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“It’s better inside,” Victor pointed out, his voice playful. Danielle smiled and shook off her stunned amazement enough to step through the door. There was a shoe rack just at the end of the entryway, and she glanced at Victor; he was slipping his own shoes off, so she followed suit.
The apartment was even more luxurious past the entryway than her first look had given her the ability to anticipate: the main space of the apartment was huge, with a fireplace that was—since it was late summer—clean and dormant, but which took up most of one of the walls, of which there seemed to be two hallways flanking it.
In front of it was an enormous couch that might as well have been a bed, but the living room area itself was so large that it just looked proportionate. To her left, Danielle saw the kitchen, fully equipped with appliances and furnishings that wouldn’t have seemed out of place in a high-end restaurant.
“Do you cook?” she asked Victor as they moved towards the couch, gesturing to the kitchen. He nodded.
“Not a whole lot, but I do like cooking,” he said. “Then, too, it’s more convenient on the nights when I have a private chef come in to do dinner—for business meals, things like that—to have something they can really work with.”
“So just how rich are you? I know that’s a rude question to ask, but…” Danielle gestured around the sprawling penthouse apartment. “I kind of feel like I have to ask at this point.”
“I have 30 billion dollars to my name,” Victor said. “Not as great as Jeff Bezos, but doing better than a lot of other people.” Danielle let out a low whistle.
“I honestly can’t even imagine ever having access to that kind of money,” she said, shaking her head. She sat down on the couch and looked around her. With that kind of money, she thought, doing mental math in shorthand, she could—if she had it—spend millions every day and probably still never go broke for the rest of her life. She could flat-out give half of it to random strangers, and she would still never go broke, and still never want for anything. It was a realm of wealth that was almost terrifying.
“I definitely wasn’t planning on it when it happened,” Victor said. “I had hoped at best to become a millionaire—and to pay off the Sokolovs for their investment in my idea—but then it just sort of...exploded.” Danielle nodded, not really understanding but at least wanting to.
“You could spend over a million dollars a day and never go broke,” she pointed out. Victor nodded.
“I know. It’s sort of…” He shook his head and sighed. “I think about it sometimes, when I can. How it’s more money than anyone could ever manage to spend short of literally just giving it away.”
“How do you deal with that?”
Victor grinned. “Well, I have a system. It’s just a drop in the barrel, but I like the thought of at least doing something with all this money,” he told her. “I pick ten fundraisers—GoFundMe or whichever platform—a day and donate the amount they need for their goal anonymously. I’m looking into some more charity endeavors. I’ve bought out about half a million dollars in student loan debt and forgiven it.”
He shrugged. “I really need someone in my employ whose only job would be finding ways to get rid of my money.” Danielle laughed.
“That is a hell of a thing to need,” she said. Victor chuckled with her.
“What about you? I know you’re not involved with any of the families, so what do you do?” Danielle shrugged.
“Right now, I’m a receptionist,” she said. “It’s a shitty job, and it pays just a little bit more than minimum wage, but it’s enough to keep me afloat—and it’s better than what I was doing in the Bey family. Or what I might have ended up doing.”
“So, you were involved with them in the past?” Danielle shrugged again.
“I did some basic stuff,” she said. “Went on dates with guys who needed a legit-looking woman on their arm. I’m pretty sure my brother was using me as cover for whatever it was he was up to tonight. Things like that.” She tucked her feet underneath her legs, pulling her knees up onto the couch. “I got out before I could get pulled deeper in—to do stuff I already knew I didn’t want to do.”
“That was smart of you,” Victor said. He stood. “Do you want something to drink? Water? Coffee?” He smiled slightly. “I have alcohol too, but I think we’ve both had enough for at least the next hour or so.”
“I’d love some coffee,” Danielle told him. She watched him go into the kitchen and spotted the rather impressive-looking coffee machine just before he went to it.
“Decaf or regular?” Danielle rolled her eyes.
“Decaf is for wimps,” she told him.
“Just my thinking, too—but I keep it around in case I have any wimps in my apartment,” Victor told her. A few moments later she heard the telltale sounds of coffee brewing, and the sharp fragrance wafted over in her direction. She was beginning to relax and feel a little better about inadvertently ending up in the company of a billionaire. He seemed—she thought—like more or less of a normal guy, in spite of having more money than God.
“I’m assuming that you don’t see the Sokolovs often,” Danielle said, once Victor came back with two cups of coffee, along with a pitcher of half-and-half and a bowl of sugar cubes.
“Not all that often, no,” Victor said. “They leave me alone since I paid them back for their initial investment in my company.”
“So, that’s your connection to them?” Victor shrugged.
“That’s what more or less started my connection to them,” he said. “Mostly we stay clear of each other nowadays—I owe them nothing, they have no hold on me. I’m kind of a success story, in that I earned them back twice what they spent on me; they invite me to dinner or for drinks now and then, occasionally if they have a legit business they’re interested in working with, they come to me—things like that.” Danielle
nodded; while she wasn’t on the inside, she could see how it would work.
“In theory at least, we really should have never met,” Danielle pointed out with a wry little smile. She finished stirring the milk and sugar into her coffee and took a sip.
