Read The Billionaire Game for Free Online Page A

started to get mad.
    “Are you allergic to the word
lesbian?” I asked.
    Sarah sputtered like a malfunctioning
water fountain. “What—I didn’t say—I assure
you—don’t know what you’re talking about—”
    “Lesbian,” I said, slowly,
just in case she hadn’t understood me the first time. “You
have heard of those, right?”
    Sarah’s face was turning red, and
even the HR goons were looking everywhere in the room but at me. “I
really must protest the implication that I insinuated—”
    “This isn’t about
insinuation. This is about harassment.” An idea occurred to me,
one that wasn’t exactly playing fair but which could save my
ass. “You know, it is illegal to discriminate against an
employee for—”
    “This is not discrimination!”
Sarah looked like her body couldn’t decide between a heart
attack and apoplexy. “This is strictly about company policy,
which you have violated repeatedly. We’re not interested in
your—”
    That little ray of hope died, and I
could hear the funeral march starting up. I may have gotten
defensive. “You’re not interested in anything I have to
say, are you? You do seem super invested in this being porn, though.
Which it is not. Do you get a pay raise every time you catch
someone?”
    Sarah was propping herself upright with
one hand now while she fanned herself with the other. “That’s
not what’s happening!” She took a deep breath. “Kate,
you’re deliberately getting this conversation off course.
Regardless of whatever we’ve discussed—which has been
closely monitored by my colleagues here, and will not be ammunition
for you in any sort of civil suit—this is inappropriate
material for you to be looking at on your workplace computer.”
    And she had me there. I mean, I thought
the really inappropriate part was the third picture from the left,
because whoever had the idea of making a bra out of polyester should
have been burned at the stake. Preferably while wearing polyester
themselves.
    “You’re right,” I
said. “I didn’t think, and I misused company resources,
and I’m very sorry. I’ll sign whatever stuff I need to
and take the appropriate punishment—”
    “That won’t be necessary,”
Sarah interrupted. There was a hard hateful gleam in her eyes. I
began to regret some of my less professional word choices during this
conversation. Whatever this punishment was, it was going to be a
doozy, probably a pay dock or maybe even a suspension—
    “You’re fired.”
    “But—” and then the
argument withered on my tongue. But what? But my best friend is
running this company, and how dare you deign to fire me? But I will
get Grant Devlin on your ass if you think you can treat me this way? I’d be just as much of an entitled asshole as any other
entitled asshole if I thought I had a right to pull anything like that.

 

FOUR
     
    Dumped and fired, all within the same
week. So basically I was batting one hundred, right?
    Don’t tell anyone, but I don’t
actually understand baseball.
    (And who needs to, am I right? The way
those socks grip those calves, I understand all the things I need to.
Dear Santa: please send me Derek Jeter, and a spoon to eat him all up
with.)
    Some girls wallow with chocolate ice
cream. Some girls wallow with soppy romantic movies. Normally, I like
to wallow with a sexy ex-boyfriend of mine named Jorge, but
unfortunately he got an investment banking job back home in Brazil,
so booty calls were not an option.
    I did the next best thing and wallowed
by clicking through fabric websites and binge-buying every bolt of
cloth that had the word ‘decadent’ in the product
description.
    Thankfully I had a fitting on Monday,
so after two days of pouring my bank account into the black hole that
is the Internet, I turned off my computer, dragged myself out of bed,
and began to make both myself and the apartment presentable for
clients. Oddly enough, this actually made me feel better than
anything I had done—or more