Page 16 of Dominant

It didn’t take long for me to learn why everyone kept warning me about Alexander - and why Marianne’s nickname for him was bosshole.

He hadn’t been in the office for my first two weeks, even though I’d been eager to see him. I’d quickly finished the detail he wanted on the Chateau Andilet files and set up the new payroll software, so I’d started working on Abbott Holdings’ next tax filing to get ahead of the deadline. I was deep into the ledger when he finally came into the office on the Monday of my third week.

I was hunched over a pile of bank statements I’d printed up, meticulously highlighting instances where funds had been transferred to or from a numbered account I’d become very interested in. There was very little information filed about it - deliberately so, I’d come to guess, because the account was responsible for massive transitions of money to and from the organization. There should have been stacks of paperwork supporting it but I could only find the bare minimum.

The account appeared to be for some kind of licensed private club. It had huge payroll expenses, but the revenue it brought in was staggering. It was floating Abbott Holdings and seeding its investments.

I wondered if it was a strip club or some other sort of sleazy investment, but if strip clubs brought in this much money, I was in the wrong line of work.

In short, it was suspicious.

I heard footsteps coming down the hall and I swivelled my chair around, expecting to see Mark coming to say good morning.

Instead I heard a jangle of keys and saw a tall man in a well-cut suit walking down the wide hallway toward the office beside my workstation.

Alexander.

He stopped at the door and inserted a key in the lock.

“Hi!” I called to him, leaning over to the side so he could see me from around the corner. He looked up in surprise, as if he hadn’t expected to see anyone there, and I waved.

“Hi,” he answered back, frowning as though he hadn’t expected to see me, or didn’t understand why I was there. His dark hair was slightly windblown and dishevelled, but he looked exquisite as usual, his bright blue eyes piercing and inscrutable. He unlocked the door and walked into his office without saying another word, closing the door behind him.

I sat in place for a moment in surprise. Had there been some mistake? Was I not supposed to be here?

Or was this how he was going to play it at work? Like we were strangers?

I got that he wasn’t interested in me, but I expected that we would at least be friendly.

I snapped the elastic band on my wrist.

I tried to occupy myself for the next half hour by hunting through the ledger for more activity from the mystery account, but my mind kept wandering, tracing anxious circles. Eventually I decided that the best course of action was to clear the air and get things off on the right foot with Alexander. I gathered my courage and walked over to his office door, rapping on it with more confidence than I felt.

“Yes?” his voice rang out from the other side of the door. It didn’t sound particularly welcoming. I took a deep breath and swung the door open, letting myself in.

His office was much larger than it looked on the outside - strikingly masculine, with a large, imposing wooden desk, a tufted black leather sofa along the side wall, and even a small bar cart with an old-fashioned scotch decanter and several expensive-looking bottles. Behind him, the floor-to-ceiling windows showed the same view of the city below that I had from my desk.

“Hey,” I started. “I just wanted to… say hi, and thank you. Looks like I’m sitting right by your office. And I’m really looking forward to working with you.”

I stopped speaking. I didn’t really know what I wanted to say anyway, but he was staring at me stonily, as if he couldn’t believe I dared to speak.

“Is there something I can help you with, Jordan?” he asked with barely disguised annoyance.

“Er, no.” I nervously flicked my eyes away from his. He really was very intimidating. “I just wanted to say hi. And good to see you, and looking forward to working with you.”

“Yes, you said that part already.” He frowned and stood up, towering over me, and walked around his desk to the door. He had to be six foot four or five, fully a foot taller than me, and when he braced one hand on the edge of the door in order to close it, I felt small in every way. “I have a lot of work to do, as I’m sure you do, too, and I don’t normally have a lot of time for pleasantries.”

And that was it. No Welcome aboard, or Nice to see you, too - not even one iota of common decency. He glanced towards the doorway as if to make himself clear.

“Of course,” I stammered, stepping backwards into the hallway. “Uh, well, have a good day.”

He closed the door in my face.

I spent the rest of the day finishing off my investigation into the mystery account, and internally debating Alexander’s motivations.

Had I offended him? Maybe pouring salt over my stepmother’s dessert didn’t look so cute in the light of day, and he saw it for what it was: the impulsive acting out of a child. Maybe he regretted hiring me.

But he had hired me. When he’d asked me why my sisters were on the Chateau Andilet payroll and I wasn’t, I saw something in his eyes: anger… and empathy. Plus, there was work at Abbott Holdings that needed to be done. I only had time to do the deep dive into the organization’s accounts because I was waiting on things from other people. But there was an incredible backlog of accounting work to do, including payroll and taxes.

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