Chapter 1 Step-dad Assistant

Mila Pov: I stared at my reflection in the full-length mirror on the back of my door. The red pencil skirt hugging my narrow hips looked like it had been made especially for me, but I still sneered at it, loathing every inch of it and the short-sleeved, white button-down blouse I had tucked into its high waistband. I wasn’t an “executive assistant” kind of girl, but that was exactly the part I had to play today at my father’s company. Well, stepfather. He wasn’t my real dad. I reminded him of that fact more often than I had to, if only because I knew that it bothered him so much. Maybe it was cruel, but William just didn’t get me. As far as I could tell, he didn’t even try. His parenting techniques were all straight out of the books of the Eighties, where “force your kids to go to college” was at the top of the list mothers and fathers could pat themselves on the backs about. It didn’t matter to him that some people just weren’t interested in a degree, or that their real life’s passion wasn’t something that required a glorified piece of paper. From the time that William came into our lives, he made it excruciatingly clear that enrolling in a university was expected of me. When I graduated high school at eighteen, he’d chalked up my lack of follow-through in that department to needing some time off from the twelve years of school I’d just put in. But once I turned nineteen, he laid the pressure on thick. I’d eventually broke the news that I had no intention of going to college, and that I could pursue a career as an artist without the crippling loan debt or additional four years of academic agony. Not that I needed to take out any loans. William was a billionaire—literally. He owned his own company, which meant we had a very nice house in a very nice neighborhood with three very nice cars parked in the driveway, the kinds of cars usually reserved for movie stars and oil princes. There was absolutely no reason he couldn’t have paid for my tuition, if it had suited him. The problem was that it didn’t. He wanted me to learn to fend for myself, which seemed rather unfair, given that he’d probably never had to learn those lessons. He didn’t build his company, his grandfather did. “Tough love” was hard to swing when you were being a giant hypocrite about it. When I told him I wasn’t going to college, he’d gone quiet for a time, as though he genuinely didn’t understand what I was saying to him. His brows had knit together in a dark knot in the center of his forehead, and his dark eyes had suddenly lit with a fire as he began to catch on. He called my answer “unacceptable,” and I’d rolled my eyes, and we’d fought for two days straight about the condition of my future. That all led to today, where I was now about to start my first shirt as his personal assistant so that I could “better understand what fate awaited me” if I didn’t do as he said. I wasn’t going to make it easy on him, though. If he wanted to believe that I was an incompetent idiot, I’d play that part just fine. I grabbed my purse from the hook beside my mirror and threw my cell phone into it. My boyfriend, Derrick, was away for the week on a trip we were supposed to go on together, but my stepfather had seen to it that I stayed at home, instead. I hoped he and our friends were having fun without me in California. I also hoped that Derrick would find the time to text me today while I was at work. It would give me an excuse to ignore my responsibilities. I shouldered the purse and looked at myself once again in the full-length mirror, shaking my head. I’d never looked more corporate in my whole life. Parental mandate or not, I was disgusted with myself. Don’t let him get to you, I thought, wiggling my toes in my red slingback heels. This is exactly what he wants. Keep your head up and make his life a living hell. I smiled at my reflection. Raising hell was definitely something I could do, and it wasn’t corporate in any way, shape, or form. If anything was going to make me feel better, it would be ruining my stepfather’s day. The commute to my stepfather’s office didn’t take long. Although we lived in a very nice neighborhood offset from the rest of society, downtown wasn’t very far away, and neither was the enormous building he owned, Holsten Tower. It was a gargantuan skyscraper with a blinking red light at the end of its spire, one that was all but lost to the fog and cloud cover today. Great. On top of the fact that I was basically a slave to my stepfather’s whims, it was also going to look like shit outside. I wouldn’t even be able to enjoy the view. I parked in the garage and reported to security for my plastic name badge and keycard to my stepfather’s executive level. The guard there had made a big deal about it—“not many get the kind of pass you do, girl!”—but I was considerably less impressed. I got the feeling that pretty much everyone sucked up to my insufferable stepfather, either because he was unbelievably powerful or because he was unfairly handsome, but probably both. It wouldn’t have surprised me to hear that his last personal assistant had gotten the job strictly on the merits of lying on her back. But that wasn’t likely. In addition to every other ounce of perfection that slithered through his veins, William was, by all accounts, a man of integrity and honor.