Chapter 20
twenty
LOCKE
“The products team has been steadily increasing output and profits for the last six months, sir.”
“Are they at the quota I asked them to be?”
The only woman in the board room keeps her hands under the large wood table. I imagine she’s wringing them anxiously. Her eyes are wide in fear, and I know she’s staring at Dad, but sitting next to him makes it feel like she’s staring at me.
I hate it. No singular person should be able to strike this much fear in anyone, and definitely not during a routine monthly meeting. On a Monday morning.
I count the seconds it takes her to answer. When I count past five, my heart drops. She took too long.
“Well?”
My father’s loud voice is intimating, abusive, and familiar. The other department directors drop their heads and press their mouths shut.
“N-No, sir.” The stutter makes him angrier.
There’s unreasonable waves of heat flowing off his body, and if I wasn’t so adamantly told to keep my head raised while next to him, I’d look away too.
“But they’re nearly there, and most of the top performing team members have been working six or seven-day weeks. ”
“Did I ask how much they were working? I don’t care how much they’re working. I care about my numbers.”
The awkward and tense air around the room is suffocating. I readjust my glasses and take the risk of rolling my shoulders. Dad is too caught in his torment to notice.
“We’re close to your numbers.”
“If you open your mouth again, without saying what I want to hear, your final paycheck is going to hit your bank account by the end of the day. Do you understand?”
She nods. There’s a painful stretch of silence before my father reiterates what he was saying before the product department head stood up for her colleagues. He tells everyone they need to work harder, stop making excuses, and to give him the numbers he wants before the next meeting.
That’s it. He never apologizes or acknowledges his tactics are abusive and wrong. Just shoos everyone off until it’s me, him, and his business partner Vaughn heading to that stifling sky-rise office.
The in-and-outs of the stock trading Rosie loves are hyper focused on strategizing numbers, as opposed to establishing a virtual monopoly. Or, at least, that’s what my father’s world of e-commerce business consists of.
But I know there’s an overlap in the way men in power think they can walk all over everyone. It’s never slipped past me that Dad’s patience is shorter with the women in the company. His tone is harsher and more unforgiving to them. The product department head is just one example of his cruelty.
Her shaky voice and scared eyes haunt me when we’re back in Dad’s office and he’s pouring three glasses of bourbon.
It’s a Monday morning, he just ripped a new one into his employees who work tirelessly to give him the life he doesn’t deserve, and he’s drinking whiskey.
“Grab a glass and take a seat, Locke.”
And pathetically, I listen.
Vaughn casually pushes the plaque at the front of my father’s desk to the side, sitting on the edge and smirking behind his glass. Only he has enough authority to pull something like this with my father. Aside from Grant, I think he’s the only person I know that’s not afraid of him, either.
They’re on leveled footing. They own the same percentage of the company and are equally hated by staff. I’m sure he’s the person Dad despises most in the world.
“How’d you like the meeting, boy?” Vaughn’s smile is eerie when he stares down at me.
“It was eye-opening.”
“Good answer.” He nods, gray hair covering his eyes before he whips his head to my father. “That why you wanted him to sit in, Keller?”
I’ve always watched my father closely. Walking on eggshells around him, waiting for the slightest indication I’ve crossed a line and have to prepare for the consequences. I notice now the tiny twitch of his fingers and the extra second he takes before slowly turning away from the window, smiling.
Then, he taps his foot twice
“Yes, of course. Wanted him to get an idea of what a meeting would be like if he chooses to join the software department after university.”
Vaughn smiles again. Unsettling, and devoid of any actual joy or happiness. This time, staring directly at my father.
He must know Dad’s plans of side-stepping him, forcing him out of the company and eventually handing it over to me. I don’t know how he’s planning to do it—just that he has every intention of turning VK Corporation into a McCarthy family empire.
Meaning, Vaughn must have the same idea. Or at least a way to keep his half of the company intact until he can force my father out.
They continue with their little wordless mind game.
Staring one another down, never saying what’s on their minds but leaving little to the imagination.
It’s sad. I don’t know much about my father’s life aside from being a businessman, but I know Vaughn used to be his friend.
I’ve seen younger pictures of them. Before sharp stares and dirty business tactics, they cared about golf tournaments and beer on tap.
They grew old together—and bitter, too. Now it’s nothing but sour competition.
My mind goes to laughing at a table over a board game, and joking with Rosie while cleaning up the living room, and texting funny videos to the group chat I have with Grant and Billie.
Those memories are some of my simplest, but by far the most rewarding.
More valuable to me than any amount of money.
For the first time in my life, I pity my father.
They eventually finish their alpha-male stare-off before discussing an upcoming collaboration. I sit silently through it, spend the hour pretending to listen but really thinking about Rosalie’s beautiful brown eyes, and swish the bourbon around my glass.
Vaughn leaves the room before I take a sip.
“Did you see that, Locke?” Dad’s voice is hushed.
No one would be able to hear us in his office regardless, but his body bends to bring his face closer to mine.
The wrinkles crowding his skin sit everywhere but the area around his mouth.
“Those were first-hand lessons of what you should be preparing yourself for. After everything works out in my favor, that’ll be you in fifteen to twenty years.
Commanding a board room and standing your ground against your enemies. ”
I feel sick. I can’t think of a worse way to live than being cruel to others and making millions from it. The furthest thing I want to be in my life is anything resembling my father.
The idea gives him a horrifying sense of pride, though. He rounds the leather chair before dropping his hands onto my shoulders and kneading them painfully.
“Do you know what my greatest accomplishment in life is?”
His mouth is lowered close to my ear. I almost have the nerve to push him off me, grunt out a few choice words, and stomp out.
Almost. The uncomfortable feeling stirring in me is strong, but my father’s sneering tone is stronger. Thankfully, at least, I know the answer to his question.
“This company, sir.”
“That’s right.” His hands stop, but they linger on my shoulders. Keeping me tethered to the chair while he grits out, “This company means more to me than anything else in the world. And having you is essential to making sure it never slips out of this family’s hands.”
I scoff accidentally. It slipped from my subconscious and out of my throat before I realized. Quickly, I cover it up with a cough and hope he’s too distracted to care about me.
“Your head has been on straighter in the last few weeks. I’m pleased.”
“I’m glad to hear that.” I lie through my teeth.
I have been doing better to avoid his relentless lectures and screaming phone calls. Spending less, kissing up to his professor friends more. Staying quieter during office days. Not pushing back when he called this morning and told me to skip my classes to be here.
It should make me glad to get my father off my back. He’s eased up in the last few weeks. A few months ago, all I wanted was room to breathe from the pressure of being his son.
There’s an itching side-effect of it now.
Even if his harsh words aren’t directed to me as often, they still sting.
Maybe even more. The desire to throw his cruelty back into his face grows more tempting every day.
I daydream about it while logging in different reports from my smaller, quieter office a few hallways down.
I want to tell him off just once. To give him a taste of his own medicine. The exact opposite of nodding when he wants me to and falling in line as he asks. I’m obeying him but betraying myself.
His hands squeeze one more time before he walks back to his own chair, falling down into it. My father smiles, proud and unafraid. I don’t think my need to stand up for something—someone—has been so charged before.
I don’t dare, though. I’m not brave enough.
“You’re shaping up well. If you keep it up, by the end of this year, you very well might get that apartment back. And then by the end of next year, you’ll be in a high-profile position in this company. It’s just a matter of time.”
No and no. I hate both of those ideas.
Just tell him how much you hate it.
Spine straight. Shoulders back. Chin up.
I open my mouth and disappoint myself.
“Sounds good, sir.”
The front door to our dorm feels heavier than usual. My backpack feels heavier too. That’s the excuse I tell myself when I drop it carelessly onto the floor, kicking my loafers off and tugging my tie loose.
It might be the strain of having typed so many reports, or the heavy realization that I’m a coward, but either way, I’m exhausted.
Like she knows I needed her, a bright ball of energy in the form of my dream girl appears from the hallway. Ghost follows behind her loyally.
“You’re home!” Her wide smile washes away the tiredness of the day. It’s two large steps before she’s wrapped in my arms and I’m sighing into her hair. “And you’re wearing a suit?”