“I can’t believe I made you cry, I’m so sorry.”

I was cringing hard enough to make my toes curl under me. Anna was opposite me, slumped in her chair, wiping the tears from her face.

“I made a girl in a wheelchair cry. I’m such a bad person.”

She shook her head, sniffing loudly as she looked up at me. Then in an instant, the tears stopped. She grinned.

“You were acting?”

Her grin broadened until it covered her entire face. “You can’t say sorry when someone cries, it’ll ruin the entire effect.”

We’d spent the last hour at this and I was getting nowhere. “I just can’t do it,” I said, shaking my head. “I can’t be mean to people.”

“You have to,” she said, pointing a finger at me. “Now let’s go again and if I cry, don’t apologise. The top executive mega-bitch boss from hell never apologises. She gets shit done and that’s why she got this job. Remember why you’re doing this?”

I knew she was right but that didn’t make it any easier. I just wasn’t a mean person.

This new post was a big step up for me. I’d been hammering away at the glass ceiling ever since graduating, clawing my way slowly up the corporate ladder. It also meant enough money for our project to keep running. Meals for homeless families. The funding for the food club was drying up. Cutbacks everywhere. My increased salary meant we could potentially fund it ourselves. If I made a good impression. If I made the job work for me. This was my big chance and I had to get it right.

Anna knew what she was talking about though. She’d had to develop a thick skin since her fall, taking abuse about her wheelchair from people she once called friends. She learned a lot of things in the aftermath, including how to manipulate people into letting her get on with her life, the only way she could be independent. It was how we’d funded the project for so long. Her ability to get people to do what she wanted was a skill that never failed to impress me.

I was too nice. I let people walk all over me. Yesterday, she had summed it up perfectly. “You would have had this job five years ago if you’d toughened up. Remember the Snuggly Rabbit when you were in kids books?”

“Yes, I remember,” I replied, still pained by the memory.

“Stolen from you because you let them do it. All that work down the drain. Toughen up, kiddo or it’ll keep happening.”

I tried, I really tried. I couldn’t let another Snuggly Rabbit happen. I had shared the concept for the book, shared the author name, then Remington Books went and signed him for a contract right under my nose. All thanks to me being too nice. That cost me big. I left Kidtastic Publishing a month later.

But that was then. I was now an executive. On a six month trial. Do well and the post was mine. Lose another Snuggly Rabbit and I’d be back job searching once again.

It would be different this time.

I had a much better grasp of confidentiality, of keeping things under my hat, not sharing them with anyone apart from Anna, the only person in the world I knew I could trust.

Somehow I got lucky with this post. I spotted the vacancy in the newspaper. I wasn’t going to apply but Anna made me. I told her I didn’t have a shot, I had nowhere near enough experience to run an entire office, not aged twenty-five. It would go to someone forty or fifty, someone with a life of experience in the publishing industry.

But I got an interview. Somehow I got an interview. I had a fortnight’s notice of it and I spent the entire two weeks rehearsing answers with Anna’s help.

On interview day, despite being on the verge of a panic attack the entire time, I did pretty well. Each question they asked was one Anna had trained me on, I had the answer ready. I popped, I sparkled, I wowed them. I came away floating on air, only descending when I got home. They had told me the CEO would make the final decision by the end of the day, all based on their recommendations. But I heard nothing.

The next morning, after a night of drowning my sorrows in hot chocolate, they rang me. They offered me the post. I had no idea why they picked me. Anna said it was because of my enthusiasm for books and publishing, things you couldn’t fake. "I'd have hired you," she said, patting me on the back as I hung up the phone.

She worked in publishing too, in a way, self publishing a couple of her books online after receiving more agent rejections than she could cope with.

She never gave up though. I had to give her that. Her bedroom was filled with manuscripts, finished, in progress, and dead in the water. There was more paper than floor space. I was amazed she could wheel herself in and out of there without getting buried in it all.

I had offered to take her books in and try and get them published in the past but she refused to even countenance the idea. “I will survive or die on my own merits, Lucy,” she had said, snatching back the book of hers that I loved most.

“Well, I don’t know why it’s been rejected. This is the best thing you’ve ever done.”

“You have to say that, you’re my best friend.”

“I know but I mean it. It’s brilliant, if a bit raunchy!”

“If I can’t jump on men anymore, my heroines have to do it for me.”

“You still pull more men than me.”

“You’re just more picky.”

She was right. I had yet to meet the right guy for me, someone who would sweep me off my feet and make life exciting, Rhett Butler mixed with James Bond. Actually, that would be a bit weird. "Frankly my Q, I don't give a damn."

I offered again when I got this job. I could take her latest book in, add it to the pile, but she still said no, preferring to spend her time being drill sergeant to my very reluctant soldier, toughening me up to be an executive.

If she wasn’t in the chair, she’d have been the type to pace the floor. As it was, she sat perfectly upright, pointing her riding crop at me, the reminder of her accident that she refused to hide away, seeing it as a talisman of some kind, the reason she was partially paralysed, not dead. It featured heavily in her books, often brandished by the dastardly anti-hero.

She scowled at me. “You are the new executive mega-bitch, correct?”

“Yes, Sir!”

“No sarcasm. Just listen. You are the new executive at Snow Day Publishing. Correct?”

For six months, remember, not forever.”

“You are in charge of an entire company, correct?”

“Just adult fiction but yes.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You don’t want them all walking all over you like at Kidtastic, do you?”

“No, Anna.”

“Then you need to be strict, you need to be mean, you need to be mega-bitch.”

“I need to be mega-bitch?”

“Yes. Someone screws up. You yell at them. Someone steals your idea, you boot them out with not even enough time to clear their desk. You go in on your first day and you set the right impression and it’ll all be easy from then on. You can ease off once they know you’re not to be messed with.”

“Mega-bitch? Are you sure?”

“Yes! March in on your first morning, burst through the doors and start demanding action. Whatever deadlines they have, move them forwards. Whatever they’re working on, give them something more, keep them busy, show them that you’re the boss and you take no prisoners.”

“No prisoners?”

“Exactly. Now let’s practise.”

We spent our time in the run up to me starting in the same way every day. She played the role of an employee, surly or aggressive or lazy or one of the other dwarves Snow White turned down. My favourite was sleazy when she pretended to lech over me and I had to threaten her with being arrested, her chasing me around the room in her chair. That was pretty funny.

But the day I was due to start, she made me rehearse one last time and then I made her cry and I felt so bad, I wasn’t sure I could go through with it at all.

“I wanted to go home early,” she said, in the role of whiny employee. “Please, Miss Rhodes.”

I didn’t even let her finish. “Listen to me, Missy Actress O'Big Tits. We work hard here and we get the job done and to do that I need everyone in the office until I say otherwise so you park your ass on your seat and you get that contents page finished before noon or I send you downtown to the wolves for them to eat you alive, you understand. Are you listening to me? Back to work.”

I stopped there because, one, I needed to take a breath and, two, I noticed she was crying. I felt so bad.

“I can’t believe I made you cry.”

But then she revealed she was only pretending.

“I’ve got to go,” I said once my apologies were over, looking at the time. “Can’t be late on my first day.”

“You’ll knock ‘em dead,” she said as I started putting my coat on.

“You really think so?”

“Nobody there knows you’re a fluffy bunny pussy cat who loves crying at The Sound of Music and curling up in the world’s softest slippers. Today you wear spiked boots of doom. You are mega-bitch. What are you?”

“Mega-bitch?” I asked, unsure.

“Louder! With conviction. You are mega-bitch.”

“I am mega-bitch.”

“Now go make some books happen.”

“I will.” I headed down the hall and pulled open the front door.

“Just one more thing,” she called after me.

“Who are you, Colombo?”

“I’m more of an Ironside, don’t you think?”

“Very good.”

“Listen, seriously, good luck.”

“Thank you, Anna.”

I headed out to the car. My own parking space was waiting for me in the underground garage at the office. My first named, reserved, parking space. I felt like a somebody at last.

I didn’t feel like a mega-bitch though. I felt like a fraud. It would only take one person to say, “but you’re a fluffy bunny,” and I’d crumble like a cracker in a clenched fist.

Was she right? I had been walked over in jobs before. I was often too nice to people. But could I be mean? Could I be strict? Was it even a good idea?

She knew what she was talking about better than me. I could trust her.

I needed to get angry. Not easy as I was ridiculously happy to be working at Snow Day. I couldn’t walk in beaming at everyone though, they’d see me for who I really was, a pushover. I needed to get angry. Be in a foul mood. Roar at them all, make them scared of me. Be mega-bitch.

I had my first flare of justified anger when a car cut me up not long after I’d set off. Some souped up supercar with a super idiot driver in the midst of a mid life crisis, forcing me to slam on the brakes when he came tearing into my lane from nowhere. Then racing off before I even had time to mutter a swear word to myself.

“You twat,” I said quietly long after he’d vanished into the distance. That wasn’t very mega-bitch, I thought. But what if I’d yelled out the window and he’d come over with a baseball bat and swung at me?

Ten minutes later, the roads came grinding to a halt. I got to the garage far later than I planned. I’d have to set off earlier tomorrow. I had got stuck in traffic on the way in, no surprise given the congested streets in the middle of London.

By the time I made it to the ramp going down, I only had two minutes to spare before I was due to start. I had planned to get there half an hour early, get the lay of the land. But it wasn’t to be. At least I wouldn’t be late. That was something, right?

I rolled past bay after bay, all filled with vehicles. It didn’t matter. My space was down at the end, second to last, and no one would be parked in that.

Or so I thought.

I was about to angle slowly into the space when I had to hit the brakes hard. In the middle of the space was a car, blocking my name sign from view. Not just any car either. It was the same bloody car that had cut me up on the drive in.

My blood pressure, already rising, started to bubble dangerously as I did a seven point turn in the narrow lane and tried to find another space, all the while cursing under my breath. There were no other spaces.

What would mega-bitch do?

I smiled to myself as I drove slowly back towards my space. Then I positioned my car directly behind the one that had snatched it from me. Then I turned the engine off.

I climbed out. “That’s what mega-bitch would do,” I said out loud, nodding towards the car. Let him complain about who blocked him in. Shouldn’t have been in my space. Only had himself to blame, Mr Mid Life Crisis.

I turned around three times on the way over to the lifts. Each time, I felt guilt washing over me. I shouldn’t do that. I shouldn’t do the bad thing, block in the car. I should be nice, I should let it go.

Then Anna’s voice came echoing around my head. Mega-bitch takes no prisoners. Mega-bitch takes no shit from anyone.

I made it to the lift, hitting the button and watching the doors close from inside, the cars vanishing from sight.

The lift rose silently upwards as I looked at myself in the mirrored door. Hair, on point. Kind of. Make up, spot on. Pretty much. Turn that polite smile into a glare. That’s it.

I tugged at my business suit. Pencil skirt, black tights. Shoes that said I’m in charge, not you. Jacket with handbag that said get out of my way, I’m far too important for chitchat. I had to admit I looked the part of the mega-bitch. I just hoped convincing everyone else I wasn’t a pushover was easier than convincing me.

Anna had given me a tip. As soon as I got in there, single someone out. Make a point of disciplining them harshly in front of everyone. Make them all see that I wasn’t to be messed with.

I stepped out on the seventh floor. My floor. Adult fiction. The floor above was academic, below was seasonal. It might have been June but they were already working on Christmas books down there, glitter had even been coated on the ‘six’ button in the lift.

The doors closed behind me on seven and the lift moved on. I was in the corridor alone. Adult Fiction. Floor Seven. My new empire. A chance to shape future book releases and keep our project going. All in all, I had a lot riding on this. I took a few steps, then stopped outside the double doors. Inside was the open plan office. For one moment there was just me.

“Knock ‘em dead,” Anna said in my head.

“I can do this,” I muttered out loud.

I took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Then I took hold of the brass handles to both doors and shoved them open. It was time to show them who was in charge. Me. I was in charge.

I walked in.

 

End of sample.

Sign up to my to be notified when it goes live.