Chapter 43
Caroline
Despite Harrison’s and Rafael’s reassurances, I was worried that learning about my one-afternoon-stand with Lucien would damage our relationship.
That it would eat away at them and make them slowly view me differently, either consciously or subconsciously.
That’s just how men were about this sort of thing, no matter what they claimed.
But over the next week, the way they treated me didn’t change at all.
If anything, they were even hungrier for me when we did hook up at Harrison’s place at night.
Rafael was there every single evening, the two of them kissing me passionately and driving their cocks into me with unrestrained passion.
Then, on Monday, I went to the Blackstone & Moreau building and took the elevator to the Human Resources department. I filled out a stack of paperwork, most of it pretty normal. The only non-standard documents involved my new fake name.
Whenever I was working there, I would go by Carol Ashburn.
And voila! I was an employee at a company I had written countless articles about.
“It’s so great having you here!” said Alice, the woman I was replacing. She rested a hand on her belly, which had the tiniest little hint of pregnancy. “Although it’s a little weird. I’ve had to issue several press releases in response to articles you’ve written.”
“Sorry about that,” I said. “Although in my defense, your company deserved every single critique I’ve given.”
Alice laughed. “No argument there! Welcome to the dark side.”
She spent some time giving me a tour and introducing me to people using my fake name.
I was on the same floor as Harrison and Rafael, although on the other end of the building.
Her office—which was now my office—had a view of the East River that took my breath away.
And if I looked in the other direction, deeper into the building past all the analysts and rows of cubicles, I could barely make out Harrison pacing in his corner office.
“How long until you return?” I asked.
“I want to spend the first three months with the baby,” Alice replied. “I’ll play it by ear after that. Mr. Blackstone said I can take as much time as I want, but I don’t want to push it.”
“That’s really nice of him,” I said, glancing through the glass. In his office at the other end of the building, Harrison was gesturing angrily at something.
“He takes care of the people around him,” Alice said.
“I know you said this is only a temporary position until you return to your job at The Wall Street Journal, but Mr. Blackstone is an incredible man to work for. People have a way of sticking around here longer than they do at other investment firms. Loyalty is a two-way street.”
My gaze shifted to the adjacent office, where Rafael was chatting with a security guard. “So I’ve heard.”
We spent the day going over Alice’s general responsibilities, the ebb and flow of her work as the Public Relations Manager. She compared her job to being a firefighter: she sat around doing nothing a lot of the time, but when there was a fire? She had to spring into action at a moment’s notice.
I shadowed her for a week, watching her handle two small issues that required issuing press releases.
Then, when one of the firm’s investments tanked on Friday, it was my turn to write the press release downplaying the damage done to the firm.
It was fun flexing a different kind of writing muscle, rewarding in a different kind of way than my work at The Journal.
On Monday, Alice began her maternity leave. And then the job was all mine.
It was intimidating starting a new job under a semi-secret identity, but the imposter syndrome ended within the first day.
It turned out that writing press releases was a million times easier than actual journalism.
There was no subject to research, or interviews to make.
All I had to do was send out information, sometimes in the blandest way possible.
The first few days were great. Harrison was right that the job only required about ten hours of work a week, which gave me plenty of time to work on the biography. And being in an office again, rather than writing at home or from a coffee shop, helped me focus.
At night, I met with Harrison and gleaned more information about his life for the book. Then, during the day, I sat behind Carol Ashburn’s desk and turned my notes into chapters. The book was two-thirds complete, and I had a good feel for how I wanted the final third to go.
It was immensely satisfying to make progress on such a large project.
“I wanted to circle back about something you mentioned earlier,” I asked him one night. We were watching Jimmy Fallon, but it was a commercial break.
“Circle back?” Harrison chuckled. “You’ve been working for the firm for barely two weeks, and you’re already using corporate buzzwords.”
I rolled my eyes, then pressed further. “Your first job during college. How exactly did you get it? You didn’t have a degree, and had no real experience.”
He got a distant look in his eyes, then smiled. “I never told you about that?”
“Nope.”
“It’s a good story. It’ll fit well in the book.
” He turned to face me directly on the couch.
“I was twenty years old, and impatient. I didn’t want to wait until I graduated to get a jump start on my career, but like you said, I had no experience.
Nobody would care that I sold fucking candy in high school.
So I accepted a position in the mail room at a firm, busted my ass, and worked my way up the ladder. ”
I blinked at him. “Really? That’s it?”
He barked a laugh. “Hell no. I lied.”
“Lied?”
“I had no relevant experience, so I manufactured it. I made up a fake company and gave myself a fake history there. It costs one hundred dollars to create an LLC. Another twenty bucks to set up a few Google Call phone lines. And just like that, I had five years of experience working for Singapore Trading.”
“No way,” I said. “There’s zero chance that actually worked.”
“You’re right,” he admitted. “At first, it didn’t work.
I applied to five companies and they saw right through it.
But the sixth company was a new investment firm, one that was growing faster than they could manage.
They were scrambling to hire new analysts to keep up with their demand, and they got lazy.
The hiring manager visited my fake company’s fake website, and called my reference.
My fake boss—who was voice-acted by yours truly—gave me a glowing recommendation.
The next step for them should have been to run a background check on me, which would have shown that I never worked at Singapore Trading, that I hadn’t completed my degree yet, and that I wasn’t twenty-five years old. But they didn’t bother with that.”
I stared at him. “That’s insane.”
A huge grin split his face. “Right? I couldn’t believe it worked.
But once I was in, I showed them that I was good at what I did.
I thrived under that environment. My fake employment history meant they put me in charge of the foreign markets, mostly in Japan and Korea.
That allowed me to take classes during the day, and trade the Asian markets at night.
Five years later, I was a partner with equity, which I sold off to start my own firm. And the rest is history.”
I was jotting down notes as fast as I could write. “Is this a story you want in your biography? It kind of makes you out to be a fraud.”
“I think I’ve proven that I’m not a fraud,” Harrison replied, idly caressing my thigh.
“I got my foot in the door by lying, but so what? Half the analysts at that firm got their positions because they had powerful parents. Nepotism is rampant in the finance industry, as you know. I don’t feel bad for using whatever resources I could to give myself a chance against them. ”
“Still, though,” I said. “People might see that you lied your way into your first job, and make assumptions about your current firm. That you’re lying now, cooking the books in some way.”
“Caroline,” he said, fixing me with an intense stare. “When I hired you to write my biography, you requested complete editorial control over the book. That hasn’t changed. I still trust you to write the best possible biography about Harrison Blackstone, even if some parts aren’t very flattering.”
I stared at him. He was being completely serious. “I appreciate that,” I said. “The boss at that first firm. Did you ever tell him the truth?”
“Actually,” Harrison replied with a laugh, “he found out a month into the job. Discovered that I had faked the entire job history, and that I was actually twenty years old.”
“And he didn’t fire you?”
“He liked the ingenuity, actually. He told me it would make me a good investment analyst. That I needed to be willing to do anything to succeed, even things that society might consider immoral. That’s a lesson that stuck with me.
” He shrugged. “It’s a good origin story.
Feel free to use it. I mean it, Caroline: I don’t want you to pull your punches with this book. ”
I stared at the billionaire, then down at my notes. It was a relief that he wasn’t asking me to sacrifice my integrity to preserve his image.
If only I knew that was about to change.