Chapter 5
5
MICKEY
“ T hank you, gentlemen,”
Numbers are up for this quarter, outpacing my projections from July. It’s good news all around. I finish shaking hands with the legal team and finance guys, then I ask Ben Ragucci to hang around for a minute. He’s the forensic accountant, and he’s been around since my dad was in charge. He’s the guy who’ll give it to me straight.
“You got a minute?”
“For you, boss? Always,” he says and sits back down at the table in the board room.
“Thanks, it won’t take long. I was thinking with profits way up, I can funnel some more to the robotics program, food banks, maybe the women’s shelter.”
“You can cross off the food bank. You got them set up for the next six months at least. Roxbury and Mission Hill already looked at sending the holiday donations from the community down to Somerville and Medford. Spread the wealth.”
“Good. Then put the surplus on robotics and the women’s shelter.”
“You talk about charities the way your old man bet on the ponies,” he chuckles. I nod. There’s nothing I can say to that without insulting the memory of my father.
Ben looks up from his calculations. “You wanna put all this on those two?” he asks.
“Why not?”
“Most guys would take a vacation at least. Buy yourself another car.”
“I’ve got four. And two bikes. I don’t need another car.”
“Right. I’m just not sure the robotics program needs this much money. They have all new equipment. The teams will go to competition with their travel expenses paid already.”
“Then give it to the libraries.”
“Okay, will do. You know, you and your old man couldn’t be more different,” he says.
I know it’s a compliment.
“Thanks,” I say. I want to be a better leader and a better man than my father, but it’s awkward having Ben Ragucci mention it to my face. “Save the compliments for my eulogy, okay?”
“You got years ahead of you, boss,” he says and nods to me as he leaves.
I know he’s right. I have years of this job ahead of me, of guiding this organization and building my legacy as long as no one else gets the crazy idea to try to challenge me or take it from me. Frankly, I get a little tired just thinking about it.
I like what I do, and I like being in charge, but there’s never peace for very long and another forty years of this doesn’t sound like heaven right now. It feels good to give to charities and know I’m changing the face of the city little by little, but all I have to look forward to is going home dead tired at night and doing it all again the next day. It’s no wonder my dad was such an asshole—the grind is unforgiving and it never stops.
I open up my laptop and look over the email from Kate’s boss. She does great work, and all reports indicate she gets along fine with everybody there. The only downside to her re-entrance into my life, is the nonstop hard-on I seem to have whenever her name is brought up.
I’ve got a case of lust that I can’t seem to slake. She’s not even a possibility for me. An employee at the very least, but the little sister of my best friend. Nothing about that situation lends itself to what I want, which is to pluck her, ripe and wanting, and get a taste.
Being the object of my fantasies wasn’t in the job description. I have no business thinking about her that way. Hell, I don’t need to think of her at all.
Concentrating on work is impossible now. All I can think of is getting home where I can relieve some of the tension in my body that’s all for her.