Chapter 7
ELIZABETH
“I see.” My voice is barely a whisper.
“I need someone competent and able to do this job properly within a respectable timeframe,” Paul adds, a smug smile settling over his smooth face. This man is twisted.
I don’t even dare to look at Matteo.
“We are looking into this,” Matteo snarls, his tone deathly quiet. “These things take time. You just need to be patient.”
“So you keep telling me.” Paul doesn’t even look at his son, but smiles at me in a way that unsettles me even more.
Matteo’s face contorts, erasing my impression of the wonderful guy I just met. “Why the secrecy? I didn’t even know you were hiring and I’m the CTO.”
“And I’m the head of this empire.”
I swallow, caught in the crossfire, my heart beating wildly.
“You don’t trust me to do my job?” Matteo growls.
Paul’s eyes narrow. “Are you questioning my authority?”
Matteo presses his lips together, flexing his jaw muscles, as he looks away. I feel for him. I feel his pain. Fragments of our conversation come floating back, but I try to bury them somewhere deep inside me. I’ll put the pieces back together later.
“Everything is set up and ready for you,” Paul says, his tone changing, not softening, just changing. “You can set down your bag and get settled.”
The tension between father and son is so palpable, the air feels prickly. Paul sits down, clasps his hands loosely over his stomach and stares at me expectantly.
My mind is in disarray. My heart is thumping like I've run ten miles. I'm supposed to give my presentation now and all I want to do is vanish into thin air.
Everything I've practiced, the way I’ve polished my performance, has slipped away.
Being trapped in the elevator didn't help and now, discovering that the man I thought was in maintenance, the hot guy with the rough, tousled hair and tattoos, the guy who stroked my wrists and made me feel all sorts of weird and wonderful, is the son of Paul Knight.
He's in charge of cybersecurity here, and he didn't even know about me. This is the third time I've been here and I've never seen this guy until now.
How can the man in charge of the department I'm supposed to be working for not have any idea about me?
And thinking he was the janitor. I hang my head in embarrassment.
I offended him. He’s seen me at my worst when I was panicking, and talking about my past. I gave him personal information I don’t usually share, and now he knows more than I want him to.
I’ve ruined my chances because he’ll now have an opinion of me that’s not going to help, no matter how well I do with my presentation.
But now I’m not even sure I want to work here, even if I were lucky enough to get it.
“Something wrong?” Paul asks, sensing my hesitation.
I open my mouth, try not to look at this son, sitting on the other end of the table. The guy I didn't know was going to be sitting in on my presentation. “N-no.” I try to swallow, because my mouth feels like it’s full of sand.
“How rude of me,” Paul says, then quickly gets up and walks to the door. “You've been trapped in an elevator. I'll get my assistant, Patty, to bring you some water. Would you prefer something stronger? Tea or coffee?”
“N-no thank you. Water will be fine.”
I try to get settled. Pulling out my laptop and setting it up, even though I’m still recovering from the shock of the situation.
Paul steps out and I hear him talking as he leaves the room to speak to his assistant. It's just me and the guy-who-isn't-in-maintenance. He gives me a withering look that makes my insides shrivel.
“I wish you wouldn't stare at me like that,” I murmur, turning my back to him as I switch on my laptop.
“I had you down for being an intern.”
“I had you down for—” I stop. No need to remind him. “Why didn't you tell me?”
“Would it have made any difference?”
We gawk at one another silently.
“And now my old man's gone and poked his nose into my business,” he mutters to himself, tapping his pen on his notepad.
“I didn't know that you didn't know.”
“He's gone looking for an outside consultant without my knowledge.” He stops the pen tapping. “I shouldn't even be telling you this.”
I let out a heavy exhale. I had a feeling that rich people were messed up anyway, but witnessing what I just did tells me that this family has more issues than most.
Before anything more can be said between us, Paul returns, with his assistant in tow. She's carrying a jug of water and a glass on a tray. She sets it down, pours me a glass and hands it to me.
I take it and thank her. Then I drain the glass dry.
“Whenever you're ready, Elizabeth.” Paul takes a seat, facing me.
I move to the front of the room and pull up the presentation.
My gaze goes to Matteo. He's leaning back in his chair, arms folded across his chest, watching me with an intensity that makes me acutely aware of every word that I'm about to say.
Self-consciousness prickles along my skin, but I've come too far to let it get the better of me.
Taking a steadying breath, I launch into the presentation.
I don't know how I get through it, but I do, because I've always had to. When things get difficult, I thrive. I block out everything I need to and force myself to get through the day, the hour, the next hurdle.
Growing up in foster care prepared me well to handle anything that's thrown at me. Living with the sort of families I've lived with, and seeing the things I've seen, I'm a master at surviving.
They throw questions at me, and I manage to answer everything even as I keep waiting for that question. For Paul Knight to pull out something from my past.
He doesn't, but sometimes I wonder if he can see through me, and he's not letting on.
“Do you have any more questions?” I somehow manage to pour myself another glass of water and sip it slowly this time.
My heart still thunders like galloping horses, and I’m quaking inside, but I manage to hide it.
I've always managed to hide how I feel. Nobody can really guess what goes on inside me.
Paul’s brow creases like he's thinking. “No. I don't have any questions for now, but let me tell you more about the position we’re hiring for. We've been experiencing technical issues which haven't yet been resolved.”
I catch the way Matteo’s face hardens. “Working on it,” he snaps, tapping his fingers on the table, throwing me off guard.
“I need someone to work faster,” Paul replies.
Matteo yawns, then stretches, and it’s hard for me to ignore.
“I would like you to first do a comprehensive security audit of the entire division.”
“Seriously?” Matteo sits bolt upright. “You’re hiring someone to do that when we’ve got the expertise in-house to handle it?”
“We need a fresh pair of eyes.” Paul turns to me.
“Will she be working for me, or for you?” Matteo asks.
“I haven’t offered anyone the job yet,” his father replies.
I’m now having doubts watching these two and I’m not even sure I want to work here given the psychological warfare between them. Being trapped in the elevator alone would have been easier than this.
“She made it to the third interview. Clearly she's impressed you,” Matteo counters.
I hate that Matteo talks about me like I’m not here.
“If you get this role, after carrying out the security audit, you will be tasked with helping the tech team to identify and resolve the technical issues that have plagued the company.” Paul stands up.
“Completing the security audit will give you a good insight into the systems we have in place here, and I hope you'll be able to easily and quickly locate the other issues and fix them.”
“I would be most ... delighted ... were I lucky enough to get this position.” My mouth says all the right words, but inside I’m floundering. I want to work in a calm and happy environment. Not a billionaire battlefield.
“You've been excellent, Elizabeth. That was exceptional.” Paul looks like he’s eager to leave.
“Do you have any other questions?” I ask, still wondering if he’s going to hit me with something unexpected.
He shakes his head. “I don’t believe I do. Matteo?” He looks at his son.
Matteo sits with his arms folded, face tight. “No.”
“Then there’s nothing more to do. We do have more candidates coming in,” Paul says.
“We do?” Matteo exclaims, with a big dose of exaggeration.
His father ignores him, though I understand Matteo feeling pissed. It doesn't make sense, his father behaving this way. He seems to relish making pointed comments that belittle Matteo. I hate that already.
“When the hell were you going to tell me about those?” Matteo snarls, his quick temper startling me. I feel uneasy, like I shouldn't be here.
“I still run this company. The technical issues are a worry—”
“I heard you, for the hundredth time, I heard you,” Matteo hisses.
“We don't need to have this discussion in front of one of our potential candidates, do we?” Paul says calmly, then he looks at me. “Elizabeth …”
I grasp my glass tighter and wait for him to say it.
Say it. Say it. Say it.
Say you know about my hacker past.
But he doesn't.
I set down my empty glass of water.
“As I said, we have more interviews to conduct, and HR will inform you either way. Thank you for your time.” He walks out, leaving me whiplashed at the speed with which he ended the interview.
Matteo gets up. He's quiet. I gather my things together, glancing at him occasionally. He walks towards me, and I brace myself, not sure which version of Matteo I'm about to get. The kind, caring guy from the elevator or—
He opens his mouth, then stops himself. Clamps his lips shut, then walks away and out of the office. I exhale a bottled-up breath, feel my shoulders slump from a release of tension.
I wonder what he was about to say.
I leave the office with conflicted thoughts. Even if I get this job, I don't want it. I really don't. There’s no way in hell I can work here with that guy.
I get into the elevator going down, still reeling from the interview. I close my eyes as it all comes rushing back—the memory of being trapped again, in such a small space, with Matteo.
Heat prickles along my skin as I recall the way his thumb brushed across my wrists, how he made me feel, how he cared for me when I was so scared and felt so trapped.
I’ll never forget the way he told me to breathe, how he looked at me with such tenderness.
I've lived in foster homes for weeks and months, with people who never cared, but this guy, within twenty minutes, made me feel safe and special.
I wish we’d exchanged numbers.
My eyelids fly wide open. There’s no way in hell anything would happen between me and him.
We’re so different.
And if I worked for him, he would no longer be that caring guy.
He’d hate me.
He’s so mad that his father went behind his back, he’d take his bitterness out on me.
I don't want this job anymore, even though it would help me to ethically rebrand and rebuild myself, to shake off my past as a grey-hat hacker. It would help me to conform. To establish me as a legitimate professional.
And yet, my gut warns me to walk away.