Chapter 42
FORTY-TWO
Men who fuck off to high mountains
Patrick
My fist comes down on Craig’s employee file photo hard enough to make everything on the desk jump.
Sarah lifts a brow from across the desk. “That behavior doesn’t really fit with the new company protocols.”
I sigh, ball up the picture, and throw it in the trash.
“Anything else you need clarified in the report?” she asks.
“It couldn’t be clearer.”
They convinced Georgie to come in yesterday, a “lessons learned” session, they called it. She didn’t have to do it. Could have told us all to fuck off. But she came anyway, because that’s who she is.
The report sits in front of me, each page worse than the last.
“When I explained technical concepts, Craig would interrupt to ‘translate’ for the room, as if everyone else wouldn’t understand me directly.”
“He constantly called my thoroughness ‘overthinking’ and my attention to detail ‘slowing progress’.”
“Every time I pushed back on unrealistic timelines, I was being ‘difficult’ or ‘not a team player’.”
“He joked about how I was playing with my Barbie Dream House when he was debugging COBOL. Made some of the sales guys laugh.”
“He got me to schedule all the meetings and take notes. He never asked male developers to do admin tasks.”
“He told me I should ‘smile more’ if I wanted to advance.”
“He asked if I was ‘hormonal’ when I disagreed with him in a meeting. In front of twelve people.”
“Others got promoted ahead of me even though they came to me for help with their code.”
She was right. I was willfully fucking blind to what was happening right under my nose.
I can see it now, like someone’s ripped off my blindfold.
Structural sexism. That’s what the report calls it. Not just Craig being a bastard, though Christ knows he was, but the entire rotten system I built that let bastards thrive while brilliant women got crushed beneath them.
I failed her. As a CEO. As a leader. As a man who claimed to give a damn about his people.
How was I so blind?
Craig went green when I hauled him in here at the weekend. Properly sick-looking, because he knew if this landed on him, he’d be out. That’s the deal at his level. You take the massive salary, the corner office, the executive title, and when you fuck up this badly, you’re gone.
The bastard was just scrambling to save his own backside, protecting his six-figure salary. He knew exactly what he’d done, knew those emails would prove she was right, so he deleted them. Made her look like a liar rather than admit his own incompetence.
That’s who I believed. That’s who I chose over her.
The Forbes accreditation is dead. My reputation’s fucked. The industry press will feast on this. But that’s nothing compared to the rot I let spread through my company while I sat in my executive bubble. Problems I let fester because I treated my business like the building site I started on.
I need to fix those first.
HR’s already implementing everything we discussed: a complete restructure of management practices across all properties.
They’re auditing every department for power abuse, setting up anonymous reporting systems that protect people instead of just covering the company’s arse.
Proper bias training too, not the tick-box shite we’ve been doing for years where everyone watches a video and learns nothing.
It’s too little, too late for Georgie. She won’t come back now, and she shouldn’t.
I want her to soar with IRIS, and she will, because she’s shown how strong she truly is.
I want her to forget McLaren Hotels ever existed, except maybe when we’re on our knees begging her to let us keep using her software.
I hope she charges us double what she’d charge anyone else. We’ve earned it.
But it stops the next Craig from destroying the next Georgie while the next Patrick sits in his corner office, deliberately ignorant.
The press release about IRIS goes out tomorrow, making sure the entire tech industry knows it’s hers. Her name and her innovation. At least I can give her that.
My lawyers went apoplectic when I signed over the IP rights. “Even if it’s not core business, you’re giving away company assets.”
They can fuck off.
Liam, surprisingly, understood. I thought he’d tear me apart. Instead, he just said, “If she matters to you, then she matters more than the business.” Coming from a man whose favorite hobby is hostile takeovers, that’s practically poetry.
I saw what happened when he and Gemma split before they sorted themselves out—he was a shell. The man knows the cost of choosing wrong.
I want to choose what’s right for Georgie.
I was so bloody terrified of being another controlling older man that I became something worse: a coward who let her suffer rather than fight for her.
I meet Liam and Edward at Liam’s house in Richmond, a mansion that looks like a bomb’s gone off thanks to my two-year-old nephew.
Liam’s holding the wee terrorist when I arrive. Edward’s slumped on the sofa after a twelve-hour shift at the hospital. Both men look wrecked.
“Uncle Pat!” Liam Junior shrieks, launching himself at my legs with what appears to be jam-covered hands.
“Christ, he’s absolutely covered in it.” I laugh, picking him up anyway. My shirt’s fucked now, but the kid’s grin is worth it.
“Everything’s covered in jam,” Liam says wearily. “My suits. The rug Gemma loves. Somehow, the cat. I found jam on the fu—” He glances at his son. “—flipping toilet.”
“Rough night?” I ask, bouncing my nephew, who’s now trying to stick his jammy fingers in my mouth.
“This tiny tyrant’s harder than takeovers. At least finance bros eventually sleep.” Liam collapses into his chair. “Get yourself and Edward drinks, will you? You know where everything is.”
I hand him back his son, pad into his kitchen and pour three glasses from my own distillery’s eighteen-year. Might as well drink the good stuff.
“What’s the current situation?” Edward asks when I hand him his glass, looking more alert now that there’s whisky involved.
“Georgie hates me. There’s no hope.” I take a long drink. “I chose wrong at every f—flipping turn.”
Liam snorts, trying to prevent his son from grabbing the whisky. “There’s always hope. You just have to stop being a coward about it.”
“I don’t know what else to do to fix this situation.” I run a hand through my hair, exhausted. “I hurt her badly.”
“Look, you want my honest opinion?” Liam says simply, shifting his son to his other hip. “You’re doing that thing where you decide you’re irredeemable instead of trying to redeem yourself.”
“That’s not—”
“It is,” Edward interrupts. “You’ve decided she’s too good and pure and you’re too much of a bastard, so why bother trying? It’s actually quite self-indulgent.”
“Fuck off.” I take another drink. “I’m not good with the emotional side of this. I’m trying to fix it in practical terms. I’ve signed over the IP for IRIS. I’m hiring consultants who’ve coached FTSE 100 leaders on building healthy cultures. Complete restructure of management practices.”
“That’s all business,” Liam says. “What about the personal side?”
“I don’t know how to fix that part.” I groan.
“How do you do it with Daisy?” I ask Edward. “You’re complete opposites.”
Edward considers this with characteristic deliberation. “We are rather.”
“So how does it work?”
“I’d have spent my entire life doing what was expected—appropriate marriage to someone from the right family, respectable career, suitable everything. Then Daisy crashed into my world, and I realized I’d been existing rather than living, if you’ll forgive the cliché.”
I chuckle. Edward’s old money through and through, heir to the Cavendish estate, so upper class he probably bleeds blue.
Meanwhile, Daisy’s a free spirit, a proper working-class girl who used to sell bathroom products on late-night shopping channels.
The kind of programming I’d rather gouge my eyes out than watch.
Her mum used to clean at the Cavendish estate for Edward’s mum. She is vivacious, loud, and bubbly. She says whatever pops into her head. Edward thinks through every word before speaking.
She’s everything his mother despises. And Edward’s never been happier.
But there’s a fundamental difference between Edward and Daisy, and me and Georgie. Edward’s built for relationships. Before Daisy, he was married for years and loved his late wife completely.
I’ve never managed more than a few months with anyone. I wonder if I’m even built for that or if I’m too selfish. Georgie deserves more than being an experiment for me while I work myself out.
“You want my advice?” Liam cuts in, wiping jam off his son’s face with what looks like a Hermès tie. “Stop thinking like a CEO. Start thinking like a man in love.”
My glass stops halfway to my mouth. “Did those words just come from Liam McLaren?”
“I’m serious. What would you do if you couldn’t buy your way out? Couldn’t fix it with contracts and consultants? If all you had was yourself?”
The question hangs there. If all I had was myself—that’s the problem. Myself chose Craig. Myself stood there while security marched her out. Myself is exactly what she needs protecting from.
Junior toddles over, offering me a sticky block covered in jam. “For you, Uncle Pat.”
I take it solemnly. “Thanks, mate.”
“See?” Liam gestures at his son. “Even my two-year-old knows how to give from the heart.”
I meet Jake at a pub near London Bridge. He’s already there when I arrive, nursing a pint.
“Thanks for meeting me,” I say, sitting down carefully. Out of swinging range, just in case.
“Didn’t do it for you.” He gives me a curt nod. “But what you did with the IT system, giving Georgie the rights… that was the decent thing to do, even though I know that’s a fucked-up business decision. So, thanks. Even though I’m still fucking furious with you.”
“Fair.”
We sit in silence. Years of friendship reduced to this: two blokes who can’t meet each other’s eyes over a pub table.
“I need to apologize to you too,” I say finally. “For what I did to Georgie. Having her suspended.”
“For humiliating her.” Jake’s voice is flat. “Let’s call a spade a spade.”
“I didn’t intend—” I stop. Intent doesn’t matter. Impact does. “Yes. For humiliating her. For failing her. I’m sorry.”
He grunts, which from Jake is about as much forgiveness as I’m likely to get right now.
“I love her,” I say finally.
“What?”
“I love Georgie.”
His jaw clenches. “This better not be bullshit. You’ve been with half of London. Now suddenly you’re in love with my sister?”
“I know how it looks.”
“Do you? Because from where I’m sitting, you’re a thirty-five-year-old CEO who’s fucked his way through most of the city’s female population, and now you’re telling me you love my shy, sweet sister who worked for you.”
“Fair point.”
“So, convince me. What makes Georgie different from all the others? Why do you love my sister?”
I’m shit at this. Always have been. How do I explain what she means to me?
“She’s...” I stop, start again. “She’s really fucking loveable. Easy to love. That’s the truth of it. I can’t write you poetry about it. But I know I love her.”
“That’s it? That’s your grand declaration?”
“You know I don’t say things I don’t mean. But yeah, that’s my truth. Simple as that.”
He chuckles, which might mean he’s softening. Maybe.
Alas, he frowns. “You hurt her.”
“I know.”
“So why should I believe this is real? You don’t hurt people you love.”
I let out a harsh sound, almost a laugh but not quite. “Christ, Jake. The people you love are exactly the ones you hurt. That’s why men like us fuck off to high mountains.”
“Well, maybe we should stay there.”
“Or maybe we should learn how to come down off the mountain and fix what we’ve broken.
Show up stronger. Love harder, not less.
” I meet his eyes. “I’m here, getting my balls broken by you, instead of moving on.
I gave her IRIS when my lawyers nearly had strokes.
I’ve realized that losing Georgie would cost me more than McLaren Hotels.
More than my reputation, the Forbes list, five-star ratings, all of it.
I’d rather lose the entire fucking empire than lose her. ”
Jake’s glass stops halfway to his mouth. “You’re serious.”
“Dead serious.”
“Jesus.” Jake takes a long drink, studying me like he’s seeing me for the first time. “You really do love her.”
“I really do.”
“Fuck me.” He runs a hand through his hair. “She’s going to kill me for even having this conversation with you.”
“Even if she doesn’t want anything to do with me, I need you to understand something. I’m nothing like her ex. I need you to know that. I need her to know that.”
“I know.”
“What finally made her leave him?”
Jake’s face darkens. He takes a long pull of his beer before answering.
“The bastard was a complete fucking prick. They were having an argument in the car park outside the university. Georgie wanted to stay and talk to her advisor about her dissertation, and he wanted to leave. Some controlling bullshit like always. She was trying to explain, and he grabbed her hand—supposedly to ‘guide’ her to the car. Opened the door and slammed it on her fingers. Hard.”
My whole body goes still.
“She started crying and he immediately said it was an accident. ‘Sorry baby, didn’t see your hand there.’ But then he got angry because she was crying.
Said she was ‘making a scene,’ and ‘being dramatic.’ Left her there and drove off.
She called me from A&E later, could barely speak through tears.
Turned out two of her fingers were broken. It was that that finally did it.”
The rage hits me so fast I can’t breathe. My fist clenches around my glass hard enough that Jake actually reaches over.
“Patrick—”
“He broke her fucking fingers?”
“That’s what finally ended it, yeah.”
“What happened to him? Tell me someone did something.”
“Absolutely fuck all. He kept his job at the university. We couldn’t prove intent. Georgie said trying to report it would destroy her more than just leaving.” Jake’s face is bitter. “But she couldn’t stay there after that. Couldn’t walk those halls knowing he was still tutoring there.”
“He broke her fingers and kept his fucking job?” The words come out too loud. Several people turn to stare.
“Patrick. Calm down.”
I force myself to lower my voice, but my whole body’s vibrating with rage. “Name.”
“No.”
“His fucking name, Jake.”
“So you can what? Track him down? Beat the shit out of him? That’ll really help Georgie, won’t it?” Jake’s voice is tired. “I wanted to kill him myself. Still do sometimes.” Jake signals for another round. “So when you say you love her, you better fucking mean it.”