BOUND: Together Read online

  Eric couldn’t imagine these two souls ever being reconciled. It would take a great and mighty force of the cosmos to right the wrongs that had transpired beneath the roof of Mann Manor and the evil that permeated every hall.

  A force that might come one day, but not soon enough. If it ever did, Erica might be so far gone in her identity as Eric that she didn’t know what was real any longer.

  She would need someone with an indestructible will to accomplish a Godlike miracle such as that.

  Chapter 1

  ERICA

  I woke up at 5:30 every morning. Otherwise, my façade would fall apart.

  I don’t lie. Not easily, anyway, even though my entire life was a giant lie. If I didn’t get up early enough to get into character, I wouldn’t survive the work day. When you’re someone who handles billions of dollars in a million separate coffers, then it’s imperative – no, an absolute necessity – to survive the whole work day. From nine to five, sometimes earlier or later, I was in my office or in a meeting, balancing that precarious line between capitalist hotshot and a big fucking mess knocking back shots of bourbon to give me liquid courage. It depended on who I needed to impress.

  Breakfast was delivered to my room at six. That was half an hour for me to hit the snooze button on my alarm and slink into my bathroom, where the first of my disguise came into play.

  Sometimes I wonder… do normal, everyday women savor those first few minutes in the morning when they sit in the bathroom, sleepy head in their hands as they feel the relief of a night’s full bladder emptying? Do they realize how commonplace this is? Do they know how lucky they are to hold onto a piece of their identity when they leave the bathroom?

  Because I had to leave mine behind. That first trip to the bathroom was the only time I had to pretend I’m just another woman thinking about the upcoming day.

  That morning, in some chilly September I would’ve otherwise forgotten, I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and slinked to my mirror, the counterspace cluttered in the intimate items of a person who lives a double life.

  I was meticulous about how it was all organized. Not only because I was too sleepy before my first coffee to trust myself around so many products, but because I needed to remind myself about that unwavering divide between my female self and my male self.

  The righthand side was the smallest collection. Bath products I occasionally dumped into my large tub on the other side of the room. Perfumes, some of them straight from Victoria’s Secret, and others purchased by my personal assistant when traipsing around Paris or Milan. Delicate razors I occasionally ran across my legs or underneath my arms. Acne medication I no longer needed but always kept on hand. My vast assortment of over the counter medications and the occasional prescription to curb my anxiety.

  I didn’t have time for any of it on that fateful morning. I had to turn to the left-hand side, where I encountered the aftershave and hair gel.

  Rarely have I shaved my face. I don’t need to, since I don’t naturally grow much beyond the rogue black hair from my chin. Those I have professionally plucked every few days. If I leave them alone, the occasional male acquaintance will stare at me for too long, usually while drinking his glass of whisky on the rocks, and quip that I “missed a spot” in my daily shaving regimen.

  I couldn’t afford for anyone to stare at my appearance for too long. I needed to come across as just another man among the masses. Being a mere 5’7 helped. If I wasn’t the tallest guy in the room, then I didn’t attract too much attention. Both my assistant and my personal bodyguard were taller than me – and more striking, whether with their blond coils on top of their heads or their muscular torsos that could take down common criminals. Me? I was just Eric Mann. A man who was more known for his reclusive – yet brilliant – lifestyle, than what he got up to on Friday nights after the meetings finished. The quicker people forgot about my appearance, the better.

  Still, the only reason they were able to forget about me was because I put so much effort into my image. It started with washing my face and rubbing aftershave against my chin. I may not have shaved, but I had to smell like I did.

  By the time I walked into my bedroom to eat my breakfast in my reading nook and watch the latest stock and business news on the TV, I was already in character. I wouldn’t dress yet – I always saved that for last, because the binder I wore was bad enough to wear all day, let alone for an extra fifteen minutes in the morning. The night was the only time I could let my chest be free and do what nature intended. Sometimes I spent my entire breakfast staring down my shirt, in absolute awe that I had breasts. It was hard to tell during the day. The binder even minimalized sensation to my nipples. Once it went on, I was dead between my neck and pelvis.

  But that morning, I didn’t immediately go out into my bedroom and sit down for my delivered breakfast. I stayed in front of my mirror, staring at my makeup-less face, wondering what people really saw when they looked at me.

  Eric Mann. That’s who I was on paper. That was the name people heard when I walked into the room. Entire chapters in business coursebooks were written about my family, including me. My father was one of the most ruthless businessmen on the west coast. He was also one of the most ruthless husbands and fathers a girl could ask for.

  He was dead. Almost ten years since he went into the dirt. And ten years later, I was still living the lie he cultivated for me.

  I was still posing as my brother.

  Few people knew who I really was, or that I was born female. Today, I can say that I was also born a woman. Back then, though… I didn’t know. From the age of five, I had been raised as a boy to take my dead brother’s place in my family. My father covered up the death of his only son. He said his daughter had died instead.

  He wasn’t wrong. She – Erica – had legally died. The plaque in the family plot bore the name I was assigned at birth. From the day my brother drew his last breath, I became him.

  I was too young to protest. Too dumb to know how fucked up it was. Too scared of my own father to tell him where to shove his archaic misogyny. He was convinced a girl couldn’t take over his company. It wasn’t a biological failing, as proven when he thought it perfectly acceptable to dress his daughter up as a boy and call her Eric. It was cultural, he said. Societal expectations. The world expected the heir of Mann-Garrett Enterprises to be male, so he had to make it happen. My mother wasn’t having any more children. Short of adopting a boy to take my place in the line of succession, my father had no “choice.” He had to make me his son. His daughter was dead the day the real Eric Mann died.

  Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I see my brother die.

  When I opened them again that morning, I saw him looking back at me. His eyes. His jaw. His thin lips and his pores. His hairline. His ears. It was impossible for us to be identical twins since we were different sexes, but there he was, like he possessed my body and used my reflection to communicate with the world.

  Most of the time, I channeled him. What would he act like? What would he say? How would he look at an attractive woman? If I really became “Eric,” then I could get through another day.

  Unlike that day, when I frowned at my reflection, my knuckles turning white against the counter beneath my fingers.

  My reflection.

  Mine.

  This was my body! My mind! My beating heart and my soul that I wasn’t allowed to express, not even in the confines of locked journals I shoved deep in bottom drawers or in the annals of my walk-in closets. I wasn’t allowed. I wasn’t allowed to have my own body anymore. Did I ever own it? Was it ever mine to parade in front of others the way I wanted?

  “Erica.”

  I slowly closed my eyes and let out my pent-up breath. I swallowed the last of my bubbling rage. Put it away. Compartmentalize. Forget about it. Get on with the day. There was too much to do.

  “Are you okay, Erica?”

  Only one person called me that, even if it was in private. Only one person saw me as a woman every t
ime he crossed my path, even though he had trained himself to use masculine pronouns in public.

  “I’m fine,” I said to Sherman, my personal bodyguard and the head of my security. “Just a little nausea this morning.”

  He approached me, hands clasped before him. Few men of his stature help themselves into my bathroom, let alone men in sleek suits. But Sherman was such a common sight around my chambers that I didn’t think twice about letting him stand next to me in front of my bathroom mirror.

  “Maybe I should stay home,” I muttered.

  Sherman crossed his arms and let out a sympathetic sigh. “Unfortunately, there’s a lot you have to do today. First, your new interns begin work this fine Monday morning.”

  “Ugh.” The interns. I had forgotten about them.

  “Pretty sure you have a big meeting you’ve already rescheduled twice. Dunno. Brooke can tell you more. My job is to make sure the people you’re meeting don’t try to kill you.”

  “And to show me how to adjust my dick in public.”

  “That too. You’re pretty convincing now.”

  That was the thing about Sherman. We had known each other since we were kids and he was the son of my family’s head chef. He knew my quirks and my cynical humor. To this day, I consider him my most trusted, long-time friend. I’ve had other friends for different reasons over the years. But Sherman Smith was my rock when I had no one else to keep me grounded in the mists of uncertainty and self-hate.

  I had also slept with him once. Surprisingly, it wasn’t that awkward.

  That level of intimacy, between growing up together and taking a tumble in bed one night, meant he was the one person in the world who didn’t make me feel physically insecure. I could turn to him in nothing but my white tank top and my sleep shorts. I wore no underwear to bed. His eyes never once strayed from my face, even though my thighs and nipples were right there.

  He was the only person who regularly saw my body. I don’t mean sexually. I mean at all. I hid my breasts in a binder and my vagina beneath a fake, flaccid cock I wore to support my crazy existence. But it wasn’t crazy anymore. It had been my entire life. It was all I knew.

  No wonder I felt so naked without that mess, like some women without their makeup, I suppose.

  “You gonna be okay?” Sherman asked me. “We need to get going within the hour. Big day ahead. Take one of those anxiety pills if you must.”

  So easy for him to say, wasn’t it? Sherman may have known me better than anyone else, but he still had no idea what I went through daily. Even on the days I stayed home, I still could not truly be myself. There was always the risk that someone would expose me.

  “I’ll be okay.” I walked into my bedroom, where my clothes for the day were already laid out and my breakfast cooling in my nook. The TV was off. I thought I might keep it that way. “I just want to get through today with little excitement.”

  I had lofty ambitions like that.

  ***

  Everything in my life, from my brother’s death to my graduating from business school, was for the family business. Mann-Garrett Enterprises had been founded by my great-grandfather and taken to astronomical heights in my father’s early years. He had spent most of the ‘70s and ‘80s investing in the right technology companies while constructing a network of deep pockets and creating his own productive companies. Every time he spent a million dollars, he made two more. When he died as I had one foot in the door of college, a board of suits temporarily took over the company until I graduated with my degree. On that fateful day, I had already spent nearly ten years as the President and CEO of Mann-Garrett.

  In a way, running that place was cathartic. It was all I had been prepared for growing up, so I knew what to do. Overworking myself meant I spent less time fretting about my identity or what it had done to my heart and soul. I had the power to destroy a thousand companies if I so willed it. I never did. I was the kind to build them up and reap the benefits when they came to fruition.

  But it often meant having to go to my downtown high-rise office, where there was always the opportunity for one of my tits falling out of my shirt or my voice cracking like a pubescent boy’s. Leaving my house was 24/7 image control. Do you want to know why I was on anxiety pills? That should’ve been enough explanation. Yet sometimes not even the occasional hit of marijuana was enough to assuage my nerves at the end of a daunting meeting full of old men who swore they could smell my ovulating pussy from a mile away.

  The same men would offer me their daughters and nieces. Oh, no, not to marry, unless I was crazy. They just offered them to me. Straight up. Carte blanche. “Here’s my sixteen-year-old virginal daughter. Have fun, Mann. Let’s talk about that merger later, huh?”

  A little after eight on a Monday, and I already needed pot to get through the day.

  I always showed up as early as possible. Everyone in my executive office was the subject of extensive background checks, but I avoided them. Especially the ones who were great for my image, but personally unnerved me. Like my receptionist, Ji-min Cho, who was always the first in the office and the last to leave.

  The others in the office called her the Ice Queen because of her frosty makeup palette. Personally, I thought it was because she was as cold as the ice on her eyelids. She could be coolly professional to visitors and on the phone, but if you crossed her, you’d get an icicle to the chest before she could say goodbye in her native Korean.

  If Ji-min was the heart of my office, then my personal assistant Brooke was the brains.

  Before I continue, I must confess the true relationship between myself and Brooke Pentecost. In another life, only a few years ago, we were happily engaged. It was the first and only time in my life I swore I had finally found happiness. When she smiled, I glowed. When she whispered her I Love Yous, my heart swelled. When she bit my ear and said she couldn’t wait for what I did in the bedroom, I felt a primal instinct that to this day I’m not sure is more male or female. I’d argue I’m the perfect example to prove that those instincts are human, not gendered.

  I kept the truth of my body and struggles with gender identity from her. Three years. That’s how long we had been intimate with one another, including the length of our engagement. In those three years, she had sat in my lap, slept beside me, and had sex with me, all without discovering the truth. I had been petrified to tell her, even though Sherman begged me to rip off the Band-Aid before we wore our rings.

  Sometimes I wish I had never revealed the truth to her. Maybe we would still be romantically together, and she wouldn’t have a new fiancée, a perfectly acceptable man named Adam.

  She was still my assistant, one of the best in the whole country. Nobody could schedule, structure, and take notes on my life better than Brooke. Like most things in my life, I had learned to compartmentalize my lingering affection and sexual attraction to her so we could remain professional and, occasionally, close friends. She claimed to still have a lot of “mixed feelings” for me, but couldn’t bring herself to be with a woman. It was one of the only times I heard someone say “you’re a woman” to my face.

  I popped one of my anxiety pills before checking my emails. Interns would be showing up at any moment. I didn’t have to be a beacon of friendliness and camaraderie, but I had to be put-together. Answering emails from other CEOs (or their assistants) would be a good distraction from the nerves tackling the rest of my body.

  I received a message from Ms. Cho when Brooke entered forty-five minutes later, accompanied by one of my two interns. Oh, and both interns were here now. Brooke sent me a quick text indicating she would give a quick run-down of the office to the interns before bringing them in to meet me. I responded that it would be fine, but she should hurry it up because I had much to do and needed her help. The more emails I answered, the more I realized I had a full day ahead of me. Good. Monday mornings should be busy.

  She would be preoccupied by the interns for some time, which gave me enough time to pop into my private bathroom and fix any
thing that may have been out of place with my appearance. In all honesty, I remembered little about the man and woman we hired as that year’s interns, even though I had conducted the final interviews alongside Brooke and one of my board advisors. Two months ago, I had gone through a terrible bout of depression that often coincided with the romantic months of summer. I barely remembered my own fake name, let alone the names and faces of would-be hopefuls. They became nothing but stats and reference letters by the time they got to me.

  Besides, they were mere interns.

  We hired a new pair every summer. Two of the nation’s best and brightest business school graduates had the chance at a paid internship for a period of nine months in my executive office. It had been one of my father’s ideas before he died, but he had pitched them to the accountants as cheap labor. Free, if he could get away with it. When I resurrected his idea a few years later, I decided to make it a paid position, so we attracted the real best and brightest. The people I wanted were the kind to have jobs already lined up in other companies, and I would be damned if they thought it a no-brainer to turn down an internship from us. Our interns were often hired into full-time positions at the end of their term. Like I said, I wanted the best. We often got the best.

  I wish I could say who the ones from the year before were. Or the year before that. Someone named Austin was in there. I only remember his name because we had a satellite office in Austin, and I thought it incredibly clever to send him there at the end of his internship.

  Brooke texted me when she was bringing in the interns. I don’t know who I pepped myself up for more – my ex-fiancée, or two strangers I would perform before over the course of the next nine months.

  “Send them in,” I texted. I wanted this over with.

  The door opened ten seconds later. I looked up from my desk, beholding Brooke in her turtleneck, slacks, and long blond hair swept up into its usual clean and pristine bun. But my eyes soon wandered. Not to the young man bringing up the rear and closing the door behind him, but to the woman standing between them, stars twinkling in her eyes.