Stop swinging your feet.
One of my heels slipped off and fell to the floor with a loudthunk.
Marius gave me a curious look then turned to Brittany Dawn.
“We aren’t going to fire her.”
“Obviously,” the HR director said, disgusted. They both looked over to Mr. Richmond, still pacing in his office.
Marius sighed.
“I’ll just give her a write-up,” Brittany Dawn said finally.
“I don’t know why they didn’t just fire you,” Anthym railed when Brittany Dawn went back to her office to add a note to my permanent record. “You’re a mess, your clothes are undone, and you wore this shirt twice last week. You need to go shopping.”
I hastily buttoned up my shirt.
At my six-month review, I had been planning on asking for a raise, but that clearly wasn’t going to happen. A part of me wished I actually had been fired, just so I wouldn’t have to endure Grayson Richmond breathing down my neck, insulting me, calling me into his office to yell at me, and then siccing his lawyer on me.
“Are you being fired?” McKenna asked me, eyes wide, when I returned to my stool.
“Stay of execution.”
She squealed and hugged me. “You should be happy; that’s great news!”
“I know, I know.” I took a breath. “Unfortunately, I can’t—literally can’t—afford to lose this job, so I’m stuck with him.”
“We’re going to do drinks to celebrate,” McKenna said firmly.
“Drinks?” Anthym slammed her agenda on the desk. “You’re not doing drinks. You’re going back to Mr. Richmond’s penthouse to do your job.” She clapped her hands. “Go. And stay out of his underwear drawer.”
“Happy Tuesday!”I greeted Nasr, the concierge at the tallest, fanciest residential tower in Manhattan.
He offered me a steaming mug of spiced chai tea along with some cookies.
“What a treat! You’re extra chipper today. I hope that means your son did well on his exams.”
The concierge’s face lit up. “Top of his class,” Nasr bragged.
“You must be so proud.” I gave him a hug.
“He just has to figure out which college to go to. Oh, this is such a weight off my chest,” the concierge said with a breathless laugh.
“It’s because he has such an awesome father.”
“My son appreciated your positive notes,” he told me then scooped more cookies on my plate.
“I don’t need all of those; we should leave some for other people.”
Nasr dropped his voice.
“Hardly anyone is in residence, and when they are, they don’t want cookies because sweets mess up their diet. Most people who bought these condos are only in New York a few days a month. Mr. Richmond is the only resident I see regularly.”
“I can’t imagine spending tens of millions of dollars on a condo I’m not going to live in.” I shook my head.
When I had decided to move to Manhattan, I sort of had an idea of how billionaires lived that was mainly compiled from all the romance books I read. However, books hadn’t given me the up-close-and-personal view of what it really meant to be a billionaire.
You could have anything you wanted. Literally anything.
