Chapter 55 - Surveillance
Lex was pacing in his study that Sunday when his cell phone began to buzz. He checked the caller ID.
It was them.
Lex attached his voice modulator to the mouthpiece—the last thing he wanted was for his voice to be recognized—and answered it. "This is Mr. Green," he said.
"I finished the appraisal that you requested, and we're ready to close escrow."
That was the code. The surveillance team he had hired was in the LuthorCorp building now. "How soon can you complete the transaction?"
"Today. We're on site and ready to roll. We can get you full access to the property—audio and video. Do we have a go?"
Lex let his breath out slowly. He'd be able to hear and see everything that happened at LuthorCorp headquarters. It wouldn't tell him exactly how much they'd seen of his secrets—most importantly, how much his father knew about Clark—but it would keep them from being able to easily subvert any of his business dealings, now or in the future. He also wasn't exactly sure how much time his father was spending at work; now he would be able to find out.
"Mr. Green, are you there?"
Still, it was a questionable move. Definitely illegal. Clark wouldn't approve. Pamela . . . well, who knew what Pamela would say? Her moral compass was stronger than his, but she also understood how difficult the decisions he had to make could be.
Whether or not she would approve, this was for her, to protect her. He couldn't take any chances with her safety.
"Mr. Green?"
Lex's voice did not waver as he told them, "Do it."
Pamela had never imagined she would be working with Lionel Luthor again. She had remembered his cruelty, but had forgotten how smooth he could be. How kind, how gentle. It chilled her to her core—she had once succumbed to this. Believed he was a good man, even believed the lies he'd told her about Lillian. Of course, not all of them were lies, but that didn't matter. She would forever live in shame at having believed him.
She was thankful Lex didn't make her feel that way. There had been a flash of disgust in his eyes when he first learned she had once slept with his father, but nothing beyond that. He was a good kid; he made her remember her daughter, and that hurt, but it was a good hurt. The kind of hurt she almost needed, and had needed even more when he was little and the wounds were more fresh.
Working with Lionel was the last thing Pamela needed for her own health, but Lex wasn't exactly observing his father's memory loss and regaining with objective eyes. When Lionel had first awoken, and Lex had returned to her with hope in his eyes over the fact that his father had returned to the warm, loving personality Lex seemed to recall from when he was ten, Pamela was apparently the only one who recognized that the man hadn't changed in the slightest. Not over the past twelve years, and certainly not now. Lionel wasn't a good, loving father when Lex was ten years old. He was a tyrant then, going so far as to physically abuse his wife and son when they got in his way. At best, the sudden jump from Lex's preteen years to his early twenties had prompted an emotional reaction in Lionel. At most likely, he was just up to his old tricks, slipping back into manipulating his son as easily now as he had twelve years ago.
Of course, Pamela couldn't fight Lex on it, couldn't argue with him or correct him. Lex clearly wanted to believe that his father only hated him because of Julian; it probably hurt him too much to see the situation any other way. Pamela knew what it was like. Her own father had been absent and unavailable; it was one of the reasons she'd once fallen for Lionel. Now, watching him slowly regain the memories and information that would make him the particular type of manipulative and cold and uncaring that he had been in 2002 as compared to in 1990, she wanted nothing more than to stay far, far away from him.
But she couldn't. She had Lex to think about. Staying close would give her the forewarning to let him know what was coming and when.
Pamela had set clear boundaries when she'd accepted the job. No physical contact of any kind. No conversation outside of work, or about anything other than work. She'd also told him she was entirely unavailable on Sundays, just to ensure she'd always have a day off to rest. She shouldn't have been surprised when he called her in on the very first Sunday after she signed the work contract with him. He insisted it couldn't wait; she told him she wouldn't do it; he offered to write weekends off into her contract for the future, if she would only come this once, and to pay her double her usual hourly rate. She relented. If it was that urgent, it was probably a meeting with quite a few stakeholders.
She should have known. They were in the Metropolis office alone. Clearly, he was using this opportunity to try to make a move on her. For a man as brilliantly clever as Lionel could be, he could also be insufferably predictable.
Lionel was in a wheelchair, but somehow it didn't seem to symbolize his powerlessness. With the way he carried himself, it may as well have been a throne. Pamela worked her way through the paperwork Lionel had assigned to her, while he sat beside her at a nearby desk. She sighed heavily as she completed one stack and moved on to another.
"Is something wrong?"
Pamela swallowed. She hadn't meant to sigh loud enough for him to be able to hear. "No," she said, and she considered saying more—that she had expected to be here with a group of people, not alone with him, considering his insistence that the work couldn't wait—but she decided to go a different direction instead. "If you were going to invent reasons that we had to work on a Sunday, when I told you I wasn't available, I would have thought you might also invent a reason why we had to come out to Metropolis rather than working in the office in Smallville.
"Ah, but I have a gift for you that I left here."
She raised an eyebrow. "And you couldn't have it shipped in?"
He smirked. "Look inside the top left-hand drawer of the desk."
Pamela pressed her lips together and slid open the drawer. It was empty, save an ornate red box.
"Go ahead. Open it."
Pamela didn't see that she had much of a choice in the matter. She opened the box—it was a gold watch with a diamond-encrusted face. It was the kind of item she had once been too intimidated to touch, until years of working at the Luthor house had taught her to get used to it.
"Turn it over," Lionel told her.
She did. There was an engraving on the back: To Pamela, with deep affection. L.L.
Pamela felt more than a little nauseated. She wanted nothing more than to ask how many women there were out there with watches just like this, maybe even with illegitimate children that Lionel had disowned and sent off into the system, never to be seen again by their mothers. She wanted to throw it at him, to yell, to run . . . but she was here for a reason. Lionel hadn't hired her for her business prowess. She could keep up well enough, but she was no genius in the corporate world, and she had no collegiate training in any area that would be of interest to him, no experience with finance or politicking. He'd hired her because he believed there was a chance he'd get her to return to him. And if he came to truly believe that was impossible, he would probably let her go.
She wouldn't sleep with him or even kiss him—she could still have some boundaries—but she also couldn't make him believe it was completely out of the realm of possibility. But she couldn't completely just throw his gift in his face either. "Lionel, I . . . I can't accept this. You know that, don't you?"
"You have to. It's a gift."
Pamela had to work to contain the surprise she felt at those words; she was fairly certain she'd heard Lex use the same ones, though she was sure each of their intentions were very different. "I want to work with you. Just to work with you."
He reached for her arm. "Pamela—"
Just then, the office door flew open. Two men stood in the doorway, one carrying a gun.
"Hey lovebirds. Wrong place, wrong time."
"Who are you?" Lionel shouted, taking Pamela's arm.
No. This was it. This was beyond the boundaries. "As if you don't know."
"Get your hands up," the gunman said. "Let's go, get 'em in the air! Now!"
Pamela rolled her eyes, looking up at the gunman. "How much is he paying you to do this?"
"To do what?" Lionel hissed.
"To have them come in and pretend to threaten us so you could sweep me up in your arms."
"Lady, I don't know what you're talking about," the gunman said, "but if you don't get your hands in the air now—"
"Pamela," Lionel whispered, putting his hands up, "I didn't hire them."
"Like hell you didn't—"
"Pamela. Look at me and tell me if I'm lying to you."
Pamela looked into his eyes and saw something she'd never seen on his face for as long as she had known him.
It was fear.
Her heart skipped and then pounded, steady and hard. Slowly, she turned back to the gunman, putting both hands above her head.