Page 26 of One Night Billionaire

Anna: Sorry about that.

She switched her phone off completely and slipped it into her purse. He would no doubt try to call her shortly and she didn’t want to know if he did. With any luck they would call her back soon and it wouldn’t matter because she’d be busy.

Rather than tell him that she was looking for a new job, she decided to wait until she had one. There was no point in risking any more of his anger. She’d see this project through regardless of a new position and it was almost wrapped up anyway.

“Anna?” A tall blond woman called her name.

“That’s me,” Anna replied, standing.

“We are ready to begin if you are,” she smiled.

“I am, thank you.”

Anna followed her into a conference room where seven people were waiting. It was more than she expected.

She took a deep breath before sitting in the offered chair. There was a carafe of water in front of her that she could pour for herself, but she didn’t trust her hands to stay steady so she declined the drink.

“Anna, can you tell us more about why you are looking for a new position?” an older gentleman asked. He was at the center of the table and she decide he was likely the most important man in the room.

“Sure,” she began. She rattled off her practiced story about not being a good fit at the new company and that she had agreed to help them with one project while she continued to look for another position.

Satisfied, they did their introductions. She met everyone individually, and it added a lot of extra time to the interview. By the time they wrapped up, two hours had passed. She left with a job offer and a promise to start after this project was ready to hand off with Brian and Pete.

They agreed and appreciated her need to see the project through to completion. It wouldn’t actually delay her start date any because paperwork took time.

The project was due to launch Monday. That left just a few days to complete the tasks to get them ready. She was mostly concerned that they would find another bug in the code that wouldn’t be noticed until testing, but there was nothing she could do about it other than plan to work this weekend.

Anna was home before she turned her phone back on again. As expected, there were several messages that she had missed and a few voicemails. She checked her messages with Pete first and fired off responses to him.

Ignoring Brian still, she went through her fridge and put together a few leftovers for lunch. She had no desire to see what he had sent her.

Part of not wanting to talk to him was guilt. She’d been avoiding him after assuring him that she would communicate and not ghost him again. Despite how flaky it made her seem; she was worried that he would convince her not to leave.

It was for sure that she couldn’t work with him and sleep with him, though. Monday morning, things had been awkward in the office when he stopped by to talk to her and wanted to kiss her.

She had caught a few sly looks from the people on her team and knew that they understood what was happening there. That had embarrassed her and that’s when she had stopped talking to him as much.

Anna had told him that she didn’t want to be anything but professional at work and even as late as Monday morning before work she had reminded him of that. In true Brian fashion, he had either forgotten or ignored her request.

It wasn’t that she couldn’t do the job, either. It was that everyone would be questioning why she got the job and if anything went wrong it would be blamed on her and the fact that she was sleeping with their boss.

She’d watched this happen time and time again in different departments and different companies. The woman was always assumed to be an idiot who didn’t know how to do their job and it didn’t matter if they were new or had been there twenty years. People were vicious when they wanted to be.

Her phone rang again from the table where she’d set it when she got up to make food. She knew the tone was Brian without needing to answer it.

If she answered it he would probably calm her down. Then she wouldn’t take this job or would end up letting him come over again. Not that she’d let him before. No, she’d invited him and that was on her.

Anna didn’t want to be soothed right now or have logic thrown at this problem. She wanted to solve this in the only way that she knew would work for her and make things sit right with her moral compass.

Plus, she didn’t know if she even wanted to try to be with Brian anymore. He was sweet when everything was going great but she’d learned now that he could be a jerk when things weren’t going his way. That wasn’t something she wanted in her life.

Walking back over to the table, she put her phone on do not disturb and set it back down. She took her plate to the living room and opened her laptop instead. She needed to type up her letter of resignation and then maybe turn her phone off completely.

She planned to send it over tonight, instead of tomorrow. Due to the clause in her contract about a ninety-day probationary period, she didn’t have to give a long notice and she wouldn’t be. She was giving launch day, Monday, plus one week to wrap up all loose ends on the project that she could and get all her plans ready to hand over.

Pete knew she was leaving. He didn’t know that she knew, but they’d told her in the interview that they had checked her resume and that he’d had nothing but good things to say about her. At least they hadn’t called Brian, who knows what he would have said about her.

She cracked her knuckles and took a bite of her food before starting to type. It was hard, but she managed to craft it to be nothing but positives about the company and just that she wasn’t a good fit there. There wasn’t anything bad to say about them as a whole, it was leaving Brian out of it.

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