New York Billionaires Series

Best,

I lean back in the chair, crossing my arms over my chest. Well, he has balls, I’ll give him that. He’d responded to what I’d asked of him, short and concise, without unnecessary niceties and platitudes.

Except the last two sentences, that is. I recognized a blatant appeal to be allowed to stay when I heard one.

But I’m not planning on firing Freddie. What he said about the company’s employees rings true, even if I hadn’t wanted to admit it to myself. The last year has been brutal to many of the people who still work in this building. They’d seen co-workers laid off and positions re-shuffled. A lot had been sacrificed on the altar of ever-increasing profit margins. I know they’re intimidated and afraid.

I grin as I realize exactly what to do, reaching for my phone and dialing the familiar extension to Clive, the COO. Freddie is a trainee in Strategy, after all. If he wants to contribute to Exciteur… perhaps we’ll put him in charge of Thanksgiving.

It’s been four days since the fiasco with a capital F. I think that’s what I’ll always remember it as. “The Fiasco,” when I, Frederica Bilson, underestimated how easy it is to mix up the act of forwarding and replying to an email.

Every email I’ve sent since is triple- and quadruple-checked to ensure it reaches the right recipient. Toby had seen me do it once and laughed, calling me neurotic.

I hadn’t told my co-workers about The Fiasco, but at any moment, I expected Eleanor to come out of the glass box that doubled as her office and inform me my internship was over. That it came from the very highest authority.

But she hadn’t, and I haven’t heard back from Tristan Conway either, not since I responded to the last email. This gives me two possible outcomes. One, I’d pulled off the right amount of insolence and contriteness to earn his respect. Or two, he’s preparing to fire me and just hasn’t gotten around to it yet.

Each passing hour I leaned more toward option one, but it didn’t stop me from anxiously refreshing my emails. This week had been altogether too exciting for me already. New job. Accidentally email my boss’s boss’s boss with an insult. Sleep with the most magnetic man I’d ever met. All of it in the span of less than seven days.

Really, that should earn me some sort of medal.

“Uh-oh,” Toby murmurs at his desk. “Someone’s on the war-path.”

Both Quentin and I look up to see Eleanor advance on us, her heels clicking with professional ease on the floor.

“Freddie,” she says. Quentin and Toby turn back to their work, and my stomach drops out beneath me. This is it.

“Yes?”

“I just got a call from management. They’re pulling together all of the Junior Professionals for some cross-department project.” She blows out a breath. “And it’s still your first week. I tried explaining that you needed to settle into your department first, but they were adamant.”

I clear my throat. “And this came from management?”

“Yes. They didn’t tell me anything else.” The look in her eyes makes it clear she considers this an oversight on their part.

“Where do you want me?”

“You’re to go to conference room six on the thirty-fourth floor.”

Thirty-fourth floor is the top floor. The management floor. The one where Quentin and Toby warned me we go for project descriptions, where we don’t speak, talk or look at management.

“Right away?”

“Right away,” she confirms. “I’d join you, but it seems like it’s trainees only.”

I grab my notepad, my handbag, and push my chair back. “I’ll head up now, then. Thanks for letting me know.”

“Of course,” Eleanor says. “Let me know what it’s all about when you return.”

“Will do.”

Toby shoots me a thumbs-up and a good luck as I walk toward the elevators. I give him a confident grin, ignoring the doomsday look in Quentin’s eyes. I’m also ignoring the pit of nerves in my stomach, put there by words like management.

Will I come face to face with Tristan Conway?

I smooth my hands over my pencil skirt and fight the familiar nerves that comes with riding elevators, courtesy of my fear of heights. The mirror confirms what I already know. Hair in a neat, low ponytail. Simple makeup. Navy pencil skirt and lavender-colored blouse. Dress to impress, my mother always likes to say.

I stop outside of conference room six with my shoulders straight, ready for battle, and knock.Content (C) Nôv/elDra/ma.Org.

“Come on in.” A man’s voice.

I step inside the brightly lit space. On one end of a table is a man in his mid-forties, hair lightly graying at his temples, glasses on his nose.

“Hello, Ms.…” he looks down at his list. “Frederica Bilson?”

“That’s me.”

“My name is Clive Wheeler and I’m the Chief Operating Officer at Exciteur. We’re expecting your two colleagues here as well, and then I’ll brief you all. It shouldn’t take long.” He glances down at his paper and mutters, “At least I hope not.”

I take a seat on the other side of the table and make my voice professional. “Sounds great. This is for a cross-departmental project? My supervisor wasn’t fully briefed.”

“Yes, of a sorts. It was the CEO’s idea, really.” He’s not saying it, but it’s there in the pitch of his voice. He hadn’t approved.

The pit of nerves in my stomach grows. “Sounds interesting.”

“Interesting is the right way to describe it,” he agrees, looking down at his phone. “‘Create some holiday spirit.’ Those were his exact words.”

Shit. Holiday spirit?

The odds of this being about Thanksgiving and my emails spikes dramatically. The door by Clive opens and I turn my gaze to the notebook. If it’s Tristan Conway, I’m not ready yet. Not if he’d really called a meeting about Thanksgiving and invited the trainees.

“I’ll handle this meeting, Clive.” The voice is smooth and dark, a baritone as suited to dark alcoves in parties as it is to boardrooms.

It’s familiar.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. It was my idea, after all.”

I keep my eyes on the notebook. It can’t be.

“Can’t say I’m disappointed,” Clive admits.

Glancing up, I catch sight of the COO disappearing out the adjoining door, leaving me alone with the man leaning against the opposite wall. He’s tall and suit-clad, arms crossed over a broad chest.

But it’s his eyes my gaze locks on.

Eyes I’d seen laugh and challenge me just a few days ago. Eyes I’d seen closed in pleasure. My anonymous stranger. The dark mafia boss.