The Many Daughters of Afong Moy(59)

“But you’re worried that I’m a cad? A womanizer? A stalker, even?”

Greta didn’t say anything, just raised an eyebrow.

“I can assure you that every one of those rumored instances has been false and/or strictly business. I mean it, Greta.” He shrugged innocently and exhaled slowly, as though exhausted from the mere thought of impropriety. “Yes, some people see me as a very wealthy young man funding a feminist dating platform, and to them, that might seem hypocritical. But—to others—they see my financial involvement as benevolent, an ally putting his money behind a cause that he firmly believes in. I wrote a very big check. But you’re the one making headlines. I have no position of power over anyone in the company—far from it—I’ve been completely hands-off. Yesterday was the first time I’d even set foot in the office. Does that sound like something a womanizer would do?”

Greta found herself wanting to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe the stories had all been gossip. Mean-spirited conjecture at the cost of an innocent man’s reputation, who was just trying to help. She thought about how their profiles had matched. They both had one thing in common: loneliness. It must be isolating to be so wealthy, unsure of anyone’s real motives because money always gets in the way.

“C’mon, it’s getting late and I know you probably still have work to do. I’ll walk you down and my driver will take you back to Syren.”

He must have sensed her apprehension, her discomfort at bringing up such a sensitive subject, because he kept a polite distance as they walked to the elevator. Inside, Greta thanked him, then held her breath for a moment, waiting for her stomach to rise as the capsule began its five-hundred-foot journey, a descent that would take forty-three seconds. Greta did have an enormous amount of work to do, and much of her staff would still be at their workstations. But she allowed herself a moment, a five-second vacation when she’d take in the gorgeous nighttime view, the solitude, being appreciated by someone successful and powerful. She’d stepped into his world and held her own. He respected her talent. There was a small victory in there somewhere.

She turned to thank him and he kissed her.

One hand on her waist, the other beneath her chin, his mouth over hers, lips parted. He tasted like saffron and beer. She felt like she was sinking faster than the elevator was dropping.

She froze. Stunned.

“Dinner was nice,” he said. “Would you like to go someplace for dessert?”

Here he was, the golden child of the tech world, yet his words were so blatant, so comical—like the go-to move of a drunken frat boy—that she laughed out loud. But as the elevator settled and a bell chimed, she felt sickened, horrified, confused. The doors opened and she saw the driver standing next to the Escalade, the door open. But he wasn’t a driver in that moment. He was another man, a collaborator. He was saying something but she didn’t hear. When she felt Carter’s hand on her lower back, she peeled away, wanting to slap him, stab him. She looked at him and he was smiling innocently, saying something, words, noise. She blocked out the sound of his voice and stormed off, her heels clicking on the cold, wet pavement.



* * *



“So, how was dinner with the one and only Carter Branson?” Anjalee asked the next day. She smiled as she sipped her latte. “I heard his personal chef used to own a three-star Michelin restaurant in the Bay Area, is that true? Or maybe it was two-star.”

“I didn’t ask,” Greta said. Her heart raced as she remembered feeling trapped in that elevator, hundreds of feet up in the air, a billionaire’s uninvited lips mashed on top of hers. It had begun raining as she’d walked back to Syren. She’d tried to think about work, but when she stepped off the elevator into the lobby and saw numbers on the data stream monitor zooming by as sign-ups passed fifteen million users, she felt ill and went home.

Anjalee kept talking, gesturing happily.

Greta sighed. She tried to relax. Tried to breathe normally as she asked herself, Is this my fault? Did I put out some kind of signal that I was interested? Was he drunk? Was I drunk? Is this what he’s done to other women? Did they fall for it? Or did he shackle them with golden handcuffs and then think he could do whatever he wanted? Can he?

“So anyway,” Anjalee said. “A writer with Bitch Media will be coming by a week after the IPO to do a piece about you. They’re small and based out of Portland, but their content is sensational and they have six million readers that are the definition of our primary target demographic. It’s going to be uh-mazing.”

When Anjalee left, Greta sat back in her chair. She stared out the window and thought about the interview. She could tell the reporter what happened. She could out Branson as a world-class womanizer, a predator. But… it was just a kiss, right?

One he didn’t ask for.

Maybe other women would speak out if she did. But what if they didn’t? What if they were paid off, or had vested shares in something that compelled them to remain silent? Greta wondered about the many ways she could lose her job. Surely, she’d be terminated if she spoke out, and with her job she’d lose—she hated that money was a part of this—she’d literally lose millions. Carter hadn’t explicitly connected her stock options to his advances; he didn’t have to, it was implicit. While Greta personally didn’t care about the money, she realized she could also help out entire generations of her family with that kind of wealth. Or she could give it all to charity—women’s causes—like the Malala Fund, RAINN, or Girls Not Brides. There had to be a way to make this right.