Nick took one look at her face the next morning and blanched; "what were you up to last night?"
Christina stared at herself in his reflective desk. Her cheek was bruised, as if someone had slapped it, and her eye was swollen. "Same old," she answered automatically, but shivered. Something had changed.
"You've deliveries to make," Nick said, startling her. "Deliveries?" He rolled his eyes. "The thing I pay you to do?"
"Nick," Christina said, "how did you get into this job?" She pushed her hair back from her face. "I mean, you're not born into money. How did you end up here?" and she waved an arm around.
Nick's surprised, and scared, expression made Christina realize that she'd never asked him the slightest thing about himself, about his time off. She knew he didn't do the clubs; she knew he wasn't rich. He lived in the same tenement she did. That was all she knew.
He finally pulled out a file, marking off deliveries nervously. "My mother sold me to the company," he said. "As a child. I was a runner until they trained me on the personel system."
Sold as a child to the rich. It had happened before. Christina didn't know why she didn't expect it. "You still indentured?"
Nick shrugged. "Monetarily? No." He didn't elaborate, but where else would he go? the job paid, he was trained, he was good at it. he owed his life to the company. They clothed and fed him, probably took good care of him. Nick seemed like the loyal type.
"You know," and Christina swept the first pile of envelopes into her bag, "we never get together outside of work."
"Nope," Nick said.
~
Pink was waiting for her downstairs.
"I don't really have--" she started, but Pink held up a certified envelope, and Christina nodded. Okay. She was working. Okay.
She tried not to get used to the feeling of Pink on the back of the bike.