Laila was very beautiful but also a conundrum. Beautiful because she was tall and very slender with a flawless complexion, sensual lips and dark brown eyes you could drown in. Like a model, every movement was elegant, flowing, serene.
She had been born in England but she came from a rich Indian family and was used to the finer things in life. Nevertheless, she was so modest she barely ever met my eyes. She was kind, thoughtful and the rest of the staff loved her.
Perhaps the most touching things about her was her other-worldly naivete. Coupled with her ethereal beauty it made everyone want to help and protect her. As a saleswoman she could sometimes come across as kind of clueless yet customers wound up helping her sell our security systems to themselves.
She hadn't even given a great interview for the job, almost bad enough to negate the effects of her beauty. Somehow, I'd found myself showing her how to answer my own interview questions.
I found this mixture of great beauty and guilelessness deeply attractive.
And there was the conundrum. How on earth was I going to get her into bed? In my fifties, I was more than twice her age. I'm tall with a muscular build which I keep in good nick. I can still get women based on that (and it doesn't hurt that I'm rich) but never once did I catch the faintest interest or glimmer of desire in Laila.
I'm pretty sure she thought of me as a father figure like her own beloved Bapa, as she called him.
I clearly wasn't going to get her by fair means but there were other ways. I had so many tricks I'd employed over the years, often with spectacular success. Beautiful women who I'd blackmailed or coerced into my bed.
Bedding reluctant women, especially if they're married or betrothed, gives me a perverse thrill.
Threatening to sack her was a possible option but Laila's wealthy background meant the job was not all-important to her as she didn't really need the money.
I'd spent my career in security and so ferreting out damaging secrets was second nature. I delved into Laila's past, from school to university, from day jobs in small Asian enterprises to her sales experience in larger companies.
To my chagrin, she came up cleaner than clean.
I couldn't even find old boyfriends on her social media. What I did unearth was a fiancé in India, a fair enough looking chap who was some sort of lawyer. Even a glance showed she was shooting too low; this man did not deserve such a beauty.
Why on Earth had she agreed to marry him?
Once I asked her about why she was unmarried. As ever, very modest, she cast her eyes down and confessed that her parents had arranged a marriage with someone she had never met. She must have seen my shock because she was quick to reassure me that she and Ashok were in constant touch my Zoom, phone and email. That he had won her heart and that she loved him very much.
As a Westerner, that didn't fly with me at all but I tried to sound like it made sense. I was being supportive, like a good boss, you understand.
Ashok, it turned out was squeaky clean as well. I couldn't even find a previous girlfriend in his history.
I was almost on the point of giving up when I thought to check out Bapa, whose surname was actually Bipi.
And that's when I found the chink in the armour I'd been looking for. Bapa Bibi may be an entrepreneur running many businesses, but he didn't actually seem to exist. No National Insurance number, not even a passport to his name. He had certainly never applied for UK citizenship even though he'd been here at least a quarter of a century.
Digging deeper into his various enterprises found each apparently run by different front men who did have useful stuff like National Insurance numbers.
Clearly something wasn't right.
I did image searches with a photo of Bibi. India may be poor and backwards in some ways but in terms of adopting the digital revolution, you couldn't fault them. True, I had to search separately in over thirty different Indian states but I finally found his image in Chattisgarh, one of the poorer ones.
It was an arrest warrant for a crime of fraud committed nearly thirty years before. Bibi, I noted had been going under a different name then.
Despite the elapse of all that time, the warrant was still extant.
Oh dear, Bapa Bibi was an illegal immigrant, who had never got citizenship and had an outstanding arrest warrant for a country with which the UK had an extradition treaty.
Poor Laila!
I'd sent her an email saying I was holding an out-of-work staff meeting at my home, a plush modern mansion out in the sticks.
I'd done this before occasionally so Laila wasn't worried when she arrived.
What a vision of loveliness! She had long, lustrous black hair that fell all the way to her waist. She was wearing a cream trouser suit with a light blue shirt underneath. They both looked fabulous against her smooth dark skin. High heels brought her up to my six feet in height.
When she saw that nobody else was there, she was instantly apologetic. "Oh, dear, I'm too early. I'm so sorry."
I held up a hand as she made to leave. "There is no meeting. I am afraid I need to speak to you about a grave personal matter."
Her long black eyebrows rose in surprise. "Have I done something wrong?" she asked, a tremor in her voice. She was a good girl and never wanted to disappoint.
I made her sit down on the divan and sat down with her, though at a respectable distance. Her hands were clasped together over her long thighs. She leaned forward, hanging on my every word.
"No, Laila, it's not you. But I'm afraid a security check has shown up an anomaly concerning a member of your family."
Again, her eyebrows rose.
"As you know, we deal with highly sensitive material. We have to make sure our staff can't be compromised. That's why we have to run these security checks.
She was still looking mystified.
I picked up my laptop and shuffled a bit closer to her so she could see the screen. I brought up the files and we worked our way through them. Twice she had a sharp intake of breath. All of this was a complete revelation.
When I finished, I looked her in the eye. "So, you see, your employment is compromised. You could be blackmailed."
"But you know all about this now, so blackmail wouldn't work."
Good point, but I shook my head. "That's maybe the case but the problem is that I'm duty bound to alert the authorities about your father."
Shaking her head made her hair swirl around her shoulders. "Bapa is in his seventies and he's sick, his heart is bad, he can't go back to Chattisgarh. He can't go to prison. Do you know what Indian prisons are like?"
She had the long straight nose of high-born Indians. In someone else that might have given her an arrogant look, but she was such a nice person that nobody felt that way. Now tears tracked down its sides.
She took an offered tissue and wiped her tears away.
Taking a deep breath she began to beg. "Please don't do this. Thirty years is a long time. He's made a new life here, a respectable life. He's started companies that employ hundreds. Surely, he's repaid his debt?"
"I'm sorry. Perhaps you should phone him and warn him."
She shook her head. "I can't so that, it would kill him."
I shook my own head. "I don't think you have a choice."
More tissues. Eventually, muffled, I heard. "Isn't there anything I can do to stop this?"
I sat back and spread my arms over the back of the sofa, like I was considering. Then, I reached over and took her chin between thumb and forefinger. She jerked back.
"Be nice to me," I said.
