Chapter 12 #2
“All good,” he opened the door to the building, and we ducked inside. “Quick question though. Who is Lennon and who is Oliver?”
“Lennon’s our front desk person,” I called the elevator. “And sort of our HR department, I guess. Oliver’s my partner and co-founder.”
“Copy,” he nodded once as we stepped onto the elevator. I pressed the button for the seventh floor and leaned against the back. The box lurched before slowing with a concerning grinding noise and then lurching again. Color drained from Finn’s face as he gripped the railing.
“Oh, sweetheart!” My heart thudded in guilt as I reached for his arm, the term of endearment escaping naturally as I moved closer. “I’m sorry I should have warned you about the elevator.”
Finn swallowed, closing his eyes a moment. “It’s fine.”
“It’s not. I’ll do better next time.”
He didn’t say anything, but opened his eyes again, leaning into me. I slid my arm around his waist and held on until the elevator came to a stop and the doors slid open again.
“Are you alright?” I looked up at him.
“Yeah,” he swallowed and nodded. “I just… I might need to hang onto you for more than our schtick.”
“Of course.”
He slipped his arm around my shoulders as we walked out, leaning on me the same way he had the night of the party. I glanced at my watch. 8:39. Not bad. Lennon was probably at their morning meeting with Kirsty and Tabitha.
Finn straightened as we stepped into the reception area, his grip on my shoulders loosening. I felt him go still beside me and followed his gaze to the corner where Dom’s life-sized character cardboard cutout stood, glowing sword raised dramatically.
“No fucking way,” the excited whisper escaped him before he caught himself. “Sorry, I—”
“You’re good,” I couldn’t stop the grin spreading across my face as I watched his expression shift from lingering anxiety to pure joy. “Want to say hi?”
He was already moving like he was on a critical mission, pulling out his phone. “Dom’s going to lose his mind. He complained for weeks about how many girls were buying this cut out and posting selfies with it like they were dating. It might have been the only time he was mad about becoming a meme.”
I chuckled as I leaned against the reception counter, arms crossed, watching Finn position himself next to the cutout like a photographer arranging a magazine shoot.
He tried several angles, pointing at cardboard Dom, giving him bunny ears, going in for an awkward kiss.
Each pose was more ridiculous than the last.
“Okay, one more,” he held up his phone for another selfie, face split in the most genuine smile I’d seen from him yet, his arm slung around the character’s cardboard shoulders like they were old drinking buddies.
The door to the left of the reception desk swung open. I turned to find Lennon emerging in a cropped trucker jacket covered with vintage band pins. They stopped short when they spotted Finn, eyes widening as they took him in.
“Great Gatsby, is that the divorced dad of two?” They hissed, pointing at Finn with a long ring-clad finger. “Because if that’s him, I’m changing my answer to yes, absolutely. Who cares whose fault it was.”
My ears heated. “Lennon, this is...” I glanced at Finn, testing. Would he step up to the performance, or leave me hanging? “This is Finn. He’s—”
“Her incredibly handsome and charming boyfriend,” Finn supplied smoothly, pocketing his phone and extending his hand toward Lennon, his performative confidence sliding into place. “And you must be Lennon.”
Relief flooded through me, followed immediately by a spark of competitive energy. If he was going to commit to the bit, the least I could do is match him.
“Oh, I like him already,” Lennon shook his hand, then looked at me with raised eyebrows. “Alex, honey, you’ve been holding out on us.”
“Well, you know how I can be about mixing personal and professional,” I stepped closer to Finn, wrapping my hand around his arm. “But some things are too good to keep secret.”
“Way too good,” Finn added, a smile playing at the corner of his mouth as he covered my hand with his. He turned back to Lennon. “Alex was just saying you’d be able to give me the grand tour while she handles some boss lady business.”
“Consider me your personal guide,” Lennon clapped their hands together, eyes sparkling with delight. “I have so many embarrassing Alex stories, and unlike Tabitha, I have no professional obligation to protect her dignity.”
“Excellent,” Finn’s grin turned slightly predatory. “I’m very interested in compromising her dignity.”
“He wants to compromise you,” Lennon turned to me with obvious pleasure. “It is now my solemn duty to make sure that happens.”
Heat flooded through me at the innuendo, and suddenly I was acutely aware of Finn’s solid warmth beside me, the way his fingers tightened over mine, thumb stroking over my skin. Stars, I wanted that. I wanted him to compromise me in every possible way.
“I’m going to find Oliver,” I managed, my mouth dry as I stepped away, “before you two become best friends and plot my complete downfall. Lennon, please don’t traumatize him while I’m gone.
And Finn?” I slid my fingers against his and he caught them.
“Try not to let them convince you I’m completely unhinged. ”
“Darlin’, I already know you’re unhinged,” he replied, leaning over and brushing his lips across mine as he squeezed my hand. “It’s my favorite thing about you.” His eyes sparkled as he stood back. “Go do your big important exec stuff. We’ll be fine.”
I watched Finn and Lennon fall into a comfortable position with each other as I moved toward the glass doors separating reception from the rest of the office, already deep in conversation. He was going to be fine.
The familiar sound of the office pulled me back as I walked through to the other side. Coffee brewing, co-workers conversing quietly in the break area, a voice over speaker in a conference room, soft ambient sounds playing through strategically placed speakers.
I stopped at the open kitchen to get a glass of water before continuing toward Oliver’s office. Tabitha and Kirsty were at their desks, looking at their respective monitors as they planned out our day.
Tabitha noticed me and stood as I walked behind the glass partition that set their space off from the lounge area.
“Hey, we’ll be there in five to go over what Sherlock found,” she smiled. “You look great today, by the way.”
What Sherlock found. The Titan research. My spine straightened, mind shifting gears to deal with whatever was coming.
“There she is,” Oliver appeared in his doorway with a warm smile, can of Diet Coke in hand and reading glasses perched on his nose. “How was your evening?”
“Better than I could have hoped,” I followed him into his office, settling into one of the four chairs around a small table.
“Good,” he studied me over his glasses as he sat down. “You look different this morning. Rested. I’m glad you took the extra time this morning.”
Tabitha appeared with her laptop and a thick folder. Kirsty followed, tablet in hand, closing the door behind her and lowering the privacy shades over the glass office walls.
“Morning, all,” Tabitha set everything down carefully and turned on the TV Oliver used for conference calls and screen sharing. “Sherlock found some interesting patterns.”
The way she said “interesting” made my mouth go dry.
“How interesting?”
Tabitha pulled out two copies of the summary and handed them each to Oliver and me. “Sherlock flagged seventeen acquisitions in the last five years. Average timeline from acquisition to workforce reduction was fourteen months. Average percentage of original staff retained after three years—”
My eyes flicked up to Oliver as I finished. “Seven percent.”
Oliver set the summary down with deliberate care, his fingers lingering on the edges as if the paper might bite him. The reading glasses slipped down his nose. He didn’t push them back up.
“Seven percent,” his voice hollowed out on the words.
I smoothed my copy flat against the table, aligning the corners. The data marched across the page in neat rows of clinical, sterile numbers that represented thousands of people who’d trusted their employers to value them as more than line items.
“Walk me through the methodology,” I said.
Tabitha peered at her laptop, fingers moving across the trackpad. “Sherlock cross-referenced SEC filings, LinkedIn employment data, and publicly available press releases. We also pulled Glassdoor reviews from acquired companies’ former employees.”
“Show me the timeline breakdowns.”
She screencast to the TV, filling it with a graph that made my chest tighten. Neat bars declining in absolute corporate efficiency, each dip representing real people losing real jobs. People with mortgages and kids and dreams who thought they were part of something special. Lives.
“Birdhouse Games,” Kirsty consulted her tablet. “Austin-based mobile game studio. Acquired March 2019, first layoffs November 2020. Cited ‘redundancy elimination’ and ‘operational synergies.’”
I reached for my water glass. “How many people?”
“Started with forty-three employees. Twelve remain, all relocated to Titan’s Seattle headquarters,” Tabitha’s voice carried the same objective tone she used when reading me negative client feedback.
“Meridian Creative followed an identical pattern. Bought September 2020, integrated by December 2022.”
My stomach twisted. Integrated. Such a clean, corporate word for dismantling everything someone had carefully built.
Oliver pulled off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose, leaving red marks where the frames had pressed. “What about the other acquisitions?”
“Studio closure in fourteen cases,” Kirsty scrolled through her tablet. “Operations moved to existing Titan facilities in the remaining three, with what they term ‘right-sized teams.’”
Right-sized teams. My pen found its way into my fingers, clicking once before I forced it still.
I could see it all playing out with crystalline clarity.
Tabitha’s desk empty by month fifteen, efficiency review determining her position overlapped with corporate admin.
Lennon’s HR duties transferred to Seattle.
Casey and Jordan offered their choice of relocation or severance.
“The employee retention data,” I pressed forward. “Sherlock tracked individual careers?”
“LinkedIn profiles, mostly. Some SEC employment disclosures,” Tabitha clicked to Sherlock’s research. “Across all seventeen acquisitions, approximately eight hundred total employees were affected. Fifty-six are currently employed by Titan or its subsidiaries.”
Three more than we currently employed. The math was simple and devastating. Seven percent.
My vision narrowed to the numbers on the page, everything else falling away.
The systematic dismantling of everything these companies had built.
Everything we’d spent seven years cultivating and creating along with fifty-three people would be reduced to statistics in a quarterly report about optimizing legacy assets.
Less than four people would keep their job, if they were lucky.
“Alex,” Oliver’s voice came from very far away.
I looked up to find three pairs of eyes watching me with varying degrees of concern. The pen in my hand had snapped in half, blue ink seeping across my fingers.
“We need to get you stronger pens,” Tabitha teased gently.
“Sorry,” I set the broken pieces aside, reaching for the tissue box Kirsty set on the table. “Just processing.”
But I wasn’t processing. I was cataloging.
Month ten: Lennon gone, their laugh no longer echoing through the reception area.
Month eighteen: Casey’s desk cleared out.
Creative sessions replaced with corporate mandates from Seattle.
Month twenty-four: silence where there used to be the gentle chaos of people creating something beautiful together.
“If we say yes,” Oliver said quietly, “how long do you think we’d have?”
I wiped ink from my fingers, unable to look at him. “Based on this pattern? Studio operations would be ‘evaluated for synergies’ by fall. Full integration or closure before the end of the following year.”
The words came out clinical, detached. Good. I could handle clinical. Clinical kept the rage tamped down where it belonged, kept my voice steady and my hands from shaking.
“Holy smokes, Alex,” Oliver’s face had gone gray. “If we do this...”
“Now we know,” I aligned the broken pen pieces parallel to each other and glanced up at him, emotionless look fixed on my face, “exactly what saying yes would mean for all of us.”
Tabitha closed her laptop with a soft click. “I’ll forward the complete analysis to your secure folders. Sherlock flagged some additional patterns in their recent SEC filings that might be relevant for future discussions.”
“Thank you,” I gathered the summary pages, tapping them into flawless alignment again. “All of you. For letting me be thorough.”
“You weren’t just being thorough,” Oliver said, his voice cracking slightly around the edges. “You were being protective.”