Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 64704 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 324(@200wpm)___ 259(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64704 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 324(@200wpm)___ 259(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
“Fucking,” he said harshly. “Said it, Daisy.”
Nervously, I tucked my hair behind my ear. “What do you do when you're not at work?”
“Fucking.”
Frustrated, I reached for my water glass. “What do you do when you're not at work or with a woman? Do you have a sport that you like or a hobby? Maybe a television show, although I haven't watched TV in a long time.”
“Really?” He cocked his head and continued to eat. “You don't like television?”
“There was only one in the apartment, and my father was on it all the time. I watched a little when at Ralph’s, but he was on the television all the time too.”
“I don't want you say his name in my presence,” Mr. Langston said coldly. “Ever.”
Closing my eyes briefly, I took a deep breath. Everything I did tonight upset him. “What about business? I saw the merger between Jones Investments and Sealand Accounting. That takes two medium businesses and turns them into a giant. They're the biggest rival now for Berringer. Stocks are going up. Clients are raving about the perks, and their new customer sign-on bonus is hard to beat.”
“You follow business news?” he murmured. “Why?”
“I don't really follow it, but it was headline news for weeks. Hard to miss. I actually applied to the Berringer internship program when I graduated high-school,” I said before taking a bit of my food.
The creamy pasta was delicious, but I was far too nervous to really enjoy it. Instead, I just shoveled it in automatically while talking. I'm sure it was a beautiful sight.
“You didn't get it?”
“Oh, no. I did.” I wiped my mouth. “But to keep the internship, I had to go to college, and that just wasn't in the cards.”
“But you applied anyways?” he stared at me over his glass of wine. “Why?”
“I applied for student loans. I got into NYU, but when my father found out, he forbade me to go.” I cringed at the memory. “Couldn’t continue to work full-time if I was in college, and he wasn't working at the time. We had to pay the rent somehow.”
“So your father made you give up a bright future where you could have pulled in way more money than you make working at the Weiner Hut—”
“Grill,” I interrupted him.
“—all because he was too lazy to get a job. And you let him do that to you?”
I didn't tell Mr. Langston about my college and intern opportunity so that he could judge me. I just wanted to have a conversation. “My father is my family. He was devastated when my mother died.”
“I doubt that very much.”
“And I was living there. I needed to pull my weight.” I gripped my fork tightly. “Anyway, back to Berringer.”
A ghost of a smile played on his lips. “Berringer has been King in this city for decades, but they could stand to be shaken up a little. This new merger is going to do just that, but they're a long way from taking the crown. People will talk about it for a while, but Jones and Sealand will get greedy. They'll make a few mistakes, and Berringer will be back on top again. It's not the first time that another investment company has risen up to try to take their place.”
“You know the market well. I guess that you should. Your company would be indirectly affected, right?”
Mr. Langston shrugged. “We have our own internal team that handles the kind of cash that Berringer might take on, but they're capable of handling more, and we have a few clients that we sometimes nudge in that direction. That sort of back-scratching works both ways, but it's not a big enough issue that would make or break me.”
The conversation lulled. I had nothing else to say and focused instead on my dinner.
“You're still young. It's not too late for you to go to college. That ten grand that Ralph is going to give you could pay for a semester,” Mr. Langston said.
“I thought about that,” I admitted, scraping my fork against the plate. “But I don't think that R…that he wants me to go to college. He's got a brighter future than me, and I would be better suited in supporting him.”
“You don't have to support anyone, Daisy. You're eighteen. You just have to focus on yourself. You've only been dating him for a little while. Why are you letting him run your life?”
I popped my head up and nearly snorted. That was rich coming from the man who bought me and left me a letter of instructions every morning. For the next month, he owned me, and he was going to lecture me on letting a man run my life?
There was a glimmer of regret in his eyes. Almost like he realized how ironic his lecture was, but he didn't apologize. Instead, he quietly finished his dinner and pushed his plate away. Slowly, I rose to clear the table.