Page 19 of Knocked Up by my Best Friend's Brothers

I’m blushing now. My words aren’t coming out the way they’re supposed to. “You don’t need me to be so close to you. Professionally, geographically, in the building, I mean.”

He chuckles lightly. “We decided on proximity for two reasons. One, the department you’re heading will grow fast, and it will quickly become a key revenue source for us in the next five years. We want to keep a close eye on that. Two, like we mentioned during the interview, you’ll be working with us on each of these projects. We may have a supervisory and advisory capacity, giving you free rein over the actual development, but still… We want to be close. And three—”

“You said two reasons,” I mumble.

“Bonus third reason,” he shoots back. “We want to make sure you’re comfortable here, surrounded by familiar faces. You don’t know anyone else in our company, after all. Do you not want to work so closely with us?”

“No, that’s not what I meant. It’s just after what happened during the interview—”

“What happened during the interview?” Amusement flickers in his eyes.

I straighten my back and defiantly meet his gaze. His eyes drop slightly as he admires my cleavage. This pale green shirt doesn’t show much, but my busty figure isn’t easy to conceal.

“I thought we’d agreed on a complete separation between the two.”

“You’re on the same floor as us purely for professional reasons. There. Does that ease your mind?”

“It does, a little. But just as a follow-up on what we agreed on toward the end of the interview…” And what an interview that was; my panties are already wet just from remembering the key highlights. “What happened there can’t happen again anywhere in this building.”

“Fair enough.” Cassius holds back a grin as he takes a few steps toward my desk. “So, you’re settling in nicely, right?”

“Yes. Thank you for providing me with everything I listed. Consider me impressed,” I say, then take a seat in front of my computer. “I can’t wait to take this baby for a joyride.”

“It has the specifications you required. I can see why it fetched a pretty penny, though. I’m pretty sure you could program a moon launch with this system.”

I laugh quietly. “You could devise an entire operation to terraform Mars, too, if you know your algorithms.”

“Good to know. Have you had a chance to go over the briefing materials I sent you to your new Hawthorne email?”

I nod and open my inbox on the main screen. “Yes, I did. I went over everything, and I think I’ve got a pretty good idea of what the next few steps are going to be. For the following three to six months, anyway.”

“Mind if I take a seat?” He points to one of the three guest chairs across the desk from me, and I respond with a nod. “As you know by now, we’re in the early stages of developing threeproducts through this branch.”

“That’s right. Two apps, one for online payments and one for cryptocurrency investments, and software for internal banking systems.”

“I know we’re dealing with heavy competition on the first two, but I think we can rise to the occasion if we design an easy-to-use platform. It’ll probably give us a competitive edge.”

“A personal approach would add to that,” I advise. “AI client service is great and all that, but most of the users’ complaints regarding your competitors’ products revolve around the lack of personal interaction. Having representatives easily available, that is.”

“That’s a good point, thank you. I’m making a mental note of that for our HR briefing next month.”

“But I think you’re right. There is still room on the market for a new payment app, especially if you make it available worldwide.”

He gives me a surprised look. “Worldwide?”

“Yes, sir. There are plenty of European and Asian countries that need better alternatives to the existing products. People with bad credit. People who don’t want to put their money in the traditional banking system. People dodging creditors. The latter may be a bit of an ethical enigma, but honestly and based on what I’ve read on community message boards, they’d happily pay in-app fees if it kept them off the banks’ grid.”

“I thought there were several apps that already provide that.”

“Yes, but in several European countries, they’ve already caved in to local authorities’ pressure to merge their interface with their banking systems. It’s left millions of users exposed. There havebeen mass subscription cancelations over the past six months. We can pick up where they left off because US fintech laws are still a bit of a gray area.”

Cassius seems fascinated, slowly leaning forward as he keeps his eyes on me. “Tell me more. But keep in mind that the fintech law aspect isn’t something we’ll ever concern ourselves with. We’ve got one of the top legal minds on payroll for that.”

“Who’s that?”

“David Walton-Fredricks. You might’ve heard of him.”

My jaw drops. My inner nerd is ridiculously excited. “Are you serious? You’ve got him covering your fintech legal issues? That’s amazing! The man is a genius! I was actually at the World Economic Forum when he gave his talk about financial regulations for cryptocurrencies.”

---