Valley Verified by Kyla Zhao

Author:Kyla Zhao [Zhao, Kyla]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2024-01-16T00:00:00+00:00

chapter 22

ZOE SHIFTED IN her seat, her eyes darting up to the clock on the wall for the dozenth time in five minutes. Logan Horossen was running late, and she could tell that she wasn’t the only one on edge because of the delay. Bill was now pacing back and forth in the small holding area adjoining Logan Horossen’s meeting room—technically a conference room in the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco, the very same hotel the FitPickers would be staying at that night. The hotel was one of the fanciest buildings Zoe had ever seen, but she was too busy mentally running through their pitch to admire it properly.

This, after all, would be the cumulation of all her efforts over the past few months. The event that determined if Bill had been right to hire her, had been justified in thinking he saw something in her.

And while she squirmed and Bill wore a hole in the hotel carpeting with his relentless pacing, Lillian sat calmly in her chair, her face impassive as she watched the replays of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon on the television in one corner. As Zoe took in Lillian’s wrinkle-free, well-pressed A-line dress, she quickly reached up to smooth down the ruffles along the collar of the V-neck blouse Bill had suggested she wear.

Bill whipped around, his forehead creased in a frown. “Do you think he forgot—”

His voice died as a slim brunette in a skirt suit entered the room. “Mr. Horossen will see you now.” Her gaze fell to Zoe’s feet. “Would you like me to put that anklet in a jewelry box for you?”

Although she had on sleek Larroudé mules that anyone with taste would approve of, the scrutiny made Zoe long to tuck her feet out of sight. “Um, what?”

Bill clapped a hand to his forehead. “Shit. I forgot to warn you about this.”

“Warn me about what?”

Zoe soon found out. As the large double doors to the conference room were thrown open, four desk treadmills came into view, arranged in a ring and all facing inward. A stocky man with a platinum-blond man bun was pounding away on one of them, swinging his arms up and down vigorously like one of those grannies brisk-walking in Sunset Park, near Brooklyn’s Chinatown. Whenever he lifted his arms up, it exposed a tattoo of a serpent on his ribs through the gaping hole of his muscle tee.

He didn’t slow down even when he caught sight of the newcomers. “Join me,” he said in a deep voice that contained a trace of an Australian accent.

Wide-eyed, Zoe looked around at Bill and Lillian, but they were both swapping their shoes for brand new socks and Nike sneakers that the brown-haired lady was handing out. Bill caught her eye and whispered, “Just go along with this.” Go along with what? What sort of twilight zone was this where one of the world’s most powerful venture capitalists was just casually taking a stroll on a treadmill during a pitch meeting?

When it

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