Chapter 2
Mitzi~
I knew that I was skating on thin ice, but I was also banking on a reprimand being the worst of it.
While trading barbs with the company’s owner wasn’t the wisest career move that I’d ever made, it was still turning out to be better than quitting at Nautical Engineering to follow Scottie to this goddamn city.
Now, as a grown woman, I was very aware that taking my anger out on innocent bystanders was wrong, but since the person that deserved my wrath was currently unavailable, my pride was going after everyone else around me.
Pride, because I could admit that I wasn’t exactly heartbroken, which was a problem in itself.
After all, I had rearranged my entire life for the asshole.
Growing up, my intelligence had made an appearance early on, and my parents had been great about nurturing that growth.
Jonah and Jacqueline Bardot hadn’t freaked out when I’d started reading and counting while still in diapers, and they hadn’t argued about me growing up too fast. With my father being a grocery store manager, and my mother being a hotel receptionist, neither of them had wanted to hold me back from what’d been possible with an IQ as high as mine.
They’d wanted me to reach for the stars, and they’d done everything in their power to help me achieve my dreams.
So, after years of academic growth and achievements, I’d chosen to go work for Nautical Engineering because I’d been fascinated with discovering new things, and that’d included the ocean and all the animals in it.
New depths were being breached every year, and I’d wanted to be a part of that discovery and the technology that made it possible.
Nevertheless, despite my passion for aquatic life and its environment, I’d also met my cheating asshole of an ex-boyfriend while working at Nautical Engineering, and like most foolish women in love, I’d been blinded by Cupid’s stupid arrow.
Scott Traylor had been working as a bartender at a local tavern while taking college courses, and I’d found that admirable.
According to Scottie, he’d had to drop out of college when his father had fallen ill, and with his mother still having to raise his two younger siblings, he’d gone back home to help out.
While his father had eventually gotten better, it’d taken a few years before Scottie had been able to get his life back on track.
At any rate, a few random conversations at the bar had turned into dinner, then a few more dates, until we’d finally gotten serious.
We’d dated for one year before moving in together, and then after another three years of that, he’d finally gotten his degree, earning him a job with SmartCom Telecommunications as an IT supervisor, which had come with a healthy new paycheck.
So, like the idiot that I’d been, when he’d told me about the job, I had quit Nautical Engineering to follow him to Portal Lands, and I done it with hearts in my eyes and picket fences in my soul.
Now, not for nothing, it’d been easy for me to find another job, and while I’d been making a pretty penny at Nautical Engineering, it appeared that Gray Advanced Technologies had decided to pay me for all the knowledge that I had stored in my brain, which was a lot.
In fact, with Scottie and I sharing all the household expenses evenly, I had managed to build up quite a healthy safety net, and that safety net was my saving grace now.
Luckily for me, Scottie had been out of town when I’d found out about his unfaithfulness, so I’d been able to find an apartment and schedule some movers, getting me out of that damn apartment before he’d gotten back from Philadelphia.
While I’d been under the impression that SmartCom had sent him to a convention for work, he’d been on vacation with his side piece, and I’d found out because she’d been either dumb enough or fed up enough to tag him on his social media accounts.
So, all of that has brought us to now, with me getting brave with the owner and CEO of Gray Advanced Technologies, Mr. Sullivan Gray himself.
Granted, I was hoping that my contributions to his bottom line were enough to keep me from getting fired, but if not, my resumé was impressive enough to quickly land me a job elsewhere.
I wasn’t being conceited, either. Those were the facts, as my academic history spoke for itself, and my job history was impeccable.
Nonetheless, it was easy to see how Sullivan Gray could intimidate a person by just looking at them.
The man was easily six-foot-three, had raven-black hair, hypnotic green eyes, and at thirty-five, the man still kept himself in shape, and no amount of expensive tailoring could hide that fact.
Over the years, I’d seen the man with his suit jacket off, and holy shit.
His biceps bulged through his dress shirts, and I had no doubt that he was also ripped everywhere else.
All in all, the man looked like a damn Spartan god, and he also had the confidence of one, which was warranted when you considered all that he’d accomplished in his short professional lifespan.
Still, for all that he was gorgeous, rich, and powerful, it was the height of bad manners to start banging your boss’ boss’ boss, and I was also pretty sure that he didn’t need to resort to sleeping with his employees when there were plenty of women who were willing to give up the goods just to be seen with him in public.
Seriously, that’s how good-looking the man was.
As everyone in the room-my boss included-held their breath, Mr. Gray answered my question, and the bite in his voice did not go unnoticed. “Yes, I did. Contrary to what you may have heard, I do know how to read, and I’m also quite capable of basic comprehension, Ms. Bardot.”
Credit to him, Martin quickly jumped in to defend me. “You’ll have to excuse us, Mr. Gray. We tend to get...uh, socially rusty when we’ve been stuck in the lab for too long.”
Ignoring him, Sullivan Gray kept that piercing green gaze directed my way. “Actually, I’m very interested in what Ms. Bardot thinks that I don’t understand.”
He was putting me on the spot, but I didn’t mind. When it came to my intellectual abilities, I was as confident as a five-star admiral. I knew my shit, and research was like an addiction to me. Whenever I started a project, I left no stone unturned, and this case was no exception.
“Like Martin stated earlier, we’re merely in the gestational phase of the research, but we’d divided the preliminaries into five different demographics to start,” I said, trying to explain it in laymen’s terms. “Instead of approaching it from the base of the disease itself, we’ve separated it by race, age, diet, sex, and health. ”
Looking me dead in my eye, he said, “That’s nothing new, Ms. Bardot. Medical research has already tried this approach, and they’ve made very minimal progress. So, again, what makes you think that you will have any real success with what you’ve come up with?”
I looked over at Martin, so that he could make the call on this one.
If it were just me, Martin, and Mr. Gray in the room, I would have spoken freely.
However, three other team members were in the room with us, and what I knew had not been discussed with them in detail yet.
Corporate espionage was a real thing, and I did not need my research and discovery to go missing to the highest bidder.
While I liked and respected everyone on my team, I had no idea what went on in their personal lives, and so all it’d take was for one of them to have a sick kid or grandmother to make them do the unthinkable.
Martin spoke up, and his tone was enough that no one argued with him. “Daniel, Timothy, Erin, please give us the room for a few minutes.”
No one said anything as they filed out of the room, and as soon as the door closed behind them, Mr. Gray asked, “What’s going on?”
“While the team is privy to ninety percent of what we’ve discovered so far, Mitzi and I have decided to keep a few things under wraps until we can do some more testing,” Martin answered him.
“And what is it that you’re not sharing with the rest of the team?” Mr. Gray asked as he straightened in his seat.
Martin looked back my way, giving me the floor again. “Mitzi.”
“Gene therapy focuses on correcting biochemical abnormalities that lead to the loss of retina cells, and we would need to develop a neuroprotection strategy to prevent that, regardless of the hundreds of abnormalities,” I recapped quickly. “Well, we’ve done it.”
Mr. Gray eyed me suspiciously. “Have done what?”
“Mitzi has isolated the gene therapy of a test animal, and the cells regenerated with a protective neuro film that’s holding up so far,” Martin answered, and it took everything in me not to smirk.
“That’s impossible,” Mr. Gray said after a few seconds. “Dead or dying retina cells do not rejuvenate. It’s been proven.”
“Okay, well...then I guess we’ll just toss all our research in favor of something easier,” I drawled out, which earned me a reprimanding look from both men.
Damnit Scottie.
After a few seconds, Mr. Gray asked, “Who all knows about this?”
“Just us three,” Martin answered.
“I’m going to want to see the data,” he went on.
“Of course,” Martin quickly agreed.
Then looking back over at me, Mr. Gray said, “You’d better not be fucking around, Ms. Bardot.”
Angry at the world, I stood up from my seat, slapped my hands down on the table, then said, “Insult me again, and me and my brain will walk out these doors and never look back.”
Before he could fire me, I stormed out of the conference room, needing to get drunk.