Page 52 of The Reluctant Billionaire

I’m notashamed to admit I spend the rest of the weekend spiralling.

I go into our records and examine every photo Aide’s interior designer sent us of his house. You know, the onewebuilt, that I had no memory of. While it’s a little minimalist for my taste—I was raised by an Italian woman who favours Versace rugs, after all—it’s undeniably stunning. Even better, it has such structural and environmental integrity that I want to swoon.

It’s come back to me now, how much he dug his heels in over making the environmental footprint of his home as light as possible. How hard he pushed us to find innovative solutions to ensure it worked in harmony with, rather than against, nature. How impressed we were, and what a learning curve it was for the Venus team even while it became a pain in all our arses.

Next, I scroll through every single image Aidan Duffy Official (ugh) has ever posted on Instagram, which tells me that I am a pathetic stalker with a love-sick (and still marginally sore) vagina and that he is, unfortunately, a decent guy.

You can get such a good idea of a person by what they post. Aide’s Instagram is horrifyingly uncurated. On the one hand, there’s lots of random candid shit, like a fish he caught or a sunset he dug or his trashed, abandoned trainers after the London marathon.

No selfies.

No pics of him on his own, accepting awards or giving speeches or anything like that.

Nada.

The other main purposes for his IG account appear to be lending his weight to worthy causes and showcasing them to his three million followers. He shares a lot of stuff from The Prince’s Trust and from his own youth charity, Fresh Start, as well as from other causes he deems worthy.

He also doesn’t mince his words. On one post, about the teachers’ strikes in the UK, he’s simply writtenWhen the government stops stealing from the education budget, our teachers will stop striking. Understand?

Probably the biggest rabbit hole I fall down, though, is his company, Totum.From what I can see, its core business is data management software for the healthcare industry and its mission is to allow regional and specialist healthcare providers in the public sector—namely our very own NHS—to fully and confidentially share patient data, allowing doctors and other healthcare professionals to make more educated calls with a far fuller picture of all background and history pertaining to their patients.

Not only does it sound impressive, but its list of investors reads like the great and good of the British and US private equity industry. Its latest funding round, the one on which Aide’s current net worth is based, valued the company at north of fifty billion pounds.

I watch several videos of Aide talking articulately and intelligently about stuff I don’t have the faintest idea about. With every word that comes out of his mouth, my stomach sinks further at the extent to which I’ve underestimated this man, and my core clenches, because he’s impressive and genius-level clever, and it’s outrageously arousing to have this side of him suddenly made available to me. I’m Alice, going down the hottest, most jarring, rabbit holeever.

How is it fair that listening to him spout tech jargon is just as much of a turn-on as having him grunt one-syllable caveman words as he fucks me?

It’s not fair at all.

There’s also a recording of him being interviewed on Bloomberg, where he asserts for what is apparently the millionth time that he won’t be seeking to take Totum public at any stage, because he’s not prepared to prioritise shareholders at the expense of their clients and the members of the public whose data they safeguard.

All of this stuff sounds like the Aide I know. All of it sounds like he’s using his wealth and his platform as forces for good.

Still, all of it makes me really fucking angry.

Angry with him for shying away from embracing who he is.

And angry with myself for taking him at face value.

I am going to tear strips off this guy on Monday.

21

AIDE

I’m pacing at my treadmill desk in the corner of my office, trying to ignore the building feeling of disquiet I’ve had since Carlotta kicked me out on Friday night. Another few peeks at her Instagram feed tell me she spent Saturday night hanging off that classical singer Mum loves, Santiago Vale, on some roof terrace somewhere.

She looked breathtaking.

He looked smug as fuck.

I ramp up my pace just as Tish pops her head around the door.

‘There’s someone at reception to see you. She’s not in your calendar.’

‘And?’ I ask distractedly. My laptop is perched on the high desk rigged up in front of me, and I’m attempting to pour over why our subscriber acquisition costs have drifted up year to date. I have a meeting with Permira, one of our largest investors, later today, and I want all my ducks in a row before I get on the Zoom with them. Unusually, though, the numbers swim before my eyes.

‘She’s called Carlotta Montefiore-Charlton,’ Tish says.

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