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“And I need to talk to her. It’s really important, Becca.”
She sighed. “Like I said, Ruth’s not here. If I think she can handle it, I’ll let her know you stopped by. She hasn’t been doing well — and she has you to thank for that.”
I deserved this turmoil. I understood Becca’s rage. But that didn’t lessen the mounting need to find Ruth and make her hear me.
It wasn’t terribly hard to track her down once I decided I’d go that route. Not with my background — and the contacts I still maintained. It didn’t matter that she refused to answer her cell. The fact that she had it on her at all meant I could find her.
And she was on campus. Strange.
I’d only half paid attention to the documentation Ruth had brought to me at the very beginning of her internship. I had more important things to do. But now I pulled up the schedule she’d emailed me and scoured the dates. There was the week off for Thanksgiving that had just passed — disastrously.
This week was reserved for lectures, meetings, presentations about the internship
experience, and preparation before finals. And it looked like Ruth’s presentation was this afternoon. Interesting.
The part of me that cared about such things wondered if the presentation was going to be a human resources disaster. I wondered if I should alert the marketing department — or if this was something my much more specialized fixer was going to handle.
I surprised myself by telling my driver to take me there. I wanted to see it for myself, in person. If my reputation was about to go down in flames, I wanted to at least warm my hands with the blaze.
I slipped into the lecture hall that had been indicated on the syllabus right as Ruth was beginning her presentation — she didn’t notice me come in.
“Before my internship, I was a big fan of Volkov Telecom — and all things Maxim Volkov,” Ruth was saying as I took an aisle seat in the last row of the lecture hall. “And what was my first lesson at my dream internship? Don’t ever meet your heroes.”
The students and professors sitting in the lecture hall tittered as Ruth paused, flashing a small, tight smile while looking at her notes. It hadn’t been a joke, but her colleagues and mentors hadn’t picked up on her turmoil.
No, the only person who would recognize it outside of Ruth would be me. And I was here to sit and take whatever she wanted to say. I owed her that much.
“Maxim Volkov is a volatile but effective figure in the telecommunications industry,” Ruth continued. “I was lucky enough to be selected by him directly to intern under him rather than my original project management internship. The time I spent with him was … illuminating.”
You would have had to know Ruth like I did to realize that the word “lucky” was loaded, and that “illuminating” could actually mean lots of things — both positive and negative.
“I didn’t expect to intern directly under Mr. Volkov,” she added. “But I learned many things from him that I would not have experienced otherwise. First among these lessons was that if there was something I wanted, I needed to seize it. Mr. Volkov’s instruction might have been unorthodox, and I might have had to think outside of the box to glean the meaning behind the lessons he was teaching me, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t valuable. They were. Too often, we try to please others before taking care of our own needs and goals. By thinking like a CEO, you narrow and sharpen your focus. You can identify the things that are important and achieve them faster than you ever thought possible.”
I let Ruth’s words wash over me, wondering what, exactly, was happening. Had I actually had a positive impact on her? Had she been able to glean meaning beyond every fucked up thing that had occurred? Did I dare to fucking hope that she didn’t hate me after all?
“But I also learned from Mr. Volkov about who I didn’t want to be as a leader in a professional setting,” she continued, and I clenched my jaw. Here it was. Here was her opportunity to smear me publicly. She deserved it. I’d stand aside and take it, even. But it wasn’t going to be easy.
Especially given I still loved her.
“Mr. Volkov was much more focused on the inner workings of his company than I thought,” Ruth continued easily. “He was involved in many business deals that I was able to witness and learn from. If I were him, I would have entrusted more day-to-day work to others and focused on passion projects that could change lives and innovate new ways to communicate.”
Was that … it? She had a chance to wound me and my precious reputation, and she simply hadn’t. My heart gave an odd little clench inside of my chest, and I knew what I needed to do.
“Thank you so much, Ms. Miracle,” a professor said warmly, joining Ruth at the podium on the floor below all the seats. “Are there any questions before we move on? Yes?”
“Volkov has a reputation as a womanizer,” some kid snarked from the second row. I wondered if I could get him in the back of the head if I aimed my phone carefully enough before throwing. “Did you ever experience anything that made you uncomfortable?”
“I don’t know that this is a very appropriate or on-topic question,” the professor began, but Ruth waved her off.
“It’s fine,” Ruth said, giving a brave smile. “I know that especially in today’s political climate, the behavior of individuals are particularly in the spotlight — whether it has anything to do with business or not.” I was only vaguely aware that I was holding my breath. “The only thing that ever made me uncomfortable during my internship under Mr. Volkov was the steep learning curve I was forced to climb. I would have thrived in my original position, but I was given the opportunity to excel in a new and unexpected way.”
“Thank you for that, Ms. Miracle,” the professor said. “Well, our time is tight, so I don’t think we’ll have a chance for anyone else—”
“I have a question.”
A few heads swiveled around to look at me in as I stood, but not many. Not, at least, until Ruth gaped at me — and her professor outright gasped.
“Why, it’s Maxim Volkov,” the professor said, her hand fluttering over her heart. “Mr. Volkov, welcome. I had no idea you were planning on being here for Ms. Miracle’s presentation. If I had known ahead of time, you would’ve gotten a better seat.”
