With an opportunity of a lifetime to make her entrepreneurial dreams come true, Thea finds it getting increasingly harder to hide her attraction to her boss, Aiden Steele - not knowing that the man under all the cold layers has a secret worth millio...
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Turns out, Aiden's not so secret investor was none other than Jason, and I found myself grinning at the opportunity to work up close with the genius again. He insisted he'd be fine-tuning the funnels we had created and most of the initial B2B drives, taking on a more passive role after we hit a milestone. Aiden had been bending over backwards to gain my affections again, letting me use an office within Steele Park till the new place we'd settled on was finished redecorating.
We'd settled on a two-storeyed building that I had to purchase since the owner didn't want to lease it to us, just wanting to get rid of the property. We got it for much cheaper too because of his obvious willingness to get rid of it. Aiden had people look into the place, finding it suspicious, but it turns out the man just really wanted to relocate and this sale would help him do that. Having two floors meant more space than was needed, so we put up the ground and the first floor up for leases. An additional source of income never hurt anyone. An average millionaire had at least 7 sources of income. I was well onto my fourth now, and with every passing day, my dream life was turning more and more into a reality. Things were moving perfectly in my professional life, but every single day that I took a ride home in Aiden's car I was remembering how my personal life seemed to be crumbling under me. Like sand, the more I was trying to control it in my palms, the more it slipped out. And I was just watching the waves carry it away from me.
I remembered when my professors had talked about the 'It's lonely at the top' thing in class. I've never felt lonelier than I did when we lay in the same bed every night and he hesitated to hold me closer. I would wait for him to fall asleep before turning over and sliding in his embrace. He woke me every morning with my coffee and toast that he insisted on making despite Josie's insistence to make something more wholesome. He's emptied space for me in his bathroom to put in my shampoo and conditioner.
And somehow, I still can't let go of that file.
Lydia said it's because of my ego, and because I always want to be the right person in the room. I'm not sure if I want to agree with that. I mean... all we've ever learned is that drugs are bad and doing drugs is bad and selling drugs is bad and everyone involved in the business is bad. But Aiden wasn't a bad person. Having a constant war in my head was draining and it had started showing on my face. When I had first contacted Lydia to ask her if she wanted to work with me, the first thing she had said was, "Cupcake, I don't get hired by zombies. Put some concealer on and then we can discuss my salary."
I had even reached out to Sera, the goddess who had brought out the opportunity for me to work at Negative in the first place. Without her, I'd still be folding clothes and eating soup and crackers for dinner. Sera was more than happy to put that stunning face to use and work at the reception as soon as the new office was functional, but for the time being, she helped me organize things and crunched in numbers that I didn't have the time for. Having her around again was fun, and she invited herself over someday to try out the magical bathtub in my house. Since the core of the business was the app itself, the lead developer for the app had to be hired by Jason, who knew infinitely more about that business than I did. The developer, Alex, brought a team of five with him to finish the job on the deadlines, and I found myself picking up lines of their conversation with more and more ease as the days passed. Hectic didn't begin to describe what my schedule looked like, but Lydia was a woman with a mission when she pulled me out of discussions to eat a meal or to hydrate myself. It was the middle of July when she had me pulled out of yet another intense discussion with Alex, telling me to get in my office where she had a meal warmed up for me.
