The Boss(hole)

by Bloom, Penelope

“I didn’t say she was. She’s your girlfriend, from the sounds of it. And she’s a person. That means she’s going to have the reasonable expectation that you occasionally put work aside and pay attention to her. Are you capable of that?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “How many dates have you guys been on since this started?”

  “Define a date,” I said slowly.

  Noah plastered a palm to his forehead. “Come on, Adrian. You used to be good with women. What happened?”

  “I’ve been busy,” I argued. “She and I both know how hectic the move was. And I’m-”

  “Making excuses,” Travis interrupted. “So think of something really sweet, gooey, and romantic. That’s what you and her are doing tomorrow. Noah and I will cover for you.”

  I sighed. “Maybe you guys are right.” To tell the truth, the idea of getting to shut off my work brain and be with Jules for an evening sounded incredible. I just hadn’t let myself believe I could afford the time so far. “Fine,” I said suddenly. “I’ll be out of the office by five in the evening, tomorrow.”

  “Two,” Travis countered. “Take her out after lunch to pick something to wear for tonight. Then take her somewhere nice. She’ll enjoy that.”

  I nodded. “That’s not a horrible idea.”

  “This is why you pay me to deal with people. I’m good at it. So take my advice.”

  I thanked the guys, then dug into work once I was alone again. The way our team split duties was simple. Noah was the saboteur. He had the brains to get his work done but also dig up weakness after weakness. If it was a digital weakness, he’d make sure it was ready to exploit when we wanted to pull the trigger. If it was a vulnerable employee we could use, he sent Travis to do the smooth talking. They both reported to me and let me know if they needed to be shifted around within the company for better access. My sister, Jordan, was responsible for keeping her ear to the ground. She would let us know if someone was getting suspicious, and she was good at it. She went to every company function she could and was a natural with gaining people’s trust.

  Most importantly, Jordan and I operated separately. If I ever fucked up and got fired, there was no official link between Jordan and I. Part of Travis’ job was helping Jordan get promoted along with us but far more subtly than the methods I used to get Noah and Travis brought along with me. I doubted the people he influenced even knew they’d promoted her because of his involvement.

  My job was to excel. I needed to be the best damn employee at the position the company had ever seen. I needed to single handedly earn the places of my team and fast-track myself toward every available upward promotion. It was why I worked so hard. I couldn’t afford to take my foot off the pedal.

  But that’s exactly what I was planning to do for Jules.

  I’d seen the look on her face before I left. Getting scraps of my attention wasn’t going to be enough. She deserved far more than scraps, and I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to find a way to give her exactly that.

  My new secretary came in the office when eight o’ clock came and went. “Will you be much later, Mr. White?” she asked.

  My secretary was in her seventies, a grandmother, and as non-threatening for Jules as I could manage. They’d tried to set me up with a young woman when I started here, but I’d insisted on Polina. The only catch was even I felt bad snapping at a grandmother who loved collecting birdhouses and spending weekends with her grandkids.

  I forced myself to sound polite. “I’ll be late, Polina. You can head home.”

  “Thank you, Mr. White. I’ll see you tomorrow!”

  She ambled out, jingling from the hundreds of keys she seemed to carry on her person at all times.

  It was going to be a late night, but tomorrow would be worth it.

  27

  Jules

  “I still can’t believe you’re not at work right now,” I said.

  Adrian was driving a SUV I assumed was a rental. He was even dressed far more casually than I’d ever seen. He had on a teal polo that hugged his biceps and let me see hints of the tattoos on his arms. He wore a simple pair of jeans and sneakers with the outfit. He looked good enough to eat. “I put in some extra time last night. You’ve got me all to yourself today.”

  I’d noticed the bags under his eyes. He was home late, even by his insane workaholic standards. The apartment he got us had two bedrooms, but I’d casually decided we were sharing a bad. We were sleeping together, after all. Even if my draconic childhood made me feel like I was going to get in trouble for sharing a bed with a guy I wasn’t married to, I was an adult, damn it. I could do what I wanted.

  “How has Coleton Central been so far, anyway?” I asked.

  He waved his long finger, grinning. The morning sun was in his face, making him look unfairly good. Each of his long, thick eyelashes was bathed in golden light. “No work talk today.”

  “Ooh,” I said. “This is new.”

  “It’s good,” he said. “I can’t remember the last time I took a true day off.”

  “So you’ve really been doing this ten years?” I asked. “I mean, I know you said Noah made his own business and then the rest of you all worked on Terranova Holdings. But how did it transition from that to this whole demolition thing? How does that even work?”

  “I feel like that qualifies as work talk,” Adrian said.

  “Nope. This is prior workplaces. Doesn’t count. Work talk is talk that makes you think about stuff you need to do later.”

  He chuckled. “Okay. Well, I had to make enough money to afford it first. By the time we decided to go after Coleton, we all had enough that we could afford to disappear from jobs at the drop of a hat. Some of our demo jobs have cost us tens of millions.”

  “What did you do to earn it all?”

  “I started a company. We actually learned to fix companies from the inside. We started small with family owned barbecue places or laundromats. We’d take a two-hundred thousand dollar business and turn it into a million-dollar business in a few months. We eventually worked our way up the chain to bigger places. Then we started flat-out buying the struggling businesses with potential and flipping them ourselves to sell for a profit. Learning to fix a business, it turns out, is a great way to learn how to destroy one.”

  “Wow,” I said. “So you fixed companies until you had enough money to afford to destroy them. You do realize how backwards that sounds, right?”

  “We fixed good companies so we could destroy bad ones. But yes, destroying them sometimes was very expensive work. Once I had to actually take over as the CEO before we could bring this place down. They were bribing port officials and dumping toxic waste and plastics in international waters, among other things. But I had to buy out the majority of their stock shares. When we crashed the company later, I tanked the value of all that stock I acquired.”

  “How do you destroy a company from the inside out if you’re not doing it that way?”

  “It depends. That’s kind of Noah’s specialty. To be completely honest, I don’t always pretend to fully grasp what he’s doing. Sometimes he can just move numbers around and everything falls apart. Other times it takes a little more brute force.”

  “I think it’s admirable,” I said. “What you’re doing, I mean. I feel like every man I’ve ever met has only cared about money or power. You actually want to do something good. And, honestly, when I first met you, I would’ve never guessed that.”

  “Bad first impression?”

  “Uh, yeah? You were destroying Walker in the middle of your employees. How does that work, anyway? You actually want to help people, but you do it by being the most terrifying bosshole imaginable?”

  “This is work talk,” Adrian said.

  “Oh, come on,” I laughed.

  He smiled, but the amusement in his face didn’t last long. He stared out at the road a few moments, then responded. “I learned early that it’s easier to put up walls, doing what I do. I may be helping people on the outside, but I
do it by bringing down companies. All those people who work for me tend to lose their jobs. I put them through hardships and have to hope it’s a net gain for the greater good, or something like that.”

  “I hadn’t thought about that.”

  “Yeah,” Adrian said. “At some point, I think it stopped being an act and felt more natural. I wasn’t always like this. The bosshole thing, I mean.”

  “No? What were you like?”

  “Me and the guys were a little like conmen,” he admitted. “Always getting into trouble. Wild.” He shook his head, smiling at the memory. “But things changed.”

  “I don’t know if I can picture that.”

  “What about you? What was it like growing up a Coleton?”

  I sank back in my seat, blowing out a long breath. “Kind of like being an overfed prisoner. I know so many people had it worse than me, so I honestly hate complaining. I just know I needed to get out for my sanity. I wanted a chance to be my own person, you know?”

  “You don’t need to qualify your pain.”

  “What?” I asked, tilting my head.

  “You said you know people had it worse. But that doesn’t really matter. You feel what you feel. It’s not a zero-sum game—suffering—I mean. There’s enough to go around and your suffering doesn’t make anybody’s better or worse. It’s like pain tolerance. What does it matter if the same experience causes someone else less pain than it causes you? You still feel what you feel.”

  “I’d never really thought of it like that. I guess I just picture you rolling your eyes if I complain.”

  “You can talk to me, Jules.” Adrian gave my leg a squeeze, then took his eyes from the road long enough to make my stomach flutter. “Just not about work for the rest of today,” he added with a warm smile.

  I smiled and wrapped both my hands around his. The rest of our drive made me feel like I was getting a taste of the type of family road trips I always saw on movies and shows. We weren’t flying in private jets, riding quietly in different cars because everyone’s schedule was too hectic to travel together. It was just me and Adrian, and I even convinced him to stop at a few gas stations so we could eat junk food.

  My stomach hurt a little from the entire bag of Sour Patch Kids I’d eaten by the time we arrived. Adrian had been tight lipped about where we were going.

  We parked in a wooded area with signs advertising a nearby campground.

  “Camping?” I asked, laughing. “I have to admit, this is the last thing I pictured you bringing me to do.”

  “Is that a bad thing?” he asked.

  “No. I’ve never camped, but I’ve always been curious. But I do think you’re supposed to bring supplies.” I noted the top of the car was empty and there didn’t appear to be anything in his trunk.

  “I cheated. I called ahead and had someone from an outdoors store bring out the things we’d need. Hopefully that doesn’t ruin the spirit.”

  “I’m just happy we’re doing this.”

  We were in the wilderness of New York, which surprised a lot of people. People thought New York and they pictured concrete and skyscrapers, but outside the city, the state was beautiful.

  I walked down a dirt trail with Adrian and entered a campground. It was an elongated loop of dirt trail with individual plots for campers and RVs to park. There were a few campers scattered among the campsites, but more people had opted to park their cars and set up a tent instead.

  There was a relatively isolated camping spot at the back of the group and a young teenage guy in a retail uniform waiting in front of it. There was a pile of brand-new looking camping gear in a pile behind him.

  “You sure you didn’t want me to help you set up this tent, sir?” he asked once we got close.

  “No,” Adrian said. “It’s a tent. How hard could it be?”

  28

  Adrian

  Fucking tent. I’d initially tried to brute force the thing. It had unfolded aggressively and somehow managed to invert itself. It took me a few minutes of struggling to fix that, but then I couldn’t figure out how to get the final compartment to unfold. I was grunting when Jules walked up with a set of directions in her hands.

  “I’ve taken a look at these and concluded you’re doing almost everything completely wrong.”

  I grinned. “Believe it or not, I used to go camping all the time as a kid. All this survival stuff was kind of a hobby, actually. Feels like another life.”

  “Didn’t use tents much?” she asked, grinning.

  “Not like this,” I admitted. “We always had simpler stuff back then. The cheaper ones weren’t so complicated.”

  “Well,” Jules said, glancing at the directions and then reaching past me. Her chest pressed into my arm as she reached for something by my ankle. She tugged and there was a metallic click. The last section of the tent popped open. “There,” she said. “You were missing a latch.”

  “What next?” I asked.

  “Oh?” Jules raised an eyebrow. “Is the caveman ready to consult the directions full time now?”

  I glared. “I didn’t think I’d need directions for a tent. You just unfold it and stick it into the ground. Now that it's not inverted, I’m sure I can figure the rest out.”

  “Be my guest,” Jules said. She folded her arms and watched with an amused expression while I tried and failed to figure out what to do next. I was halfway into hammering the edges of the tent into the dirt when she brought out a vinyl baggie of stakes I hadn’t noticed. “Before you break it, you are supposed to use these.”

  I had to admit defeat and let Jules help me with the rest of setting up the tent. It turned out she wasn’t just an impressive personal assistant, she was a natural outdoorswoman. She got our tent going, then set up the cooktop I’d bought.

  We teased each other, mostly in the form of her laughing when I failed to figure out how to do something obvious. All my knowledge of plants, animals, and survival techniques apparently didn’t extend to setting up expensive camping equipment that was all far more complicated than it needed to be.

  Maybe the process should’ve been frustrating, but all I could do was be impressed. She really was quite the woman, and I was reminded of how I needed to make sure I never took that for granted. I had no idea how this thing between us could last, but I wanted to savor it while it did.

  We spent most of the afternoon hiking through beautiful natural trails. Our favorite was a long, upward trek up the mountain. At one point, we had to hop across slick pebbles and an icy stream to continue. Jules managed the crossing, but my foot slid on the last rock, and I fell on my ass in the ankle-deep water. It was worth it to see the way she laughed until her sides hurt.

  We were both still smiling about it when we reached the end of the trail, which took us straight to the base of a waterfall. There was a challenging trail up to get a closer look that had us climbing up steep rock faces, but nothing so tall it was particularly dangerous.

  By the time we finished our day of hiking and were back to our tent, we were both comfortably exhausted and ready for dinner.

  I wasn’t the best cook, but I knew enough to put together a simple meal of pasta with some veggies and a white wine sauce. Jules helped me roast a chicken over the fire, which went poorly. Neither of us apparently knew the finer points of outdoor cooking and we ended up burning the chicken to oblivion when we took our eyes off it for a couple minutes.

  But the pasta turned out delicious, and the two of us drank what was left of the white wine we’d used for the sauce.

  “Not bad,” Jules said. We were both sitting in outdoor chairs we’d set up around our fire. She set the plate down at her feet and sat back, sighing with relief. It was a comfortably warm night, and we’d gotten lucky with bugs. I knew certain times of year could be miserable, but somehow, we seemed to have dodged them for the most part.

  I poked the smoldering, blackened chicken we’d set in the leaves by the fire with my stick. “Not good, either.”

  She laughed
. “We should probably get rid of that so a bear doesn’t come or something.”

  “We can hike out and set it somewhere away from camp. A wild animal would probably enjoy this.”

  “Look at you,” she said. “I didn’t take you for the type to care about the welfare of animals.”

  “It’s like I said. This stuff used to be a big part of my life,” I said.

  “How’d you go from all of this to the business world, anyway?”

  “That’s just how things go sometimes, I guess. Life gets in the way of dreams.”

  “That’s depressing.”

  I got up, sticking my hand out for her to take it. “You’re right. Let’s go donate this chicken to nature and talk about something else.”

  It was late and most of the campsites now flickered with fires of their own. Families sat out roasting marshmallows or cooking dinner. Intermittent spurts of laughter echoed into the darkness.

  I put my arm around Jules, pulling her into my side as we walked. I held the destroyed chicken with my other hand. I’d speared it with a stick to make it easier to carry and keep from burning my hands. Even though it had been sitting for almost half an hour, it was still hot as hell.

  “Is this really going to work?” Jules asked after we’d left the sounds of the campsites behind.

  “It’s not that complicated. I’ll just set the chicken down somewhere and an animal will find it.”

  “Us, I mean. Like what happens if your plan works, and Coleton goes down in flames? Do we ride off into the sunset together, or do you ride off into the sunset and I’m left waving goodbye?”

  “To be honest, I haven’t thought about what comes after. I’ve been driving towards this for so long. I guess I don’t even know what I want after. I just know I want Russ Coleton to regret what he did.”

  We stopped by a lake. It was a beautiful little spot. Trees hemmed it in on all sides and we had to walk down a steep slope to reach it. The moon was out in full and covered the lake in silver, shimmering light.