Chapter 1 - The Prince's Pawn

A Girl Has No Name

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Aria

If you can possibly avoid it, never work for guys named Dave. Trust me on this; they’re nothing but bad news.

My first “real” job was when I was twenty. It was supposed to be an entry-level developer job. But when the offer letter came, it turned out to be an executive assistant. The guy who gave me the double-cross? Dave.

Granted, my resume was nothing but neatly formatted lies, but he didn’t know that.

Three years later, I had done enough networking with movers and shakers in tech to get my first sales engineer job, which was awesome. The not-so awesome part was that it came at half the market rate. The boss who low-balled me? Dave.

And now here I am, officially a mid-career twenty-six-year-old being assigned to a sales demo in which I’m not allowed to speak. The boss messing with my career? You guessed it, Dave.

And it’s not the same guy, by the way. That’s three separate Daves in three consecutive jobs that have brought me nothing but misery. At least the third Dave pays me well.

“So you want me to be the lead sales engineer… but I can’t actually talk to the client?” I stood in front of Dave’s desk with my arms crossed, trying to look down on him. It didn’t work. He was barely shorter than me as he reclined in his chair.

“Well, their country has a new king and he’s a little more religious than the last one, so that means as a woman, it might be offensive to the company reps for you to instruct them. I mean, you understand what that’s like. Women aren’t allowed to teach in your faith either, right?” he asked, trying really hard to sound nonchalant.

I gave a tight smile. Everyone at my company thought I was religious on account of wearing long skirts and hoodies every day. I never corrected them because my beliefs are none of their business.

Nothing I do outside of work is their business. I wear what I wear because there are serious consequences for people accidentally touching my skin, and I don’t want to deal with a single one of them.

I like being employed. And I like not being locked up in a lab run by shadowy government types. So I always dress like a religious nut, even though I’m not religious. Certainly not the type of hard-core Christian they assume I am.

“You don’t have to wear the headscarf if you don’t want to,” Dave assured me. “That’s optional for foreign women. But you do have to wear the abaya.”

 “Okay, but I can’t talk to the clients?” I pressed. That was kind of the whole reason I walked over here.

“Right,” he said, an uncomfortable smile popping up on his face. “Unless they talk to you first, which I doubt they will.”

“So why am I going?” I uncrossed my arms and put my hands on my hips, ready to march down to HR and remind them of the company’s commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion… the one they’d been so vocal about when filing their IPO.

“Because you’re the expert on the new software and if the deal closes, you get a bonus. Plus,” he held up his hands to stop me from interrupting, “An annual bonus for every year they renew.”

My mouth hung open, the well-rehearsed refusal freezing in my throat. What came out instead what a whispered, “Seriously?”

Dave smiled, a real one this time, and sucked in a huge, relieved breath. “Yes. Arjun is still new and I want you there in case their CTO asks a question he can’t answer. Then you can quietly give Arjun the answers he needs and boom, we make the sale. You get the bonus.”

He was bouncing in his seat like a kid at Christmas, as if talking to Chief Technical Officers was unusual for him. Or me. It would be endearing if I wasn’t being bribed into a trip to the Middle East.

“It’s that big of a contract, huh?” I asked.

“A member of the royal family owns the company. And they’re trying to compete with the big companies in Saudi Arabia and Dubai. So yeah, it’s that big.” He leaned forward. “We really need it, Aria. Please?”

I stepped closer, wanting to make sure I understood what he was offering. “So I still get the bonuses even if I end up not saying a word?”

“Absolutely! I’ll put it in writing and everything.”

The smile never wavered from his chubby, goateed face. It was almost like he knew I couldn’t say no. He didn’t, of course. He couldn’t know how bad off I was money-wise.

Like I said, I never talked about myself at work. But Dave was my boss. I’m sure he noticed I was always the first to volunteer for overtime. He definitely noticed the fifteen-year-old car I drove, despite making nearly 200 thousand a year. He wasn’t a dumb man. And he knew exactly how to get me to do what he wanted.

My pride wouldn’t let me agree out loud. So I just nodded at him and walked off, mentally preparing myself for the task of showing Arjun how to do the demo. I also had to make sure my dad would be looked after while I was gone, which would be a much harder task.

A week later, I was sitting on a plane, in coach, sandwiched between Dave and Arjun. For eighteen hours.

It had been a forgone conclusion that as the smallest person, I would sit in the middle.

“It just makes more sense!” said Arjun, who then spent the next three hours reaching over me to show Dave different TikTok videos that were “so funny.”

Idiot.

Both he and Dave had also thought it was “so funny” when I got selected for a pat-down at the airport.

I was wearing the full abaya and headscarf instead of changing into them on the flight. There were a lot of options for observant Muslim girls to wear—everything from regular clothes with a gauzy headscarf to cover her hair all the way to the canvas body bags you’ve seen on the news.

The abaya was a black cloak that reached the ground. On the advice of a quick Google search, I’d gotten the one that you pull over your head versus the zip-up kind, which might make the local ladies give me the side eye. The headscarf was more complicated than it looked and I had to pin the thing to my head.

The pins didn’t set off the metal detector, but the plus-size lady from the TSA still hauled me out of line and gave me a pat-down.

Arjun thought this was funny since he’d had his fair share of “random” pat-downs over the years. Fair enough, I guess. He was Indian, but a lot of people assumed he was Middle Eastern. I was an extremely pale white girl with bright blue eyes, so this was the first time anyone looked at me with suspicion.

It was also the first time I’d been on a plane. But I didn’t tell them that. Dave could see I was nervous and tried to reassure me. But it wasn’t the loud engine noise or the few bouts of turbulence that had me worried.

It was going through customs.

My name isn’t really Aria Summers, something that had gone mercifully unnoticed throughout my whole life. I’d gotten a reprinted birth certificate, a social security card, a driver’s license, and now a passport, all without incident.

But I was going to another country—one that might be a little more thorough in their background checks. And from what I’d read about their prisons, it wouldn’t be a happy time if they realized Aria Summers was a sweet baby girl who died of crib death in 1997.

So yeah, I was pretty nervous. I didn’t sleep a wink through the whole flight and had to bounce Dave’s humongous, perfectly round head off my shoulder multiple times.

“Sorry…” he mumbled, then repositioned himself against the window.

Just before landing, almost all of the women on the plane got up and formed a line to the bathroom. They’re not supposed to do that, but the flight attendant didn’t say anything.

One by one, they entered the tiny airplane bathroom in normal clothes (yoga pants, mostly) and came out in an abaya. Not sure why they needed to go to the bathroom for that, but whatever.

I was glad I decided to just wear mine the whole way. Especially when we got to the terminal. All the other women had the full Islamic garb, including the face covering for some of them. It was a sea of black cloaks and shuffling downcast walks. No colorful clothes, no makeup, no jewelry, no heels.

Apparently, the overly-religious king had come to power just a few months ago. There were still posters for the airlines on the walls that featured smiling women wearing stewardess uniforms. But their arms, legs, neck, and hair had been crudely smeared with black paint. Subtle.

To say the vibes were off was an understatement.

Despite my fears, we sailed through customs with no problem. All I wanted to do was go to the hotel room and sleep. It was 2 a.m. Texas time, after all.

But it was just after 10 a.m. here, so the best we got was a few minutes to freshen up in our respective bathrooms—which were glorious, by the way—before stepping outside the terminal and getting blasted with heat.

Lucky for us, the white limo the client had sent for us was idling with the air on and we could catch our breaths when we slid inside. It was very nice, of course. Leather and wood grain and waiting refreshments. But when you’re dog-tired and would rather be anywhere else, it’s hard to appreciate the finer things.

I got into the car first, relaxing on the soft leather seats. Dave and Arjun crawled in after me, sitting across from me and helping themselves to the chilled sparkling water.

“You want some?” Dave asked, holding the bottle out to me.

“Nah,” I said.

As I looked up, I noticed the driver staring at me in the rearview mirror. Not in a lecherous way. He looked alarmed.

Before I could ask him if something was wrong, the man blurted out, “You are wearing contacts?”

“No, they’re just naturally creepy,” I said, trying to smile to put him at ease. It didn’t work and he pushed a button to raise the partition.

“Guess he likes green-eyed girls,” Arjun said, rolling his eyes.

“Oh, he probably likes blue eyes just fine. Unless they’re creepy. Which mine are.”

“Noooo… they, uh…” Dave stammered, obviously trying to come up with some adjective other than weird, gross, or white-walkerish.

I laughed, raising my hand so he could stop. “I have mirrors in my house. I know what they look like.”

Most people love blue eyes and wish they had them, no matter what their ethnicity. But no one (I imagine) wants mine.

They’re not like Daniel Craig’s, for instance. They’re more like a Husky dog’s eyes. Ice blue with a black ring around the irises. Yes, that color blue looks beautiful on a dog. But it doesn’t on a person. When I started a new school in seventh grade, I had a girl walk up to me and ask, “Are you a zombie?”

She was not kidding.

But whatever, it’s not a big thing. Some people have big noses and some people have fat cankles, no matter how much they work out or diet. I have creepy dead-girl eyes. What are you gonna do?

We had been driving for ten minutes of blissful silence when my phone pinged at me.

I unlocked the screen to see the calendar reminder: Pay the bitches.

My loud, irritated sigh made Dave look up from his phone. I ignored him and swiped to open the app with a white icon of a dove. Caring Hands at Home, the company I had to pay every two weeks without fail and without delay. They had auto-pay available, but I found the home aides were a little less attentive when you had that enabled. So I made them work for it. And best believe I checked in with my dad to make sure they were nice to him before I hit PAY.

One time, a payment bounced. It wasn’t my fault.

Well, it kind of was. My car payment bounced, which I figured was fine. I would make it later plus the late fee. But no. The bank financing my car just tried again two days later. And they got paid. But then there wasn’t enough money for Caring Hands at Home.

So for three days, no one came to check on my crippled father with emphysema. He was alone for all that time. No one to help him get to the bathroom. No one to cook his meals. And the helpful customer service lady didn’t say one word about missing visits. Not one word about leaving my father to rot because of a simple delay in payment.

Which is why I have them down as The Bitches in my phone. That’s what they are. Every one of them pretending that being a home health aide makes them a good person. It doesn’t.

I can’t fire them either. Most other companies demand the patient’s social security information, which Dad doesn’t have. Most other companies also charge a hell of a lot more for patients without insurance. And I can’t add my dad to my insurance despite him being completely dependent on me. Because health insurance companies are also bitches with an extremely narrow definition of what constitutes a dependent. So here we are.

“Everything all right, Aria?” Dave asked, a concerned crease forming between his eyes.

“Of course,” I answered brightly. “Just a calendar alert I don’t need anymore.”

I smiled and put my phone back in my bag, realizing that this was the longest time I’d spent with either Dave or Arjun. Hell, it might be the longest time I’d spent with another person in years.

I looked out the window as we rolled up to the building. Like the rest of the city, it was gorgeous—the perfect blend of classic and modern architecture. The whole place reminded me of Damascus before the war leveled it. It felt older than anything in the US, but also new somehow.

There was another aspect of the view I enjoyed as well. Milling around in front of the building were dozens of men, some clearly waiting on a car, others just visiting with one another. All of them were preposterously attractive.

Do they have auditions to work at this company?

It was the only explanation. How could they all be that good-looking? It was statistically impossible.

And no, it wasn’t simply because of their ethnicity, thank you very much. I worked in tech, so there were lots of South Asian, Arab, and Persian guys walking around all the time. None of them were anything to write home about.

But these guys, they were different. Maybe it was the clothes? The white shirt-dress thing they all wore draped across their bodies perfectly, no matter what shape their body was in. It was definitely better than the slim-cut high-water suits Dave and Arjun were wearing. Dave in particular looked like too much sausage poured into too little casing.

All the men were also wearing head scarfs. Not black like mine, though. Some were white, some were red and white, and some were black and white. I had no idea if the colors meant something special or if it was just a style choice.

Regardless, all of them made the guys look hot, mysterious, and a force to be reckoned with.

Not that I’m interested, I insisted to myself. Dad was the only man in my life for the foreseeable future. I didn’t have time for anything else.

So no work-trip liaisons for me. Still… as I gave a passing man one last lingering gaze before the car pulled to a stop, I appreciated the opportunity to take in the view.