AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Raiden shrugs. “Anyway, I think you’ll find that we can get along just fine. I’m a reasonable person. People actually like me, and I’m a good boss.”
“That won’t be necessary.” I can’t contain my gleeful smile when I continue, “Because I quit.”CHAPTER 3RaidenI thought the ability to surprise me went way by the wayside a long time ago. That’s an expression my grandma loves and has instilled in me over time. My grandma also once told me she was beamed up into a spaceship by aliens who tried to probe her but couldn’t because they were allergic to grandmotherly human farts, and they liquefied on contact. She said she was then forcefully beamed back down to earth. So yeah, I probably shouldn’t be using any of her expressions.
Anyway, I was wrong about being taken by surprise. Zoe just caught me completely off guard, and not many people can do that.
“What do you mean you’re quitting?” I stammer. “You can’t quit. I…I…”
“Don’t worry. You won’t have to pay severance if I’m the one quitting, and I’m not going to do some weird thing where I sue you for wrongful dismissal or harassment or anything like that. I’m way too honest, and that never happened. It’s my choice. And yes, I fully intend to take everything I’ve learned here to some dickhead competition company and become a thorn in your side. Not that a household name like you has to worry about that. People like me are just insignificant.” Zoe blinks innocently at me.
God, she really does have the nicest eyelashes. Even though she has sandy blonde hair, her lashes are thick and dark, framing her eyes beautifully. But her eyes flash with anger and malicious enjoyment though I have no idea what I did to piss her off, so I blurt something equally disarming.
“Do you still have it?”
“Have what?” She sucks in a breath that lets me know she knows exactly what I’m talking about.
“The tattoo.”
“No.” She shrugs. Too quickly. Too glibly. She has always been a terrible liar. “I got it covered up.”
“It was just a stupid idea.”
I know she doesn’t want to talk about it, so of course, that’s precisely what I do. I always loved a good argument. No, not really an argument. More like a battle of wills and intelligence. Zoe was smart too. Way smarter than I ever was. She never got ahead because she was too honest and nice. Things I got over because I had to. I’m still nice enough, at least when it counts.
“Yeah. Poking pen ink into your skin with a safety pin is never a good idea unless you want blood poisoning.”
“Which neither of us got.”
Her eyes narrow further. Her lids are now so low that I can barely even see her lovely green irises. “Because we were lucky. We didn’t even get an infection of any kind. Home tattoos are indeed stupid. And I’m taking it you still have yours.”
We tattooed each other’s initials onto our hip, where we thought no one was likely to ever see them. We also did the blood brothers thing with each other. The tattoo came later, near the end, when our parents fought so brutally and sometimes violently, that it scared us shitless. We knew we were going to be separated, and we promised we’d never forget each other. We also promised we’d have each other’s backs forever, no matter where we were.
“Never mind,” Zoe snaps. “Even if you still have yours, it doesn’t mean anything. You’ve clearly forgotten where you came from.”
“If you’re truly quitting, you should branch out into mind-reading skills. You’re quite confident in your skill at reading me.”
That, oddly enough, surprises her. She looks uncertain, and then a little bit scared and a tad guilty. See? She was too nice. She’s worried she’s hurt my feelings.
But then she tilts her head and shuts off any sympathy or emotion.
“I think I read you just fine. You’re a snobby, overgrown child who has more testosterone than common sense, and money means more to you than anything.” Her eyes rake over my expensive suit in an unsettling way. Unsettling because when she looks at me like that, I feel exposed. Like everything is bared for the world to see. “Clearly.” That word is said like an exclamation mark. There is no room for error or doubt. She’s summed me up in a few words, and she’s so certain she’s right.
“So I’m the classic case of money makes you forget who you are? That’s what you think?”
Zoe stays ominously silent.
“Well.” I shrug. “Looks like you have it all figured out.”
“Looks like I have.” Is that disappointment on her face? Did she expect a fight? The fact that she might have come prepared for this gets my juices flowing, in every sense.
“Looks like it.”
“Good.”
“If you quit, I’m going to fire everyone else in the upper management positions as well. I’ll make sure they know it was your idea that a change was in order. A sort of cleaning of the house for this company to be successful.”
