I carefully picked up the marble. It was almost two thousand years old and priceless.
I’d asked Anthym to try to find one a year ago on a whim. No one was even sure if this bust actually existed or not. Yet here it was.
Anthym had been pleased when I congratulated her on finding it but had acted coy when I’d asked her how she’d done it.
“I’m your secretary, just doing my job,” she’d said then promised to have the piece safely delivered to the penthouse.
I turned it in my hands.
The stoic philosophy had helped drive me, helped focus me to be absolutely in control of every part of my life that I could, from honing my body and sharpening my mind, to making me laser focused on building my company and completing several successful developments. However, it was a lonely philosophy that preached caring about only the things you could control and ignoring the rest.
Marcus Aurelius would not have approved of Lexi and my need to control her.
“I’m not controlling; I’m not my father. I’m trying to protect her.”
I should just ignore her, right? If I couldn’t fire her, I should just send her off to my West Coast office and let her cater meetings and stay out of my life.
Something glittery fluttered to the floor from my chest. Had I worn that damn sticker the entire afternoon?
I carefully set the bust down on my desk and bent down to pick up the sticker.
Lexi was a distraction. But from what? I was already a billionaire and successful developer.
“You can’t lose focus. That’s how you go back to being a millionaire,” I said to the empty room.
I folded the sticker and threw it in the trash then set the bust carefully back on the bookshelf. I frowned when a bright triangle of pink poked out under the carved marble base.
Stoicism is about maximizing happiness *smiley face* not about denying the pleasures of life to win the misery Olympics. BUY SOME FURNITURE! xoxo – Marcus Aurelius
I crumpled the note and threw it in the wastebasket.
Lexi.
She was everywhere, just like her notes.
The first time I had found one of the notes, written on a square piece of bright-pink paper in loopy cursive, I had secretly been thrilled.
It was like something that happened in the books I’d loved as a child, where characters had friends or magical teachers to leave them secret notes and eventually save them from their horrible lives. I didn’t have anyone in my life who would haveever bothered to leave me a secret note. Hell, I got hundreds of emails a day. I shouldn’t want anyone to leave me letters.
Yet I couldn’t help but think of the kids in elementary school with loving parents who wrote them notes in their lunchboxes. They would roll their eyes and toss the paper in the trash.
I kept all those notes I’d found in my penthouse, wondering who they might be from. Maybe the cleaners? Though the few times I had spoken to them, we’d conversed in Spanish. I’d saved every single one in a box hidden in the secret drawer of my desk.
Then I found out they were fromher.
I pulled open a drawer, pressed the two hidden buttons that would release the secret compartment, and pulled out a wood box. It was filled with scraps of paper and smelled pungently floral when I opened the lid, like that store at the mall that sold all those atrocious candles.
I stood up, intending to toss them all in the trash can.
Instead I pulled out the note I had crumpled, smoothed it out, then carefully placed it in the box.
Who does Lexi think she is?I had furniture. I didn’t need any more furniture. Didn’t want any more, didn’t want to feel crowded, like I was stuffed in a cage.
I put the box of notes, still full, away. Then I settled down at my desk to manage my private venture capital firm. There was glitter on the imported leather blotter. I brushed it off.
It stuck to my hand.
“I am ignoring the things I cannot control.”
