My Billionaire Boss Won't Let Me Quit novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Kiss
At her new boss's anniversary gala her stepsister shows the board a photo and calls her a mistress, so Magda kisses him in front of the cameras, and the elevator doors open on the chairwoman with an ultimatum.
My stepsister waited until the board of directors had champagne in their hands.
Then she walked to the center of the Gorski Grand ballroom and held up her phone.
"I think everyone should see how Magda Dombrowski got her job," Clara said.
I was a week into that job.
I was standing by the ice sculpture with a tray of canapes.
I had just taken it from a waiter who was about to drop it.
Clara turned the phone toward the board.
On the screen was a photo of me walking out of the CEO's office at midnight.
My hair was loose and my jacket was over my arm.
"She was in there for three hours with the door closed," Clara said sweetly.
"Mr. Gorski hired her without an interview.
"I'm sure we can all do the math."
Somebody near the bar laughed.
A man in a gray suit whispered to the woman beside him, and she lifted her glass to hide her smile.
Two photographers had already stopped looking at the chandeliers.
I knew that photo.
I had been in that office until midnight because Lucas Gorski had a speech due Friday.
He wrote like a man filing a tax return.
I fixed three pages.
He ate a lemon drop and said thank you.
That was the whole scandal.
Clara knew it, and she had waited for this room, this crowd and these cameras.
I had spent six years at a PR firm cleaning up men who did much worse than this, and I knew exactly how it worked.
If I denied it, the story would be that I denied it.
If I walked out, the story would be that I ran.
Clara was already smiling at me.
She had been smiling like that since I was twenty, when my mother married her father and they moved into our house.
I set the tray down beside the ice sculpture.
I walked across the ballroom in my navy suit, with every head turning.
Lucas stood at the head of the room beside his grandmother, holding a glass he hadn't touched.
He was tall and dark-haired, with a scar through his left eyebrow.
He watched me come and did not look surprised.
He did not look like a man about to defend himself, either.
He looked like a man waiting for me to choose.
"Mr. Gorski," I said.
"Ms. Dombrowski."
"I'm sorry about this."
"Don't be," he said quietly.
I took hold of his lapels and kissed him.
I did not plan it past the first second.
His mouth was warm and surprised for exactly one heartbeat.
Then his free hand came up to the back of my head.
He kissed me back.
The room went silent, and then a camera flash went off, and then a hundred more.
I let go of him and turned around.
"If I'm sleeping with my boss," I said, loud enough for the back row, "I'm not hiding it in a sneaky photograph."
Nobody laughed this time.
Clara's smile had slipped.
"Magda," she said, "this is disgusting."
"You took that picture," I said.
"It's crooked because you shot it from behind the stairwell door.
"You stood out there until midnight, waiting for me to walk out."
Her face went from pink to white.
A woman at the board table put down her glass very slowly.
Lucas stepped up beside me.
He didn't say a word, but he stood close enough that my shoulder touched his arm.
His grandmother, a straight-backed woman with a white bob and pearl studs, looked at the two of us for a long moment.
"Lucas," she said.
"My office.
"Now.
"And bring the young woman."
The elevator to the thirty-ninth floor was glass on three sides, and the ballroom shrank under us as it rose.
Lucas leaned on the back wall with his arms crossed.
His tie was crooked where I had pulled it.
"You kissed me in front of the board," he said.
"I did."
"You didn't ask."
"You kissed me back."
"I did," he said.
He sounded like it was the least rehearsed thing he'd said all year.
I looked at the numbers climbing.
My heart was going so hard I could feel it in my teeth.
"I'm resigning," I said.
"Effective tomorrow.
"I'll write it tonight."
"Of course you will," he said.
"I won't accept it."
I looked at him.
"It isn't your choice."
"I'm your employer," he said.
"It's exactly my choice."
The elevator stopped on thirty-nine.
The doors slid open, and his grandmother was standing there with two members of the board behind her.
She must have taken the other car.
"Mr. Gorski," said the oldest man, "the chair has called a vote for Monday morning on your seat.
"A Gorski who sleeps with staff does not sit on this board."
Lucas didn't move.
"Which is," his grandmother said, "the rule your grandfather wrote."
She looked at me.
"A Gorski who marries is family.
"You have until Friday, Miss Dombrowski."
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend