The Billioniare's Fake Forever

SOPHIE

My phone went off at seven thirty and I genuinely considered throwing it out the window.

I had been asleep for maybe four hours. Piano lessons the night before had run late because my teacher believed strongly in the philosophy of one more time until it is perfect, and by the time I had gotten home, eaten and actually laid down it was well past two in the morning. My body had opinions about being woken up at seven thirty on a tuesday and none of them were polite.

I grabbed the phone without opening my eyes fully.

“Jade,” I muttered.

I stared at the name for a second. Then I picked up.

“It is seven thirty,” I pointed out.

“I know, I know, I know, but Sophie I cannot do this,” she rushed out.

“Jade,” I sighed.

She clapped back immediately. “No listen to me Sophie, I genuinely cannot. I have been up since five and I have read my notes so many times they stopped making sense about an hour ago and I—”

“Jade calm down,” I muttered.

“I think I am going to cancel,” she admitted.

I sat up. “You are not going to cancel.”

“I cancelled the last two and I was fine,” she argued.

“You were not fine. You cried into a bowl of cereal for forty minutes and made me watch,” I reminded her.

“That was closure,” she insisted.

“That was a waste of good cereal,” I shot back, pushing my hair off my face and swinging my legs over the side of the bed. “You are not cancelling. You have been preparing for two weeks. You know this stuff better than the people who are going to interview you.”

“What if I freeze?” she asked.

“You will not freeze,” I assured her.

“What if I say something stupid?” she pressed.

“You say something stupid every day and people still like you,” I told her.

“Sophie that is not—”

“Jade,” I cut in, standing up. “Stop talking. I am coming with you.”

A pause. “You do not have to do that,” she said more quietly.

“I know I do not have to,” I replied.

“Sophie seriously you do not—”

I had already ended the call.

I moved through the morning quickly. My room was just the right amount of mess.. wigs and clothes on the chair, books in a reasonable pile, the particular organised chaos of someone who knows where everything is even if nobody else would. I pulled on jeans and a nice top and the jacket I liked and dragged a brush through my hair and called it done.

In the kitchen I grabbed a cereal bar from the counter on my way past.

“Where are you going?”

My mum’s voice came from the direction of the sitting room. I paused at the front door.

“Jade has an interview,” I called back.

“Does Jade know you are coming?”

“She will in a minute.”

I heard my mum say something else but I was already closing the door behind me.

Jade was outside her building when I arrived, standing very straight with her bag held in both hands in front of her, looking like someone who was actively preventing herself from running.

“You came,” she said.

“Did you think I would not?”

“I half thought you would call from your bed and just talk me through it.”

“I considered it,” I said honestly. “Then I remembered you cry when you are nervous and I did not want to do that over the phone.” I straightened her collar. It did not need straightening but she needed something to happen. “You look great. You know everything. You are going to walk in there and be so good they feel lucky.”

Jade looked at me. “You genuinely believe that.”

“I genuinely believe that.”

She took a breath. Let it out slowly. “Okay,” she said. “Okay.”

We got a cab.

Kane Industries was a lot of building.

I had seen impressive buildings before but this one had a particular quality to it. Like every piece of glass and steel had been placed specifically to make you aware that whatever you were coming in to do, this place had been doing important things long before you arrived.

Jade went a shade paler when she saw the building.

“Do not,” I warned.

“I was not going to say anything,” she replied.

“Your face was saying something,” I pointed out.

“I am fine,” she insisted.

“You are fine,” I echoed.

We went in.

The lobby was beautiful as everything gleamed. People moved through it with the quiet purposeful ease of people who belonged here without needing to prove it. I found a seat near the side, settled in, and unwrapped my cereal bar.

Jade looked at it.

“The coffee here is eight pounds,” I said.

“How do you know that?”

“I looked it up. I have standards.”

She almost smiled. I steered her toward the security gate, told her she looked excellent, told her she knew everything she needed to know. She straightened her spine and walked through and I watched her go and then sat back down.

I took a bite of my cereal bar and looked around.

Across the lobby a woman in a corner was working through what appeared to be a full burger at nine in the morning and I respected the commitment even as I judged it silently.

I pulled out my phone and sent a text to jade.

“You have got this. Stop thinking and just talk.”

Jade: I am going to be sick.

Me: You say that every time.

She didn’t reply after that which was a good sign. It meant she was already inside.

I put my phone in my lap and looked around properly for the first time.

That was when I saw him.

He was crossing the lobby toward the lifts, tall and dark-suited, moving at the unhurried pace of someone who has never once had to rush anywhere in his life. Two assistants were half a step behind him talking and he was listening without looking at them, his eyes moving across the lobby.

Then his eyes landed on me.

And he stopped.

Not dramatically. Not in a way the whole lobby noticed. Just.. stopped. Mid-stride. His eyes were on my face with an intensity that was, frankly, a lot for a Thursday morning in a building lobby.

I looked back at him as I started to feel nervous was there cereal on my face? I resisted the urge to check. I raised my eyebrows slightly instead. A very clear what?

He did not answer it.

He blinked once then looked away and begun walking to the lifts.

I watched him go for a second. then I looked back at my cereal bar.

“Well, that was strange.” I thought to myself.

After about Forty five minutes later Jade came through the security gate looking like a completely different human being.

The stiffness was gone in her was gone, her eyes shone bright with the particular relief.

I stood up. “Well?”

“I think—” she started, then stopped, pressing her lips together like she was trying to contain something. “Sophie I think it went well.”

“I knew it.”

“No but actually well. Like the panel were engaged and one of them asked me a follow up question about my last project and I just—” she exhaled. “I just talked. Like you said. I just talked.”

“Because you know it,” I said. “I told you.”

“Do not do the I told you face.”

“I am not doing a face.”

“You are absolutely doing a face.” She grabbed my arm and we pushed through the revolving doors out onto the pavement and the morning air hit us both and Jade laughed, properly laughed, the kind that had been building since she sat down across from that panel.

“Okay so the second question,” she said, already talking fast, “they asked about cross-platform strategy and I was so nervous I almost started with the wrong example but then I remembered what I had practised and I just—”

She stepped off the kerb.

She did not look.

A black car coming out of the underground exit to our left stopped hard. it was not a collision.. Just very, very close. I grabbed her arm and yanked her back and we both stumbled and the world paused for that specific second that near misses produce.

The driver was out of the car before it had fully stopped.

“What is wrong with you people? Do you not look where you are going? You just walk into traffic like—”

Jade was frozen. Still in shock, one hand over her mouth.

“Excuse me?” I turned to face him fully. “Your car came out of an underground exit without checking whether anyone was on the pavement. That is not our fault. That is your fault. Entirely. So before you stand there pointing fingers maybe check who actually caused this.”

The driver opened his mouth.

“Do not,” I added when he opened his mouth. “I watched the whole thing. Your car. Your exit. Your responsibility.”

He closed his mouth.

Just then, the back door of the car opened and a tall figure got out from the car.

I recognised him immediately. The height, the suit, that same quality of complete self-containment. He looked at Jade first.. one quick check to make sure she was standing and then his eyes moved to me.

That thing happened again. The same as the lobby. Something shifted in his expression..

In the commotion Jade’s bag strap had caught on the edge of the car door when she lurched back. The bag was fine but the strap was done.

He noticed it before I had fully processed it. He said something quiet to his driver who immediately stopped looking like he wanted to argue. Then he reached into his jacket and took out a card.

He held it out to me.

I looked at the card then at him.

“I apologise for the near miss,” he said. “My office will arrange a replacement for the strap. Call that number.”

“Next time,” I said, taking the card, “maybe your driver checks before pulling out.”

Something moved at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile. “I will pass that on,” he replied.

He held my gaze for one second with that same full attention, that same thing I could not name and got back in the car.

Jade turned to me with an expression that had completely forgotten it was ever relieved about an interview.

“Who,” she said, “was that?”

I looked at the card then pocketed it. “No idea.”

“Sophie. He gave the card to you. Not me. My bag is the one that broke.”

“His office will sort it.”

“He was looking at you like he wanted to eat you up!” Jade said, and her voice had taken on a tone I recognised immediately and did not appreciate before ten in the morning.

“Sophie.”

“Jade.”

“He likes you.” She said it with complete certainty. “You should give him a call with that card!!”

“You spent forty five minutes in an interview and somehow have opinions about how this man looks at people.” I said.

“I have eyes and I used them.” She grinned. “You went red just now.”

“I did not,” I denied.

“You are literally red.”

“It is cold,” I said.

“It is not cold.”

“Can we talk about your interview?” I steered.

She laughed. “Fine. But I am right.”

She was annoyingly triumphant all the way to the car park till we parted.

**********

Here you go, same treatment, clean variation, nothing else touched:

⸻

I was in my room that night, halfway through teaching myself a card trick I had seen on YouTube that was significantly harder than it looked. I had been at it for forty minutes. The cards kept going wrong in slightly different ways each time which was almost impressive.

I was so focused I did not even register my phone buzzing on the bed until it had been going for a few seconds.

Unknown number.

I almost ignored it. Then I picked up.

“Hello?” I answered.

“Miss Reeves.”

I frowned. “Yes?”

“Elliot Kane.”

I put the cards down.

The lobby. The car. That look. All of it came back in about two seconds flat.

“We met this afternoon,” he said.

“Twice,” I noted.

“Yes. Twice.” A brief pause. “I apologise for reaching out directly. My office contacted your friend for your number.”

I stared at the ceiling.

Jade.

Jade.

“She was very happy to share it apparently,” he added.

“I am sure she was,” I replied flatly.

“I have something I would like to discuss with you. An offer.”

“What kind of offer?” I asked.

“Not a conventional one. I would rather explain in person.”

“It is not a job?” I checked.

“No. Something else entirely. Something I think you might find interesting.” A pause. “One hour of your time. Tomorrow morning. Mercer Street. If you hear me out and it is not for you, my office will still sort the bag and you will never hear from me again.”

I looked at the scattered cards on my bed.

“One hour,” I agreed. “And I am leaving at sixty minutes exactly whether you are done or not.”

“Understood.”

“And tell your office not to go through my friends for my number again,” I added.

“Noted.” The line went dead.

I sat there for a second. Then I grabbed my phone and texted Jade: I am going to actually kill you.

Three innocent face emojis. Immediately.

I put the phone down.

An offer. Not conventional. From a man who had stopped walking when he saw my face and still had not explained why.

What, I thought, have I just agreed to?

SOPHIE

I was awake before all night just staring at the ceiling, not even because I was excited.. Because my brain had decided at some point during the night that today was worth losing sleep over and I had not been consulted about that decision and was not pleased about it.

I laid there telling myself I was not nervous about breakfast with a man I did not know. I was simply awake. Those were two completely different things.

Just then my phone rang, I picked it up immediately just to see it was Jade.

I sat up immediately, I had been waiting for her call since last night. Three innocent face emojis was what she had sent me like she had not just handed my number to a billionaire’s office like it was a library card.

I picked up, ready to completely scream at her.

“Jade I cannot believe you just gave my number out like that, do you know how—” I started.

“I did not get the job,” she cut in.