Professional Wrath (Sinful Knights #3)

Chapter 1 Simon

SIMON

“You’ve got three months to sort your shit out, Simon, or you’re done here.”

Simon looked across at his boss, Alex Lawson, CEO of JenSure, a global specialty insurance company.

He was struggling to contain his fury. This was not how he saw the meeting going.

Yes, there had been a few blips during his first three months in the job, but never in his twenty-five-year career had he had his probation period extended.

“Is this about the Jason thing?”

“Not just that.”

“Look, I know a few people liked Jason, but he was the one who stormed out in a huff and didn’t come back.”

Alex was in his early fifties, and a handsome man.

There wasn’t a grey hair on his head, which Simon suspected wasn’t natural.

The guy broke the mould of what a Lloyds of London insurance CEO should look like.

It was rare to see him in a collared shirt, let alone a suit.

He mostly wore polo shirts, which were tailored to perfection, and he seemed to have them in a million different colours.

This was in sharp contrast to Simon, who wore a suit every day.

It felt like armour to him and gave him an additional level of confidence.

Simon knew he was excellent at what he did, his career spoke for itself, but sometimes he could get in his head, and the suit helped when he was having an off day.

Not that he doubted his abilities, but as an openly gay man in financial services, especially in the City of London, there was something unconscious which made him feel pressured to outperform his peers.

Nobody had said anything, and he didn’t work or align with any organisation that was discriminatory, but he’d been around long enough to remember when financial services was a very hostile environment.

The sector still had a long way to go, but in his part of that world, at least he could be his authentic self.

“Liked by a few people?” Alex said incredulously. “Everyone loved Jason.”

“Perhaps you should have given him the job, then.”

“He wasn’t ready and was self-aware enough to know that.”

“Are you saying I’m not ready for this role?”

“I wouldn’t have hired you if I thought that, Simon. But why has your head of talent development come to me this morning and handed in his notice?”

“What?!” Simon felt like he’d been punched in the gut. “Gabriel’s resigned?”

“Yes. As soon as his bonus payment hit his account, he asked to see me urgently.”

“Why did he come to you?”

“That’s the question I’m asking you, Simon. Why did one of your team come to the CEO to quit, rather than his own manager?”

Simon was speechless. He hadn’t expected this today. He’d thought this meeting would be a formality to sign off on his three-month probation. Now it was being extended, and a second person from his leadership team had quit within the last month.

“Did he say where he was going?” asked Simon, trying to steer the conversation into safer territory.

“He doesn’t have a job. Just doesn’t want to be here anymore. After three years and a dozen awards he’s won for this company, he says he doesn’t feel like he belongs here anymore.”

Simon didn’t want anyone to feel that way about their work, at all, and especially not because of something he did.

Alex hadn’t said so, but it was obvious Gabriel had quit because of Jason leaving, which everyone blamed Simon for.

If Gabriel didn’t have another job to go to yet, then he could change his mind.

Simon had to do something. A guy as talented as Gabriel would not be on the market for long.

“Let me talk to him. I might be able to change his mind.”

“Perhaps leave it until next week and let the dust settle a bit.”

“So, am I supposed to not say anything to him?”

“You won’t see him, as I’ve had to put him on garden leave. He was in charge of board and exec succession planning. That’s market-sensitive data, Simon. You know the rules.”

He nodded. That was right. Most of his senior team would be put on garden leave if they resigned given the sensitive information they had access to, himself included. Now he had half his senior team missing, though. How the fuck was he supposed to cover everything?

“Have you reached a settlement figure with Jason yet?” asked Alex.

“He’s not interested. Told the lawyers we couldn’t put a price on his principles.”

“For fuck’s sake, Simon. Everyone has a price. Have we at least paid out his notice period?”

“Not yet, but it’ll be in the next payroll. He won’t be out of pocket in that way.”

“So, there’s no way he’s going to come back?”

Simon shook his head. Jason was a stubborn yet principled man.

Simon saw a lot of his younger self in Jason, which is why they’d probably clashed so badly.

Not helped by Simon’s own insecurities and people constantly telling him how they were surprised Jason didn’t get his job.

He hadn’t meant to let it get under his skin, but with his life imploding outside of work, he’d been oversensitive.

There were some similarities between Jason and his ex-husband, Jared, other than just the first two letters of their names.

Both of them could be impulsive, but at least with Jason it was channelled into something productive.

With Jared, you never knew how long it would be before an idea fizzled out.

“Do you think Dexter would cover Gabriel’s role for a short while? Just until we know Gabriel isn’t coming back.”

Dexter wasn’t quiet in his dislike of Simon. He’d been close to Jason and Gabriel. They were known as the Three Queerketeers, which should be offensive, but they’d penned the name themselves.

“Does Dexter even know about this?”

“I would be surprised if Gabriel hasn’t spoken to him.”

“Well, I can only ask.”

“Given we have the spring cohort for the academy starting in less than a month, it needs someone to oversee it who knows the programme well. Dexter is your only option, so you need to tell him, not ask him, but don’t do it in a way that pisses him off.”

Simon couldn’t help but snort out a laugh.

Alex chuckled. “Yeah, I heard it. Well, good luck with that, Simon.”

“Er . . . thanks.”

“Just make sure we don’t get a tribunal claim from Jason, get that HR transformation project started, and I want no more resignations in your senior team. Do those three things and I’ll clear your probation.”

He was now in a situation where a multi-million-pound transformation project was an easier thing to guarantee than making sure nobody else quit.

“Let’s hear it, then,” said Daniel, with his annoyingly handsome smile.

They were at the new queer restaurant bar that had opened in the city.

All the queer spaces were in the West End, or in other parts of London.

There had never been a space like this in the square mile before.

Vast windows on one side of the building flooded it with light during the day, but there were discrete booths on the other side.

A semicircular bar was against the back wall.

The restaurant area sat in the middle of the space, and the casual tables and booths surrounded it, the same shape as the bar.

The place hadn’t been open long, but was already packed.

They’d been lucky to get a table – well, Daniel had.

There was one thing his friend didn’t do, and that was stand, unless it was a conscious choice.

Knights Corner was right across the road from his work, which was in the Twentytwo building. Daniel was close by, in The Gherkin.

Daniel Harper was a hugely successful corporate lawyer.

They’d known each other for five years, having met at a mentoring event that was aimed at getting more LGBTQ+ talent into financial services.

Daniel and he were considered role models, which was funny given how much of a man whore his friend used to be.

That was until he’d met Josh, a guy twenty years younger than him.

It had been one of those instalove things you see in movies, but it was great to see that someone had tamed Daniel.

Throughout most of their friendship, Simon had been the one in the stable relationship, and now look at him.

“He extended my probation for another three months.”

“Why?”

“Two of my senior team quit in less than a month. One was very explicit about me being the reason he left. The other is heavily implied.”

“What is it about gay guys working together? They either fuck or scratch each other’s eyes out.”

Simon couldn’t help laughing. “That’s not what happened here. Jason is far too young for me. More your kind of thing.”

“Jason? You don’t mean Jason Morris?”

“Please don’t tell me you know him.”

“I know of him.”

“Oh, God. You haven’t fucked him, have you?”

“No, nothing like that. We’re just acquainted through Oscar.”

“Oscar Montgomery?”

“Yes, his husband is best friends with Jason. They share a flat together in Soho. There are five of them. Two of them own this place.”

“What?! Friends of Jason Morris own this bar?”

“They’re more like brothers, to be honest.”

“Great. Well, don’t say anything. The last thing I want is to get barred from the only queer place in the city.”

“What did you do, Simon?”

He put his head in his hands, wondering how he was going to explain this and not come across as a complete arsehole.

“I found out early on that he’d gone for the job as well.”

“That’s not like you, Simon. If anything, you would have supported him in his disappointment.”

“I know, I know, but all I kept hearing from people in my first two weeks was how it was such a shame Jason didn’t get the role, and how everyone loved him, and that I had a lot to prove to show Alex that he’d made the right choice in hiring me instead of Jason.”

“That was pretty shitty of them.”