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“Burger’s good,” she said as she held up her food.
I giggled and shook my head as I grabbed my drink.
“Are you really that worried about me?” I asked.
Katie took a massive bite of her burger, taking time to gather her words.
“I just don’t want you to be blindsided by him again. You were an eighteen-year-old girl smitten with a junior college student at a Halloween party. You followed him around like a slobbering little puppy dog. You’re a strong woman now. You stand on your own two feet. I don’t want to see you reduced back to that little girl just because he’s back in your life,” she said.
“Trust me, I’m stronger than that. I was beaten down my freshman year of high school because of arguments I had with my mother. You know this. She wanted me to go to the community college up the road from home, and I wanted to be in Seattle at the university.”
“But I know you fell in love with him, Olivia.”
I sipped on my drink, occupying my lips so I wouldn’t have to talk about it. How much ending things with Brett hurt, despite the rocky relationship we’d had over the four years we were together.
“That’s the last thing I’ll say about it. All I want you to do is take care of yourself, okay?” Katie asked.
“And you know I always do,” I said.
“Except when it came to Brett. He was always your weak spot.”
“Well, things change. People change. Weak spots change.”
“For your sake, Olivia, I hope they have.”
But even as I rolled my eyes again at her, I knew she had a point. If someone wasn’t telling me Brett was an asshole, they were telling me he was cheating. Or that his family was stuck-up. Or that he loved money more than anything else. I knew better, though. I’d known a sweeter side of him no one else had ever seen. It was why I always rose to his defense. I wanted to think I wasn’t weak to him any longer, but I wasn’t sure if that was true. Hell, he’d been on my mind all morning as I sat ten floors below him in the office building he owned for his damn company.
That didn’t exactly spell out “strong, independent woman” to me.
“Earth to Olivia. You there?” Katie asked.
“Hmm? Yeah. Sorry. Just running down my week in my head,” I said.
“You know I know when you’re lying, right?”
“I’m not lying.”
“You’re so lying to me. And that’s fine. Just make sure you don’t lie to yourself. That got you into trouble the first time. We don’t need any repeat affairs while trying to figure out a new job,” she said.
I didn’t even try to fight her on that truth.
2
Brett
“In a word, ‘international,’” I said.
“You want to take the company international,” my investor said.
“Yes. I do. I think we’re ready. It’s what we’ve been building to for years. The past three, at least. My company is ready.”
“What makes you so sure?”
I turned my head, looking over at the shark of an investor sitting to my left. “Do you know how many American citizens live abroad, either for school, for work, or for dual-citizenship purposes?”
“How many?”
“Over twenty million. Twenty million Americans who don’t have a chance in the world of utilizing what my company has to give simply because they don’t live in the States. I think that’s a travesty. Don’t you?” I asked.
“And yet you have three hundred and twenty million Americans right here in the States.”
“Gerald, Greyson Consulting was picked as the number one national financial consulting firm. The issue is that I want that word to be ‘global.’ I want to be the number one global financial consulting firm. And I don’t want to just consult Americans. I want to dip into all the marketplaces. Those that have failed their citizens, like Italy, and Greece. These economies are collapsing. They could use a savior.”
“And you think you’re that savior.”
I shook my head. “No. But I know my company is.”
“What you’re proposing is outstanding. It’s never been done before.”
I grinned. “Exactly. I want to do what no financial consulting firm has ever been able to do before. And it starts with taking Greyson Consulting global with the same promise to American citizens we’ve already made. I made the promise of my company its slogan for a reason: ‘All money. No boundaries.’ What kind of firm would we be if we started instilling boundaries now?”
I’d been in New York City for two fucking weeks trying to get my investors on board with my idea. And finally, I think I had them. Once I got them on board, it was simply a matter of explaining to them why we needed to take on another investor or two. It would take more capital than ever required before to get this part of my company up and running. Taking anything international was never a small task. And even the smallest tasks required the greatest money.
