Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 69858 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69858 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
“I’d have a job,” he says with complete confidence. “Just not this one.”
“Look, if you’re worried I resent you for it, I really really don’t,” I say truthfully. “I can’t imagine anything more mind-numbing than being a middle-manager. The job’s all yours, okay?”
Thomas crosses his arms, and looks annoyed, but says nothing.
“No comeback?” I say, almost a little regretfully.
“None that are appropriate to say to a subordinate in the office,” he grumbles, before turning away and continuing towards our meeting.
Christina’s office door is open, and she waves us in.
“Mac. Thomas, morning,” she says distractedly, as we sit across from her. “Sorry about the last-minute early-morning meeting invite.”
“Not a problem,” I lie.
I mean it is, but Christina is sort of my idol. Sometimes I feel bombarded by the message that a woman’s life isn’t complete until she finds a life partner and has kids, or at least a dog. As though it doesn’t matter how great our career, how incredible our friends, or how happy we are—the message is clear: we’ll be just a bit happier when we shackle ourselves to one person forever and ever.
I don’t buy it, and neither, apparently, does Christina.
There is, however, a crucial difference between us: Christina doesn’t just want to climb the corporate ladder, she wants to dominate it. That’s not my scene.
“Okay, so before we get down to it,” Christina says, placing a sheet of paper in front of both Thomas and myself. “I’m going to need you both to sign these.”
I glance down, my surprise at the document bubbling to the surface. “An NDA?”
I’ve worked at Elodie for years now, and I’ve never been asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement. I always just sort of assumed that all the new-employee paperwork we sign before we start work covers the whole, “You can’t talk about this to anyone outside the company” thing.
Thomas is carefully reading the document, because, of course he is. To be honest, I’m more of a skim-and-sign kind of gal, especially when it comes to jibberish legalese I don’t understand. Not wanting to look like an idiot, I read it as well, and surprise surprise, I understand only about 15 percent of it.
Luckily, Christina spells out the important parts for us. “What we’re going to talk about today doesn’t go outside this building, it doesn’t even go outside this office,” she emphasizes. “To say that you two are on a very short list of need-to-know is an understatement.”
Curiosity begins to smooth the edges of my hangover as Christina continues.
“You can’t discuss this with your colleagues, your subordinates, not even my bosses. Got it?” she says, looking between us.
Thomas and I both nod. He signs his document with a pen pulled from his suit breast pocket, because Christina didn’t offer us one. I lift my purse to my lap and begin to dig through it, looking for a pen of my own, since Christina’s desk is the very definition of minimalist, and there’s no pen cup in sight.
I rifle through the mess of my bag: a tampon, another tampon, lip gloss, a bobby pin . . . a half-eaten PowerBar that I can’t remember opening, so it must be ancient . . .
But no pen.
I feel something poke against my bicep, and glance over to the pen Thomas is holding out. I accept it, because let’s be real, my purse search could go on for days and still come up empty.
The pen Thomas hands me is a fancy fountain pen. Pretentious, just like its owner.
I sign my name and hand the pen back to him, and he slides the pen back into his pocket as Christina takes our NDAs. The moment she sets the documents in a folder, her face seems to light with excitement. Obviously she’s dying to share the exclusive news.
“So.” She leans towards us a little. “It just became official over the weekend. Elodie is acquiring Carbon & Shine.”
“Whoa,” I blurt out, genuinely surprised. This is one of those bits of news that outside of the biz would barely cause a ripple, but inside the biz is a bit of a tidal wave.
I’ll explain. Elodie—my company—is old-school fancy. We’ve been around forever and are one of the oldest and best known high-end jewelry companies in the world. Imagine Elodie like you would one of those British actresses with Dame in their name: they’ve been around forever and keep getting better with age.
Carbon & Shine, more often known as C&S, is the Lady Gaga of diamonds. Young, edgy, and breaking all the rules. Walking into an Elodie store feels a bit like being frozen in time, and that’s very intentional. We sell timeless. Classic.
Carbon & Shine has turned the jewelry retail experience upside down. Instead of sales people in conservative suits and pencil skirts and polos, you’ll find tattoos and leather jackets. Instead of Sinatra softly crooning about flying to the moon, you’ll hear a song you don’t recognize, because the store knows what’s going to be cool way before it’s actually cool.