by Penny Wylder
“Not this time.” Sammy hangs her head between her hands, fingers massaging her temples. “She told me she was done. Completely done. I’ve never heard her talk like that before.” She groans. “And I can’t blame her, either. Why should she date me, and force herself back into a closet to do it? We can’t tell anyone we’re together. I can’t even bring her as a date to boring terrible dinners like this.” Sammy gestures at the hall around us with a rueful laugh. “My parents will never accept it. Never accept her.”
“I’m sorry.” I reach a hand across the table, and Sammy drops hers into mine briefly, squeezing once, hard.
“It is what it is,” she says, turning back toward the stage with a new, resolute set to her jaw. “Anyway. We were talking about the sorry state of your love life, not mine.”
I laugh again, though not without a pang. “I just… I feel like there’s some solution, I just can’t see it yet. Maybe it’s the company, or the way things were managed at her old branch… I mean, she talks about resenting my father and the way he runs this business a lot. Which, I can’t say that I blame her.”
Sammy snorts under her breath. “Me neither.” Then she turns a smirk on me. “Well, if that’s her complaint, at least she won’t have to deal with it for long, right?”
I blink in confusion. “What do you mean?”
Sammy lifts an eyebrow, clearly confused. “Well, because of the sale, I mean.”
“What sale?”
Now Sammy’s face goes pale, and her eyebrows both shoot skyward. She glances from me across the ballroom, to the other table where our parents are sequestered at a four-top. My father in his best suit, my mother in an evening gown that hugs her figure just closely enough to not quite be demure. Sammy’s parents in similar get-ups—her mother in a garish red dress that wouldn’t look out of place on a girl twenty years younger, but which on her, well, strikes me as a little ‘trying too hard.’ And then her father, in a suit that probably cost just as much as the one my father is wearing—which is to say, an obscene amount.
“They didn’t tell you?”
I glance from our parents to her and back again, a furrow appearing between my brows. “Tell me what?”
“About the merger.” Sammy’s eyes go wide as saucers, and she snatches up her not-so-dirty martini in order to down the rest in one long gulp. “Fuck, Bronson. I knew your dad didn’t exactly keep you tightly in the loop anymore, but this…” She shakes her head, and the look on her face, the way she’s acting, makes dread pool in my stomach.
“Sammy. What are you talking about?” I keep my voice low and steady, because otherwise I’m afraid I’m accidentally going to scream.
“Your father’s selling half of his shares. Giving up sole control of the company. He decided to go public, but he wanted to keep ownership within his close circle. So he’s selling half his shares to my father, giving my dad partial control over the bank… A lot of the branches are going to change ownership, though. My father’s getting half of the locations, and your father’s keeping the other half.” Sammy stares at me, frowning deeply. “You really didn’t know about any of this? I would have thought for sure your father would have to tell you; especially considering your current branch out in Santa Monica is the one my dad wants to turn into his new headquarters.”
I’m gaping at her now. Trading back and forth between staring at her in horror and then over my shoulder at our parents, chatting away at their table, a tabletop full of empty champagne glasses between them, all four laughing heartily at some dumb joke, I’m sure. Content in their plans, their futures.
The weight of this new knowledge sinks straight to my stomach. My father doesn’t trust me. He didn’t tell me about my own fucking branch.
“Wait.” I whirl back around to face Sammy. “Is this why my father’s so obsessed with making sure I don’t lose any more employees in the next few months? He issued some crazy ultimatum, told me if I fired or had any employees quit, he’d disinherit me once and for all.”
Sammy purses her lips, bobbing her head. “It would make sense. If he’s looking to make the branch look as successful as possible when he gives it to my father… My father agreed to take this branch over some of the more profitable ones, because your father convinced him Santa Monica has the most potential—it’s the oldest, most established branch, and it’s got enough space to grow…”
I groan, so long and loud that it turns into almost a growl. “Only because we’ve fired or lost the entire staff twice over this year—and loads more before that. Santa Monica is the branch we have the most difficulty with.”
Sammy laughs, but it’s not a happy sound. “That would explain it, then. Your father wants to unload his difficult properties on us, huh?”
“I guess so.” I clench my jaw. “Fucking hell, Sammy.”
“Confront him.” She leans back in her chair and crosses her legs, one arm draped over the empty seat beside her. “You have nothing to lose, right? He’s threatening to hinge your inheritance on the performance of this branch, and then he doesn’t even tell you what’s really going on with it. I’d be pissed.”
“I fucking am,” I mutter, fists balled. I spin to glare across the ballroom at my father’s table once more. “Look, Sammy—”
“Go,” she says, reading my mind with a rueful shake of her head. “There’s no point in you hanging out here getting drunk and angrier about it.”
“Thank you,” I say, gazing at her. “For telling me.”
She frowns. “Duh. What are fellow stuck-in-crappy-family-situation friends for?” She tilts her head up, calls after me before I can stride away from the table. “And good luck with Daisy. I’ve a feeling you guys are going to figure it out, one way or another.” She winks, and for some reason, maybe just because Sammy always seems so damned sure of herself, like she knows everything somehow, it does make me feel better.
Because it makes me realize where my priorities lie. “Thank you,” I repeat. “Tell Lyra I send my love.”
Sammy rolls her eyes, but she salutes, too. And I have a feeling that, if she’s right about Daisy and me, then I’m right about her and Lyra. Her girl will come around. Hopefully mine will, too.
“Bronson, can this wait? They’re about to announce the top donations for the month, and your mother’s going to need me there to support her when her name is called.” Dad’s half-turned toward the ballroom doors, wide open at the far end of the hallway I led him down, through which we can both hear the sound of applause spilling.
But I grip his elbow hard, to keep him focused on me. “Is it true?” I ask, my voice pitched low enough that none of the servers carrying trays of champagne and hors d’oeuvres drifting past us will overhear what I’m saying.
“Is what true?” he replies, clearly irritated.
For once, I don’t care. “Are you selling my branch of the bank?”
His gaze zeroes in on mine, his eyes narrowing. “It’s not your branch, Bronson; it’s just the branch I assigned you to attempt to manage because I thought you couldn’t possibly screw up this simple of a job. But clearly I was wrong about that.”
I ignore the dig. “You should have told me.”
“Why? It’s not as though you showed any interest in this business before now. I had to drag you back into the company with threats and bribery, if you recall. Why should I entrust you with our innermost trade secrets?” He arches a brow, calm even in the face of being caught in his lies.
“Because you asked me to run this branch. You ordered me not to lose any employees—why, because it will make your new business partner less likely to agree to take on this dying branch of the bank for himself?” I lift an eyebrow back. Two can play this whole blank stare game.
“Yes,” my father replies simply. “That’s called a smart tactical move, Bronson. Something you might know if you’d bothered to attend business school the way you were supposed to. But god forbid you do anything you’re supposed to do. Your mother and I spend your whole life trying to teach you, but you nev
er listen to a single thing we say—”
“Are you kidding?” I interrupt, my voice rising. “I did everything you both asked of me. All through elementary school, high school, I let you dictate every single life decision I ever made. And did you ever once tell me you were proud of me, that you trusted me thanks to how reliable I was?”
“You were a child,” my father says. “Adults don’t trust children. We just expect them to follow the rules.”
“Well there were too many fucking rules,” I spit. “And too much distrust, too many lies.”
“How did I lie to you? I don’t see any problem with what I did.”
“This branch is a perfect example.” I fling an arm wide. “You didn’t tell me half the things I needed to know. You only shared the bare minimum.” In the back of my mind, I think about Daisy. About how much I hurt her by hiding what was going on. Maybe I didn’t actively lie to her, but I still hid things. That’s the same thing as lying. It is lying, even if it’s a lie by omission.
She was right to be angry with me. She was right to mistrust me afterwards. I should have told her the truth all along. Just like my father should have told me everything to start with, here.
“I don’t want to be like you,” I tell my father, my pulse speeding up as I realize the words are true. As I realize how long I’ve spent—how much time I wasted in high school trying to be a miniature copy of him, when of course, I’d never be able to. I can only be myself. And I don’t want to be the type of person who lies to those closest to him. Not Daisy, not my children if I ever have any.
“That much is clear,” my father is saying, still scowling at me.
I straighten, and a smile rises to my face. “You’re right,” I tell my father. His eyes widen. “There is no problem with what you did. You were just treating the situation the same way you treat any situation. You were handling it like yourself. And I need to do the same.”
He narrows his eyes at me, clearly suspicious. “I’m glad you understand where it is I’m coming from, Bronson,” he says finally. He reaches out to rest a hand on my shoulder. “I’m not hard on you because I want to be, I hope you know. I’m hard on you because you need to understand what I can teach you. You need to understand that the way I’ve run this business, the way I’ll continue to run it, is the best way. It’s the only way forward for Burke Bank.”
“I agree,” I say again, because I do. It’s the only way this company can run. The way he’s always run it.
But me? I need to stop following in his footsteps. I need to do what’s right for me, company policies be damned.
“Can we go back and watch your mother receive her award now?” My father squints at the end of the hall. “It’s important to her.”
“Of course.” I turn to follow him down the hall, but I reach into my pocket at the same time, withdrawing my phone. We take our places back at our tables, and an announcer drones on about the charitable donations my mother made to various foundations—mostly ones run by her friends, which donate a small portion of their profits to charities, yet spend far more on throwing lavish galas like this one, expensive parties where the rich and famous can go to feel good about themselves, because the whole event is “charitable.”
While the announcers call my mother up to the stage, however, I’m distracted. Busy typing out a message, in a new window in my email account. I write out everything. My father’s planned divesting from the company, the upcoming transfer of the branch to new management. I just lay it all out there, the way I’d want my employer to if I were the employee.
If I were Daisy. If I were having a difficult time trusting my boss, and I wanted him to just lay the truth all out there on the line, so I could make an educated decision for myself about what the best option for me to do next would be.
By the time I finish writing the message, the gala is winding down. Sammy flashes me a wink, and turns her phone toward me just far enough that I can see she has a new message from Lyra. Come over and let’s talk, it says. I flash her a grin back, glad for her that her problems are starting to turn around.
I just hope that what I’m doing now will help improve my situation with Daisy. At the very least, maybe it will help her—and the rest of the employees serving under me—to trust me again. That’s all I really want. I want to be open and honest. I want to be the kind of boss whose employees trust him.
I turn back to the draft in my inbox, and I select the mailing list for the entire branch. Every single employee, from my higher-ups all the way down to Cheryl at the front desk. And then I click Send.
13
Daisy
I stride through the doors of the office to a shitstorm, from the sounds of it. People aren’t even bothering to hide their distress—they’re chatting away at a volume loud enough to stop me in my tracks in the doorway. Oh god. What have I missed? My stomach flips, and immediately, all I can think about is whatever happened in this office the last time, before Bronson took over.
Are we all being let go again? Or did people quit?
I’d feel happy about that, normally. Except I remember how worried Bronson looked when I told him I needed him to fire me. The expression he wore when he told me he’d lose his entire inheritance if a single more person walked out of this office.
As much as I know what I told him is true—I still need to leave, no matter what happens—I don’t want his entire life to be ruined over it. And I’m sure things will be even worse for him with his father if something else has gone wrong in the office.
But I don’t have long to be worried about what’s going on. Terry from accounting appears at my elbow. “Have you seen this yet?” he asks, and practically forces his tablet into my hands. On it, there’s a branch-wide email open on the screen, from Bronson, sent last night, addressed to every single person in our branch.
I take the tablet, my eyes widening with every line that I read.
I want to be fully transparent with all of you, Bronson begins the email, and it only gets more surprising from there. My father is planning to, for the first time in Burke Bank’s long history, make the company public. At the same time, however, and in a move that will impact all of you here with me in Santa Monica far more, he plans to divest himself of half his shares in the company. The other half, he’s selling to an old business partner of his, a man I’ve known my entire life, Mr. Norrel Vertura. But the main branch my father wants Mr. Vertura to take control of after he gives him half the company, is ours.
This is the basis for my father’s moving all of you into this branch. It’s why my father asked me to make employee retention my number one priority here—so that we will look appealing for Mr. Ventura when he’s deciding which branches to take on. I want to be fully open with all of you about this, because I want you all to be able to make your own decisions about where you plan to remain. If you do plan to stick with Burke Bank, which of course I hope you will, I want you to be able to make that decision with your eyes wide open, and with all of the facts in your possession.
As a good friend of mine recently taught me, it’s important to be open and honest with people, if you expect them to be open and honest with you. And I hope all of you will be honest with me when it comes to your feelings about this new plan, as you decide what’s the best path for you individually.
I stare at his signature on the email when I finish reading, unable to convince myself for a long moment that it was really him talking. But it’s his name there. And I read back up to skim the last paragraph. As a good friend of mine…
Well, at least he listens to what I say. I smile, in spite of myself.
“This is nuts, right?” Terry is saying. “I can’t believe nobody’s told us this is all going on. And the shares are going crazy right now—half the people are buying more, half are divesting entirely.”
But I’m already staring past him, at the hall that leads to Bronson’s office. “Definitely crazy,” I agree. “Listen, Terry, I’ll catch up with you in a few.” Unable to wai
t any longer, I stride up the hall, out of the buzzing common area where everyone is talking about the email, what it means, what they want to do about it now.
But there’s something I need to do. Because Bronson’s words are weighing heavy on my mind. It’s important to be open and honest with people, if you expect them to be open and honest with you.
Bronson’s done that now. He’s opened up to me about everything—about his father, about the debt collectors and the beating he took, about why he left Georgia without telling me what was really happening. At the very least, I owe him the same in return. I owe it to him to be open and real about what’s going on with me.
When I reach Bronson’s office, I find a line of people waiting outside. “Join the club,” Cheryl from the front desk calls over her shoulder at me, then nods toward his closed door.
As if on cue, the door swings inward, and Bronson holds it open to let a girl whose name I can’t remember from accounts out. “Thank you again,” Bronson is saying to her, and she’s smiling, despite the fact that her mascara is smudged around her eyes like she started out the day much more upset than she looks now.
“No,” she says, her smile widening. “Thank you. I feel so much better now.”
Bronson smiles and bids her farewell. At the same time, his gaze drifts past her and locks onto mine. “Ms. Rider.”
“Mr. Burke,” I reply.
He holds the door open wider. “Care to come in?”
“Hey, some of us have been waiting,” Cheryl butts in, one hip cocked, her lips pursed with annoyance.
“I know, and I apologize,” he says. “But I need to speak to Ms. Rider about something urgently. I’m sure you all understand.” He turns to take in the rest of the four people in line, and their heads all bob in unison.
“Of course” echoes up the line, and they stand aside to let me pass. Still, I can’t help feeling a tingle at the back of my neck, like everyone standing here is watching me, wondering why I’m getting special treatment. It doesn’t matter. In a couple of weeks, I’ll be gone, and I’ll never have to see these people again. I don’t care if they start rumors about me. If they figure out that there’s something more going on between Bronson and me.