The Billionaire From Philly

But they hadn’t. Instead, they’d spent the night together, getting clean and then having sex as many times as they could both stand before they fell asleep in his bed with their limbs still tangled. The next morning, Danielle had joined him for breakfast and then left him on just as friendly terms as she’d met him with at the beginning of the night, and the following Monday she’d reported to work as if almost nothing had changed between them.

But Victor had noticed that there was one change: their sex together was only getting hotter, more passionate—and, he thought idly, more frequent. It would almost be a problem, except for the fact that Victor had plenty of help to take up the slack, and Danielle was superb enough at her job of spending his money on helping others that he was almost certain that she could take an entire week off and still have a list of names, organizations, charities, and projects for him to spend money on.

Now that she’d been with him over a month, Danielle had moved out of just compiling reports and information and into properly spending his actual money, with Victor providing minimal approval; he barely looked over the reports she gave him, confident that she had done her due diligence, and signed off on everything readily.

It felt good, knowing that some of his wealth was going back into the community, helping people who hadn’t had the same level of luck he had had—and Victor knew that it was mostly luck that had seen him into the position he found himself in. He’d gotten a report from his accountant about the first expenditures that Danielle has made, and everything was exactly as it should be; he was more than happy to let her do more or less as she saw fit with the budget he had for her.

“Might as well go home, Vic, you’re not getting anything done,” he told himself, glancing at the time. He could order from Zahav before he left and pick it up on his way home and get back to the apartment in time to watch some of the new episodes of Black Mirror on Netflix. You know you’d rather invite Danielle over and share dinner with her, maybe lay around a little while and then go to bed together, he thought, and almost as quickly pushed the thought out of his mind.

Things were fine between him and Danielle—but he knew that it was a bad idea to push them to try and make them go faster. So far, she was perfectly happy in her current role working for him, and the date hadn’t changed that; he didn’t want to risk making her feel cornered by coming on too strong too quickly.

He wasn’t sure when it was that he’d realized he had actual feelings towards Danielle, beyond just liking to have sex with her and wanting to do her a solid by giving her a lucrative job working for him. It was—he thought vaguely—sometime after she had started working for him, and before the date they’d gone on together, but something about the date had solidified the abstract, vague feelings he had for her into something a little more specific, though he still wasn’t entirely sure what to call what he felt for her.

Victor shut down his computer, made sure that he had his wallet, keys, and phone, and rose from his desk, deciding that rather than ordering from the high-end Israeli restaurant he would have something delivered to his building instead. His

usual nighttime plans suddenly seemed so lonely, so lacking compared to the way they’d appeared to him before things had started with Danielle, and Victor wasn’t sure how to tackle that problem. You could get an actual girlfriend, his mind suggested, but Victor didn’t want an “actual girlfriend”—not unless it was Danielle.

He stopped just short of the door to his office at that realization. He’d known for weeks that he had wanted to spend time with Danielle outside of their work hours, and he’d known that waking up with Danielle in the bed next to him was the best feeling he’d had in a while, but he had shied away from thinking about the specifics of that feeling, and what it would mean. “Just admit it to yourself: you’re into her,” he said quietly in the silence of the office. “And you at least partly gave her the job so that you could spend more time with her.” Victor stood for a moment and let that knowledge settle in his mind.

The question that accompanied that fact—now that he recognized it—was what he would do about it. Danielle had responded well to the date, and seemed to be interested in the idea of another celebration when she’d been working for him for two months; but did that mean that she would welcome the idea of having an actual relationship with him? She hadn’t made any forward moves herself, after all.

Victor continued out of his office and towards the elevator, ready to get back to his apartment, even if he knew he’d only feel restless and bored once he got there. By the time he’d reached the ground floor of the building, Victor had begun to think about how he could broach the topic of his feelings with Danielle.

“Excuse me! Excuse me, Mr. Andersson!” While he wasn’t precisely famous, since he was a billionaire Victor had grown accustomed to the occasional paparazzo accosting him; every once in a while some magazine or another wanted to do a story on wealthy people under 40, or ones living in unusual places—and while Philadelphia was a major city, and certainly he wasn’t the only billionaire living there, there were not very many others, especially compared to places like New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and so on.

“Yeah?” Victor only slightly paused on his way to his car.

“I just want to ask you a couple of questions, if I can,” the man said. He had a badge for one of the smaller national magazines; Victor guessed that it must have been a slow week for the man.

“Go ahead—but I’m on my way home,” Victor said, gesturing for the man to make it quick. Alan got out of the car and shot him a look, and Victor shook his head; he was okay with answering one or two questions for someone.

“Rumor has it that you’ve got a new girlfriend,” the man said. “You were spotted about a week ago with a beautiful woman.”

“That isn’t a question,” Victor pointed out. The man’s cheeks flushed for a moment.

“Can you confirm?” Victor managed to avoid rolling his eyes.

“I don’t currently have a girlfriend,” he replied. “I have recently gone out with a colleague, to celebrate a full month of employment.”

“Is it true that you were on-site at the raid that happened at Vagabond a month ago?” Victor looked more sharply at the man for that question.

“I visited early in the night,” Victor replied. “But I wasn’t there when the raid happened—I had already left.” Nobody could prove otherwise, unless Alan, one of the Sokolov family, or Danielle came forward; but the fact that he’d been seen by anyone—noticed by anyone—enough for someone to be asking about it so long after the fact shook Victor more than he would have expected.

“You must be one of the more boring billionaires I’ve ever come across,” the man said, almost dismissively. Victor chuckled.

“Most billionaires are boring in their daily lives,” he told the man. “Anything else I can answer for you?”

“Is it true that you’re embarking on a mission to get rid of as much of your wealth as possible?” That, Victor thought, he could answer in all honesty.

“That is true, actually,” he said. “I’ve recently hired someone to help me find ways to put my money to good use in the community and the economy—I would rather not put forth a lot of details as to how, because I want to keep that private. But I can confirm that I am interested in and pursuing the goal of giving back.” He nodded to the man. “If that’s all, I do need to get home.” Either the man had no more questions, or he was startled to get an actual answer; either way he wasn’t able to think quickly enough to detain Victor any longer.

“That’s an odd line of questioning,” Alan commented to him as they pulled away from the curb, and Victor nodded.

“Someone on my staff is telling tales,” he said with a sigh.

“What are you going to do?” Victor shrugged.

“Not much I can do,” he pointed out. “There’s always someone who’s going to say something where a person can hear.”