by RJ Blain
Instead of fulfilling my dream of becoming a human raisin, I took a quick shower and changed into a pair of jeans, button-up shirt, and a sweater. With jeans, it didn’t matter what color my blouse was, and since the sweater covered it completely, no one would notice I had dressed myself, something I hated doing so much Dad or Sam dealt with my clothes or dealt with my mismatched attire. I finished my casual ensemble with my favorite pair of sneakers. To add to the image of having no fucks left to give over my appearance, I piled my hair on my head in a messy bun and declared my efforts complete.
When I emerged from my bedroom, Dad gawked at me with wide eyes.
“If anyone tries to tell you this is not business attire, they’re wrong.”
The knock at the door saved me from justifying my choice of clothing. Sam took one look at me and laughed, giving me a thumbs up to signal his approval.
There were worse ways to start a day.
Chapter Five
Instead of subjecting me to the steps required to get to the elevator from our normal parking spot, Sam had dropped us off in front of the doors, drawing the attention of every single employee outside on their smoke break.
Not only had New York City outlawed smoking indoors, but it was against company policy; too many of our employees had asthma. Considering I had joined the ranks of inhaler-toters, I was grateful for Dad’s decision to cater to their health needs.
Once inside, I wouldn’t have to worry about my lungs filing divorce from the rest of me. The three steps to the lobby were enough to wind me, but I forced my breathing to stay slow and deep.
Quick, shallow breaths led to coughing and wheezing.
While I didn’t know any of the employees by name, they recognized me, and offered their hellos and smiles. I returned the smiles. On a whim, I murmured, “Hello.”
I heard them whispering when I followed Dad into the building. He held the doors open for me, and I was pretty sure he was counting my every breath just to make certain I was still alive.
The stomach-churning stench of Eau de Skunk gave me advance warning of Vice President Harthel’s presence in the lobby. I glanced around, catching sight of the rotund man near the security desk, chatting with one of the guards.
“Chuck,” my dad called out, and I groaned at the thought of having to deal with the fat weasel.
Mr. Harthel spun around like Dad had jabbed him in the ass. “Ralph? What are you—” The man caught sight of me and his mouth dropped open.
My eyes decided to start playing tricks on me again, and the inky miasma surrounding Mr. Harthel reached out in my direction. I slinked to my father’s side, seeking shelter from my imagination in the comfort of his presence.
Dad wasn’t usually the type to welcome public displays of affection, but he wrapped his arm around me and pulled me close. Super-protective mode had some benefits, and not even the tendrils of darkness dared to approach my father when he was playing guard.
“She wanted to come in today,” Dad explained. “Any problems I should know about?”
“N-no problems, Ralph.”
Maybe I had taken enough medication to down a horse before leaving home, but I didn’t miss the way Mr. Harthel’s gaze slid away from me without making eye contact with Dad. Sirens—the kind I’d heard wailing in the distance at LaGuardia—rang in my head.
The shroud enveloped Mr. Harthel like a second skin, staining him with the darkest of blacks.
“Good. I’ll be with Annamarie shuffling my schedule for the day.” Dad checked his watch. “Will you be in your office in an hour?”
“I can be.”
“Good. We’ll talk then.”
My creeped-out-o-meter redlined, and I shuffled closer to Dad, torn between following him to the impromptu meeting in Mr. Harthel’s office or hiding in ours to avoid any contact with the company’s Vice President.
The hike to our office exhausted me, but pride demanded I make it without falling over in a faint, panting like a dog, or coughing to death. My breath wheezed, a faint whistle I hid from Dad by humming a cheerful melody.
As soon as he turned his back for more than ten seconds, I’d go fishing for one of my inhalers. I had used one once in the hospital at the doctor’s insistence so I’d know how to use it if—when—I needed it. That I hadn’t lasted a full day without requiring it bothered me almost as much as the idea of leaving Dad to face Mr. Harthel alone.
The nice thing about Mondays was the fact everyone was so focused on catching up from the weekend they didn’t look up from their work when we passed through the executive floor. It wasn’t until Dad opened the door for our reception I was noticed.
Annamarie surged to her feet, made a strangled noise in her throat, and fainted.
Dad knocked half the stuff off her desk, including Annamarie’s monitor, in his effort to catch her as she fell. Fortunately, success was measured in preventing our assistant from hitting her head on the floor. While my father missed catching her, she did end up sprawled on top of him, her head pillowed on his chest.
I closed the door for privacy, sighed, and took advantage of Dad’s position on the floor to use my inhaler. It helped a lot faster than I expected. Once certain I wasn’t going to wheeze or cough, I crossed the reception to glare at my father. “You didn’t tell her we were coming in?”
“It slipped my mind.”
I picked up Annamarie’s phone, referenced the employee list, and called the nurse for Annamarie and tech support to bring up a replacement monitor. Neither of the men I spoke to recognized my voice, and I didn’t introduce myself. Some things, at least, hadn’t changed.
Word spread of my presence in the office, resulting in a steady stream of curious employees wanting to verify I truly numbered among the living. While Annamarie recovered on the couch in our shared office, I sat at our assistant’s desk, restoring everything my father had knocked over and onto the floor.
It gave the onlookers a chance to peer at me from the doorway like I was some critter in a zoo. The bolder ones came right up to Annamarie’s desk, leaning over her replacement monitor to take in my less-than-professional attire.
“What a pity. No one told me today was Casual Monday.” The head of the accounting department, Mrs. Frank, arched a perfectly threaded eyebrow at me. I liked her, which is why I didn’t start pushing the buttons on Annamarie’s desk in the hope one of them opened a trap door under the woman’s feet.
“I told Mr. Evans he’d be fired if he didn’t show up for work today.” The drugs were making me run my mouth again; I needed to figure out how to keep my lips zipped, stat.
Mrs. Frank laughed, reached into her purse, and pulled out an unopened package of cough drops, setting them on the desk. “Give your voice a rest, use those, and drink some hot tea. It’ll help. Is Mr. Evans in his office?”
“I’m in here, Margret.”
Cough drops hadn’t been a part of my recovery arsenal, which made them even more appealing. I ripped into the package, grabbed one, and unwrapped it, popping it in my mouth. “He’s supposed to meet with Mr. Harthel in ten minutes.”
“I’ll make sure he gets on the move,” Mrs. Frank promised, strolling into my father’s office.
Most of our employees were like Mrs. Frank, pleasant and interesting to be around. I bit my lip, wondering if I really wanted to let Dad meet with Mr. Harthel alone.
I couldn’t. Grumbling my annoyance under my breath, I did a final pass over the things on Annamarie’s desk, straightened the photo of her with her young son and husband, and followed Mrs. Frank.
Annamarie was sitting on the couch, blowing her nose while my father sat beside her.
“See? She’s right there, safe and sound,” Dad said, pointing at me. “Sorry to leave you to clean the mess, Matia.”
Mindful of Mrs. Frank’s advice to rest my voice, I smiled instead of saying anything, and leaned over to give our assistant a hug. She clung to me hard enough she surprised a squeak out of me, which made Dad laugh.
“I�
��ll send Rachel up to cover for you, Annamarie,” Mrs. Frank said, reaching around me to pat our assistant’s shoulder. “Take your time and go clean your face. I’ll wrangle these two to see Mr. Hathel before the board meeting.”
“Board meeting?” I blurted along with my father and Annamarie.
“You didn’t know?” The alarm in Mrs. Frank’s voice placated me. “Wait. You didn’t know, Annamarie? It’s in forty minutes.”
“No. Who ordered it?” Letting me go, Annamarie surged to her feet, brushed by me, and stormed to her desk. I grimaced the instant she passed through the door. “What happened to my monitor? This is a mess!”
“Good intentions, poor execution,” Dad called back. “At least you didn’t crack your skull on the floor or your desk, right? Right? That counts for something, doesn’t it?”
“Mr Evans!” our assistant wailed.
I sighed at the hell we were putting the poor woman through. “She needs a raise. What board meeting?”
“Mr. Harthel planned it on Friday. I thought you had called it, Ralph?”
“This is the first I’ve heard about it.” When Dad started clenching his teeth hard enough his jaw twitched, I knew there’d be trouble and a lot of it. While the Vice President could call for a meeting of the board, he needed to involve both Dad and me in the process.
Maybe Dad was the primary face and CEO of Pallodia Industries, but I had earned my shares over the years, enough to put me on the board in my own right. Granted, half of my income was in shares, an arrangement I had made when I had been fifteen and officially joining the company. After accounting for my rank in the business, which fell somewhere beneath Dad but above most of the various heads of departments and the Vice president, I should have been the second person notified of a board meeting.
If I added the shares Dad had put aside in my name I hadn’t earned on my own, if an issue went to a stockholder vote, the other shareholders would have to gang up on me to overrule me if I chose to vote instead of abstaining as usual.
Abstaining was my way of letting the company maintain its vitality. Dad voted early and often, and I was content with my role as observer.
When I needed to vote, I did. If I needed to again, I would.
What was Mr. Harthel up to? Was he seeking to undermine Dad, taking advantage of the attack on LaGuardia? By eliminating Dad and me from a vote, he’d be in a far better position to get what he wanted—whatever that was.
I wouldn’t put it by him, which only served to make me angrier.
Angry me had a foul mouth, and it took every bit of my will to avoid punctuating my words with curses. “Why are you involved, Mrs. Frank?”
As a department head, Mrs. Frank usually attended the meetings, but she didn’t rank as a major stockholder; her shares and rank combined got her into the meetings, but her influence ended there.
I shoved my hands into my pockets, glancing in the direction of my desk. Instead of my usual no-name brand I picked for myself, it was an Apple, Dad’s preferred brand.
I hoped it had everything I needed loaded on it.
Mrs. Frank sighed. “The minutes.”
Normally, it was Annamarie’s job to record the minutes for the board meetings, and I exchanged glances with my father. It didn’t happen often, but the darkness surrounding my father had returned, wafting from him.
Maybe I wasn’t really all that sure what my confused eyes were seeing, but I had an idea of its cause: fury.
There was definitely no way I could leave Dad to meet with Mr. Harthel alone. Dad would break our second rule with a cheap pen if I left him unsupervised. I headed to my desk and packed up the new laptop. Worse-case scenario, I’d use the cloud to pull up my backups for the unexpected meeting.
I’d just have to wing it.
So much for a relaxed day lounging on the couch pretending to work. I plastered a smile on my face. “Annamarie, would you please pretend you know nothing of this meeting?”
“Miss Evans?” Annamarie rolled her chair into the doorway, her mouth hanging open. “I-I mean, of course, Miss Evans.”
Dad’s eyes widened before narrowing. “What are you planning, Matia?”
“Regular conference room for the meeting, Mrs. Frank?”
“No, the one two floors down.”
Interesting. I kept smiling. The first thing I needed to do was convince Dad to cooperate with me and prevent him from revealing the fact we knew about the board meeting. “Think you can pretend you know nothing of the meeting, Dad?”
He scowled. “I can. Why should I?”
“I’m asking you to?”
“You drive a hard bargain, Miss Evans. Fine. Why am I pretending I know nothing of this meeting?”
“It’s more fun this way,” I replied. “I think I’ll head down a few floors and crash a party. Come in maybe twenty minutes late, would you, Mr. Evans?”
Mrs. Frank coughed, covering her mouth with her hand. “I had no idea you were such a devious, wicked young lady, Miss Evans.”
“If only you knew. Whatever you do, don’t encourage her,” my father muttered wryly, shaking his head at me. “I’ll one-up you. I’ll call Chuck instead of going to his office. I’ll make him break a sweat if he wants to be on time for his own board meeting. I’m sure I can think of something to keep him occupied. Annamarie, can you pull copies of the company bylaws, employee agreements, and general policies? I think I’m going to need them. Margret, if you could send Rachel over, I could use another set of eyes going over them.”
“Yes, sir!” both women replied, moving to execute my father’s orders.
I tucked the new laptop under my arm, grabbed my purse, and stole Dad’s access pass. “You’ll just have to get someone to walk you around, Dad.”
Heading to his desk, Dad grabbed a pass on a lanyard and held it up. “Then I’ll just take yours.”
I grabbed mine, which had my latest company photo on it before tossing Dad’s back to him. It was new, and I wondered when it had been issued. “Well, fine then. Be that way. I’m going downstairs for a coffee so I don’t murder someone due to my lack of caffeine.”
While I wanted to go to my favorite coffee shop across the street, I headed for the one on the ground floor of the office building. It had several booths in the back, offering the illusion of privacy.
It was enough for my needs. With a coffee in hand, blacker than the darkest pit of hell, I opened the laptop.
I had no idea why Dad had a love affair with Apple computers, but I’d deal with the unfamiliar operating system. Thirty minutes wasn’t enough time to figure out how to load Windows on it, if I could even load Windows on it. At least I knew enough to figure out how to locate my files.
They probably wouldn’t work on the laptop, but I found the entirety of my ruined laptop’s hard drive on the system. I pulled up the list of board members, and relief swept through me when the file opened.
It seemed Dad’s claims Excel and other Microsoft products worked on Apple laptops were true. I had no idea how to access the corporate-wide private servers, so I hoped nothing major had changed with the list.
Twenty-five men and women would be cramped in the smaller conference room, but two floors down from the executive level was the ideal place to keep something under wraps. The entire floor served exclusively for meetings too large for individual offices, and it wasn’t uncommon for the board members and executives to head down during the day, so no one would notice anything unusual.
Most preferred the larger conference room on the executive level for the main board meetings, which meant one thing to me: Mr. Harthel was trying to hide the board meeting, probably from Dad.
If the man had made the plans on Friday, I hadn’t been a factor in his scheduling. I clenched my teeth. Dad—along with everyone else—had thought I had died. Too many ‘what if’ questions rattled around in my head.
What if I hadn’t woken up coherent and well enough for the doctor to be comfortable letting me leave the hospital? I wondered abo
ut that. The time I had spent unconscious was long enough I was astonished they hadn’t kept me in for observation. But, it had worked out.
If I hadn’t come into work, we wouldn’t have found out about the unplanned board meeting. I had no idea what Mr. Harthel was putting up for vote, but I’d crush him and hope he choked to death on the darkness cloaking him.
No one fucked with Dad on my watch. I had a bit of an advantage in my unexpected appearance at the office. My casual clothing would also help unsettle everyone. When I opened my mouth, a lifetime of silence would work in my favor.
Almost dying in an explosion had loosened my tongue. I’d have to implement a third rule to keep from embarrassing myself. Smile. Don’t stab anyone. Don’t curse, at least not too much.
I really wanted to know what the Vice President of Pallodia Industries hoped to accomplish without Dad in the way to stop him. The list of board members told me nothing, and neither did my old calendar.
The only loose end I could pursue was the business meeting we had never reached. Could the missed meeting have something to do with Mr. Harthel’s decision to go behind my father’s back?
I had difficulty believing it, but I had no other ideas and no more time to think it through. Making the best of a bad situation was my role at Pallodia Industries, and I’d make certain every member of the board remembered it by the time I was done with them.
I stole a security guard’s baseball cap out of his back pocket and flipped him a salute and a wink. Startled laughter followed me as I prowled the meeting floor of our building.
Without a real plan, I figured I’d catch the attention of security and make certain they were nearby in case hell broke loose in the conference room. With his cap on my head, I snared my first guard, who caught up with me and fell in step beside me, invading my personal space long enough to flip my access badge. His startled inhale made me smirk.