by Max Monroe
I’ve spent more hours in this building than I have in houses in my lifetime, and I have my dad’s ambition and drive to thank for that.
Trent Turner Senior is a man who could be the poster child for the American Dream. His family wasn’t poor, but they weren’t well-off either, so it was only the power of his determination and perseverance and drive for success that allowed him to create the multibillion-dollar empire that is Turner Properties.
The company was established back in the late seventies when my father opened his first hotel in New York. A boutique hotel, at that. It began with a two-hundred-thousand-dollar debt, a second mortgage on his and my mom’s house, and an insane amount of stress and failures from what I’ve been told. But within ten years, he’d turned that debt into a million-dollar profit and ten more hotels across the country.
And with Turner Properties’ last evaluation as a solid twenty-billion-dollar company, it’s safe to say the momentum hasn’t stopped since.
No matter how big his company got, no matter how many employees he acquired, he’s always kept an ear to the ground and a hand to the work. As a kid, I went with him everywhere he would let me, and I have to admit, that meant I went a lot of places.
He flourished under my attention, and I worshiped the ground he walked on.
All in all, that foundation for our relationship is probably the reason why I am the way I am. He is a self-made man—something, as his son and employee, I’ll never be able to say I am—but he’s the man who made me.
I work long hours, and the ones I don’t spend at the office, I usually spend plotting and dreaming about new ideas to implement when I’m there.
But all of the hard work isn’t for naught.
One day soon, I want my father to be able to retire. He’s reached the age where he shouldn’t be spending the majority of his days and nights in the goddamn office. He should be at home with my mom. Spending time with her. Taking care of her. Enjoying the time he has left with her.
But getting to the point where he trusts me enough to take over Turner Properties currently feels like a nearly impossible feat. One I’ve been trying to overcome for the past decade.
I’d never personally label myself a workaholic, but it’s a term I’ve heard thrown around more than once or twice among my friends.
I don’t have to wonder where I got it.
In addition to hardworking and dedicated, my father is also incredibly loyal. When he finds an employee he loves, he makes sure they never have a reason to leave.
Which probably explains why I’ve known my dad’s assistant, Helen, since I was a baby.
The shine of her hair glints in the bright recessed lighting as she completes numerous tasks behind the shield of her white-marble-topped and gold-legged desk.
She’s a hard worker and even thicker-skinned, and she runs such a tight ship, sometimes I wonder who’s really running the company—her or my dad.
“He’s ready for you,” she says, touching her ear with a nod, but I hesitate.
Is she talking to me?
Someone else?
God, Bluetooth technology is fucking unnerving. I never know if people are talking to me or the person in their ear.
“Trent,” she says, and still, it doesn’t really clear anything up.
My dad and I share the same name, and ever since we started working together, it’s been a point of confusion on many occasions.
She snaps her fingers and points at me, clear as fucking crystal, and I feel like a fool for not responding earlier. “Get in there, kid.”
Only Helen and my mom can get away with calling me “kid” without it boiling under my skin. At thirty-three years old, I’m not exactly old and gray, but after a decade in the business, I feel like I’ve earned my stripes. Anytime anyone says anything to suggest I haven’t, it grates.
Confident and quick, I stride into the office and shut the door behind me with a click.
My dad is going over a report and retucking his shirt into the waistband of his pants. He’s always worked sloppy, but he’d never let that show to anyone else. Not even me.
Look put together, feel put together, he always used to say. I apparently took the words to heart because my black suit is one of twenty just like it hanging in the master closet of my loft in lower Manhattan, and I’ve never worn flip-flops in my life.
“Have a seat,” my father orders, and I do. I’d rather stand, since I don’t know the nature of this meeting and being on my feet makes me feel quicker on them, but I’m not in control here.
My dad’s obsessive need to control everything is the ultimate trump card in every conversation or meeting I have with him.
And that’s exactly what he’s trying to tell me as he rounds the desk and leans into the heavy wood so I have to look up at him. His stormy gray-blue eyes sparkle behind his glasses, highlighting the silver flecks in his black hair. We don’t look particularly alike other than our bodies—slender hips and broad shoulders—because as far as my features are concerned, I heavily favor my mother.
“How’s construction going?” he asks without preamble, and for once, I appreciate the omission of bullshit.
“Fine. George gets lazy if you don’t push him, but we’re on schedule so far.”
“You need to be in New Orleans,” he huffs. The fact that I’m still living in New York, working remotely and only traveling to New Orleans when absolutely necessary, is a huge point of contention between us. He knows damn well why I’ve stayed, but it doesn’t matter. If the time you’re living on isn’t his time, it’s wrong.
“I know. I’ll be there by the end of the week.”
“You should have gone two months ago.”
I grind my jaw against his insensitivity. Every time he pushes me on this, I get a little bit closer to feeling like we’re not even related at all. I cannot comprehend why can’t he understand why I’ve stayed. She may be his wife, but she’s my mom, and she’s sick.
“Mom—”
“Would have understood. She’s been with me long enough to get it when work comes first.”
And this is a perfect example of where his bullheadedness and indelible work ethic go too far.
It takes everything inside me not to offer up a rebuttal to his fucked-up mind-set, but I take a deep breath and stand up from my chair. I move behind it and lean into the leather back pointedly.
I’m done lying on the ground and taking my licks. If he wants to continue this meeting, we’re at least going to do it on the same level.
“What do you need?” I ask, hoping to speed up this painful process.
“I just wanted to let you know I’ll be finishing up staffing for the New Orleans team today.”
He is going to finish up staffing for the hotel I’m in charge of.
Fucking hell.
My eyebrows draw together, and tension pulls my spine straighter. This is the first time I’m hearing anything about his involvement in the staffing for my hotel, and apparently, he’s already almost done.
“I thought I was doing the interviews.”
My dad shakes his head, but he doesn’t make any excuses. It doesn’t matter what the plan was, this is the way it is now. Period. “You thought wrong.”
“Dad—”
“Staff is important, Trent. You should know that by now.”
My jaw aches as I clench my teeth together in an effort not to say something I’ll regret. “I do.”
“Your track record says otherwise.”
The urge to toss poison and bullshit right back at him is so fucking strong, I can taste it. I’m tempted to tell him about the woman from the gym the other day. The one who said his pride and joy was ugly.
She was attractive, even beneath that baggy Metallica T-shirt of hers, but rude as fuck. And her opinions of the Vanderturn Manhattan were obnoxiously bad.
But the mere idea of her pisses me off too much and repeating what she’d said to my father would result in the opposite of satisfaction. The criticism
that came out of her pretty but vile mouth was a fucking slap in my face too.
And my track record? Really? The only track record I’ve established is a strong work ethic and a willingness never to rest until the job is done.
“I think you might be forgetting about what I did in Tokyo. Or Paris.”
“Those were small projects, Trent,” he retorts, like all of the time and effort I put into those was bullshit.
“They’re five-star, highly successful restaurants.”
“Yeah, but they were restaurants inside the hotels, not the entire hotel,” he retorts with a smugness highlighting his jaw. “Not to mention, they have nothing to do with the actual hotel you’re working on. The one you’ve already delayed development on by sixty days.”
Nothing is ever fucking good enough for him.
After thirty-three years, I thought I’d be used to my dad’s thinly veiled insults, but it never gets easier.
Trent Turner Senior is one of the most liked men in the hotel business. His smiles come easy, his employees are valued, and he’s smart enough to stay down-to-earth despite growth and wealth.
He’s “the best”—as long as you’re not his son.
I’ve been trying to crawl out of the shade of his shadow for the better part of the last five years, but every time I think I’m getting close, he gets up and moves.
I’m dying to tell him what I think of his domineering bullshit, but if there’s one thing he really hates, it’s back talk. So instead, I stand tall against the onslaught and bear it. It won’t do me any good to get into it with him now. I’m on the cusp of finally being far enough away to do something without him, to make a name for myself, and I don’t need my impatience to derail it. “So, you’re finishing the interviews today.”
“Yep,” he responds. “We’ll have a meeting when all the staffing is finalized, and then it will be your project.”
My project with a staff full of people he chose.
“Great.”
He purses his lips and shakes his head before rubbing at the tense skin between his eyebrows and taking a seat in his chair. In my effort to keep things civil, I’ve taken my concise responses too far.
“You don’t have any idea, Trent,” he chastises, “what it takes to run a multibillion-dollar company like this.”
I clench my fists in my pockets and prepare for the speech he can’t stop himself from giving me. If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a million times, and I don’t know that there will ever come a time when he thinks he can stop.
“It’s more than strong-arming and thinking you know what’s best. It’s collaboration and humility. Listening and learning instead of ordering people around. Sometimes you’re not the expert, and you have to be okay with that.”
I laugh inside. Is he even listening to himself? He should try following his own fucking advice sometime.
“I’m making sure you’ve got the best group of people around you. Experts in their field.”
The pointed statement rubs against my skin like sandpaper, and I can’t help but throw out a sardonic question. “Who do you think I was planning on hiring?”
He rolls his eyes. “I’m sure you would have hired people who seemed like experts. But it’s not always as simple as a fancy resume and smooth-talking, Trent. I’ve had years and years to get an eye.”
“Through experience,” I stress. “If you don’t ever let me fully take the reins, how do you plan on having me learn it?”
He smirks then. “Through observation. If you want to learn through trial and error, you’ll have to do it with your own money.”
And that’s the real crux of our issues. Trent Turner Senior doesn’t think it’s possible for anyone else to invest as much interest and care into the business he built. He thinks I’ll take what he’s made and run it into the ground with carelessness and laziness and entitlement.
But none of those things are true of me.
There’s nothing that means more to me than the business he built on his back, and there’s no one, despite our disagreements, who respects him as much as me.
That’s why I put every ounce of blood, sweat, and time I have into it.
That said, all I have to give him is a tight nod. I don’t trust myself to respond any other way.
“I’ll let you know when you can meet them.”
Fan-fucking-tastic.
“You have nine months, Trent,” he says in closing. “Nine. Don’t fuck this up.”
Greer
Vomit pools in my throat as I move my purse from one side to the other and back again in the bulky leather office chairs in the waiting room outside of Mr. Turner’s office.
Helen, his bob-sporting assistant, smiles at me awkwardly, and I know she’s noticed my fidgeting.
Great.
I sit up straighter and smooth my smart pencil skirt down over my knees. Helen pushes a crinkly plastic-covered candy toward the edge of her desk and then turns back to her computer.
Helen, it’s now obvious, is someone’s mom. That kind of care and compassion is nothing short of maternal, and it’s the sort of thing I missed out on as a kid.
My brother and my grandfather did their best, don’t get me wrong, but there’s only so much motherly instinct inside a body with a penis.
Grateful, I get up to take the candy, regardless of whether I want it or not. My stomach hasn’t decided, but accepting the gesture seems like the right thing to do either way.
When I get back to my seat and look at its contents, red and white pinwheeled together, I realize Helen really has thought of everything.
Peppermint soothes nausea.
I pop it into my mouth and suck until it disappears, and by the time I finish, I’m feeling a little better.
Helen types furiously on her computer without looking at the screen, clearly transcribing something for Mr. Turner, and then stops immediately.
She touches the Bluetooth piece in her ear. “Yes, Mr. Turner?”
A brief pause.
“Of course. I’ll send her in.”
I gather my purse and portfolio and stand as Helen gestures me forward with the curl of two fingers, saves the document on her computer, and rounds her desk to hold open Mr. Turner’s office door for me.
She is efficient to the point of madness. I hope I can live up to the employee standard she’s set.
Trent Turner is an attractive older man who’s started to gray around the edges. His temples and hairline are more salt than pepper, and a wire-framed pair of glasses sit perched at the end of his nose.
Helen knocks on the frosted-glass pane of the door to announce my entrance, and he looks up and tosses his glasses to the surface of his massive desk before rounding it to greet me.
“It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Turner,” I say as I shake his hand.
His grip is firm, a quality I appreciate, and he indicates I should take a seat with the other hand. “You too, Greer. And please, call me Trent.”
I smile nervously and settle into the soft leather chair in front of his desk before tucking a curled lock of hair behind my ear. My knee bounces—thankfully out of his sight—and I put a weighty hand on top of it to slow it down.
“Okay. Trent.” I test out his name to make sure I can say it without dropping to my knees and begging for the job. It’s close, but somehow, I manage. “I really appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule to meet with me.”
He waves me off and sits in the large desk chair on the other side of the mahogany island between us. His desk is so massive, I wouldn’t be surprised if he had hermits camped in the middle of it that he doesn’t even know about. “Please. I need a designer, and you come highly recommended.”
Really? By whom? Clarise Beaumont doesn’t hate me or anything, but she’s not the kind of person to speak highly of anyone. Other than her, the only person I’ve ever worked for is my grandfather, and if he’s giving me references from the grave, I’m officially freaked out.
I’m careful
to cover the shock in my heart with a smile on my face, but he’s too keen and too experienced to miss the subtle clues.
“I’ve spoken with several of your clients.”
“My…” I swallow a sudden flood of saliva. “You’ve spoken to my clients.”
He grins, comfortable in a position of power. Clearly, he didn’t get to the place he is in the hotel business by playing by the rules, and I didn’t get into the trouble I am by expecting the unexpected. We’re a match made in hell, and he’s the devil who plays all the chords.
Each and every one of my client relationships is important to me. I’ve been a part of creating the perfect home for a new couple just starting to build a life together, making a space for a new life to live out its days and nights in several nurseries, and restoring a foundering home left ravaged by Katrina to its former glory. My design expertise even turned a barely surviving gallery in NOLA’s Arts District into a thriving, successful business that now attracts some of the most popular artists in the country. But I’ve never done anything with the magnitude of a hotel, and I’m afraid the limitations of my past experience will work against me.
What does Trent Turner, one of the richest men in the country, care about Genevieve and Ford Amant’s nursery? Or Lisette Ellois’s kitchen remodel?
“I’ve always hated references from employers and coworkers and industry professionals because they’re good at feeding bullshit in whatever direction benefits them. You were good, you weren’t, whatever. Their opinions are based on their needs and wants. Not the needs and wants of your clients. And I’m in the market to be a client, not an employer.”
“I…” I frown and put a hand to his desk, swirling a smudge onto the wood with a fingertip before coming to a conclusion. He’s not holding anything back, and neither should I. I’m either going to save everything I’ve been working toward or go down in a blaze of glory.
Go big, or go home.
“Would you mind explaining to me how you see those as different? To me, my clients are my employers. I work for you and your goals. I’m only meant to be an expert in all the areas you’re too busy to get lost in.”