Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 65054 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 325(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 65054 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 325(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 217(@300wpm)
The other man looks a lot like Dominic, only a little older. It takes me three weeks to find out he’s Dominic’s cousin.
Tomasso Vieri has sharp angles to his face. He’s always frowning when he walks in, and he never spares me a single glance. Sometimes he and Dominic get into shouting matches. The first time it happened, I thought about getting up to check on them, but my instinct told me to stay put.
After that first time, I was glad I had. Dominic and Tomasso’s communication style is shouting, and it happens almost every time Tomasso comes in. I tell myself it’s just because they’re Italian and passionate, and go about my business. My gut tells me that’s the smart way to handle it.
I must be right, because once I’ve crossed over a full month of employment, the assistants in the group chat all congratulate me. Apparently, no one else has lasted this long in years. That doesn’t surprise me. The job requires a high level of stress management.
Like when I walk in one morning and my desk is a disaster of folders dumped off by other departments. Papers that need signatures, agendas for board meetings that need double-checking. There’s a sticky note on one folder that reads CALL LEGAL??, underlined twice. Ever since I was hired, I’ve become the go-to for catching other people’s mistakes.
Another assistant named Nina stops by my desk with a hot coffee, my name written on the cup.
“For me?” I ask in surprise, touched by the gesture.
“I stopped by earlier and saw the mess,” she says sympathetically. “I knew you could use it. How’s everything going?”
“I’m living the dream.” I sigh sarcastically.
She laughs and nods sympathetically. “I heard Arthur Klein keeps harassing you,” she says darkly. “For that alone, you deserve your own personal coffee cart.”
Arthur Klein is the VP of one of our hotels. He thinks he deserves direct access to Dominic, which makes me the reluctant gatekeeper.
“He’s not so bad.” I shrug. “A lot nicer than some of the men who just barge in here.”
She nods with wide eyes, and I know she’s looking for more information. As kind as the gesture is, I realize too late that it’s come with strings attached.
Dominic is shrouded in mystery, and I’m the one who guards him. The other assistants are all desperate for gossip, but I know better than to put my job in jeopardy.
“Anyway,” I say, trying to organize the folders in some workable way. “Dominic has a meeting in five minutes. I’d better prepare. Thank you again so much for the coffee. It was really thoughtful.”
She nods and slinks off, disappointed. I grab my notebook and the folder prepped for this very meeting. I knock on Dominic’s door to remind him, and we end up walking over together.
We’re the last to the conference room, which is by design. Dominic likes to make an entrance. All the people waiting stand up when he enters. It gives me a weird little thrill. I start passing out all the packets, then take a seat in the corner to take notes.
A silver-haired woman kicks off the meeting. Vieri Holdings is acquiring a new company, and the people in this room are the power players. The amount of wealth and influence sitting around the table could run a small country.
I had to double- and triple-check all the packets for this meeting, so I’m very familiar with the information being shared. I scribble my notes efficiently and try not to roll my eyes at the thousand different opinions being shouted across the room.
At the end of the day, Dominic is the one who makes all the final decisions, but people need to feel heard. It makes these meetings extra-long, when they’re mostly formalities to begin with.
A man named Leonard Shaw taps one of the pages in his packet and says, “I have some concerns about these staffing numbers.”
I don’t like Leonard. He often stares at my legs too long. He also asked me to get him coffee the first time I walked into a meeting. Dominic had to step in and tell him that I was his assistant, and not in charge of coffee runs. At this moment, what I like least about him is that he’s questioning my work.
Dominic looks up at Leonard, then immediately down at his packet. “Which ones specifically?” he asks.
“These,” Leonard answers, turning his packet toward Dominic to show him. “They don’t match the summary we were emailed last week.”
I crane my neck out of curiosity. He’s got the wrong tab open. Of course he does, the idiot. The silver-haired woman who started the meeting looks between his tab and hers and frowns.
Leonard just has to continue. “If this is the level of oversight our company is bringing into the deal, I think we need to slow down and have a more serious conversation about internal review.”