The Billionaire and His PA novel Chapter 67

“You look stressed.” Felix said from his desk as Cassie walked in on Wednesday morning. He was used to seeing bags around his eyes whenever he looked in the mirror but it felt odd seeing them on Cassie. She looked like she deserved to be at a spa or an exotic getaway rather than at work.

Cassie grunted in response, barely sparing him a glance. Of course she was stressed. She had already started to feel the effect of working three jobs and taking care of two children. Her shift at The Bean House had been extra difficult the previous night as she, Diana and Austin had had to cater for a group of rowdy frat boys who had been kicked out of a bar and had come to the Bean House seeking oily bacon and enough space to perform terrible renditions of pop songs with the help of the newly installed karaoke machine. Halloween was barely a week away and she hadn’t even bought any decorations and the twins had already started hounding her for potential costumes. The date for Tobias’ trial was getting closer and even if she wasn’t the one that had committed a crime, she still felt nervous about it. And then, there was the fact that her suspicions about Preston stealing her program had been right.

After Lucas had kindly lent her his notes on Monday, she had gone over it and made two written copies: one for herself and one for Felix. When she had gotten home, she had gone over her copy of Lucas’ notes and had compared it with the features that were on the app For Isabel. It was no coincidence that she had found too many similarities between the two. When she had started working on the app, she had written down her ideas in a notebook and worked on the coding on the laptop that she currently had. Compared to the ideas that she had penned down in her notebook, there had been just a few notes on her laptop for the app but still, Preston had implemented every one of them. There were only two visible differences. The color and icon were different and Preston had given the app a name. While Cassie had been working on the app as a sophomore, she had neglected to design an icon for it but she knew that she wanted it to have tones of blue and white. Preston had used an ugly red and yellow building as the icon and he had named the app Health.

Cassie knew that naming it For Isabel was silly but naming it Health was the most unimaginative idea that she had ever encountered. Daniel had been right; they were going to have difficulties marketing the app, especially if they kept that shitty name and icon. Ever since her discovery, she had begun to wonder if she should confront Preston about it. Unless she had concrete evidence against him, he was just going to deny any accusation thrown at him.

“I haven’t been getting enough sleep lately.” Cassie said, handing Felix his coffee. “But I’ll be fine.” She went to her desk and started work for the day. When it was finally time for lunch, Felix had taken one look at her face and had tried to convince her to stay in the office and have someone else bring their lunch up to them. But she had declined the offer, saying that she needed to stretch her legs after being cooped up in the office all day.

She had gotten two plates of salad for herself and Felix and was listening to Tabitha, the lady that made lunch for the company’s staff, rave about a football match she had watched with her husband the previous night. With how often Cassie had come to her to get food for herself and Felix, their friendship was inevitable. When Tabitha was done, Cassie turned to go and immediately came face to face with a smug looking Preston.

“Hello, Cassandra.” Preston greeted. “It’s been a while.”

She clutched the plastic plate the salads were in hard enough to leave dents at the sides. “What are you doing back here, Preston?”

He smiled lazily at her. “Didn’t you hear the good news? The boss approved of the plans for my app. We’re coworkers now.”

A part of her had been hoping that Felix wouldn’t take up Preston’s offer so that he wouldn’t get any money for her app but she knew that if Felix rejected his offer, Preston would just take it to another company. Cassie opened her mouth to call him a fiend and a charlatan, to assure him that she would report him to the appropriate authorities and that he would pay for his actions but she found that no words came out.

Satisfied that his presence had literally rendered Cassie speechless, Preston brushed past her without saying another word. Felix wasn’t in the office when she got back so she placed his salad on his desk and went to sulk on hers. She knew that Preston was nowhere near being a good person but she had no idea that he was devious enough to steal her codes from right under her nose back when they had been dating and market it at the company that she currently worked in. She was supposed to be composing an email for Felix but her thoughts were so consumed by Preston’s treachery that she had trouble focusing on the email.

So engrossed were her thoughts about Preston that she didn’t even realize when Felix walked into the office later sometime around evening.

“Are you okay?” Felix asked once he saw Cassie slumped on her chair dejectedly.