Chapter 1
Vivian
Ileft my cubicle for two minutes —two minutes— and what did I find plastered all over the background of my desktop when I came back? A collage of George Clooney against a vibrantly colored background. Mostly shirtless and entirely sexy, but definitely not appropriate to be looking at on a company computer.
And I knew exactly which one of my co-workers to thank for this mortifying display.
“Molly!” I gasped, frantically navigating to the settings window to change everything back. “You’re going to get me in trouble!”
Her suppressed giggles from the other side of our shared cubicle wall erupted into outright laughter. “What? I thought you said you liked older men like George Clooney.”
I groaned. “I told you that in confidence.”
“Daniel Day-Lewis. Does he do it for you, too?”
“Stop it.”
“Robert DeNiro?”
“I said older men, not grandpas.”
“Oh, lighten up. It was just a prank.”
“A prank that could get me fired.”
Molly twirled a lock of her curly red hair around her finger, leaning over the flimsy cubicle wall to roll her eyes. “Ooh, I sure hope we don’t lose our co-op positions that pay us pennies on the dollar.”
“It could be worse,” I insisted. “We could be interns. They don’t earn anything at all.”
She curled her nose. “That should be illegal. You’d think a company as big as Blue Cloud Financial would be able to take care of its employees, interns or otherwise.”
I shrugged. “It’s always about the bottom line.”
“You don’t sound too bothered.”
“Of course it bothers me. That’s why I’m trying to learn as much as I can so I can open my own investment firm one day.” I tilted my chin up and grinned. “Everyone’s going to get paid when I’m in charge. Even the interns. It’s only fair considering how much work they do.”
“Well, ain’t you a saint?” Molly said dryly. “Don’t get too ahead of yourself, Viv. You’re not going to be the next Merrill Lynch overnight. We still have to get through our placement and then one more year of college.”
“You soundsuperexcited about it.”
Molly slumped down into her creaky office chair, staring up at the fluorescent light panels above us while she spun around. “Early-as-fuck morning lectures, last-minute crunch sessions before exams,andwe’re going to be a year behind all our classmates? Sounds great.”
“One, early morning lectures aren’t that bad. You need to fix your sleep schedule.”
“How dare you,” she replied, feigning offense.
“Two, you wouldn’t need to crunch for exams if you spread out your studying like I do.”
“We both know that’s not going to happen.”
“And three, why do you need the rest of your classmates when you have me?”
Molly sat up and smiled. “Alright, but that’s the only good thing to come out of this.”
One of the senior investment analysts who had a cubicle across from us cleared her throat. Her name was Marta, according to the metal nameplate sitting on her desk. Marta shot us adon’t-you-have-work-to-doglare, prompting Molly and I to sit up straight and get back to the grind.
Naturally, Molly grumbled about the workload the entire time, but I didn’t share the same opinion. I loved working for Blue Cloud Financial. We weren’t allowed to handle the bigger investment portfolios —those were reserved for more practiced portfolio managers— but we got to handle the tail end transaction processing, which was mostly record keeping. Very straightforward, but I loved every minute of it.