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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.
