Chapter 3 - A Billionaire’s Discovery
Forty-five floors above the city, Julian sat at his massive glass desk. The Chicago skyline glittered through his floor-to-ceiling windows, but his attention was solely on the laptop screen in front of him.
He had plugged in Clara’s flash drive, intending only to find a resume or a name so he could return it to her. Instead, he found dozens of intricate, highly advanced financial models.
Julian was an architect, but he understood the brutal math of corporate acquisitions. The spreadsheets on this drive were not the work of a novice. They were brilliant. The algorithms she had designed to predict market fluctuations were cleaner and more aggressive than the ones his senior analysts produced.
He clicked on the file properties. The author's name was Clara Vance.
He immediately picked up his desk phone and pressed a single button. "Sarah," he said when his HR Director answered. "I need the employee file for a Clara Vance."
"Vance? Let me check," Sarah replied. Keys clacked over the line. "Ah. Clara Vance. She’s not corporate, Mr. Hayes. She’s contracted through the third-party maintenance crew. Graveyard shift janitorial staff."
Julian stared at the brilliant, multi-million-dollar financial projection on his screen. The girl with the scuffed boots and the exhausted eyes had a mind that belonged in a boardroom, not a supply closet.
"Sarah," Julian said, his voice dropping into its most authoritative register. "I want you to create a new internal advancement program. An accounting traineeship, fully paid, starting at eighty thousand a year. Post the flyer in the maintenance breakrooms by noon today."
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"Sir? A corporate traineeship for the cleaning staff?" Sarah asked, bewildered.
"Do it, Sarah. And make sure Clara Vance sees it."
