8

AIDEN

 

My father comes into my office, catching me eye the new girl while I’m still on the phone.

“Mornin’, Aid.” He slaps me on the back. He’s got a smile on his face.

“Gotta go. Get that email to me by lunchtime,” I say into my phone and end my call.

My father undoes his blazer and sits in one of the two guest chairs in my office. I hate this office. I use it when I’m here at headquarters and it’s a fucking fishbowl with glass walls. There are blinds, but none of the other leadership team members use their blinds with my father’s preference for an ‘open door policy’.

In the New York branch, I have an office with walls, not bullshit windows. Granted, I didn’t have much of a view, other than other office buildings and the view here via the exterior window is nothing to scoff at. I have views at home. At the office, I prefer privacy.

I don’t only have a nice view out the window looking at San Diego, I also have a nice internal view, too. Seeing that girl bent over in her cubicle in front of me with her tight skirt, her hair over one shoulder, her peach blouse giving me a peek of back cleavage; it made my dick twitch before my father strolled in.  She’s a tiny thing but she’s got a great round ass with plenty to grab onto. Tiny waist. Luscious big tits. Wonder if they’re real. If they are, they’re fucking perfect. Perky. Big. If they’re not natural, her surgeon is an artist. If they’re hers, proof there’s a benevolent God.

Yep, round ass like a perfect peach. Keep seein’ her wear that orange-peach color.

My cock twitches at the idea of getting rammed between those tits or at sliding between those ass cheeks.

The look on her face when she spotted me and realized who I am? She was surprised, obviously having no clue who I was until then. Wonder if she’ll keep up with the sass she showed me over the weekend or if she’ll fall in line now that she knows I’m her VP and the CEO’s son. I’m fully expecting her to start kissing my ass.

I don’t ponder it for more than a beat, since my father is now blocking my view of her in her cubicle right outside my office.

“Dinner was nice yesterday.” He’s got his eyes on me.

“It was what it was,” I mutter.

My father purses his lips. “Aiden.”

Our eyes meet, and I see pain in his eyes. Does he not have a fucking clue how messed up his family is? The bullshit his wife has put on all of us?

Is he ready to address it?  Ten times that first month after I walked in on that, I tried to talk to him about it and he shut me down, like he knew what I was gonna say, and didn’t wanna hear it. As a result, it’s been a couple years since I even tried to have a conversation with him about anything that wasn’t work-related.

I hold his gaze, mine hard.

I’ve had enough of her shit to last a lifetime. As much as my father wasn’t a great Dad, he is a decent man. And he doesn’t deserve to have his heart crushed under the feet of his son. But, fuck. This game? This not talking about the elephant in the room?

Audra Carmichael isn’t just a cheater. She’s also a shitty human being.  And I have more than a strong suspicion that my and my younger brother’s paternity are big fat ugly question marks.  And it has been a monkey on my back for more than a year.

An early memory hit me like a truck after catching her being spit roasted by the two fucking landscaping guys, so I hired a PI to see what else she’d been up to. If suspicions are correct, my brother and maybe also me are both Carmichaels, but not fathered by the same Carmichael as we grew up calling Dad.

“As nice as it was having all my children at the table for dinner, your attitude upset your mother yesterday,” he says to me.

He doesn’t elaborate. He never does.

“Doesn’t it always?” I finally return, giving him an arched brow.

He stares a long moment until I break it by rising.

“We have a meeting in five. No time for this now. And let’s leave family shit out of the office.”

It wasn’t a true Carmichael dinner. We’ve never had one of those where Audra allows her whole family at the table since her grandson was born. She doesn’t want Braeden at the formal dinner table until he’s got manners.  He’s fucking two.

“You’re right. It was my rule to leave work at work, so we should leave home at home. Trouble is, I rarely see you. How about you and I go for dinner tonight. Just us two.”

I shake my head, thinking too fucking little and way too fucking late. “Got plans.” I open the door and motion for him to leave.

He looks over his shoulder briefly (for what reason, I have no clue) and then looks back at me with a smile. “Tomorrow then?”

“I’ll have to let you know. Gotta make a quick call before our meeting.”

He rises and gives me a look that might be interpreted as pain, and then he heads out, buttoning his blazer as he goes.

Quinten Carmichael is the poster dad, the Carmichael kids the poster children in that song, Cats in the Cradle.

He had no time for anything but work when I was a kid. Work and family were always separate, so I don’t typically get ‘my father’ at work. I’m not supposed to get ‘my CEO’ outside of work, but he’s so rarely outside of work that I’ve never gotten much of him at all.

That said, I do have loyalty to him. This bullshit with my mother has been a cloud I’ve chosen to ignore. It was easier to ignore it from New York. Now that I’m here again, it’s hanging over me.

Dad had a heart attack a couple months before I’d caught her. It did not wake his shit up and slow him down. His heart was just one of the list of threats my mother used in an effort to get me to keep my mouth shut about her escapades. Yet I tried to talk to my father repeatedly, thinking I could deliver the truth in a way that would soften the blow, but he blocked me at every turn.  He has to know. Or maybe he knows without knowing the details, but it’s obvious he doesn’t wanna deal.

When threatening me about his heart didn’t seem to work, she tried threatening me, saying she’d “eviscerate him” if he filed for divorce, suggesting she had secret ammunition. She plays dirty. I don’t doubt she would.

But, if my suspicions about my paternity and Austin’s paternity are right, I could play even dirtier.  I could wind up with more of my father’s estate than her. Way more if I play certain cards.

She’s always been self-absorbed, preferring to leave the childrearing to nannies and teachers. Now, I tolerate her. I have limited relationships with my siblings, my nephew, but she’s another story.

She’s gonna try to corral me into fake “family” shit for the time I’m here, but I’ll be pushing back.

She’s the prime reason why I have but one use for the fairer sex. They’re not fair. They’re selfish bitches who only care about themselves. There’s one exception. Okay two.

Adele, my sister. And Suki, the nanny who raised us. Suki retired a decade ago when my younger brother went off to college, rendering her useless. Suki moved to upstate New York a few years back and I’ve visited her half a dozen times since I’ve lived in New York City. She is more like a mother to me and she’s the only reason why Adele isn’t just like Audra.

As for the women in my life other than my sister and my nanny? There’s no room in my life for a permanent female. Yeah, I’ve got commitment issues. Because, in my experience, 98% of the women out there can’t be trusted. I don’t have the inclination to sift through the remaining 2% to look for compatibility. Besides, there is no shortage of attractive women throwing themselves at me, so I never have to look for female company.

I make my quick call and then head to the boardroom where the meeting is already underway.

 

***

 

It’s our fiscal year end this week, so my father is going through slides on a PowerPoint, talking to the room about our goals for the upcoming quarter. The room is filled with my team and a few tech people. Me. Two designers, one of them a new girl with pink hair who has been ogling me (undressing me with her huge blue eyes the entire meeting. She must be from the Baltimore company we recently acquired), two IT people, the new chick who I’m sharing the apartment with. My father’s secretary, two marketing staff members, and two marketing interns are also here. The four marketing team members in our New York office have dialed in to the meeting and are on-screen.

In New York we’ve got six salespeople and four marketing people, two admin team members and me.

We’ve also got a Miami branch office with ten staff members, all sales.

Normally, my marketing manager would head up a team meeting. George does weekly meetings at 9:30 on Monday mornings. My idea. My people hate it but there’s no excuse for laziness. I expect them to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed on Monday mornings. I only attend these meetings once a month, by video conference.

Dad wouldn’t even be here, normally, but we have the two new contract people and George is on medical leave. Since I don’t usually work out of this branch and we’ve got two newbs, it’s typical for him to do a meeting and make sure people know who he is. I’ll have to be the one doing these meetings until George is back.

My father introduces Carly Adler and Ally Kingston again, for my benefit since I’m late, cracking a joke about it, then resumes talking about how Carly’s gonna be taking a lead on our internet marketing campaigns. Ally is aligned with her on our new campaigns and will be working with our team as well as the web developers on art for all the new company website properties as well as working on the art for our online courseware.

We recently acquired a new franchising consultancy division in Buffalo, which I scouted because of their impressive online and social media presence and Dad closed the deal on it.

This is where Carly came from and we’re ramping up marketing for another consultancy firm we’ve acquired, so it’s going to get busy.  Dad’s intro tells me that this girl, my roommate, is the reason why that firm in Buffalo was doing as well as it was.

Dad’s singing her praises, waxing lyrical about how she boosted the return on investment for Facebook and Google ads for the subsidiary singlehandedly. She got them ranking as top for many coveted search terms for our industry, which is why we bought them. They were small potatoes, but yet they were outranking us, taking their small regional firm from local to national.

She had gotten them an online reputation and influencer reach that had been enviable.  And that was why I punted the opportunity Dad’s way. If we can’t easily compete against someone and quickly outshine them, we try to buy them out.

Dad’s talking like this twenty-something chick is the sole reason for that company’s success and he gushes in a way that never happens, continuing to eye me as he does it. And that doesn’t sit well.

He announces we’re closing that Buffalo office down and bringing work for it in-house, laying off the entire team back there. Her expression drops at this news and I give my dad a look. He doesn’t pick up on the meaning of the look.

He should’ve told her this aside, rather than telling her in front of the department that she’s the sole survivor from a company she worked at. I don’t know how long she’s been there, how hard it’s gonna hit her. These things are unavoidable, but you have to finesse them when you’re keeping assets around.

Dad tells the room that she was the only functioning team member and that’s why she got transferred and promoted. He’s smiling at her. She wipes the shock off her face and gives him a hesitant smile, but everyone in the room feels her tension.

We all know that he only keeps high-performing people. If you’re a slacker, you’re gone.  He keeps this philosophy at the forefront at all times, letting people know they’re expendable.

If Quinten Carmichael was programmed, it could be said it was done without sensitivity, as has been demonstrated throughout not only my working life, but also my entire life. As he asks her to recount her accomplishments in the Buffalo office, she stutters at first, thrown at the news of the demise of her former coworkers, but then as she talks about some of her accomplishments, she gets this light in her eyes and changes course. People ask questions and she freely shares information, which is stupid, because if you show all your cards, someone has a chance to study your playbook and take you out.

But, she wows the room with her knowledge about all things Google Adwords, Facebook marketing, and social media in general. She talks about her plans to help us boost our online following, to up the click-through rate for our email marketing campaigns, and talks about her plans to launch a YouTube channel where we can do a web series that shows entrepreneurs how to grow their online presence with the upsell to our high-ticket marketing mastery online course, which will tie in with a further upsell to hiring our consultancy services to help these companies grow their businesses to the next level. She’s talking about plans that could leverage our new call center in the Philippines, too.

Dad is looking at her like there’s sunshine coming out of her ears.

He keeps looking at me to… what, gage my reactions? What’s his game? Why has he put her in my apartment?

Questions are firing rapidly in my brain. Is he grooming her for my position for when I get promoted to president? Shouldn’t that be my choice? Or is he using her to make sure I know I could be replaced if I don’t drink his Kool-Aid? I’m feeling paranoid all of a sudden. 

Is he trying to warn me that my job is at risk of being scooped by a little girl with curly hair and great tits along with ideas that she shouldn’t be voicing in a meeting instead of bringing them to me privately, since I’m the fucking VP? I don’t fuckin’ think so. What’s her game?

Is she another one of Audra’s moles, like Bella? Spying on me in my apartment, reporting on my activities?

I feel like I’m about to snap at the notion that he’s playing games with me.

Fuck, I’m paranoid. Why the fuck am I so paranoid? Being in San Diego is fuckin’ with me.

My father doesn’t fuck with me. My mother, I can see, but Dad? No.

I’m supposed to become president of the company next year. He’s fifty-five and wants to retire at sixty. In five years I’ll be taking over as CEO and by then my brother Austin will be CFO.

I’ve bent over backwards and done triple fucking backflips to prove I deserve my position. That I don’t just have a VP on my business card because of my last name.

Has my bitch of a mother gotten in his ear about me? Is he trying to threaten me into compliance with her fake family bullshit?

This innocent twenty-something girl from Buffalo isn’t a threat to me. Not remotely.

Yet it’s rattling me. And when I’m rattled, I go on the offense.

I start firing tough questions, some of them trick questions at Carly, trying to trip her up to show her weaknesses, make her stutter and sweat.

“Isn’t that black hat? You took that risk knowing it could get your site banned by search engines?”

“No, it was a grey area, but it worked. I knew the algorithms could change so I had a back-up plan. I …”

 

The little bitch is on the ball, and comes back with answers to every question, a confident look blazing in her eyes.

She does not lose her cool even once, despite my upping the ante with every question I fire back. And there’s challenge in her eyes. Sassiness in her tone.

It’s giving me a raging fucking hard-on, which pisses me off even more, because I’m thinking Why the fuck is this chick’s sass making me hard?

I wanna grab her by the hair and ram my tongue down her throat. I wanna throw her face-first over this table and grind my cock between her ass cheeks and then tell every person in the room to get out, tell them I’m about to fuck this bitch until she’s whimpering and pleading for me to stop making her come because she can’t take it anymore.

And I’m well-aware of just how much tension I’m filling the room with via my snarky replies and questions until my father cuts in and abruptly ends the meeting.

Dad rises and looks at his watch.

“We had this room booked until 10 and it’s 10:06. We didn’t get a chance to hit all our agenda items, but finance is waiting. Let’s stop here.  Ally, Carly, welcome again. Lunch with the two of you and me and your VP, Aiden. Twelve noon at Tapsters, across the street. Sound good? And everyone, don’t forget, team building Friday night. Mandatory.”

The room is so quiet, yet brimming with tension, that you’d hear a pin drop.

I need to talk my dick down so my erection isn’t obvious as I leave this room.

“Sounds great,” Ally shakily says, smiling.

Carly nods at my father and then her eyes land on me. She’s pissed and now that she’s stopped talking about her skills, she’s doing a bad job of hiding it. She’s looking at me with challenge in her eyes.  Not afraid of going head to head with me despite finding out I’m a Carmichael? I’m almost impressed.

I stare right back, dead into her eyes with challenge, and she flinches.

Good.

I physically bump into my brother outside the boardroom and he jokes about it, but I’m in no mood. I storm off.