The Billionaire's Assistant

Chapter 55

"Ok," she confirmed, "Ok." So the speech is gonna be structured around the chronology of your life story. At the end we sorta delve into how each stage of your life taught you something important that you bring to the table as the leader of Tillibenton industries, right?

Jove nodded. "That sounds good."

"So, let's start with your childhood and boarding school. What do you feel like is the most important lesson you learned there?"

"Straight to business, ok," said Jove, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms across his middle. "Alright. I think the most important thing I learned in boarding school was..." He drew out the word, thinking. "I'm really not sure. I think boarding school taught me some things I probably shouldn't of learned, a bit too much of a bubble."

Kat cocked her head. "What do you mean?"

"My time in boarding school taught me," he laughs. "I mean it basically taught me that money makes the world go round. And that sounds stupid, but it was our whole world there, what our dads did, how much they made, where they could afford to send us on breaks and what presents we came back from holidays with, those were the only things that mattered. When I started at my first boarding school my father had just started taking things over from my grandfather, but by the time I was about to graduate high school, things had really changed. My father had expanded Tillibenton industries, made a few financial gambles that paid off in major ways, and all of a sudden, after a lifetime of knowing rich people, we became the richest people I knew. Things changed so fast. My dad moved me to a better boarding school, one in Austria, and I had to leave my friends I'd been growing up with since I was a kid." He laughed dryly. "That sucked. Boarding school taught me that growth is naturally sacrificial." He laughed again, more mirthfully this time. "Does that sound dramatic? I know, I know. But as a kid I didn't want it, I didn't like it. I didn't want to stand out as the kid whose dad had the most money, I felt like it almost had nothing to do with me, like people saw me as him instead of who I actually was. So I became him I guess." He focused back on her eyes. "Does that count as a lesson?"

Kat nodded, still typing rapidly. "What about in college?" she asked as her typing slowed. "What's the biggest lesson you learned there?"

"Oh that one's easy," he replied offhandedly. "There's no joy to be had in extremes."

She looked up from the keyboard, surprised at his phraseology.

"None at all," he continued. "And for someone who could've had anything and everything however he wanted whenever he wanted it, it was an important lesson to learn, probably saved my life."

"What do you mean?" Kat asked, still staring at him as he spoke.

"Well, I get to Columbia, probably didn't deserve to get in but I was coming out of the highest ranked boarding school in the world and everybody knows who I am. Everybody wants to be friends with me, girls want to talk to me. And I'd only gone to all boys schools, I didn't know shit about girls. And I felt like, ok, they all want me, I want all of them. And I kinda got this reputation, this whole idea about me I guess, an idea that wasn't true. Because yea, I got around, but I started hearing more fake rumors about me than real ones. Stuff I'd never do, stuff I wouldn't want my mom to hear about. You know? I wasn't trying to hurt anyone, or break anyone's heart. And it was because I went from one extreme to another. There's never balance at the end of a spectrum, ya know?"

Kat nodded, deeply engaged with her notetaking forgotten.

"My last two years at Columbia I decided I needed a change, and I started taking things more seriously here," he said, gesturing widely to his office. "I basically started shadowing my dad, I'd barely show up to campus anymore except for classes or tests. I still heard stuff about myself, some rumors, some jokes, whatever, but I felt a lot better about it. About me. I felt better knowing that I'd learned the lesson I came there to learn, that I prepared myself to run Tillibenton by understanding the cost of distractions, of extremes.

I also learned." He laughed, then gave Kat a look. "Maybe don't put this next part in the speech. But I learned what a fraud most people at this level are. I couldn't tell you how many of my friends got into the school as a favor to their dad. They'd cheat, they'd have fake LSAT and MCAT scores, they'd get picked up for a DUI with no charges, they would just do anything they wanted to, anything they could get away with. I feel like I'd always known that at some level but." He shook his head slowly. "But Columbia really showed me. A lot of those assholes are running major companies now, still acting like the same drunken children on the weekend. It's," Jove frowned, looking for the word. "It's concerning."

Kat nodded again, still enthralled.

"I wanna be able to sleep at night, ya know?" said Jove, searching her eyes with his. "I want to wake up in the morning and be able to look at myself in the mirror. And if I was living like them, and doing what they do, the cheating and the lying, I just couldn't."

"So that's why you don't settle down," Kat said, the words leaving her mouth before she had time to realize she'd begun speaking.

Jove lifted an eyebrow at her and she shrank back in her seat, horrified at herself.

Jove continued to stare at her with a questioning expression in the ensuing silence and Kat only shrank back further, praying against expectation that he'd drop it and move on.

"And what do you mean by that?" Jove asked, still eyeing her.

"Nothing," said Kat quickly. "Just. You know. If you don't settle down, you can't cheat." She looked down, trailing off quietly. "So that's how you avoid it."

"I avoid cheating cause I don't wanna cheat," Jove corrected, the unreadable expression creeping back onto his face alongside a sly smile. "I just haven't found someone I don't wanna cheat on, so no settling down yet."

"You wanna cheat on every girl you meet?" Kat asked incredulously, curling her upper lip in disgust.

"I don't even want to talk to most girls I meet," Jove responded with a laugh. "Much less get to know them, much less date them, much less be exclusive with them, and much less cheat on them. I don't like them enough to want to be with them in the first place."

Kat looked down again, smiling, although she was unsure why.

"What, you're just too good for them?" she asked teasingly.

Jove shook his head. "Nope. Just." He paused long enough for her to look up at him. "Just not the right match."

They stare at each other for a moment in silence, their eyes locked together, their breath coming in tandem. Kat felt lost in the endless blue of his, as if afloat, at sea, adrift in their magnetism and downing in their deep blue swells of surf.