AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But Nick just shook his head. “You really don’t know her. She’s not like that.”
“They’re all like that.”
“The women you go out with only care about money because that’s how you get them to go out with you in the first place,” Nick pointed out. “If you drive up in a car that might as well be penis-shaped and wave bunch of cash at a girl then you can’t be surprised that she disappears when the money runs out. But that’s not how it happened with Zoe. I mean, I’m not saying that a week in a vineyard didn’t help but… it was going to happen anyway.” Nick headed for the door. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to have lunch with my girlfriend. Despite all this, you will get a wedding invite and I really hope you’ll come. If only to find out about how wrong you are.”
“I’m the sole CEO now! Don’t you forget that!” roared Adam, as if he could make it matter with volume.
Nick nodded mildly. “You always were. You’re very good at it and I wish you all the luck with it.”
“Stop being so damned reasonable!”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry! Be angry!”
Nick grinned. “I just can’t. I’ll send you my resignation. Unless you’d like me to write it out now? I’ve got a little time.”
“No!” Adam would not be denied this. “You’re not resigning.”
“I’m not?”
“I’m firing you!”
“Okay.”
“At the next board meeting,” Adam went on. “In front of everyone. I will fire you for gross incompetence, for never having properly fulfilled the duties of a CEO, and for fraternizing with the staff.”
Nick nodded. “That is all true. Perfectly fair. Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s a member of staff I need to go fraternize with.”
“Of course she’ll be fired too.”
Nick stopped with his hand on the door. “What?”
There was an almost mad gleam in Adam’s eyes, his face split by a broad grin, as he realized that he had, finally, found a way of twisting the knife in his brother’s side. He had found Nick’s weak spot. “You can’t seriously expect that little tart of yours to keep her job.”
“What has Zoe done?!” Nick no longer even tried to keep his cool. To him RothCo had meant relatively little, it was just a pay check he had done nothing to earn. But Zoe loved her job, he knew. Perhaps she was not one hundred percent happy working for Vanessa, but it was a good stepping stone and one that she had worked hard to earn. With her business brain and work ethic she had a great future in the company, a future that she had worked hard to earn. If Adam fired her then it was not just that she had lost that immediate future – the black mark of being fired for sleeping with a boss would keep her out of starting again at another company. This could be the end of her career in business. God knew he certainly didn’t have any business contacts to help ease her transition.
“We have very clear rules about this sort of behavior,” said Adam. “You can’t ban office romances, but when they occur like this and when they are obviously being used for personal advancement…”
“You know that’s not true!”
“I know nothing of the sort,” said Adam innocently. “What I know is that two of my employees were, without my knowledge, part of a plot to deceive Monsieur Jacques Jourdan, a good friend of this company. Fortunately I was able to get to Monsieur Jourdan first.”
As if indiscretion with a CEO was not enough to keep Zoe out of a meaningful career, Adam was adding attempted fraud. She would be lucky to get a job in the mail room of any major company.
Nick approached his brother, not violently this time, but pleading. “Don’t do this Adam. It’s me you’re mad at, leave Zoe out of this.”
Adam nodded to himself. “You see, you’re right: it is you I’m mad at, but I don’t seem to be able to get to you any other way. It’s a shame to drag someone else into this and destroy them just so I can hurt you but… Well, I don’t see that you’ve left me any other option. At least it’s not someone we give a shit about. Not someone worth anything. Not someone who would ever have made any meaningful impact anyway. Just taking out the trash.”
Nick felt his hands involuntarily curl into fists but he fought back the urge to punch his brother once more. “I’ll do anything. Anything you ask of me.”
Adam pondered. “I’ve got your stake in the company and with it all your earnings. As you’re so keen on pointing out, all I care about is money so I can’t think of anything. I mean, all you’ve got left in the world is a bar with so many debts that it is literally worth less than nothing. And of course the girl whose life you’ve just ruined. And I wouldn’t want her, even if you dipped her in disinfectant and basted her with honey.”
“You bastard!”
Nick lunged for Adam but this time his brother was too quick for him and skirted out of his reach around the table, laughing.
“You know what’s funny about all this? I had no intention of doing anything like it. I mean, obviously I didn’t know you had real feelings for the girl - how could I have predicted that? Just look at her! Hell – even you thought she was a worthless piece of trash when she wandered into your bar!” Adam laughed riotously as he recalled that night. “I can still remember your look of disgust when she dribbled cheese sauce all over herself. Didn’t you call her a fat pig? It’s hilarious that this is how it ended up.”
“Yeah, I called her names. Yeah, I thought she was beneath me – trashy -- when we made this bet. Yeah, I never thought she could ever become something classy or even moderately attractive—but you know what? She---,” Nick was shouting his outrage, but Adam’s voice broke in before Nick could say another word.
Adam wiped tears from the corner of his eyes. He was clearly enjoying himself. “But even if I had known then I still wouldn’t have planned to go this far. If you hadn’t made your little speeches about how you could turn that ghetto trash into Cinderella, if you hadn’t acted so smug, if you had just displayed a moment’s regret over losing the company rather than acting like some sort martyr who’s so much better than the rest of the world just cause he’s making a go at his own living, then I’d have just taken the c
ompany and left it at that. Miss Blanchard may not know culture from the hole in the ground she was brought up in, but she was good at her job, I’ll admit. Not everyone can keep Vanessa happy enough to keep her from coming to me with complaints every five minutes, and I’m actually very sorry to be firing her. Still, what are you going to do? It’s not my fault you lost our bet and couldn’t keep it in your pants.”
Nick lunged for his brother once more, but Adam had anticipated him and ducked out of the way, and Nick’s fist slammed a hole into the wall behind Adam’s head. Adam turned and looked at the broken wall dispassionately.
Then he looked at his brother’s murderous face for moment, contempt written all over it. “Weren’t you on your way out? Lunch date or something. I’m amazed you can afford it now. Off you go. Don’t let my door hit you on the ass on the way out.”
With heavy, murderous footsteps, Nick trudged for the door. What on earth was he going to tell Zoe? What could he possibly tell her?
“You can tell that asinine assistant of yours that he’s fired too!” Adam called after him.
In the outer office, Nick shambled up to Eddie’s desk, half-hating that he had to deliver this news, half-glad to have some practice before delivering the same to Zoe.
“Eddie, I…”
Eddie met his gaze with even more distress in his eyes than usual.
Nick frowned. “Is something wrong Eddie?”
Eddie’s eyes shot to his right momentarily and Nick turned to look. On a chair by the wall there was a picnic basket.
Nick turned back to his assistant. “Eddie, what…”
“I’m so sorry,” Eddie shook his head. “I mean… I don’t think it’s all my fault, necessarily. I mean you shouldn’t have said… I mean you didn’t know that she was… But you still shouldn’t have…”
“Eddie!”
Eddie met Nick’s gaze. “I’ve just never got the hang of the intercom.”
Chapter Eleven
