JAKE
The air-conditioning hummed as I sifted through employee folders in my office. It was ten o’clock on Sunday night, and the office was empty except for the security guards who made the occasional pass of the lower level below me. I could always hear one of them coming because he was a heavy walker and he sang to himself. Before he entered a room, I could hear his slightly off-key renditions of Billy Joel and Bob Seger songs. Every now and then he’d change things up and somehow Dolly Parton would slip in there, too.
I had to see about either getting his shift moved to another floor or getting rid of him entirely. It was distracting.
The employee files on my desk glared up at me. I didn’t know most of them by name, so I’d had an intern print off everyone’s employee photo from their ID cards and add it to their work-history files so I could put faces to names and positions in the office. My mission?
Find a new assistant.
I’d been investing in more start-ups than ever, and I needed someone to have my back and keep things running. I couldn’t keep on top of all my work commitments as well as maintain other obligations. I needed someone to lighten my load.
However, none of my prospects looked very good.
Nobody from the accounting department could be poached—I needed them right where they were. I couldn’t call on the marketing team. I shifted my attention to the communications department. Maybe there’d be someone in there I could depend on.
After sifting through a dozen employee files, I was met with only more disappointment. I didn’t recognize hardly any of them. Preferably, I’d like a familiar face for the role.
Sighing, I noticed one stray file that had somehow been knocked off the edge of my desk. I walked around to pick it up and let it fall open. The first page was a printed picture of my receptionist, Gabriella St. Clair. Her photo reminded me of a high school yearbook picture. Where all my other employees had their shots snapped with modest, tight-lipped smiles and rigid posture, Gabriella’s photo showed off a big grin with her mouth open. I could see her tongue, as if the photographer had said something that made her laugh. Perhaps he’d offered to take another picture where she could pose, and she’d declined. She was an unnaturally cheerful person, that receptionist.
It was one of the reasons why I’d hired her. I wanted a cheerful, sunny, pretty face to greet clients when they came in the door. She had the welcoming personality I’d been after, and what experience she lacked, she made up for by learning quickly and exercising her own initiative muscles.
“Gabriella St. Clair,” I murmured as I flipped through the pages in her file. My office manager gave her glowing reviews. She met all expectations—even exceeded most—and it was noted during her last interview that she was already too skilled for her position.
Perfect.
She’d make a great assistant.
She had a steady and patient temperament, she was always punctual, and she was professional. Everything else, she could learn on the fly.
I collected all the other folders and left them in a neat pile on the corner of my desk. Gabriella’s file remained dead center above my keyboard to remind me to talk to her tomorrow. I needed to get the ball rolling on this. Sooner or later, I’d be in over my head if I didn’t have someone watching my six.
AKA, doing my coffee runs, picking up my dry-cleaned suits, and managing my schedule.
And if she didn’t work out?
I’d fire her.
I collected my suit jacket from where it hung on the coat rack near my office door. I shrugged into it, collected my briefcase full of business proposals that I would review at home with a glass of bourbon in hand, and pushed out the door.
My office sat a floor above the communal office down below, and I’d often heard my employees refer to it as the crow’s nest. It had views on every side, and the south wall overlooked the busy city street down below. The other walls let me survey my workers from every angle. At the push of a button, I could tint the windows so that nobody else could see in, and I could also make it so I couldn’t see out, a nice option for when everyone and everything were pissing me off.
I descended the set of metal stairs into the communal office, referred to as the deck by my staff, and strode across the polished concrete floors. I passed the half-dozen communal workspaces of large desks full of power banks for computers and phones. I passed the reception desk, flanked by large tropical plants on either side that Gabriella had filled with Christmas lights this past holiday season. When I told her to take them out, she’d called me Scrooge, insisted the lights stay, and pushed back so hard that I eventually caved.
That didn’t happen very often.
I rode the elevator down to the lobby and considered if Gabriella really was the right call for the assistant position. She could be stubborn. Relentless, even. She had a mind of her own, which came with opinions of her own, which truth be told I wasn’t interested in hearing. If she took the job, she had to understand that I called the shots. It was my company, after all.
The elevator doors opened with a chime. I stepped off and crossed the lobby, passing one of the security guards—not the incessant singer—who was patrolling the lobby. He saw me coming and moved to unlock the main doors.
He held them open for me. “Good night, Mr. Cassidy.”
I walked through and around to the side of the building, where my car was parked in the closest reserved space under cover. I got in, pulled out of the parking lot, and sped off down the street toward my rental home. It was only a fifteen-minute drive into the office, and on a Sunday night with hardly any cars on the road, I made it home in less than eight minutes.
After parking the car in my six-car garage, I moved inside, where barren walls and minimal furniture met me. I went straight to the liquor cabinet, poured myself a drink, and carried it and my files into the living room, where I got comfortable on the black leather sofa. It wasn’t mine. The rental house came fully furnished and had been decorated by someone who knew this would likely be a bachelor pad. There had been an assortment of art left out for me to choose from, but I couldn’t be bothered, so I’d told the landlord to use it in his other rental properties.
This place was only supposed to be temporary when I moved in. That was almost two years ago now.
When I first found out my marriage to my high school sweetheart was ending, I’d spent a month living in a hotel near my office. I’d hated every second of being surrounded by upbeat staff trying to make my “holiday” a good one, when in reality I was dealing with my entire life coming apart at the seams. I’d acted quickly when this house came on the market because its location was so good. After signing the documents, I moved in with nothing but a single suitcase full of clothes.