Page 4 of The Billionaire's Wake-up-call Girl

I just need to last six more business days, not counting today. A person can handle anything for six days, right?

Two hours later, we’re waiting for the elevator. Sasha frowns at me for about the tenth time. “Do not speak unless spoken to. You understand?”

“Got it,” I say.

“Don’t elaborate needlessly,” she says. “You tend to elaborate…”

I swallow. “Got it. No elaboration.”

I don’t have an official marketing degree. I used to own a bakery, Cookie Madness, that got really popular thanks to my work on Facebook and Instagram. I even won some awards. Those awards got me this job—I could tell from the interview.

It still hurts to think about my stolen bakery. My stolen life. My stolen dream. Stolen and destroyed.

We get in. Sasha hits the button for the fifteenth floor. “Not everybody gets the chance to meet him,” she says.

Yay?I think. But I don’t say that.I just nod and smile.

I worked in restaurants all through culinary school, and I had a lot of jerky bosses. Jerky bosses can be fun because they give the employees a shared enemy to whisper about, to exchange mocking glances over, and that creates a sense of camaraderie, like a workplace version of the French Resistance.

Vossameer doesn’t have even that bit of joy. It’s sad.

We’re stalled at the tenth floor while people try to fit in a cart. Nervously, Sasha checks the time.

I’ll admit, I’m interested to meet the elusive and tyrannical Mr. Drummond on a purely WTF level. Because who runs a company like this?

In my quest to be the perfect leader of the five employees who worked at my cookie bakery, I used a lot of positive reinforcement. If somebody took a risk that backfired, I would still praise them, because I wanted them to feel empowered to try new things. I encouraged individuality and creativity, and it totally paid off—my employees came up with some great ideas.

We hit eleven. The cart leaves.

There aren’t many photos of Mr. Drummond out there. Most of them are him standing in large groups, or in a lab wearing protective goggles. I requested a picture for the site, and Sasha told me Mr. Drummond isn’t into it. The picture he makes his assistant provide for industry events is a black-and-white line drawing of a chemist’s beaker with two bubbles coming out of the top of it.

He doesn’t like to draw attention to himself, Bob from HR explained in hushed tones.

Hushed tones.

As though amazing Mr. Drummond might hear his words and feel displeased, and that might destroy his ultra-important lifesaving train of genius thought, and a swarm of locusts would descend from the sky to eat everybody’s smell-free lunches.

Here’s a hint for the inmates of Gulag Vossameer: you don’t have to talk in hushed tones when you discuss Mr. Drummond. He doesn’t have godlike omniscience. He doesn’t have bat-like hearing. He is not a wizard.

He is but a man!

When you pull aside the curtain, that’s what you’ll find. A controlling jerk of a man with a machine to make his voice sound loud and boomy. Just like inThe Wizard of Oz.

Right before we hit floor fifteen, Sasha takes out a compact mirror and touches up her lipstick. She’s such a gorgeous and clever tiger of a woman, smart and aggressive. Sure, her aggression is turned on me half the time. Still. I feel bad for her.

I feel bad that this jerky man has made her feel like this. It’s not right!

I want to tell her not to waste her time on a control freak like Mr. Drummond.He’s just another man behind a curtain!I want to say.There’s more power in your awesome shoes!

But I don’t.

For the record, her shoesareawesome—shiny and sculptural high heels in severe black. Her dress is a formfitting knit, sexy in an understated way, with a smart wool blazer over it.

She snaps shut the compact and glances at me nervously as the door opens.

I so rarely see her nervous. It’s ominous. Like in movies where the most powerful jungle animals start running for the hills.

“Don’t mess this up,” she says.

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