by K. L. Brady
"Perfect. I look forward to reviewing and approving it."
She bolted to her feet. "First of all, I have several suggestions about what you can do with your little approval."
"Tessa—"
"Secondly, I'll get my company out of Hart Enterprises and your clutches if it's the last thing I do. If you've got a roadmap for that, I'm all ears."
"Come on..."
"Lastly, you can't be my CEO if I quit. And be warned, I always keep a pair of Chuck Taylors handy."
"Are you finished?" He shrugged and waited for a response that didn't come. "If that's how you feel, it would seem that you and I have come to an impasse."
"No, we're at the end...again."
Tessa hovered over his desk with a menacing glare and snorted like a bull before making her exit.
He allowed his head to fall on the mahogany wood and banged it repeatedly. Then he picked up the phone to warn the next victim. "Brace yourself. Tornado Tessa just left here. I'd bet two-to-one she's on the way to you."
Tornado Tessa. He introduced her to the Big Business game all those years ago, and refused her the chance to sit in the “big chair.” Adding insult to injury, he told her she could grab a notebook and take their Happy Meal orders.
His chest had puffed with pride as he put her in her place. He’d run the show like Pops, let her know who was boss early and often. In twenty-twenty hindsight, he was a child unacquainted with women or the ways of the world. Under her seemingly placid façade was Tornado Tessa.
In lockstep with him, Tessa made a play for the chair and reached out to grab it. He strong-armed her to prevent her incursion, planted his hand against her shoulder to hold her back. He was determined to keep her from getting what she wanted. She’d need to settle for what he gave her.
That’s when it happened—she planted her Chuck Taylor’s so far into his chicken nuggets they jiggled in the back of his throat. The kick sent Cody crumbling into a heap on the floor, howling in pain. Through unfallen tears and blinding agony, he glimpsed her form as she nonchalantly stepped over his soon-to-be corpse with the boldness of a cold-blooded boss she later proved herself to be.
Even in her youth, Tessa was unflappable. Little did he realize at the time, the kick that could’ve marked their ending sparked a new beginning.
He hoped for a similar outcome this time…except he’d rather avoid the kick, proverbial or otherwise.
Chapter Four
Tessa
* * *
Cody's announcement, the acquisition (takeover) of Keep It Real Cards, cut into Tessa like brutal, jagged blades. Her mind flooded with a litany of unspoken clap back responses that she wished she’d delivered with the fury of dragon fire, but nothing could come close to the sting in his retort.
Bitter Witch Greetings.
Well played.
She’d think of the perfect, snappy response about an hour after their meeting ended. Too late to matter.
His quip, his well-chosen strike weapon, pierced through her veneer of self-assured success. His words compounded her persistent doubts that she’d strayed from her purpose, her goal, to gift the truth rather than curse people with it. She'd never intended her brand to sound bitter or witchy. She'd only wanted to help people, to "keep it real" while using humor to soften the blow of hard, cold realities.
But her failing did not diminish the weight of her message to him—the nerve! Cody had the gall to criticize her when he built Hart Cards on the idea she conceived; he was the one who sent the “Dear Jane” cow dung that crushed any possibility of building Sweet-Hart Cards. Shame on him for judging her. She could recommend a location or two where he could shove his wisecracks.
However, Codys beef with Keep It Real put the spotlight on underlying issues that were more significant than acquisitions and roadmaps and could be boiled down to two salient points: Tessa had succeeded without him...and he hated her for it.
With her life and sanity in shambles after the clash with Cody, Tessa left Hart Enterprises and lurked outside as she pulled herself together. She wandered across the parking lot to her car, and the wind rudely greeted her like the frost between her and Cody. Between the break-up card and the acquisition, Cody was two-for-two in hitting his intended target—back-to-back bull's eyes.
The farther she moved from the building, the steadier and harder the stream of frustrated tears flowed down her nippy cheeks. Her eyes rained more from the disappointment than the pain; she'd been deceived…again.
Tessa had only trusted two men in her lifetime—Cody and her father. With the sale of Keep it Real completed behind her back and with zero notification, it was clear they'd conspired to ambush her. Once upon a time, she didn't believe either capable of this DEFCON 1 betrayal. Together, they’d not only taken her life’s work but robbed her of time to wallow in the mire. She’d now set on a new mission—to find the shortest distance from defense to offense and make her move.
She mopped her eyes dry with the back of her hand and stiffened her spine. She put her well-deserved pity party on pause while she wheeled her car out of the parking lot and pulled onto the road to get answers.
The drive gave her time to regroup. The journey to redemption would begin in the place where her new trouble with the Harts really began—her father's office.
Dad's got some explaining to do.
In one fell ambush, Sweet Media, her former refuge from the world of Hart, became enemy camp. Now she’d storm the building like a ticked off Marine on a beachhead, kicking butt and taking names all the way up to the seventh floor.
Determined and fierce, she ripped into the lobby and bolted toward the elevator banks.
Security usually recognized her as the boss's daughter, so they never stopped her...until today. A giant neophyte officer, unschooled in the company way, defended the Sweet Media territory like Davie Crockett at the Alamo. Before she reached out to the call button, the towering man-mountain materialized and blocked her.
"Sorry, ma'am," he said as if he was talking to her grandma. "I can't permit you to go upstairs. Strict orders." He pointed upward.
She tilted her head back to take in his altitude. He stood man-wall tall.
"Listen...Mr. Shorty."
"Mr. Little."
"Stop, really?"
He pointed to his name badge.
"My father owns the building. I'm Tessa Sweet." She batted the air with her hand and dismissed his refusal as she leaned forward to call her ride to the seventh floor. He obstructed her with a Kung Fu arm block.
"I know who you are. Your father not only posted a picture of you, but he also called down and ordered us to prevent you from entering if you arrived in, quote, Tornado Tessa mode, unquote. I failed mind-reading 101, but my keen talents for observation suggest the cyclone has touched down. Your journey ends here. Sorry! I can't allow you upstairs."
Allow? Hello! I own this building.
By her calculation, he weighed three or four of her. She’d be a next-level fool to get ready for that rumble. Instead, she ducked and dodged, danced on her toes like a prizefighter—but instead of sticking and moving, she moved without sticking. She flounced from side to side until she bobbed and weaved herself breathless. Then she huffed and puffed, searching for a place to perch herself so she could catch her breath; she noticed lobby benches that sat too far out of reach, so she planted her hands on her hips. By now, beads of sweat had collected along her hairline.
The man-wall, unlike Tessa, was unflappable. He hadn't wheezed, gasped, or missed a single inhale while she stood there sucking air like a Hoover. She vowed to resume her workout routine...next week...after a few days of carb loading.
For now, she raised her white flag. The fight was over. Tessa bent over to grasp her knees, praying they steadied her while she collected herself; she held up her index finger before foolishly failing in her second and last physical attempt to breach the barrier.
"You don't understand,” Tessa said. “I own part of this company. I demand to s
ee my father."
Mr. Little had the nerve to start laughing. "Mr. Sweet told me you'd say that. He directed me to remind you that your company has been sold and, technically, neither you nor Keep It Real are part of Sweet Media."
Tessa's shoulder sagged. She wanted to argue, but her fancy feet routine had turned her from a storming Marine into a napping-Norma.
Defeated, at last, she pivoted but left him with words to remember before walking away. "One day, maybe sooner than you think, my father's gonna die. As his sole heir, I'll own everything the light touches in here." She jabbed her index finger in his face; she'd save the middle finger salute for a safer distance. "If you're still working here when that day comes, pack it up, my friend—you're so fired!"
She cranked up her inner toddler and mumbled her verbal tantrum all the way to the exit.
"If I'm still here," he called out to her, "I'll let you go upstairs."
What am I gonna do now?
Back on the street again (in a non-hooker way), she hung her hands on her hips and allowed her thoughts to churn for a moment. There had to be a way inside besides scaling the man-wall. She'd practically designed Sweet’s new building, well, two snack rooms, and the daycare center. No one knew the interior better than she and her father, especially not the man-wall.
That’s when an epiphany cracked through her exhaustion. She'd use the insider information to her advantage. All those summer vacations spent at Sweet exploring the halls were about to pay off.
Wearing a floppy straw hat and dark glasses purchased from a nearby street vendor, she dropped her chin to her chest and piggybacked on a UPS delivery driver rolling a stack of Amazon's smiling boxes on a hand truck.
Once beyond the threshold and unnoticed, she slipped into the emergency stairwell and slogged up seven flights of steps. She opened the door at the destination, and her eyes volleyed between the elevator banks and her dad's office as she scanned for Sweet bounty hunters.
With a clear coast, Tessa trotted into her father's posh, newly decorated suite where she found him tucked away behind his desk reading, no doubt the sales reports. The unschooled eye would see an executive suit with silver hair. To her, he was a dimpled, kind-eyed angel and doting father who stayed up half the night assembling and reassembling her Huffy bike for her eighth birthday. Usually.
Today, he was the Judas who traded her company for, well, ten-point-two million cannoli.
"Buttons! I wondered how long it would take you to make it by security."
"Don't Buttons me, Dad. Really? It's Miss Sweet to you."
Flashbacks to childhood threats to knock her eyes in the back of her head squelched her desire to curse him like a man off the streets. She much preferred her peepers to stay where they were.
"Oh, don't be angry with your dad. You needed time to cool off. So, my plan worked. How did you escape Tiny?"
"You mean, Mr. Little? Yeah, if he's Tiny, I'm Michelle Obama." She snickered from her gut. "There's not an inch of this space I haven't explored. You're lucky I used the door. I could've dropped through the ceiling like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible and given you a heart attack," she said, spreading her arms as if in a hover pose.
Angry or not, Tessa kept her father in stitches, and today he laughed with his belly and shoulders, emitting almost a honking noise from his left nostril. She closed the door behind her and scowled at his plush new couch before collapsing on it. During the recent redecoration, he'd rid the office of the worn leather sofa that served as Tessa's sole remaining source of nostalgia, the monument to Tessa's and Cody's first kiss. She didn't want to keep the cast-off furniture, but she also didn't want to let it go...much like her relationship with Cody.
“Do you remember bring-your-daughter-to-work day? My absolute favorite. Not Christmas. Not my birthday, but spending the day with you at Hart and then Sweet. This place. I thought you intended to pass Sweet Media to me, as part of our family’s legacy from you to me, me to my future kids, and so on."
Pride tilted his head upward. His smile was the evidence of it. "How could I forget? You've always burned so bright, with this fire, this hunger for success. I admired that quality in you, even though you were a little artsy for my tastes. It takes some people years to learn in business what you know by nature. That's flare. I can't teach that."
He spun around and shifted his eyes from her face to his hands. She could feel the hurt in her expression, and he avoided it but continued. "You asked me a hundred questions. What is this? What is that? What does the line on this report mean? How do you use this? What does this key do? Who is that? What does he do? I've worked with some of the most powerful and talented people in this industry, and, to date, I've only been stumped by the litany of questions from my excessively inquisitive daughter."
"And to think Mom wanted me to earn an MBA."
"Or get a Juris Doctor so you could join corporate counsel," he added.
"She even suggested medicine. Me of all people. I can't even stand the sight of blood...on a Band-Aid."
"Yeah, you're a touch too bougie for bodily fluids...but, I must admit, Dr. Tessa Sweet had a nice ring to it," he replied.
Tessa smiled. "She hated the idea of me writing. Too unpredictable, she warned. But not you. You said go for it—you told me that I might find a hundred things I'm capable of succeeding at, but I'd only find one passion, one pursuit that I’d love so much that, if I was lucky enough to earn a living doing it, I'd never work a day in my lifetime. You all but ordered me to find that thing and commit myself to it. You remember?"
"Sure do."
"You allowed me to discover and choose my own destiny. You said you'd always have my back."
"True to this second."
"Is it? The knife lodged in my back begs to differ," she said. "You sold Keep It Real like a used Toyota...and to none other than Cody Hart, for the love of all that's good and holy."
"Here we go. I didn't sell you out."
His words hung in the air like smog. "Since you left Hart Enterprises, the Harts have been plotting to destroy Sweet Media at every turn," she said. "On top of that, you watched me circle the drain for months after Cody abandoned me. I cried like the chief slicer in an onion factory for weeks. Then I crawled my way out of that darkness and found my dream; I struggled to build my company. Some days I didn't think I'd make it, but you helped me put the pieces back together. For what? To auction them off to the highest bidder?"
"I didn't agree to this arrangement to hurt you. Whether or not you understand the rationale, I did what I needed to do to help you, ensure your future, but I can't disclose—"
"The terms of the deal. Blah. Blah. Blah. Spare me the spiel. It didn't go down well the first time when I heard it from Cody," she said with a shrug. "I'll quit Keep It Real, abandon it as Cody did me. Let him try to run my company without me; he wouldn’t last a day."
"Buttons. You built Keep It Real from little more than a dream....and so much pain. You and Mia used almost all of your savings, your imagination, and card stock. You turned paper and ideas into a multi-million-dollar corporation. And, now, I mean, what? You're really going to abandon everything and everyone, your family as you call them because your pride's a little bruised?"
"Bruised? No, Cody opted out of Sweet-Hart cards, not me. Now, he's emerged from the muck to steal my life's work, and you’ve welcomed him to use you as a proxy."
Her dad paused, and his lips turned down at the corners. "Six thousand, three hundred and seventy-nine."
Tessa's shoulder-shrug reflected a question about the source of that number, a question she didn't ask but wanted him to answer.
"That's the number of employees in my charge," he continued. "You are one of them." He lifted a single index finger in the air to put an exclamation mark on his point.
"I used to be the most important one."
"You still are...but you equal one person. When I make decisions involving this company, Buttons, I have a fiduciary responsibility and a professional commit
ment to think about what's best for all. This deal was best for everyone—you included."
"How did we even get here, Dad? You didn't even hint that selling Keep It Real was under consideration."
He took careful steps toward the slick new sofa before filling the seat next to her. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder, hugged her close, and she became his sweet girl again.
She resisted and pulled away at first but conceded before leaning into him; her eyes gave way to a flourish of tears.
"Buttons, you are a part of me. I would never make a decision of this magnitude without ensuring your survival. There were stipulations…several."
She wiped her eyes and jerked her head backward. "Such as?"
"Hart Enterprises voting shares, for starters. As you know, Devon loved surprises, positive and negative. Firing his final shot to his kids, given the rivalry between him and me, he bequeathed some of his shares to me—as it turns out, just enough. As part of the acquisition agreement, you will receive mine."
"But that means—”
"Exactly. Except there's a but..." He paused, leaving her hanging in the silence. "In his final letter to me, Devon asked me to do the impossible—keep the peace between Cody and his sisters, serve as a check and balance. I think his request demonstrates how well he understood his kids, especially in light of the recent court battles. Handing over my shares to you is a gesture to show you how much I trust you."
The wheels in her mind began to turn. Ten minutes ago, her predicament appeared hopeless, bleak. Now, not so much.
"It's not a sizeable percentage, but it's critical—vital to Hart's operations." He left her side and returned to his desk. "Cody holds forty-nine percent, a combination of his and his brother Jackson's shares. The twins hold forty-seven. Four percent tips the balance either way."
