Superior - Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Investors

As I arrived at home and undressed to shower, every one of my thoughts was consumed by my sexy young rival. My mind was still marveling at the quality of her proposal. Jim was clearly right. Even if she had prepared it prior to starting with the company, it was staggeringly brilliant work. She must have had help. Maybe she knew someone who was giving her a leg up? That seemed to fit. There was no way a girl that gorgeous would have spent all her free time working up fintech marketing plans. She could easily make seven figures as a model or influencer with a body like hers and face to match.

For a moment, as I stepped into the stream of steaming water, I wondered what she would look like in lingerie or a bikini. The thought spurred a shiver of desire so powerful that it left me breathless. Fuck! No more thoughts like that! I needed to think of Jane as my enemy. Nothing more. Fantasizing about her lush curves and perfect skin would not be helpful.

Yet it was difficult not to, I thought as I scrubbed at my flushed skin. Her suits did their best to hide her body, but with curves like that, it was impossible to obscure them completely. Besides, something about how she dressed bothered him.

Suddenly, he realized what it was.

Shouldn’t she be showing off more? If she had been hired for her looks, shouldn’t she be wearing sexier clothes for the benefit of her secret benefactor? It sure seemed like it. Women that traded on their looks tended to show them off at every opportunity.

Unless her sugar daddy didn’t want her to....

Maybe that was it. Maybe Carl or Bill or whoever it was helping her was the jealous type. Maybe she only showed off her body to him. In private.

So who was the jealous type? Bill certainly didn’t seem to be that way. The man was smooth, confident in his own abilities but never seeming to overcompensate for anything. Forcing his secret lover to dress a certain way didn’t seem like his style. He was a fairly freewheeling sort.

While there were other board members and two other members of the C-suite, they wouldn’t have had the opportunity to hire her position. It was possible that they had simply influenced Bill or Carl to hire the girl, but that seemed far-fetched. Those men would have asked too many questions—especially after seeing her.

That left Carl.

Carl, I knew quite well, and he was far less secure than Bill. He drove a $100,000 Audi and had been married for years, spending more time in the office—and away from his wife—every year. He seemed like the best suspect.

Still, I wouldn’t have pegged Carl as the workplace tryst type. Could he really be having an affair with the girl? She was a hell of an upgrade over the man’s wife in the looks department. And probably personality-wise as well. Carl’s wife was known throughout the company as an absolute shrew. The woman had once lectured me on wastefulness when I’d thrown away a half-full cup of punch at a company Christmas party. After that experience, I wouldn’t blame the man for looking elsewhere for company. I wouldn’t have made it a month with that woman, let alone two decades, or whatever it had been for the two of them.

And Jane reported to Carl. He was likely the one who had been in charge of hiring that position.

It would explain a lot. That must have been why she’d spent that Friday night at the office! So they could have sex in his office, far from Carl’s wife’s prying eyes.

I stepped out of the shower, toweling myself dry.

That must be how Jane had gotten her presentation so perfectly accurate. Carl knew the business inside and out. He had probably been the one to come up with the insightful go-to-market strategy. Hell, he had probably had a consulting firm working on “her” presentation for weeks before he issued the assignment. And by giving her their work and sending it out as her own, he had enabled her to impress everyone with her brilliance. It was the perfect way to justify the hiring of someone so obviously underqualified.

It was a clever plan, really. One that I hadn’t realized Carl was sneaky or strategic enough to pull off. Until now, anyway. But it was far more likely than a lone, beautiful teenage girl instantly becoming God’s gift to the business world.

But what did that mean for me? He couldn’t possibly intend to promote her to the SVP position. That would be a serious liability for a company that paid most of his salary in stock options. She would be exposed in a way that threatened the man’s equity.

No, her current VP-level position must be what he had promised her in exchange for sex. He had made her a rising star by helping her with her first two projects, but that was where she would remain. He wouldn’t continue to make her look exceptional or he would risk making her look too good.

That was a relief, really. Realizing that Jane’s hot start was about to cool made me breathe a bit easier as I put on my clothes.

I again thought of Carl. I had always known that men did such things, but I never would have suspected that Carl was the type. He had always seemed so devoted to his wife, in spite of her caustic personality. Still, guys had affairs all the time, and if there were any woman it would be easy to tire of, it was his wife. It certainly wasn’t out of the question. And there was no one else who could have helped her prepare a presentation quite so on point. Bill was an effective leader, but he wasn’t a data guy. It was pretty unlikely he could have helped her put together something so complete. And her help couldn’t have come solely from an outsider. Literally everything in it was tailored to our specific business. Carl was the best bet as her primary source of help. Hell, I hadn’t even realized that Carl could do such a great job.

It was incredibly irritating that Carl was setting her up to look so good that the girl was actually outshining me, however.

I scrubbed angrily at my hair with the towel.

But that was unlikely to continue. I needed to prepare, however, just in case it did. Maybe Carl was infatuated with this girl to such an extent that he was willing to promote her into the SVP role just to have her. Her looks were unique enough to justify it. It wasn’t every day that even a wealthy and powerful man like him actually met an honest-to-God supermodel that was willing to fuck him for a six-figure job and impressive title. Most women who looked like that were independently wealthy and didn’t need any help from a man like him. Maybe I shouldn’t be so sure that he wouldn’t be willing to move her above me.

But that meant that I was going to have to continue to compete with this Carl-Jane combo.  Taking on someone as experienced and with as many resources at his disposal as Carl did was a much bigger challenge, but now that I knew what I was up against, I could do it. After all, Carl had a large number of other responsibilities. He couldn’t help her all the time. The moment something unplanned came up, she would quickly be exposed. Those were the opportunities that I needed to exploit to make sure I came out on top. While I still had a hard time believing that Carl actually intended to promote Jane, I had to make sure that there was absolutely no risk of it.

I smirked as I strode out of the bathroom. Maybe I could even “accidentally” catch them in the act, giving me knowledge that would be perfect leverage over Carl. I wouldn’t actually blackmail him, but just knowing that I knew what he was up to should ensure that Carl didn’t try anything else that could damage the progression of my career.

I sat down, leaning back into the cushions of the sofa, a wide grin forming over my face. Yes, I knew what I needed to do now. I needed to take care of business by proving my superiority on projects that couldn’t be pre-planned, and then I needed to attempt to catch Carl and his sexy little minx in a late-night tryst at the office.

I turned on the television but didn’t pay a bit of attention to the images that flickered across the screen. Instead, I spent the evening strategizing how to go about “accidentally” discovering Carl’s affair.

By the end of the evening, I had decided on an approach. I would leave the office each night, waiting in my darkened car until only their cars were left in the lot. Then I would re-enter the building, taking care to walk by both of their offices on my way to return and get something that I “forgot” at the office. Smirking as the latest Wonder Woman movie came on, I wondered how many nights it would take before I caught them in the act. Probably not many, I decided. With the opportunity to do the deed with a girl who looked like that, Carl would do anything and everything he could to find time for her.

As the movie continued to play, the fit, powerful women cast as Wonder Woman’s tribe of amazons managing superhuman feats with seeming ease, I checked my email one last time before going to bed, surprised to find an email from the CEO, Bill Harper, in my inbox.

My eyes scanned the email on the screen of my phone. CurrenTech had landed at presentation for an international venture capital group’s multinational advisory board! I laughed aloud. This was absolutely perfect! Even Bill, in his email, said that this was hot off the presses, so there was no way that even Carl could have known about it in advance. Jane wouldn’t have the benefit of foreknowledge this time. And because Bill had asked for the presentation to be completed within 48 hours, it would greatly limit any help Carl could give her. Besides, I knew that Carl was traveling to Europe first thing in the morning, taking him out of commission for the crucial first day of the short-term project. The fact that it needed to be translated into three languages too, meant that the English version really needed to be done by tomorrow.

Well, Jane. It’s time to see what you’re really made of, I thought, giddy at the prospect of humiliating her for the first time. And this project would be visible at the CEO level. If I played my cards right, nailing this one could be enough to solidify my promotion all by itself.

I set the alarm on my phone for 5:00 AM and went to bed, already excited by the prospect of nailing this presentation to secure $100 million in capital for the re-branding and advertising campaign to lock down my promotion once and for all.

The next morning, I pulled into the office parking lot at 5:40 AM, noticing Jane’s car there again. Covered in frost. Again. It had clearly been there all night. That one was puzzling. I knew Carl was at the airport, preparing to board his flight. He’d even fired off an email requesting some information to read on the trip. If he had left, then what was Jane still doing here? Had she done the deed with Carl last night, then just spent the rest of the night there? Maybe she’d seen the email and had wanted to get a head start?

But she would be completely exhausted if she had done that. She had to know that that wasn’t a smart plan! She would have to leave soon for some sleep anyway, making her look lazy for leaving work early when something this big was due. Besides, the quality of her work, done with a complete lack of rest like that, was bound to be poor. Stupid girl. Apparently, she just liked to spend her nights at the office. Hell, maybe she was just sleeping on the sofa in Carl’s plush office. It was probably the closest thing to a comfortable bed in the building.

Maybe I would get lucky and catch her there, providing him with some evidence of their affair! The thought of shaking a dozing Jane’s toned shoulder to see the horrified expression on her perfect little red lips made me chuckle uncontrollably.

Still grinning, I entered the building, deciding to swing by Carl’s office first. When I walked by, however, the lights were off, his sofa empty. Damn. Oh, well. Maybe next time, I’d catch her in there. I circled behind a bank of cubicles, sneaking through them to get a glimpse through Jane’s office window from a hidden vantage point.

Her light was on, and she was typing away at her laptop keyboard, her stunning visage looking as fresh as ever. How did the girl do that? Again, she looked as fresh as if she’d just woken up! But from the looks of her car, she had clearly spent the night in the office. Even if she had rested on Carl’s couch for a while, she should look at least a little disheveled. And probably groggy or something. But she looked alert and focused as ever, hair shimmering and perfect, hard at work on… whatever she was doing.

I drew back behind the cubicles, pondering the mystery of Jane’s all-nighters as I snuck furtively to my office.

Hooking up my laptop to the docking station, I quickly got to work, determined not to let myself become distracted by thoughts of either Jane’s mysterious work habits or her luscious body. I read through the string of emails. It looked like the investor group was made up of three people, one German, one Japanese, and one from the UAE. So the presentation would need three translations into very different languages. Thankfully, I had someone to go to for each of those translations.

I snickered gleefully.

Even if Jane could find someone to do the translations for her, I doubted she could manage to get them done in the time frame we were working under. This is where experience and relationships would really pay off. Not to mention that even her English version was bound to be subpar without Carl’s guidance driving it this time.

After a couple of hours of gathering data and creating Powerpoint slides, I saw an email notification appear in the bottom right corner of my screen. Glancing down, I noticed it was from Jane. Ha! She was probably asking me for help. Good luck with that. Especially after making me look bad in the last executive meeting! No, Jane, this was the presentation that was going to show everyone who really deserved that promotion. You would not con me into helping you as you had Carl.

I opened the email, and my jaw dropped. She had completed the assignment. Already. That email had come in at 10:00 PM last night. And it was not even 8:00 AM yet! Most people hadn’t even come into the office to see an email sent so late last night, let alone have a big presentation like this completed. What had she done? Three slides? Practically cackling with delight, I clicked on the first attachment, my expression quickly transforming to one of horror as I reviewed its contents.

It was in German. It looked polished. It looked professional. It looked insightful. It looked persuasive. It looked completely fucking perfect!

Stunned, I opened the next document. It was the same thing. In English. I scrolled through it, skimming slides that overflowed with market data, believable forecasts, and plausible growth projections. Her presentation tied marketing to origination strategy to top line growth in a synergy-creating blend of strategic brilliance. If I were an investor, seeing this, I would be eager to dump as much money as I could into the project. It looked like an absolute sure thing.

Ten hours. She had put this together in ten fucking hours! Hours that happened to be the middle of the Goddamn night!

I opened the other two attachments, finding the presentation already translated into Arabic and Japanese as well, feeling my cheeks flush with anger, my lips quiver with rage.

This wasn’t possible. It just wasn’t. No one could have done this in that amount of time.

No one!

Even if Carl had spent the night on it with her, it wouldn’t have been anywhere near this good. And the translations? Unless they were complete gibberish—which I sincerely doubted—they had been done in record time. And by who? So she’d done the presentation in seven hours, then translated it into three completely different languages with three different alphabets in an hour apiece?

I laughed aloud, my voice filled with scornful bitterness. Not even a professional translator could pull that off. Certainly not for a document with all sorts of technical industry jargon. Even they would have to confer with the author to work out the meaning of each slide.

But it wasn’t as if Jane knew all of those languages herself. No one knew that combination of languages. She couldn’t. She was not even twenty years old yet, for Chrissakes! Most people her age were worried about dates and sorority parties, not putting together devastatingly convincing investor decks that would impress even the saltiest of venture capitalists.

I felt like throwing my computer across the room. I felt like throwing up. I felt like giving up. In a rage, I stormed out of my office to hers, where she sat placidly, stirring a cup of coffee, a plastic spoon clenched between two perfectly manicured fingertips.

“How the hell are you doing it?” I demanded, my fingers clenching into fists at my side.

“Pardon me?” she asked, eyes widening slightly as she took in my flushed, angry expression.

Her surprise seemed so genuine, her face so innocent, that I began to calm down, in spite of myself.

“The presentation? Did Carl help you with it? Did someone give you the heads up ahead of time about it? It’s okay, you can be straight with me. But I deserve to know.”

“Carl? The CFO?” she asked, her gorgeous features scrunching into a look of confusion. “Why would he help me with it? He’s traveling today, I think. And as far as I know, no one knew of the investors’ interest until last night!”

“I know that,” I seethed, exploring her face for some sign that she was hiding something. But there was none. “Okay, then. The translations. No translators are working in the middle of the night. And they wouldn’t have had time to…”

“Translators?” Jane inquired, cocking her head to the side, causing a shimmering cascade of long fiery red hair over one shoulder. “I didn’t use any translators.”

She was good. Really good. I could detect no dishonesty from her at all, and I was pretty damn good at reading people.

“Fine,” I said, with a little less certainty, but still attempting to harness the last of my anger to threaten the girl a bit. “Don’t tell me how you did! But this isn’t over. I never back down from a fight…”

With that, I spun on my heel and stomped back to my office, slamming the door shut behind me to rattle the glass walls. I sat down at my computer, slithering my fingers through my hair as I stared at my barely started presentation. I couldn’t concentrate, however, thrown completely off by my alluring rival and her strangely convincing delivery of her blatant lies.

I picked up the phone and called Jenna, Bill’s admin assistant, determined to expose the girl for the fraud she had to be. “Jenna, when did Bill find out about the investor meeting? Did he know about it before last night? Did he tell anyone about it?”

“I don’t think so, John. This morning when he got in, he said he was thrilled to get word from that investor group late last night.”

“Hmm,” I grumbled. That hadn’t been the answer I’d expected to hear. It certainly hadn’t been the answer I’d wanted to hear. I had thought that maybe Jane had had the inside track on this presentation, starting on it well in advance of the email, but it seemed, for now, as if she really had done it all in one night. Carl must have helped her overnight, before he had gone to the airport. I still had no idea how she had pulled off the translation, though. Some new software that could actually handle financial jargon, maybe?

“Thanks, Jenna,” I said, hanging up the phone and tossing it angrily aside. I stared at my computer and stewed.