The Billionaire's Match Is Three Percent novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Match Packet
Daria is sent to the thirty-first floor to explain why the app matched its new owner at 99% to a pastry chef, and when he asks her to run the two of them together the screen says 3%.
On Monday morning I was eating a cold bagel at my desk when Phyllis Greer called me up to the thirty-first floor.
Nobody gets called to the thirty-first floor.
"Bring your laptop," she said. "And the matching model, whatever you call it."
"It's called the model."
"Then bring the model."
Deb rolled her chair back from the next desk and mouthed, what did you do.
I shrugged and took the elevator.
My name is Daria Orlowski, I am twenty-seven, and I wrote the thing that decides who sees whom on Lodestar.
Forty million people use it, and every one of them is a row in a table I built.
I had never once been in a room with the man who owned the table.
Winston Aldridge had bought the company in June.
I had seen him twice, both times across a lobby, both times walking fast with a tall gray shadow of security behind him.
Phyllis opened the office door herself.
She was fifty-four, silver-haired, in a charcoal blazer, and she looked at my hoodie and my boots and said nothing at all.
The office was glass on three sides, with the city and both rivers laid out below.
Winston stood at the window with his back to me.
He was six foot four and lean, in a navy suit with no tie, and his hair was gray at the sides, though he was only thirty-five.
He turned around.
His eyes were gray too, and they went straight to my face and stayed there.
"Ms. Orlowski."
"Daria."
"Daria. Sit. Please."
There was a slide on the wall screen.
It showed a woman with a sleek dark bob, flour on her forearms, smiling out of a bakery door.
Under her face it said SIMONE QUIST, 33, and next to it, in gold, 99%.
"Marketing says our app found me a perfect match," Winston said.
"Congratulations."
"They want to put it on a billboard on Liberty Avenue. Our founder and his ninety-nine percent."
"Okay."
"I'd like to know if it's true."
He said it plainly.
I put my laptop on his desk and opened it.
"It's true that the system printed the number," I said. "But your account is a VIP account. VIP accounts get scored on stated answers only. The questionnaire, nothing else."
"Not on what I do."
"Not on what you do. Marketing asked for that, so nobody famous gets a weird score."
"What would I get on what I do?"
"I don't know. I haven't run you."
"Run me."
"Against Ms. Quist?"
"No."
He came around the desk and stood next to my chair.
He smelled like cedar and clean laundry and nothing sweet.
"Pick anyone in the building," he said. "Run me against them with the real model, the one you built. Live data, behavior included."
"Anyone?"
"Whoever you like."
I should have picked Deb.
I should have picked a stranger from the directory.
Instead I typed my own employee ID, because it was the only one I knew by heart, and I hit enter.
The model took four seconds.
It always took four seconds.
The screen showed a white box with a number in it.
3%.
I stared.
I had run the model on fifty million pairs.
I had never seen one under nine.
"That has to be a bug," I said.
"Is it?"
"Give me a second."
I scrolled to the breakdown.
There were six red bars, all full.
Sleep schedule.
Planning style.
Conflict style.
Talk volume.
Spending.
Tidiness.
"It's not a bug," I said slowly. "It's right. You're awake at four forty-five every morning. I'm awake until four. You plan your weekends. I find out what I'm doing on Saturday when Saturday starts."
"How do you know when I wake up?"
"Your phone logs. Everyone's does. It's in the terms."
"I see."
He leaned down to read the bars, and his hand came over mine on the trackpad.
He did not take it away.
His fingers were warm and long, and they rested over my knuckles for a full breath, then two.
My pulse went somewhere it had no business going.
"Scroll down," he said, very low.
I scrolled.
He did not move his hand, and I did not ask him to.
At the bottom of the page there was one more line, in the plain gray type I had chosen myself.
Lowest compatibility recorded on live system.
"Is that true?" he said.
"Yes."
"Three percent."
"Yes."
He straightened.
I expected him to be angry, or embarrassed, or to ask me to delete it.
Instead he looked at me.
"Everyone has been telling me what I want to hear for three months," he said. "You just told me the worst number I have ever seen, and you looked me in the eye."
"It's a fair number."
"I believe you."
"Mr. Aldridge, I really should get back to-"
"Dinner tonight."
I blinked.
"I'm sorry?"
"Eight o'clock. Wherever you like. We'll sit across from each other and see how the number does."
"You have a campaign. You have a picture of a woman with flour on her arms."
"I do," he said. "And I have a three percent."
Behind him, Phyllis cleared her throat by the door, and neither of us looked.
"That sounds like a conflict of interest," I said.
"Your salary doesn't depend on it. Neither does your job. If you say no, nothing changes, and I'll never ask again."
My mouth had gone dry.
I thought of my small apartment, and the dishes in my sink, and the six red bars on the screen.
Everything in me said that the model was right and I should walk away.
"Polish Hill," I said. "A place called Pierogi Mary's. It's loud."
"I like loud."
"No, you don't."
For the first time, he smiled.
It changed his whole face.
"No," he said. "But I'd like to find out."
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