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Owen
For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why this woman was so damnmoodyabout the rooftop nonsense.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying she’s moodybecauseshe’s a woman. That’s not very politically correct, and the CEO of an up-and-coming start-up has to be as straight-laced and proper as the industry demanded.
But this woman? She was moody. That’s the honest truth. It had nothing to do with her gender—she would have been just as grumpy if she were a fat coder guy with a neckbeard.
She lost her shit during the interview. Completely unprofessional. If a man called someone a cunt-waffle, you can bet your ass they’d be canceled before they even had a chance to post an apology to social media. But when someone like her does it, she gets another chance.
I didn’t want to invite her back. Sure, I’ll admit it. It’s personal. I didn’t like hiring people who screamed at me tolick their assin a job interview. I considered that a pretty good rule of thumb. Granted, she was the only interviewee to ever say it, but it would have been true for anyone else.
But I trusted Jude like a brother.Morethan a brother. A partner. He was the fellow soldier who had fought in the trenches with me when times were tough. Watching my back. Going through all the same shit. Nobody else understood how hard I had worked to get to this position except for Jude—because he was right there with me the whole time, sweating and struggling and fighting just as hard.
Jude was also a meek guy. He was usually happy to go along with the flow without ruffling any feathers. So when he put his foot down and demanded that we give this crazy cunt-waffle-declaring girl another chance? It meant he was as serious as a heart attack. So I agreed to extend an offer to her anyway, because I’m a nice guy, and I’m able to focus on the big picture rather than the hissy-fit she threw.
And how did she thank me? By flipping out again in my office.
Whatever. She was Jude’s problem now. As long as she sat at her desk and turned coffee into code, I didn’t care how she acted around here.
I dialed in to my next call with our team of lawyers. That call ended up lasting three hours. We were discussing the specifics of the investor’s proposal. Series A financing was usually more straightforward than this, but Furio Rossi wasn’t any normal investor.
He was Italian royalty.
Okay, sotechnicallyItaly dissolved the monarchy and royal houses in 1946. But even without the title of Duke, people treated Furio as if he was one. Like the silent letterginchampagne.Nobody said it, but everyone knew it was there.
Also, he was filthy rich. The heir to the Rossi family fortune. You know what’s better than the rank of Duke? A bank account with three billion euros in it.
As I listened to the lawyers talk about the boring minutia of the Series A contract, I wondered why Furio wanted to invest. His estate owned eighteen thousand hectares of land in the rolling hills between Rome and Naples. He was the principal owner of eleven winemakers, and supplied the grapes to at least thirty more. His family yacht was big enough to stand up to the Italian Navy. It had its own helicopter pad on the prow, for Christ’s sake.
Basically, Furio Rossi had more money than he could ever spend in a lifetime.Realmoney, not tied up in stock options. Old money. He didn’t need to get involved in a speculative tech company.
But hey. If he wanted to invest in ACS, out-bidding all of the other Silicon Valley investors we had courted, then who was I to stop him? I would gladly smile and shake his hand and take his euros. Even if he did want a much larger stake (forty-five percent of the company) than any other investor.
A knock came at the door. The windows were currently fogged, so I reached under my desk and pressed the button that turned off the electrical fogging. Melinda’s slender frame was standing outside, a sandwich in her hand. I muted the line and waved her in.
“The banking information is all finalized,” she said. “No hiccups.”
“Nice. I knew you’d kick their asses into submission.” I nodded at the sandwich in her hand. “I thought you were a vegetarian.”
“I am. This is for you. To remind you to eat.” She placed the sandwich on the table.
My stomach growled at the sight of it. “What would I do without you?” I said while hastily unwrapping the plastic.
“Starve, probably. And then I would be out of a job.”
“Remind me to give you a pay raise.” I bit into the sandwich, savoring the thick turkey and tangy mustard while the lawyers chatted back and forth about some detail in the contract that didn’t matter. When I looked up, Melinda was still standing there.
“Is there something else?”
She crossed her arms under her breasts, which I knew was a bad sign. “You’re a lot like my boyfriend, you know. He’s stubborn as a mule too.”
“Are we ever going to meet this mystery boyfriend of yours?” I asked. “I’m beginning to think he doesn’t exist. You said he’s not working right now, and that he’s just lazily lounging around his apartment. Why not bring him in?”
“He’s good at changing the subject too,” she said dryly. “The point I’m trying to make is that you’re both stubborn, and you really ought to apologize to Amber.”
I swallowed my bite of sandwich. “Yeah right. She’s lucky I forgave her, even though she didn’t really apologize. It’s not often someone gets away with calling their boss a cunt-waffle.”
“I was there atMarcello’s,” Melinda said, “although I only heard the argument from inside. Youwerebeing kind of a cunt-waffle.”
