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Not that he was a bad loser or was too arrogant to believe someone could be better than him. Quite the opposite, actually. Darren was humble and determined. The quietest and most in his head of the four of us. It wasn’t that he thought he had to be the absolute best because no one could be better than him. It wasn’t the competition that got to him, the other racers or the other teams. Instead, he was always in competition with himself and wanting to push harder to new levels of success and achievement. He wanted to do better simply because he believed he could do better. He would be the first to tell you he got a rush out of a good race and enjoyed when his competitors did well. He wouldn’t want to be a winner because all the other racers failed miserably. There was no fun, no sense of pride or honor in being at the top when everyone else was in a heap beneath him.
Darren was determined if he was going to be the best, it was going to be because he earned it. I had absolutely no doubt he would earn it. And once he did, he would have his chance to get a bit of a big head and enjoy the prestige. But for now, it was all about figuring out ways he could do better, starting with crafting the fastest and most efficient bike possible for the upcoming races. We were going over the new specs on his bike and discussing possibilities for other modifications when out of the corner of my eye I saw someone stalking toward the test track.
At first, I thought it might be Glenda, the receptionist. As many times as I tried to tell her it wasn’t my fault, she still got frustrated at me when women called the desk. Unfortunately, it wasn’t an odd occurrence for one or more women to call the complex incessantly, insisting on talking with me. Several just assumed they would be able to charm their way past the receptionist, not realizing she’d been working with my family for years and could give seriously zero fucks who we were or how powerful people thought we were because of what I’d built.
The truth was Glenda saw past everything and knew every one of the members of the family exceptionally well. She’d worked for my father’s business before Darren was even born, which meant the four of us boys were still just kids to her. She wasn’t impressed by us and wasn’t going to be convinced she should be. And she most certainly wasn’t impressed by the women who liked to throw around their names or try to convince her they had some sort of intimate knowledge of me. I couldn’t count how many times she’d told me of the women who called, trying to get through with a story about having met me at one event or another, and that I had given her my phone number with the insistence they call me.
Of course, they would have no way of knowing I would never give the information for the front desk of the office building if I wanted to talk to somebody directly. Instead, they would get my personal cell number, or at the very least the number to the phone in my office. She was quick to shut them down and never filtered any of them through to me, for which I was grateful. But that didn’t stop her from scolding me about them wasting her time and tangling up her phone lines. But that day it wasn’t Glenda. Instead, Mom was stomping toward me and she looked pissed.
Darren snickered and walked away, leaving me to be cornered by our mother. Whatever was wrong, I was alone to deal with her wrath. She wasn’t even all the way to me when one finger jutted out from her hand directed right at my face and the other hand planted firmly on her hip. I knew that posture. That was the angry mother ready to scold posture. I’d seen it when my brothers and I tracked mud through the house when we were little. I’d seen it again when we were teenagers and stayed out past our curfew doing the stupid things teenage boys did when they stayed out past their curfew. And I was seeing it now.
Only this time, I didn’t know what had gotten her riled up, so I didn’t have the opportunity to prepare my defense.
“My boy, we’re going to have a talk about how you treat new employees,” she announced when she got to me.
Her arms crossing over her chest made me shrink back slightly. It felt ridiculous for a grown-ass man to react like that, this was my mama and I loved her, but she could be tough as nails. And now I knew exactly what she was talking about.
