Chapter Five
Olivia debated the pros and cons of stabbing someone in the eye with a pen versus bludgeoning them over the head with a stapler. She wasn’t a violent person by nature, but she could learn and adapt. A few Google searches and YouTube tutorials, maybe a couple of grisly movies. She’d be on her way to Violentville in no time.
Her co-workers deserved it.
They spilled into the office in a loud, chattering, post-lunch high, sleeves rolled up and faces gleaming with sweat from tromping through downtown San Francisco in the middle of a summer afternoon in suits. It was warmer than usual today, and the scent of their musk invaded Olivia’s nostrils.
She wrinkled her nose.
“Olivia!” Logan slapped a heavy hand on her shoulder, causing her fingers to slip on the keyboard. She gritted her teeth and deleted the resulting nonsensical string of letters and symbols on-screen. “Working hard, I see.”
“Someone has to,” she said with a mix of tart and sweetness that made it difficult for the receiver to discern whether she was joking. She wasn’t.
Next to her, Cassidy continued typing like she was the only person in the room.
Besides the office assistant, Olivia and Cassidy were the only women in Pine Hill’s San Francisco office. Cassidy was a senior analyst like Olivia, but she carried a chip the size of Alaska on her shoulder. Olivia had tried getting lunch with her the other day and received a bland, silent glare in response.
So yeah, zero help or female bonding there.
Logan laughed. “You’re funny. Pretty girls usually aren’t funny.”
Pen stabbing. Definitely.
If only because the pen was closer and it would take less time to dispatch the blond tool hovering over her shoulder.
While the rest of the office settled into their seats—a few of them casting amused glances in Olivia and Logan’s direction as they did so—Logan perched on Olivia’s desk and obscured her view of the monitor.
She exhaled a long breath and tightened her grip on her Bic. “Can I help you with something?”
Olivia had played the Wall Street game for close to a decade. She couldn’t blow up—especially not here, where she had no allies. Her new manager in the New York office had been a sexist pig, but at least she’d had colleagues who had her back. Here, she was the new girl. She was only in California for the summer, and none of her co-workers seemed keen on getting to know her beyond some of the men’s thinly veiled come-ons.
She’d worked too hard and too long to throw her future away over some idiot finance bro who had nothing better to do with his time than annoy her.
“The question is whether or not I can helpyou.” Logan flashed what he must’ve imagined was a dazzling smile. Objectively, he wasn’t bad-looking, but his personality canceled out any charm his golden hair and lean build might have had. “You’re new to the city, and I can show you around. I know some great nighttime activities we could do after work.”
His voice dropped, making his insinuation clear.
Disgust crawled into the pit of Olivia’s stomach. She flicked her gaze toward the gold wedding band on Logan’s finger. “Your wife might not like that very much.”
Translation:I would rather bathe in acid than spend time with you outside the confines of this godforsaken office, you cheating ass.
He didn’t blink at the mention of his spouse. “Don’t worry about her.”
“Okay. I won’t.” Olivia scooted her chair to the left so she could see her monitor again without Logan blocking the way. She purposely didn’t respond to his offer to show her some “great nighttime activities.”
Logan opened his mouth again, but before he could speak, their boss poked his head out of his office.
“Olivia, I need to speak with you.”
Olivia pushed back from her desk and sauntered past a disappointed-looking Logan. Hopefully, he would be back at his desk—on the other side of the room from Olivia—by the time she finished her meeting.
She entered the managing director’s office and sank into the chair opposite Michael, curious what this was about. She hadn’t interacted with him much beyond a perfunctory greeting on her first day, but Michael Berman sat high on Pine Hill’s hierarchy, and it couldn’t hurt to butter him up.
They made small talk for a minute or two—how Olivia liked Stanford, her impressions of San Francisco, and so on—before Michael got down to business.
“Have you heard of Ty Winstock?”
The name sounded vaguely familiar. Olivia flipped through her mental files until she zeroed in on where she’d heard it before. “He’s the co-founder of Mosaic,” she said, naming a popular workspace and productivity app that had exploded on the scene a few years ago. Since then, Mosaic had been praised by everyone fromForbesto Oprah. The company went public last year with a huge IPO (initial public offering) that made its founders two of Silicon Valley’s newest tech billionaires.