The next day, she reported early for work and got her first assignment.
“Good day Lucia, I am your boss, Mrs. Leticia Wright and I welcome you to The Scope, I hope you brought your A-game to work today, because today, we’re giving you a special assignment”, her boss said with a chirpy tone.
Oh, she couldn’t believe her luck, it was her first day and they were already assigning her a special assignment.
“I try my best to not disappoint ma’am”, she said.
“Good, so you’re going to be interviewing the newest billionaire who just topped the Forbes under 30’s list, Mr. Stefan Baxter”.
“What?”, she said and caught herself.
“Excuse me?”, her boss said, “is there a problem with that?”.
She couldn’t back down now, but she also couldn’t get an interview with Stefan after the silly stunt she pulled last night, she needed an alternative, “Um, no disrespect ma’am, but can’t I try to get an interview with someone else, maybe Nicole Kelman? I heard that her auction event last night was a huge success and she raised millions of dollars f-“,
“Honey let me stop you there”, Mrs. Wright cut her short, “whenever I ask you to do an interview, I don’t expect you to give me excuses, or suggest any other alternatives. Mr. Stefan Baxter might just be the richest man in Seattle after he was the highest bidder of his company’s own asset. Do you know how fast that necklace’s value has skyrocketed? Getting him to do an interview with our magazine would put us in the forefront, farther than the rest of these other piece of trash papers. So I’m going to tell you again, and this time, you’re going to answer appropriately”, she said.
“Of course ma’am”, Lucia said downcast.
“Good, you have a two-week ultimatum to give me my story, got it Lucia?”, her boss asked.
Two weeks?!, how the hell does she expect her to get her a story that would be ready in two weeks? She wasn’t even sure two weeks would be enough to get him to agree to the interview.
“Got it”, she said, unsure of what she had gotten herself into.
When she left work, she hailed a taxi and headed for the Baxter Jewelry company. She had to get in touch with Stefan if anything, to explain herself and ask him to grant her the interview.
When she entered the company building, she became nervous and her hands started sweating, she walked up to the nice-looking lady at the receptionist's desk, “please I need to speak with Mr. Baxter”, she said.
The lady typed something into her computer, then she looked up at Lucia and said, “I'm sorry, Mr. Baxter left for New York this morning, should I set an appointment for you?”,
“When will he be back?”, Lucia asked.
“He didn't say”.
Lucia sighed in disappointment, “I'll be back”, and with that, she left the building, she had no idea how to convince the
arrogant billionaire to do a story for her magazine.
*********************************
An hour and forty-five minutes.
Stefan had been sitting for an hour and forty-five minutes, waiting for Mr. Conrad, his father’s lawyer, to meet with him. He was fuming. His phone rang, it was his assistant Gary, “Gary, this better be good”.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Baxter, but Rosita wants to know if she should leave the paperwork until you’re back or if she should get started”, Gary said. Stefan did a double take, those papers were supposed to be on his table by the time he got back from New York. What kind of secretary doesn't know their job? Stefan thought to himself. Already irritated and ill-tempered, he answered, “put her on the phone”.
There was a pause, then a soft female voice said, “I’m sorry to bother you Mr. Baxter but with all th-“,
“What the f**k does a Secretary do Rosita?”, Stefan cut her off.
She spoke quickly, “Um, they um, they help with the umm, Uhm Uhm”, she cleared her throat, Mr. Baxter was angry and it would not be wise to piss him off any further. Tension gripped her. “What was that?”, he asked,
“I’m sorry sir, I-“,
“No I’m sorry that you don’t know how to do your f*****g job Rosita, those files are supposed to be on my table by now, but because you are f*****g slow, you aren’t even able to do something as simple as that”.
Silence.
“Gary, get those files in my office”, his voice had gone down a notch. “Yes sir”, came Gary’s voice in the background.
“And Rosita”,
“Sir?”, he could tell she was about to cry.
“Get the f**k out of my building, you’re fired”.
Mr. Conrad came exactly ten minutes after he ended the call with Gary and Rosita. He apologized for his lateness giving the excuse that his wife went into labor. Stefan could not react the way he would have reacted had it been someone else who wasn’t as close as Mr. Conrad was to the family. If it were someone else, Stefan would have let all hell loose on the poor sucker for making him wait that long.
He called the driver, he wanted to get to his hotel.
And oh Rosita, he thought as he got into the car, she should have been smarter.
Stefan was aware that his staff feared him, and why wouldn’t they?. He made sure to destroy every shred of his father’s legacy just to make them understand that he was longer to be known as Stefan Baxter, the son of Lionel Baxter, but as Stefan Baxter, the business tycoon who took the Baxter jewelry company to even greater heights.
He wished his father could see him now, the same way he wished his father, while he was alive, would pay attention to him. But Lionel Baxter never paid attention to his son, not when he graduated top of his class in high school , not even when he almost died from overdose.
His father’s attention either lay in a casino in Vegas or in another woman's v****a.
They reached the hotel and Stefan stepped out of the car. He needed a stiff drink. As he got to the door a couple were already stepping out.
They were beautiful people, he thought. The lady caught Stefan’s eye, and in that brief moment that he stared at her, she noticed, and she smiled at him, he smiled back. In his mind’s eye, she was on his hotel bed, naked as the day she was born, and he was on top of her, thrusting deep and hard.