Chapter Twenty-Six
Anthony
I have no choice but to go to work. I just signed a multi-million-dollar deal, and I’m now legally bound to see it through. Nobody bothers to tell you there’s another side to success. When you finally score big, people expect you to keep doing it. You can’t crawl into bed and pull the blankets over your head the day after you bluffed your way into a big ad campaign just because you got dumped.
No, I didn’t bluff my way in. I knew what I was talking about. I just needed a lot of help. And now she’s gone. From my work and my bed and my life. She’ll never come back, not after everything she said.
My heart is heavy as my driver opens the car door for me. I usually enjoy the luxury of a chauffeured town car, but I can’t even muster up the strength to care. All the money in the world and I couldn’t care less without her.
There’s one comfort: nobody at work knows what happened. Jane and I kept things quiet about us, so the only person who knows about that is Chloe. Everyone else only knows I scored big yesterday. And since I made it clear in the past that I didn’t want an assistant, I’m sure no one will be surprised when Jane doesn’t show up.
They smile when they see me step off the elevator and nod and congratulate me and tell me what a good job I did. Kiss ups, sure, but it still feels good to hear it. At least the entire world doesn’t think I’m a faithless, heartless loser. It doesn’t make it feel any less hollow, though.
I’ll forget her. I’ll have to. At least there won’t be any time to brood when I have a campaign to head. I ignore the sick feeling in my stomach when I think about doing it without her. I can do this.
My chair is barely warm when Dad calls in on my speaker phone. “I want to see you, now,” he barks.
“Good morning to you, too,” I mutter under my breath as I stand, buttoning my suit jacket, and smoothing a hand back over my hair to make sure it’s in place. Why do I even care what he thinks about the way I look? Regardless, it’s a habit. I hope he doesn’t want to talk for too long. I’ll probably beg off, tell him I’m busy, then lock the door and sit by myself all day. I can’t imagine concentrating enough to get anything done.
Dad’s sitting with his back to me when I get to his office. Funny, seeing as how he called me, but it’s a power play. Everything with him is a power play.
I knock on the open door. “You wanted to see me?”
“Close the door.”
And here I am, thinking he was calling me to congratulate me again for yesterday. His voice is so cold, I’m surprised the windows aren’t frosted over. This is going to be fun. Once he hears the latch turn, he turns in his chair. It’s official. His face is roughly the same shade as an eggplant.
Fuck.
I sigh. “What did I do this time?” Might as well get it over with. I stand with my hands clasped behind my back and wait for the storm to rage, then blow over.
This isn’t one of the usual storms, however. I can tell when he doesn’t stand up. He normally does that when he wants to stare me down. Instead, he leans his elbows on the arms of his chair and tents his fingers beneath his chin.
“I want to preface what I’m about to say by stating that I don’t approve of sneaking around.”
“Okay…” Where could this possibly be going? Usually, he’s yelling at me for not being subtle enough.
“However,” he continues, “when it’s in the best interest of my company, not to mention my employees and their livelihoods, I feel it’s warranted.”
“That’s…good to hear,” I reply, still waiting for the bomb to drop.
Then, it does. “What the hell were you thinking, using that girl’s ideas and calling them your own?” he explodes in a voice that practically shakes the windows.
I stare for a moment before I can even react. “What? Who told you that? How would they even—?” Before he can reply, I figure it all out. “Jerrod? That sneaky son of a bitch!”
“He accessed your email—”
“You mean broke into!”
“I mean accessed!” Dad roars. “It’s my damn company! And he saw that she gave you all those ideas! He saw everything!”
I’ve never liked Jerrod. It’s been his mission in life for years to take me down, but never more than when I took the job with Dad. And there’ve been times I’ve wanted to knock the daylights out of him, but this is the first time I feel like I actually might lose control if I hit him now.
“Do you even understand what you’ve done?” Dad asks. “Do you know how much trouble this could make for us? You used her ideas when you know damn well she’s not contracted to do that kind of work. She’s an intern, for God’s sake! Using her intellectual property under false pretenses could leave us open to a lawsuit!”
I have to admit, that gets through to me. I had no idea. I didn’t even think that it could be an issue because I never bothered to pay much attention to, well, to anything really.
He’s not done yet. “Not only that, but the scandal would ruin my reputation—and my political chances! And for what? So you could pretend to be a big shot?”
“I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
“Yeah. You never mean for anything to happen, do you?”
I’ve never heard him sound so hateful before. That’s exactly how he sounds, too. Full of hatred. He hates me.
My father hates me.
“I’m sorry, son.” He doesn’t look sorry. Not even a little bit.
“Sorry for what?” I dare ask, though I have a pretty good idea of what’s coming. He warned me, after all.
“I gave you one last chance, and you blew it. You have to go.”
I feel cold inside. He really wants me gone, just like that. His own son. Okay, so I fucked up. But at least this time I was actually trying to do right.
“It was an honest mistake,” I manage to say.
“Bull. You didn’t make a mistake. You deliberately used that girl’s ideas, just like you use people for everything else you want. You’re a screw-up, Anthony, and I can’t have that around me, not when there’s so much riding on my reputation.” He turns away again, facing the window.
The discussion, what there was of it, is officially over. It’s not the firing that hurts, not really. If my father wasn’t my boss, I probably would have been fired a long time ago. No, no probably, about it. I would have been. If it was just that, it wouldn’t hurt so much. It’s the fact that he’s baldly stating what I’ve always known. His career means more than his son, and that’s the real reason I’m being fired. It has little to do with work performance and everything to do with his image.
I have to go. I manage to hold my head high as I walk out of the office, but it doesn’t matter. He can’t see me, and I admit now that he never has.