Chapter 2 #2
No home to return to. No loving arms to comfort me in my last few months.
My roommate and best friend, Tara, would do her best, but she was the same age as me.
Only twenty-five, and still in the prime of her life.
It wouldn’t be fair to burden her with the responsibility of caring for a dying friend.
A wave of self-pity washed over me. Iain was right. The wisest course of action would be to work until I couldn’t work anymore. Then use the money in my savings account to make sure I’d have everything I needed when I checked myself into one of those hospices in the brochure.
But the only thing more depressing than dying in eight months was the thought of working for Iain until my body tapped out and I had to go to hospice.
Which is why I found myself answering, “Why would someone in my condition quit a well-paid job with private benefits? I guess because I’m a 25-year-old virgin who’s never been anywhere further away from my childhood home than Scotland.
I guess because I know exactly where my father came from in New Zealand, but I’ve never been there. ”
Hot tears spilled down my face as I both said and realized this aloud. The truth of how little I’d lived horrified me. But it also spurred me on to do better by myself.
“I have a little money in the bank—not a lot, but enough to go a few places. Like New Zealand,” I told both Iain and myself through the tears. “So that’s what I want to do. I want to go somewhere else that’s not here … maybe have a fling or two … see things while I still can.”
“Don’t cry, Millicent.” Iain took a tissue from the box on his desk and stiffly handed it to me. “I can’t bear it.”
Of course, he couldn’t bear the sight of me crying. Iain hated drama. And tears. Me crying was another thing that wasn’t up to his standards. And he looked away as if he was embarrassed for both me and himself.
“I’m sorry,” I said, taking the tissue and hastily wiping away the offending tears. “I’ll go type up my two-week notice, okay? I can email it to you, so I don’t have to come in here again. I just wanted to tell you in person before I sent it.”
He gave me a long, measured look before saying, “HR tells me most of the people we hire don’t bother to read their contracts before signing them. I’m surprised to find out you’re one of those lackadaisical employees, Millicent.”
I lowered the tissue. “Wh-what do you mean?”
“I mean, if you’d bothered to read your contract in full, you’d know AlgoFortune requires a minimum of thirty days’ notice if you wish to quit. Not fourteen, but thirty. Exactly.”
He leveled me with a cool look. “So, write your letter if you want, Millicent. But if you leave this job in anything less than thirty days, you’ll be doing yourself a great disservice.
After our lawyers have finished with you, you won’t even have that little bit of savings you need to go flitting about on your quest to … ”
He pauses and gives me another derisive look before finishing with, “See things, and have sex with strangers you just met.”
“What?” My heart withered inside my chest. “I don’t understand. Why would you—”
“You don’t understand.” Iain’s face remained a hard mask.
“Well then, let me make it very clear for you then, Millicent. Employees who quit in the middle of a project do not meet my standards. And that is why I had that clause put in every hiring contract. You will stay on until your thirty days are up, and not a day less, or I will sue you for everything you have. Now, do you understand?”
I stared at him in mute shock. Seriously … how could anybody be this cruel?
“I’m waiting for your verbal response, Millicent,” he said, his voice cold as Scottish winter. “Do you understand that you’ll need to stay on in my employ for thirty more days, or I’ll be forced to sue you for breach of contract?”
For heaven’s sake, I was only an assistant! The pitiful woman everyone in the office called Milly Mouse. Why on earth would he sue me just to make sure I served out a ridiculous thirty-day quitting clause? I opened my mouth to ask that very question.
But then a bolt of clarity struck me, and I suddenly understood something I’d only suspected before.
Iain, for all his various recurring five-figure donations to numerous charities, cared little for anyone or anything outside of his precious algorithms.
My cancer was an inconvenience. And if there was one thing that wasn’t up to Iain’s standards, it was being inconvenienced.
Most people wouldn’t be this cruel. Most people would have at the very least, expressed sympathy. But Iain wasn’t most people. And he had no problem showing his true colors … at least where I was concerned.
“Yes, I understand,” I answered in the end, my tone dull and flat. Because what else was there to say?
“Good,” he said, voice clipped as if he were the aggrieved party in this conversation.
“Now, it appears I won’t be finished with this code before my retreat.
But I promised to have it to GUI by tomorrow.
I’ll take it with me to finish, and then you’ll have to come up to my place in Faoltairn tomorrow morning to pick it up. 4:00 A.M. sharp.”
“Are you serious?” I crooked my head, dull acceptance giving way to surprise.
While I’d arranged for countless deliveries to Iain’s million-dollar flat in New Town, I wouldn’t even know Faoltairn was a small Highlands mountain village if not for having to arrange for a special courier to drop off Lachlan’s Father’s Day gifts.
“You want me to come to your home in the Highlands?” I asked. “Like, the house where you grew up?”
Iain gave an impatient jerk of his head.
“Nay, not there. My brother’s taken over that place.
I have another residence I keep for myself.
As I said, I’ll expect you there at 4:00 A.M. on the dot.
I won’t be there to meet you in person, of course, as I’ll be camping.
But I’ll leave the algorithms on a thumb drive in my home office.
All you’ll need to do is go inside and fetch it off my desk. ”
Fetch it. Like a dog …
“You can go now,” he said, dismissing me before I could say anything further. Then he went back to his computer, furiously typing as if he was angry with me for wasting even this much of his time with my dying stuff.
Love at first sight.
“Hello there, Millicent.” I once again recalled how Iain had smiled down at me when I offered him my hand at the start of the interview.
That smile had hit me like a freight train. My heart had sped up, and my stomach had suddenly dropped with the sensation of falling.
Love at first sight. Those four words had floated into my head, rocking me down to my very soul.
And I’d actually thought Iain felt the same way too. He’d held my slender hand in his much larger one for way longer than was professional. And he’d gazed down at me with a look so soft, I’d felt for sure that this was the first meeting of soulmates.
But then his nose had flared, sniffing at the air like he’d smelled something rank. And just like that, his smile was replaced by the hard mask I’d come to know well in the years I’d worked for him.
One glimpse. It had been just one glimpse of a man I’d thought maybe I could spend the rest of my life with, but that small peek had haunted me ever since.
And, despite all evidence to the contrary over the years I’d worked for Iain, I’d found myself wondering too many times to count if maybe—just maybe that guy who’d warmly said, “Hello, Millicent” was still lurking beneath my boss’s hard and unfeeling exterior.
Well, now I knew the answer.
Iain Scotswolf was a 100% bastard. He didn’t have an ounce of consideration for me, much less love.
The man obviously didn’t even give two craps about me, and I’d been a fool to spend over three years of my life secretly hoping it might be otherwise.