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West
The days drag on. Raleigh and Callie are accommodating and considerate, but the extra hours I’m having to put in just to keep up are wearing all of us thin. The old guard has formed a wall around the retail division, drumming up an amount of loyalty I’d never have expected to see from the employees. Which makes me think the “course correction” I’d been hired for—the term used by my father and grandmother both—is entirely their brainchild. Perhaps they haven’t seen fit to let the rest of management in on their plans; it would explain the frankly stunning amount of resistance that keeps cropping up.
I have a reputation for relentlessness but this… this is something else.
It keeps me too busy to think about Finn, which is for the best. Surely. It’s bad enough he’s not returning my messages. Or calls. Or texts. Callie tells me he’s decided to move out, though she says his truck is still parked at his apartment most of the time. I don’t know if he’s leaving, or just getting out of town for a while, or if he’s ever going to speak to me again.
For the umpteenth time today, I remind myself that if I were in his shoes, I wouldn’t speak to me either. I made my choice, and while Callahan is worth every bit of it and I can’t regret that, Finn’s my best friend. Was my best friend. For years. For a long time, he was the only person who mattered, who made me feel like I mattered.
But wishing I could explain doesn’t change a damned thing. I redouble the grief and hurt and doubt and anger back into the office, tearing through my work with singular focus.
It barely moves the needle.
Later in the week, Herb Levitt, one of the oldest of the old guard in our division, shows up for our one-on-one—late—and refuses to answer a question directly. On the verge of losing my temper and trashing my own office, I stop fucking around.
“What the hell is going on, Herb?”
He glances at me for the briefest moment, then returns his gaze to the window, unperturbed. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Weston. You have my report.”
I tap the desk with my pen repeatedly, then drop it and push back in my chair.
“Here’s the deal,” I say, standing up to plant my hands on my desk and leaning forward. “You and the rest of the team have until the end of the week to get your shit in order. No more ignoring my emails or giving my assistant the runaround when I set up a meeting.”
“Is that a threat?” Levitt asks. He appears to be entirely unconcerned by the idea.
“Does it need to be?” I ask, unable to keep the incredulity out of my voice. “For Christ’s sake, man, you’ve been here twenty-five years. I don’t want to fire you. But if I can’t get the job done—”
The rest of the sentence evaporates before I can get it out because Herb laughs.
My vision goes red.
“Look, junior,” he says, and I hold my breath, aware that the next thing I might say could land me in a lawsuit. “Believe it or not, I like you. So I’m gonna throw you a bone on this one.” Herb takes his time getting to his feet, tugging his overpriced coat over his sizable girth and taking entirely too long to secure the button at the front before he speaks again.
“You want to get somewhere on this? I suggest you start looking to your own house.”
“My own house,” I say flatly, my anger stalling out. “My family owns this company, Mr. Levitt. Perhaps you’ve forgotten.”
“Oh, ho,” he says, giving that condescending laugh again. “I’ve not forgotten, Mr. Thorpe. But perhaps you have.”
With that cryptic statement, he exits my office. I’m still staring at the door he’s just vacated when my father strolls in, looking uptight as ever.
The thing about my father is that the company always comes first.
The company.
Dad flings a file folder on my desk and points at it like it’s a snake about to bite.
“We need to talk.”
I barely refrain from rolling my eyes, looking instead at the door as a hint for him to close it. He does, nostrils flaring as he takes a heavy breath, launching immediately into a tirade about the department going over budget.
It buys me a minute to reconsider Herb’s parting words. My father’s never been much of a family man, never much bothered by familial responsibility beyond his work obligations. His parents’ attention was conditional, my mother explained to me years ago; if he wanted their attention, he had to carry his weight with Thorpe Industries. Dad thought it was hilarious to joke about how he’d been conceived at the original office building downtown. If local gossip is to be believed, he’d continued on that particular tradition by fraternizing with a succession of female employees.
There’s nothing he wouldn’t do for this company. Does that include forcing out his own son? After he’d gone to the trouble of bringing me all the way back down here?
It doesn’t make any sense.
“Are you even listening to me?” he says, his voice rising. He jabs the report on my desk with a finger.
