Speculation on the drive home

Vanessa put her seat belt on. In the backseat, being chauffeured, with her arms crossed over her ruined top... she couldn't help but feel that she was projecting the image of a pouting child rather than an aura of righteous, deserved anger. Brand's continued smirk of amusement only made it worse, so she seethed inside while trying her best to ignore him.

"Be a dear and text me your address please, little-miss-sulky." It was like the fucker read her mind... or she simply did look like a petulant child. How pathetic.

Vanessa got out her phone, looked up Brand's contact information on the employee registry - she wouldn't ask him for anything, not even his number - and smashed her address into a text. She had to retype it three times, which far defeated any catharsis she got from handing her phone roughly. She really was acting like a child. What else was she supposed to do, though? Take it all lying down?

She made up her mind there. One way or the other, this one-sided game would be over. She had to call his bluff. They had to reach some kind of an understanding.

The sound of an off-putting female GPS personality was rattling off the directions to Vanessa's house. At least Brand didn't expect her to actually lead him there herself.

Her house would be the place to do it. Her home ground.

She had to regain some semblance of self-esteem, after that godawful mess in the executive parking garage. She hadn't felt this - this stupid since her ex-husband swindled her, used her like a chump. She had clawed back from that, somehow, although clearly it was still coming back to haunt her. She had a plan then, something in motion, something to work on. That had kept her going, kept her feeling in control. She needed a plan again.

Get it together, Vanessa. Fucking get it together.

Her ex-husband... he was the only one who really knew what she did. Had he sold her out? Been bribed? Been in contact with Brand somehow? How had Brand found out anyway? Was that degenerate asshole still fucking up her life? Was this some kind of **** of his, through Brand? That didn't make sense... if either of them deserved **** on the other she did. But people weren't always rational like that, and all that business was before Brand's time. There's no way he would have known what to look for, or searched back in her history that far.

Or would he have? Find a target, sniff for a slightly-wrong thread somewhere in their past, and yank it. Pull, pull, pull at that thread until something dirty just magically dropped right into his blessed-white-male lap. That did sound like him.

"Take-your-next-right-onto-Meadowview-Terrace. Your-destination-will-be-on-your-left."

Vanessa had been musing longer than she had thought. A moment later, they were there. She unbuckled her seatbelt and opened her door.

It wouldn't open. Brand got out and shut the door behind him. Vanessa tried to unlock the door. It wouldn't. Child locks.

Of course.

Just as Vanessa started to crawl over to the driver's seat to get out through the front, Brand turned, clicked a remote button, and opened her door for her, motioning his arm like he was offering her some kind of favor. Vanessa restrained herself from hurling every obscenity at him that she knew, and instead smoothed her skirt and fell in beside him. She didn't leave his side the whole way to the door - she was not about to get locked out of her house with her top ripped down the middle.