Page 220 of By A Thread
“Actually, Jasmine, I don’t think—”
“I received a call from this cute junior peon in accounting named Mickey, who I make out with sometimes.”
“Uh.” Grumpy Jasmine had just officially broken my brain.
“He was talking about this audit of the credit card statements or some other boring stuff that I usually don’t hear because I’m too busy staring at his biceps.”
Apparently she was into the arm porn.
“Anyway, he mentions that there was this weirdness because the creative director kept buying food for the admin pool.”
“The creative director?” I said slowly.
“In January, Dominic started buying food for the admins almost every day.”
“Wait. Wasn’t that like a thing? Like a thing that they did before…”
Before what? Before me? Before me and my poor ass with my expired salads and rationed leftovers started showing up for work?
“Nope. It started the day after your hire date.”
I felt like I needed to sit down.
Okay, so Dom paid for some food. Big deal. That didn’t make up for him not trusting me.
“And then there’s the phone and laptop,” Jasmine continued.
Oh, shit.
“What about the phone and the laptop?”
“Did you ever notice other new hires weren’t getting free tech?”
Yes.“Not really.”
My neck started to flare up.
“There was no record of the purchase. So I checked with Gola, who handles some of Dominic’s personal bills. He bought them out of pocket and had IT set them up for you.”
I thought of Buddy and his wife. How they still didn’t know that Dominic Russo was their secret health insurance Santa.
“I don’t understand,” I began.
“Look, maybe I’m just a romantic at heart,” she said.
I doubted that very much.
“The guy screwed up. Big time. But numbers don’t lie. He clearly cares about you. Anyway, I’m totally coming to dance this week. See you there!”
“Yeah. See you,” I said lamely.
Something occurred to me, and I couldn’t get it to un-occur.
Almost every good thing that had happened to me since January had been at the hands of Dominic Russo. The food. The phone and laptop that I desperately needed. The job. The renovations. The closetful of couture. The freaking piano.
It was a pattern. A consistent one. Dominic recognizing a need and quietly filling it.
I was not a lucky person. I didn’t win on scratch-offs. It was more fun for me to set dollars on fire than to put them in slot machines that never paid off. And I sure as hell didn’t win grants that I didn’t know about.
