My Most Precious Human

It was understandable that no one was going to help the most hated human working at the Argent Investment Bank carry heavy boxes of documents. I had to do it all by myself. Certainly, Sariel didn't even think about assigning someone to assist me. I bet that in normal circumstances there would be at least five people working at the external audit, but since I was the one who suggested this I had to accept the fact that I had become a one-person department. Working alone wasn't a problem. I used to handle assignments that involved hundreds of documents without any help. At that moment, it was all about those damn boxes from the archives.

I carried three boxes at once. The boxes weighed around thirty pounds each. These were merely documents from the first quarter of the year 2011. I walked through the corridor while people were passing me by, wickedly chuckling or smirking. I wouldn't be surprised if one of them decided to trip me.

"Lilith, calm down and think of it as weight training," I muttered under my breath.

Someone who decided to place the archives at the end of the fourth-floor corridor certainly was a sadist. Certainly, I was looking for something like a luggage cart first, but of course, the "nice" human workers decided to use all of the available ones just the second I mentioned it. I guess the real problem was that I had no authority over those people. I could merely report their mistakes if they had happened to make one. That really started to piss me off. Fortunately, I had developed a lot of patience in dealing with haters over the years. For now, I could only ignore them. Additionally, I knew that my indifference would drive them crazy. While they were busy fuming inside their little heads, I could focus on my job.

Over 90% of the archives were in digital form. I could easily access those documents from my computer. The problem was the additional documentation with hand-written signatures that sometimes needed to be checked. Unquestionably, going through those paper folders took most of my time. Luckily, no one disturbed me, and that was why I was ready to hand over my first report by the end of the day.

I got out of my office and went all the way to another end of the top-floor corridor. It was the place where the CFO's office was. I knocked.

"Come in, Lilith." I heard Gabriel's voice, who apparently decided to call me by my first name from now on.

"How did you know it was me?" I asked, entering his office.

Gabriel chuckled, got up from his desk, and walked over to me.

"First, there is no one daring enough to knock on my door, and you were the only one whom I expected, and second, there is no one who smells better than you." He sniffed my neck as if my scent was some sort of aphrodisiac.

I flinched and stepped back. I guessed it was stupid of me to ask him that question.

"I brought the first report," I said, nervously handing him over the twenty-page long document.

"I'm impressed!" Gabriel called out, "You sure work fast. Are you certain that you are human?" He snickered.

"Let's just say that my mind works at a level slightly above average," I smirked.

He stepped closer to me just to breathe in my scent.

"This is so peculiar," he said, sniffing my neck again.

I moved away since his behavior had started to freak me out.

"W-what is peculiar?" I laughed nervously.

"You haven't been marked by a vampire and yet there is a weak vampire scent on you, or more like... within you," he explained mysteriously.

I wondered what he meant by saying that I had a vampire scent, yet there was something I wanted to know more about.

"How do you know that I haven't been marked?" I asked.

There were still too many things about vampires I couldn't understand, and since I was now beginning to work among them, I thought this was something I ought to know.

"Vampires can sense whether someone belongs to a vampire or not. It's like an invisible seal that appears on a human body... Although it's not necessarily the neck," Gabriel explained teasingly. "Have you ever marked anyone?" I inquired hesitantly.

He burst out laughing. Only then did I realize that my question was close to asking him if he was a virgin. I became flustered, and was about to tell him not to answer, but then...

"I marked hundreds of women over the years. I currently have my little harem of ten," he stated casually, "But I would gladly make it eleven if you wanted to join." He licked his lip while staring into my eyes. "I'll pass."

"Such a waste... If I were Sariel, I would have sunk my teeth into you the first day we met," he claimed confidently.

As gruesome as it sounded, I could somehow talk casually about that.

"Sariel wouldn't take my blood even if I offered, because I am the daughter of his mother's killer." I gritted my teeth.

"Do you think this is the real reason he doesn't want to mark you?" Gabriel chuckled.

"Well, I don't know. Since, as I heard, marking someone is rather intimate, maybe he additionally doesn't find me attractive, or he doesn't like human women in general. Maybe he merely forces himself to drink blood, and that is why he uses blood bags..." I developed theories.

Gabriel started to laugh so hard he nearly collapsed on the floor.

"I'm glad that my assumptions amused you." I clicked my tongue.

It took Gabriel a while to calm down. Once he did, he gazed at me with a big grin on his face.

"All right, sit on the sofa and wait until I read your report. Then I will tell you a story about my precious cousin," he stated.

I sat on the sofa as he told me to while he got back behind his desk. He took the paper folder with my report inside and opened it. He went through everything I wrote at an incredible speed. If it weren't for the fact that he made notes while reading, I would have thought that he was brainlessly flipping pages. I started to understand why there were so few humans among the higher-ups. Hardly anyone on the planet could keep up with such a work speed.

"Excellent job, Lilith." Gabriel grinned at me while putting down the last page of my report.

"Thank you," I responded nervously, still amazed by his skills.

"It looks like that you have already found a few people worth firing," he stated and wickedly chuckled.

"The things I found were simple mistakes. I would note it as first warming, and fire the ones involved only when it repeats," I suggested hesitantly.

"We don't make mistakes here." Suddenly, Gabriel's voice sounded freezingly cold.

Only then did I realize why the other employees feared him. He sounded mercilessly and calculative. If that was the way he acted while running the company, I could only imagine the pressure he put on everyone. At that moment, I thought of his previous compliment as something he probably didn't voice out often, or more like, hardly ever. Nonetheless, I couldn't stay quiet. Punishing people for minor mistakes that had happened ten years ago sounded a bit too much.

"It was a long time ago... I bet that some of those who made mistakes then are now valuable workers, or perhaps, don't even work here anymore," I tried to make my statement.

"It wasn't that long ago," he argued.

"It was a whole decade ago!" I burst out while chuckling.

"Oh, you are right. Then some of those humans could have already died..." he pondered out loud.

I smiled awkwardly at him, "I wouldn't go that far... What I meant was for you to trust me. I will point out major issues in my next reports. I will also be able to see whether those mistakes appear again." He sighed and smirked, "Fine, let's wait and see."

He put my report into a folder tagged as "confidential" then stood up and walked over to the sofa to sit right beside me.

"Now, aren't you curious about my cousin?" He wore a full of excitement grin.

I would have lied if I said that I wasn't, but it was weird to talk about the sexual preferences of the guy you're into with the person whom you just met and who was your boss. I ended up giving him a nervous smile while weirdly sealing my lips.

He meanly chuckled, "I guess you are dying to find out."

"Fine... Please tell me why he doesn't want to mark anyone." I sighed and sent him a full of impatience gaze.

Gabriel smirked then locked his eyes on mine, "Sariel doesn't want to bite humans, because the last time he fell in love in the one he marked, and he ended up killing her..."

I gasped.