The Billionaire's Intern

“What did I say about phone calls?”

“You said I was supposed to field your messages. You didn’t say anything about what I was supposed to do with the calls.”

He held in a growl and turned away from her, prowling across the length of the office. “Always say I’m too busy to take a call, even if I’m sitting in the corner playing a game on my phone.” Not that he even had games on his phone. “I don’t like to talk to people until I initiate it.”

He turned back to her, expecting to find an expression of wide-eyed fear on her face. Instead he saw nothing but serenity.

“Okay,” she said, keeping her hands folded in front of her, her shoulders straight.

“I don’t like things to be unpredictable,” he said. “I make the phone calls. People come to me. I prefer to do business on my own terms.”

“Doesn’t everyone?” she asked.

“What does that mean?”

“Everyone prefers to do business on their own terms. I mean, everyone prefers to live life on their own terms, but that doesn’t mean it’s possible to do all the time.”

“It is if you’re rich enough,” he said.

“Was that important?” she asked.

“Why?”

“It was someone with direct access to you, which I get the feeling you don’t give easily,” she said. “That leads me to assume it’s someone who might have important business with you.”

“And if it was?”

“Are you too busy to see him?”

“You’ve been here for two and a half hours. And for two hours of that time you were taking a nap in your room. What makes you think you’re qualified to comment on how I run my business?”

She lifted a shoulder. “I’m not. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to comment. Or ask you what’s going on.”

“You want to play question and answer?” he asked. “We can do that. But you’ll play too.”

“Well, that would be one way for us to get to know each other,” she said, smiling brightly. Too brightly in his opinion. Her top layer was starting to show cracks.

She was a funny creature, Addison Treffen. She made him want to tear the facade from her. She made him want to see what she was beneath the polished exterior. He had a feeling there was steel beneath the cream and silk on the surface. He wondered if anyone else knew, if anyone else had seen it. He wondered if Addison herself even knew.

He was fascinated.

And he was so rarely fascinated by people anymore.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“Right now or philosophically?” She unclasped her hands and traced a circle on the wooden surface of his desk with one slender finger. “Right now I would actually like a coffee. On a broader scale? To make it through this. To come out the other side with some idea of what I’d like to do. I have almost finished my degree. Maybe I could be successful in this industry.” What she said about the industry seemed false. He doubted she cared at all about business. Not right now. What she’d said about surviving…that he believed. That he recognized.

“A dry goal. Survival.” She was so well trained. So bound by the chains of life. He knew what that was like. And he was free of them. Of course, now he was bound by chains of another kind.

Crushing guilt. Regret. Anxiety. Darkness, hot and wet with blood and sweat. Tears.

“And what is your goal?” she asked, cutting into his thoughts.

“Do I need one?” he asked. “I’m already a billionaire.”

“Right. Which means if you didn’t have a goal you could go off somewhere and never work another day.”

If only that didn’t sound so enticing. “Impossible,” he said. “I am the savior of Black Properties. The one who will continue to push the company forward. Who will carry out the legacy.”

“And the legacy matters?” she asked. “I’m sorry, I only press as one who recently discovered that her legacy is mud.”

“Let me tell you a story,” he said, wondering why in hell he was talking to her about this. One thing he didn’t believe in was giving explanations for himself. He didn’t owe his story to anyone. He used their discomfort at his inability to conform to his advantage, and he didn’t apologize for it. And yet something about Addison made him want to talk. And why should he waste a moment justifying that? Even to himself. “When I got on that yacht four years ago I was the despair of my father. And I deserved that. I was given everything from the time I was born, and with it I did nothing. Nothing but spend, coast through school, knowing I would get a pass because my father was David Black, and no one would dare fail his son. In my own mind, I was the damn chosen one, Addison. Nothing could touch me. Nothing was withheld from me. Invincible. A god. For no reason other than that I was born with blue blood and a full bank account.”

He watched her face closely, watching for a ripple in the calm. So far, he hadn’t managed it.

He continued. “I hate that arrogant man,” he said, “the one who walked onto a yacht four years ago for a weekend of drinking and sex. Who had never in his life spent a penny of his own money. I hate him. As far as I’m concerned he died on that island. Unfortunately my father died in Manhattan, while I was gone. And he will never know any other son than the one he had before. I was the son who made his mother cry, who left headlines that would shame his family. And now I have a second chance. Doesn’t my father deserve his legacy to be carried out? Doesn’t my sister deserve to have the company in good condition?”

“Does your sister want to run it?” Addison asked.

“No. But it’s the inheritance of future generations, and I’m sure she’d like to have children someday. Those children might appreciate it if their uncle didn’t destroy their legacy. I should think you would understand something about that.”

“And your mother?” she asked.

“Deserves to be proud of me for once. Not for my sake, but for hers.”

“Isn’t the business healthy enough for you to put someone else in charge?”

“No,” he said. “At least it wasn’t when I came back. I disappeared. My father died. And for about six months my mother had someone else in the position of CEO and things failed to improve. Then…I was rescued.” It was a strange term for what had happened to him. Because rescue, to him, implied something that was happy. And happy was never the emotion he associated with it. “Back from the dead. My mother lost her husband, but her son had returned. And I owe a debt to my family. I’ve restored what was lost. I intend to make everything stable so that they never have to worry again. So no, I can’t just go off and leave it to rot. Does that answer your questions?”

“Almost. Why do you hate the man you were?”

“Is that important?”

“I’m curious.” She looked down for a moment, then back up. “I’m curious about what it takes to change like you did.”

“I hate the man I was because he had everything and with that he did nothing.”

“So, what you’re saying is in order to change, it would really help if I hated my former self?”

“It doesn’t hurt.” He studied her expression, the unnatural neutrality of it. He wanted to see beneath it. And he had no right to that curiosity. Because it fed something in him that he knew he needed to keep hungry.

He turned away feeling suddenly restless, a current of electricity crackling between his skin and clothes making him feel constricted, confined.

“I am not your role model for change, Addison. Don’t get confused and start thinking that because this is an internship I’m here to guide you in some way. I’m doing Austin a favor, and as long as you serve my needs I will continue to do so. You are here for me. And you will follow my rules. Never tell anyone who calls that I’m available.”

“Should I be writing this down?”

He paused midstride and turned back to her. “If you think you might need to.”