’s just off the main retail area…”

“It’s at the wrong end of the feed into the one-way system,” says Will. “Anyone entering the system at the spot takes twenty minutes to work around what ought to be a two-minute cut-through. I’ve been nagging Vandervoort about it for months. It makes it near impossible for any of the emergency services and we get a lot of road rage incidents from there because the system snarls up.”

“That will improve automatically,” says my Master, “when the new bridge is in place across the river. Right now, half the City traffic has to divert fifteen miles because the old bridge can’t handle the heavy-axle-weight trucks or even the sheer volume of standard traffic… Freight, commuters and the like. And that snarls up everything else…”