Darien shrugs like thirty million is nothing. I guess if you’re the CEO of one of the top banks in America, money like that is chump change. Both men are richer than Bill Gates and Warren Buffett combined, and if they wanted to, they could buy several countries. They’re business partners, but Darien owns D&D and Gunner owns Underwood Banking, which also makes them competitors.

Gunner turns toward me and says, “Email Mason and tell him to transfer fifteen million to American Banking.”

I do what he says.

They ramble on about business, and it all sounds like a foreign language. When the meeting is over, I place my laptop into its case and head back to my office. Throughout the remainder of the day, I color-code Gunner’s calendar.

After I’m done, I refill his coffee, organize his file cabinet, and schedule conference calls with Mason.

At the end of the day, I feel like a Dementor zapped my energy from me and I want nothing more than to go home and lie down.

I grab my purse, sling it over my shoulder, head to his office, and poke my head inside. “I’m leaving.”

His eyes are glued to the monitor as he types on the computer. “When you get home, check your email—you have to scan my PowerPoint notes for the conference meeting tomorrow.”

As I stroll to the private elevators, I ask myself if this is what my life has come to, working at a job I hate. Every time I think about the future, it isn’t rainbows and sunshine—it’s gloomy and doomy. I’m stuck at a dead end.

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Gunner

It’s too early in the morning for this shit.

I lay my head on the black lounge chair, watching as the ceiling fan circles slowly. The A/C pumps out cool air, and Hannah’s pen scratching against the pad, the sound makes me cringe. My overpriced and underqualified psychiatrist. My head pounds so fucking much I can’t think straight. I should have never gone out last night and gotten wasted. Should have taken my ass straight home.

“Did you complete last week’s assignment and score yourself a date?” Hannah asks. Her voice is like running fucking fingernails on a chalkboard. Cringe worthy and loud.

Hangovers are a motherfucker.

I crane my neck to look at her. She perches in the chair across from me, removing a piece of gum from a wrapper, pops it in her mouth and chews. Hannah is rocking the Sybill Trelawney style. Her bifocal glasses are so thick she can see Mars, and her skin tone is the same color as milk. Her frizzy, black dreadlocks are pulled into a ponytail, and she dresses like she’s from the seventies.

She wears a yellow blouse with matching dress pants, and she’s a germaphobe, which is why she has on latex gloves.