by Mia Archer
"If it affects the way the company is perceived then I'll do what I damn well please!" he said.
"No you won't," I said. "Never again. You're not meddling in my life anymore. You don't make those decisions for me. You let me make my decisions, and you let me make my own mistakes."
He looked me up and down. "And what makes you think I'm going to go along with anything like that?"
"Because if you don't then I'm out of your life. I don't care if I have to move into a shack in the middle of nowhere just to make ends meet. It will be worth it to get away from you trying to meddle in my life."
"You wouldn't," he said.
Okay then. He wanted to call bluffs? Well then I’d hit the nuclear button. The one thing I could do that would truly terrify the old man. Actually drag his name through the mud. If he was going to accuse me of the crime then I could go ahead and pull it off. Might as well have the fun if I was going to do the time anyways.
"You're right. I wouldn't do that. Not really fitting with my lifestyle. I'd go on a reality show. I'd become America's next top heiress, or some bullshit like that. You don't want anything approaching impropriety to approach your company's name? Imagine me becoming the face of spoiled rich girls around the world. I’ll do everything you’re secretly terrified of. Everything I’d held off from enjoying over the years because I wanted to stay in your good graces. Well I’m done. If I’m doing the time then I’m doing the crime unless you back off."
"You were always so irresponsible, but maybe we could talk this over…"
I grinned. Nice to know I had his attention.
“Irresponsible? How about I show you responsible instead?”
Yeah. I’d show him just how responsible I could be while also doing a little bit of good for the people down on the seventh floor. It was probably too late to do any good for Nicole, it looked like she was making a triumphant exit and cleaning out her desk by the time I got there, but I could do some good for the other people who had to suffer under Christine's iron fist.
So I pulled out a flash drive and attached it to the computer that was attached to the board room projector. Fired it up and pulled up a little presentation I'd worked on the night before in a fit of anger-fueled insomnia.
"What's this?" he asked.
"It's what you sent me down to the seventh floor to do," I said. "Now sit down, shut up, and let me go over everything."
And for a wonder that's exactly what he did. He sat back with his arms crossed, that frown still on his face as I went over facts and figures for the department. The output before a certain sexy somebody was hired a couple of years ago. The improvements in output afterwords. A quick audit of all the login records and work logs under those logins cross referenced with the work they were supposed to be doing. One glaring fact stood out. Most of the work of that was supposed to be handled by Christine was actually being handled by Nicole. It was all there, plain as day, if anyone was interested in having a look around.
Apparently no one had been terribly interested until I went digging.
When I was done I glanced over at him, a scowl still on my face, though to my surprise there was a smile spreading on his.
"How did you get access to those systems?" he asked. "I told them to give you a regular intern’s access."
"Yeah, about that. It turns out that if you wake up the head of IT in the middle of the night and tell him what your real name is you suddenly get a lot more privileges than what your dear old dad might want you to have. You might’ve been able to pull the same stunt if they had computers back when you were young enough to do the whole intern-in-disguise routine."
He frowned at the dig at his age but didn’t rise to the bait. "You bullied the head of IT into giving you that access?"
He shook his head and chuckled. Definitely not the reaction I expected. I figured he'd be pissed off. Why was he laughing?
"Well yeah? Isn’t that what you’d do?"
"My dear, I've been trying to get that man to do what I wanted for years, and it never worked. You just pull off the impossible last night!"
He slapped the table as he continued laughing, and then he wiped a tear from his eye.
"I'm a little confused. Why the hell are you happy about this? Why aren't you pissed off?"
The smile only got broader. He stood and to my surprise swept me up in a huge hug.
"Are you kidding? Erica, I've been waiting for this moment for years!"
I blinked. He was hugging me? He never hugged. Seriously, what the hell was going on here?
“What moment have you been waiting for?"
"This moment. The moment when you finally stood up for yourself. The moment when you stopped taking my shit and actually came back at me with some facts and figures to back it up rather than the teenage angst I've been used to dealing with for the past few years."
I blinked. I felt myself getting even more angry.
"You mean all those times you acted like a complete dick to me were a test?"
He shrugged. He also had the good grace to at least look a little embarrassed. Barely. He was a man who didn't have much in the way of shame, after all. The way he bought a new sports car every year like clockwork for the secretaries he swapped out every four to five years like clockwork was proof enough of that.
"What can I say? I wanted to make sure you were ready to take over."
I squeezed my eyes shut. I moved my hands up and started massaging at my temples.
"So you've done your best this entire time to make me completely miserable? To ruin my life?"
He leaned forward. "Now listen here. I never disapproved of anything you did in your life. Only when you were doing something that could look bad for the Zeidner brand."
"Like blonde model number eleven sitting out there at your desk waiting to come in and take some dictation?"
He snorted and for a wonder he smiled. "What can I say? You have to live under the rules for a little while before you're allowed to break them."
I fixed him with my best glare. It was nothing approaching how intimidating he could be, but I liked to think I had a little bit of the family ability to make subordinates quake in their shoes. The only problem was he wasn't anything approaching a subordinate.
"Does that mean I get to start breaking rules now?"
He snorted again. "What do you think you did last night when you bullied the head of IT into giving you the sort of information I can’t even get him to give up?”
I stumbled back and fell into a very comfy leather chair. The thing was pretty damn comfortable. I could get used to sitting in a chair like this. It was nothing like the ratty old monstrosity they'd dug out of some godforsaken supply closet somewhere and given me when I started my “internship.”
"I'm glad to hear you say that," I said. "Because there are a few rules I want to start breaking right now."
"I assume you're talking about the irregularities down on the seventh floor?" he asked.
"Actually I was talking about my personal life, but let’s tackle that since we might actually be able to fix it. You knew?"
"I suspected. Suspecting is a hell of a lot different from knowing. One of the lessons you learn pretty quickly at the top is there are a lot of people who will try to hide things from you in the name of their own job security. Usually you want to get rid of that kind of person immediately, but it’s not always that easy. I'm not quite sure how things got so bad down there in this particular case, but I do know there needs to be a bit of cleaning."
I grinned. "Good. I have a pretty good idea of exactly where you can start."
"You went through and verified all these records?"
"Certainly. Christine has been forcing Nicole to do most of her work for a good chunk of the past couple of years. I have records showing work logs for Nicole and access to files she's not supposed to have access to. Doing work that's far beyond her level. I even went through and did a quick study of activity and determined that Christine is spending most of her day
s either surfing the Internet or playing solitaire."
My dad pulled out a pair of reading glasses as he looked over the paperwork I'd prepared for him. Paperwork was more his style, so I'd been sure to include a hard copy. A man of his age could only go so far with technology. The number of times I had to help him get into his email, a skill that had incidentally prepared me for my fight with the director of IT the night before, had taught me that.
"Damn it," he said. "I assume you verified these logs?"
"Sure did. You just fired the person who was responsible for keeping that floor productive because you didn't like her dating me."
He waved a dismissive hand. "You know I don't care about the whole dating girls thing. Do whatever you want. I just didn't want the appearance of impropriety while you were doing your secret internship. I didn't want anything else that could be used against you when I brought the information you to gather."
He paused for a moment. Something seemed to hit him. He blinked.
“Did you say she was fired?”
“She was cleaning out her desk when I stopped by.”
“Damn. I didn’t tell Christine to do anything like that,” he muttered.
“Are you really surprised she overstepped her bounds like that?” I asked.
He frowned. “I suppose not. We’ll have to try and fix that.”
“You’re telling me.”
"Everything you have here should be more than an enough to start fixing things. Now the question is whether you want to do that yourself or if you want me to have my people take care of it."
"I definitely want to take care of it myself. And afterwards we’re going to have to figure out how to get Nicole back."
He pulled down his reading glasses. Regarded me for a long moment. "Get her back for business or personal reasons?"
"Both."
He shrugged. "Fair enough. Your internship is over. I trust you to do what needs to be done. And I can assure you there will be a vice president position waiting for you when you graduate in a few months."
I blinked. "That's it? Just like that?"
"Well you are my daughter. It isn’t exactly nepotism if you're going to inherit the company. You have to learn how to run the damn thing sometime, it’s not like you’re going to learn how to do things from the top down in the mail room or something like that, so why not start now?"
There was a certain logic to that. Like a mother bird pushing her hatchlings out of the nest to either fly or fall and break their neck. I grimaced. Not exactly the most comforting of analogies. Then again, that also perfectly suited my father's attitude towards child rearing.
He reached across the table to shake my hand. I regarded his hand in the same way a small furry woodland critter might regard a snake hissing and rattling at them. He'd never made a gesture of affection like that. Aside from that weird hug, of course. I gingerly took his hand and gave it a firm shake which he reciprocated. It felt weird. Definitely not the kind of father daughter moment we'd ever shared before, but then again maybe things were changing.
I gathered up my paperwork and looked to the door where the board members were standing milling about and grumbling. I grinned. There was a new sheriff in town. Now I just had to prove I was worthy of all the power dear old dad had given me.
18: Head Hunted
"You did what?"
"Well I… I sort of quit. Spectacularly."
"I’d say so. That's not the sort of thing somebody does if they're looking for another job in the same field in the same city," Janet said.
"But you said it wouldn't be a big deal that I was quitting and wouldn't have a reference. You made it sound like you already had a couple of jobs that were lined up and in the bag!"
"I always tell people there’s something in the bag. Its my job to give you hope while I’m looking. What I didn't say was that you could go in and act like a complete unprofessional ass!" Janet said.
I blinked and looked at my phone. Did she really say what I thought she just said? Who was being unprofessional? There was a pause.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I reacted poorly. I can still work with this, maybe, but what you've done is going to make it a little more difficult. Even if we don't have to deal with a direct report, word travels fast. How many people are working in the cubicles at your old job? How many of them have friends who have moved on to other jobs?"
"None, as far as I know," I said.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean it's pretty well known that Christine will do her best to sabotage anyone’s career if they dare leave her personal hell. I'm pretty sure there aren't all that many people who have job elsewhere in the city. Most have to travel far and wide to have any hope of gainful employment without sabotage."
There was a pause on the other end again. "Whatever. I can still work with this."
There was something about the tone of her voice that gave me pause. That made me wonder if I hadn't made a huge mistake in going out with a bang like that. Sure it had been fun at the time, but it was starting to look like it was one hell of a major mistake. I was starting to wonder what the hell I'd been thinking.
I wasn't thinking. Not really. That was the problem. I'd been so caught up in being angry at Nicole, angry at Christine, angry at my situation in life. I got drunk on that anger. I'd let it overwhelm me. Let it take over.
Well now the hangover was calling, and it could very well mean the end of my career in this city. Damn it. Visions of being forced to move back home dance through my head. It wasn't fair. All I wanted was to get a good job out of school, work hard and get rewarded for it, and instead I'd been stuck working for the troll lady of the seventh floor at Zeidner Corp. And I'd gotten involved with the boss’s daughter in a major way that probably didn't bode well for my long term career prospects. Great. That's what happened when I did my thinking under the influence of rage. Never again.
There was another pause on the other end followed by a sigh. Yeah, this lady was definitely skirting the boundaries of professionalism, but it's not like I could say anything about it. She was my lifeline. I'd done something stupid, and now she was the only one who could pull my bacon out of the frying pan.
"Are there any other surprises I need to know about before I start sending out your resume?"
Were there any more surprises? Oh boy were there all sorts of surprises. Only I was afraid that if I let her know any of those surprises it would be the end of our working relationship.
It was definitely giving me a new perspective on how Erica had been acting the night before. I could suddenly very much understand not wanting to give away a secret that could result in one hell of a blowup. And it's not like the stakes were all that high with my relationship with Janet. Just my future job potential in this city, is all. Sure it seemed like a lot to me, but compared to a potential lost love and an assured lost fortune?
Peanuts.
Still, I figured I might as well tell her everything. At least she should know how royally I'd screwed up even if the people she was courting on my behalf didn’t necessarily need to know.
"I kind of got in trouble for getting a little too up close and personal with an intern I was supervising," I said.
Another sigh. That seemed to be her only response to my stupidity. Not that I could blame her. What I'd done was pretty boneheaded. Now that the anger was subsiding and I didn't have anything else to sustain me I was left wondering what the hell I’d been thinking.
"Anything else?"
"Would it be bad if it turned out my intern was also Mr. Zeidner's daughter going incognito to get some experience in the company? I promise I didn’t know when I got involved with her."
"Well that's definitely the most unique reasons someone's ever given me for going in a different direction," Janet said. "I'll see what I can do, but I'm definitely not as optimistic now as I was before. You really shouldn't have quit until you were sure you had something new lined up. You never quit until you're sure you have something new lin
ed up."
"Trust me. I couldn't stay another minute at that place," I said.
"Like I said, I'll see what I can do. I can't promise it's going to be in the same city though. I’m not a miracle worker."
"That's fair," I said. At this point I was starting to think that a change of scenery, hell maybe even a change of coasts or a change of country, would be just what the doctor ordered. I took a couple of years of Japanese back in high school. I wondered if that would be enough to get me by in the business world over there. Boku wa baka desu ka? Hai.
Yeah, probably not enough to get by. The only thing taking those classes had ever been good for was attracting the wrong sort of attention from the kind of guy who took all his social cues from foreign cartoons. Yuck.
"Don't worry too much," Janet said. Her voice was that sort of forced breezy that was the domain of somebody who was selling something and afraid you weren't going to buy it. Particularly worrying since she’d opened the call by basically telling me it was her job to blow smoke up my ass. Though in this case she was probably seeing her commission going up in flames. This was probably the tallest order anyone had ever given a headhunter before.
"Other people have difficulties, and I still managed to find a place for them. Just keep your chin up, and live off of your savings for a little bit. Everything will be okay."
"Yeah. Okay," I said, suddenly feeling sick to my stomach.
I didn't bother explaining that I didn't have anything in the way of savings. I had my retirement fund that I suppose I could dip into, it's not like I was going to need it for another forty years or so God willing, but I was reluctant to do that. And besides, there wasn't much money in that account to begin with. Definitely not enough for me to live for more than a couple of weeks. Like so many other people in my generation, I was living paycheck to paycheck and well and truly screwed if those paychecks stopped coming in. Which they were about to.
I took full responsibility for the stupid decisions that led to this moment, but it didn't make the moment sting any less.
A click and she was gone. I imagined her on the other end of the line breathing a sigh of relief that she didn't have to talk to me and deal with my ridiculous situation anymore. I imagined my file going to the bottom of her pile, or maybe even into the circular file at the side of her desk.
