Chapter Six
Rain
“Good morning, sir,” my assistant, Tia, greets as I enter the office, her eyes popping out in shock, clearly unaccustomed to me not being punctual. Her lips part, and I hurry past her to avoid small talks. She’s very chatty.
“Sir—”
I let out a low growl.
Sometimes I regret hiring Tia. She’s exceptionally competent no doubt, but it’s like the Heavens made her after me specifically to test my patience.
Before she started working with me four years ago, I was known as ‘CEO Inconsistent’ because of the way I changed assistants like clothes. Not my words. Two of my assistants even came out to spread the rumors that I fired them because they turned down my sexual advances. They both faced legal consequences. While one served her full jail sentence, the other avoided incarceration by paying a fine and issuing a public apology video.
There are many reasons why terminating Tia’s employment isn’t an option, even when there’s rampant speculation that she’s keeping her job because of our romantic relationship. It’s unclear to the public why her tenure is lasting so long when tens of assistants have been fired for minor mistakes.
If I’m not a ‘demanding boss’ (since that’s what people who want proper tasks done properly are called), she’d be my friend. She calls herself that sometimes. But I’m ‘emotionally stone cold’ and ‘one of the most feared CEOs’.
Again, not my words. One magazine published the article and the rest ran with it.
“What is it this time, Tia?”
“I’m sorry, sir. I wanted to tell you that we’re having a meeting with Dans Building later today and the meeting with Kings House is postponed,” she says, her professional fake ass smile plastered on her face all through.
“This might come as a surprise, but do you know that this information can also be relayed when I’m in my office?” Tia’s lips twitch in an attempt to smile, evidence that she enjoys messing with me. Did I say firing her isn’t an option? Because I’m considering it now.
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.” Despite how much she frustrates me, she apologizes excessively too. I call it her manipulation tactic, since it’s as if she guilt-trips me into seeming heartless for not being forgiving.
I shake my head in disdain and turn to leave.
“No, sir, wait.”
If looks can kill, she’d be six feet into the ground with the glare I’ve just thrown her way.
“Tia!” I bark at her and she pouts, snapping my mind to the lady from my house–the way she pouted her full lips and fluttered her lashes.
I blink in shock. Why haven’t I forgotten about her yet?
“I’m sorry, sir. This last one, I promise,” she pleads.
I rub the bridge of my nose with a sigh. “What is it?”
“Renzo is in your office.”
Even though she calls us friends, she still calls me sir, but calls Renzo by his name because he insists.
I raise my brows at the revelation. So early? Did he run from home?
“Anything else?” I ask calmly.
“No, sir.”
I make my way into my office.
Renzo lifts his head from my computer at the bang of my wooden door. He’s seated in my chair, his fingers clicking on my keyboard at a speed that convinces me he’s writing gibberish. I hope he hasn’t logged me in on another dating app. I’ll kill him this time.
“What are you doing here?”
“Good morning to you too and thank you so much, I slept well.” I’ve since concluded that he has selective hearing, so I’m not fazed at him replying to questions I never asked.
“Can I sit?”
He replies with an ‘oh’ as he stands up and dramatically wipes the seat for me. “Please, CEO.”
He lets me settle in my chair before speaking again. “I ran from home. Mom has been making me eat all types of things. I’m dying. I now hate food in a matter of hours. Only Mom can do it.” I chuckle in response, clearing off the rubbish he wrote on my monitor.
“Anyway, you’re so late, which is unlike you. I even had to ask Tia to be sure and she confirms that you’ve never entered the office at anything past eight.”
I scoff in sudden anger, my jaw clenching at the memory of the last hours with her. “Well, thanks to this woman who—”
Renzo sits up, shock apparent on his face and I clamp my mouth shut. I should have known that mentioning a woman, especially the one that made me late for the first time in my life, is sure to get his attention.
“A woman? Like a female who uses the pronouns ‘she/her’? Now I’m eager to know which lady made Rain Dacosta late to work for the first time.”
“Shut up. It’s just this lady I met at the immigration office yesterday, then I met her on my way back to the house, but she was drunk so I had to take her with me and—”
Renzo chokes on nothing and I throw a glare at him. “You took a woman to your house? Are you okay? Do you need to go to the hospital? This is so unlike you, I mean you haven’t… this hasn’t happened since—”
Heat travels through my body and resigns to the back of my neck. “It was nothing. I only helped her, I didn’t sleep with her.”
“Well I’m sorry for being so surprised. It’s you, Rain, you could have left her outside. Like last time,” he glares at me as the last sentence drops out of his mouth.
“I tried,” I deadpan. The ‘last time’ he’s talking about refers to the time I left my blind date and went home. In my defense, Renzo said all I had to do with her was eat, and I left after I was done with my food. That was the sixth and last time he set me up on a blind date. “I even told Joe to take her to his room.”
He chuckles, shutting his eyes with a shake of his head. “Now that’s the brother I know, that I’m not proud of. But it’s fine, because you just dropped her in one of the rooms, right?”
I wince. I don’t want to keep anything from him, because I never have. I shouldn’t have started the conversation in the first place. Renzo’s brows crease at my lack of immediate response. He must be expecting a sharp-witted ‘yes, of course.’
“Rain?” He urges.
“She slept in my room.” I blurt out.
Might as well rip the bandage off once and for all.
Renzo hits the table with his clenched fist. “Okay, that’s it. We’re taking you for a check up after work.” I stare at him, my eyes void of any emotion whatsoever.
“How are you not getting it?” He throws his hands up in exasperation while I pretend to not know why he’s being extra about it. “You took a girl to your house. In your room. Also your stupid ass doesn’t own a couch in your room which means she slept on your bed. You.”
“Okay fine, I get it. I’ve done something that has never been done before. What’s your point? And can you stop saying ‘girl’? She’s a woman. You’re making me sound like a pedo.”
“My point is that I need to know this girl. You need to know her.” He continues like I didn’t just warn him not to call her a girl. It’s already bad enough that I’m nine years older than her. “Listen, I know you don’t want me to talk about Sara, but it’s been five years and you haven’t been the same with women since what happened. My reaction is understandable. Hear me out, this girl is special. You took a girl to your house, Rain. In your room.”
An unintentional sigh falls out of my mouth. “What do I do then?” I can’t believe I’m asking him this, but Renzo won’t stop talking until I feign interest in the conversation.
Besides, it’s not like he’s going to tell me to go on a date with her. That would be–
“Go on a date with her.”
I scowl and fling my pen at him. “Get out of my office.”
His next breath comes out in a raspy puff as he watches me like a very disappointed father. “How are you not getting it?”
“How are you not getting it? You want me to go on a date with her? I don’t even know her. I don’t know who she is, where she lives or where she comes from, but you want me to go on a date with her. Will I go on dates with every woman I help from the road?”
He continues to give me that calm stare that annoys me by each growing minute. His eyes scream ‘ you’re so stupid ’ and I’m one minute away from throwing my laptop at him. “So when was the last time you helped a woman off the road?” I shut up. “Oh I know, on the first of Neverary. Dear brother, you haven’t been the same with women since what happened.”
He’s right. I hate that he’s right, but I can’t do it. The said woman was accused of being a criminal and a few hours later, she got drunk. Who does that?
I narrow my eyes at Renzo’s hopeful eyes. “Renzo Dacosta, are you trying to get me married so Dad doesn’t shift the hand-me-down responsibility to you?”
“Of course,” he admits sharply, not even trying to deny. “I’m not ready yet.”
“But I am?”
“Rain, come on! You’ve been in love before, you can do it again. I’m not ready at all . Plus you’re the first son. Do your job!”
The Dacosta family has a tradition of handing Dacosta Technology down to another first son in the family. It has been in existence for six generations, and my Mom has been paranoid about it ending with us. We’re the only Dacosta sons who aren’t married by the age of thirty. The burden is apparent on Renzo and I. I especially, because I’ve been training for my takeover for years, so it isn’t a surprise to anyone if I get the company instead of Renzo.
Also, Renzo’s lack of interest in the company has been clear since he was twelve, when he picked up a pencil to draw his first original suit design–a passion that has only grown stronger over the years, leaving the business side of things to me.
Now that I’m refusing to get married, he must be stressing as to whether the responsibility will be shifting to him. It’s selfish on my side to back off on a responsibility at the last minute, but I also have myself to protect.
“I don’t believe in things like that anymore.”
“Oh, for God’s sake! Don’t give up, silly. You’ve only tried once.”
“And I don’t want to go through it again. Don’t you get it?”
“Okay, let’s do this. Why don’t you go on a date with her once? Think of it as another blind date I’m trying to set you up with.” I look away from him, busying myself with something else. “I swear, I won’t bother you anymore after this. I want to see what a date with her would look like after you took her to your house, as a stranger.”
“You can stop emphasizing that I took her to my house now.”
“I wouldn’t dare. That’s the highlight of the situation.” He chuckles at my angry stare, before asking a question that makes my heart skip a beat. “What’s her name?”
My mind goes blank. Or, at least I try to make it go blank. I focus the rest of my energy on making up a look of confusion.
“Rain, please don’t tell me you forgot. You said you dropped her this morning .” I wish that’s the case. Her name lingers on the tip of my tongue, and I grit my teeth in frustration. My brain is so hellbent on rebelling against me that I can’t even open my mouth to lie that I don’t remember, in fear of blurting it out. Why do I still remember? The plan is to forget her existence the moment she leaves my house. Why can’t my brain take a hint?
I need to forget it. For the sake of this conversation, I need to.
“Rain, don’t be like that. I know you remember her name, so tell me.”
“Hazel Wilmer,” I sigh out in resignation.
“How old is she?”
“I’m nine years older than her,” I answer with a pointed stare.
He gives a quiet laugh. “So twenty-three, got it. Where does she live?”
“I told you, I don’t know. I told Joe to drop her off.” I groan out, begging him to drop the conversation. We never speak about women.
I mean we do, but never the one I bring up.
“Okay, you’ll tell Joe to take you to her house, and you’ll ask her to dinner.”
“Can I politely tell you to back off because I’m not interested?”
“Fine then, I’ll tell Mom there’s a girl you like, but won’t—”
“I swear, Renzo, if you say I like her one more time, I’ll… Get out!” My gaze turns icy and my tone falls to a warning growl.
“But—” He pauses, takes one glance at my face, and sighs. Now he knows better than to push further. “You’ll die alone if you keep this behavior up.”
“Don’t threaten me with peace. Now leave.”
“I’m meeting with Knox later. Do you want me to relay anything?”
I breathe out in relief that the conversation is over. “No. I was supposed to have a meeting with Anton, but it’s canceled. I just wish you all would leave me alone.”
He pouts as if he’s hurt by what I said, but I’ve never met a more dramatic man than him, so I pay no attention to him.
Our Mom trained him well.
Renzo walks out the door, closes it and opens it back just after a few seconds. My right eye twitches in irritation. Is it a sin if I kill my brother?
“Think about it. Think about Hazel all day,” he slurs and wags his finger like a magic wang.
This man is thirty years old.
He winks and finally leaves while I let out a shaky breath.
I unlock my laptop with a swipe of my finger and resume my work on sealing the deal with Ariel & Co. It’s a multimillion dollar collaboration that’s sure to expand both companies and with the tight competition these days, the alliance is needed.
Ever since Tea For You released their lists of the year with Dacosta Technology making its debut on Top 30 web developing companies alongside my Dad still not flinching from his own lists, other companies have buckled their belts to compete with us.
Who knew all it would take was for us to be even more successful than we already were?
My landline rings, breaking me from the twenty five minutes of non-stop work. I pick it and something falls in the background, earning a ‘shit’. Sometimes I try to remember if I didn’t interview her before employment.
“Yes, Tia?”
“Oh right. Joe is here. He said to tell you he’s back and will be outside if you need him.”
“Send him in.” I order and some seconds later, Joe gives a single knock on my door before opening it.
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you drop the lady off?” I say, trying not to sound like I care. Actually, I do not care.
“Yes, sir. She met her friend.”
He stands for about thirty seconds, staring and wondering why I haven’t ordered him out yet. I wave a dismissive hand at him. “We have a meeting with Dans Building in a few hours from now, so stay close.”
“Yes, sir.” He leaves.
My gaze fixes on the door for some seconds before I shake my head in disbelief. I can’t believe I almost asked him where she lives. Renzo is rubbing his craziness on me. I’m not going to ask her for dinner, I simply won’t.