Chapter 28: The Terrible Inconvenience of Being Friends with a Billionaire

“Done! Finally,” Octavia yawned, stretching her arms over her head. She looked out the window of her office and regarded the pitch-black sky disinterestedly.

She then forced herself to glance at her watch. It was 10:30.

Octavia scrunched up her face in frustration before she closed the lid of her laptop. She picked up the handset on the phone sitting on her desk and dialed a number. She got an answer on the third ring.

“Well?” Raemon said.

“I finally finished checking all the code for the new project. It’s all categorized for you to review,” Octavia explained, letting her body sink back into her chair.

“Some pretty awesome stuff your software designers have come up with, by the way. Especially for the newest laptop model coming out. I can’t believe it’s going to be able to process that many gigabytes—”

“I’ll pass on your message to the designers when I see them,” Raemon interrupted. “I need you to deliver the code to me.”

“I was getting to that,” Octavia said with an injured sniff. “I’ll send you the files right now.”

“No,” Raemon said, “bring them to me.”

“Bring?” Octavia said.

“Yes, that is what I said. Deliver them to me. Now.”

“Now?”

Raemon sighed. “Yes. Now. Are there any other words I just said that I need to clarify for you?”

“But it’s like ten thirty p.m. I don’t even know where you are!” Octavia said.

“I’m finishing up dealing with a robot malfunction issue at a plant inspection outside the city,” Raemon began.

“How do you expect me to get to one of your plants?” Octavia whined.

“I don’t. I’ll be heading back to my home in a few minutes. Yosef will arrive at the building in thirty minutes to pick you up and bring you to my house.

“You’ll leave the files and the device they are on with me.”

“Oh,” Octavia said, “um, why can’t I just send them to you?”

“Octavia, the code you’ve been looking at is the key to every product Icarus will release in the next few years. Do you have any idea how many people are trying to get their hands on it?

“I would never risk having something that valuable sent to me over a network where anyone could intercept it,” Raemon said.

Octavia said, “You have some of the best security on these devices. Who’d be able to hack this?”

“You of all people should know the answer to that question,” Raemon responded dryly. “I will see you in an hour.”

The phone went silent, and Octavia sighed as she set the handset back in its cradle.

While she waited for the driver to arrive, she took the opportunity to visit the ladies’ room. The building was quiet, but not deathly still.

Octavia hadn’t been surprised to see that a handful of people remained at their desks long into the night.

She walked by cubicles where pale office workers sat, sleeves rolled up, heels removed and tossed under desks, and take-out boxes scattered over the few empty spots on their work surfaces.

A janitor rolled his cart through the aisles, stopping to observe them and shaking his head in dismay before picking up a dust rag to wipe down some of the glass walls.

In the bathroom, Octavia was relieved to find the cleaning staff had already gone through it. The room smelled like bleach and citrus, instead of how it usually smelled at the end of a long workday.

She faced her reflection in the wide mirrors over the row of sinks and cringed.

Her hair, which had been combed out into a simple Afro that morning, was sticking out in places where she’d scratched her head in deep thought while going over the code.

Her face was oily, her eyes red, and when she bared her teeth, she could see green specks from her pesto-chicken salad lunch wedged between a few of her teeth.

The oversized turquoise knit sweater she was wearing was insanely wrinkled, and her jeans had a few faint, pesto-like stains around the thighs.

“Fuck it,” Octavia said to herself with a shrug. She ran her hands through her hair to make the dissonance of her Afro more uniform, then gargled some water hoping that would clear away the pesto.

A few paper towels dabbed on her nose and cheeks took a little of the shine away. She smiled at her improved reflection. It was at least 10% less cringey. Success.

She then went back to her desk to collect her things. She slung her book bag over one arm and picked up her laptop in the other hand, then headed to the elevator.

Throwing herself onto the lounging chairs, she took out her phone and opened up the rotten-fruit-slinging game she downloaded for times like this.

She had beaten the sixty-fifth level when Yosef walked into the lobby. He escorted her out the door, holding it open for her as she stepped into the chilly night air.

“How’s life, Yosef?” Octavia asked from the backseat of the gigantic SUV.

Yosef, a quiet, pleasant older man, let his weathered ebony face smile, the silver sideburns curling upward with the motion. He glanced in the rearview mirror.

“Not bad, Octavia, not bad,” he said with a slight twinge of a Caribbean accent.

“Sucks that you have to drive me around this late at night,” Octavia said.

Yosef shrugged. “I was on call. Most of the time Mr. Kentworth doesn’t need me. This was a surprise. A happy surprise, of course.”

“Aww, thanks!” Octavia said. “Marianne and the kids doing okay?”

Yosef was all too happy to abandon his quiet ways to talk about his family. Today’s exciting news was his youngest son starting college.

His parents were beyond thrilled to have a future doctor in the family.

As he talked, the car wove through the dense city night traffic until Yosef was able to turn off to the highway.

A few minutes later, they exited, and Octavia found herself coasting over long, winding roads overlooking the city.

She tore her eyes from the lights to look at the houses nestled like gleaming trinkets in a bouquet of the lush vegetation surrounding them.

Trinkets wasn’t quite the word one would use to describe them, of course. As they got closer to each building, Octavia realized they were mansions.

Soft, golden exterior lights illuminated just enough of the archways and columns making up the front of the houses to let anyone know (in case they didn’t already) that this was where the 1% lived.

“We go to visit Gerry next week,” Yosef said, pulling up to an iron gate at the end of a long, tree-lined driveway.

“That’s great,” Octavia said, watching the iron gate slide to one side on its own.

Ahead of them, trimmed trees and bushes covered the landscape surrounding the long driveway Yosef was steering the car down.

Up ahead, Octavia stared at the brown-beige mansion sitting in golden splendor at the center of the grounds.

Of all the mansions she’d seen in the past few minutes, this one was the biggest. It made the rest seem like dollhouses.

“I hope you have a good trip,” Octavia said once Yosef had pulled into the covered driveway.

Yosef nodded warmly to Octavia. “Say hello to Mr. Kentworth for me. I’d ask you to thank him too, but I’ll do that myself when I next see him.”

“Thank him?” Octavia said.

“Yes, for Gerry’s education. He’s on the company college scholarship, you know. They give out scholarships to employees’ children,” Yosef said.

“I had no idea. That’s awesome, though,” she said.

“No way we could afford med school without it,” Yosef said. “It was one of Mr. Kentworth’s brilliant ideas.”

That did strike Octavia as somewhat strange, but she didn’t say anything to Yosef. She insisted he didn’t have to open the door for her and instead hopped out of the car before he could protest.

At the entrance, the double doors were opened from the inside, and a brown-skinned, curly-haired matronly woman dressed in a gray uniform with a white apron stood before her.

“Hello,” she said pleasantly, “you must be Octavia.”

“Yes,” Octavia replied.

“I’m Mrs. Santos, the housekeeper. Please come in,” she said, ushering Octavia into the house.