Chapter 13
“To clarify, it’s a yes to the Coeliac Children’s Charity golf day, no to the Warner Music and Modern Movement dinner, and yes to the Kruger wedding in the Bahamas that Trystan isn’t going to?” Helen asks, looking up from her laptop.
Wait, what? “You’re not going to the wedding? I can’t change your mind. Trys?”
“I’m not going. They sent me an invitation only as a courtesy. Fuck them.” His surly tone does not go unnoticed.
I expected Trystan to be shaken, but this reaction is mildly surprising.
It would be painfully difficult to watch an ex-lover tie the knot with someone else when you would move a mountain to be the one reciting vows.
He may have a well-earned reputation as a cad who gets around more than most. Deep down, he feels with an intensity and longing foreign in modern relationships.
“Alright, Helen, please respond in kind that I will be in attendance, with Ms. Sabrina Broe as my date. For that, and the premiere of Trouble in Troy.” Helen dips her chin and runs a manicured finger over her mouse on the laptop. “Will that be all, Mr. Mercer?”
“Yes, thank you, Helen. Please hold my calls until this meeting wraps up.”
“Yes, sir, of course. And did you confirm the leave I requested? It’s a few days off after your return from Harbour.”
“Of course, Helen.” I make my way around the front of the custom mahogany desk and recline most of my weight, the rosy wood in the vice of my grip. His eyes burn like twin lasers into my derelict soul. If you’ve got something to say, then say it.
As if emboldened by my countenance, he explodes. “Why the fuck would you suggest a collaborative team for the Grenfer project? Why put Sabrina in a position where she’s subjected to that crap?” Hostile Trystan is a thundercloud of rage.
“Because I said so. It’s called life. Bri, at some point, we have to do things we may not want to do, and with people we don’t want to do them with. Perhaps you need to work on your resilience and not focus on petty childishness about something that upset you when you were twelve.”
“It wasn’t petty childishness; it was bullying. And as you can tell from last night, it’s still going.” Trystan vibrates with rage. He despises bullying.
“Ignore it. You’re a grown fucking woman.” It’s the best I can offer her.
“Mr. Mercer, please.”
Her aquamarine eyes beg me for a change of mind that will not be forthcoming.
Pulling at a small piece of lint on my waistcoat, I deliver what I know she will not want to hear.
“No. You, Trystan, and Juliette will work together as a collaborative unit for the upcoming buyout. Mercer and Fenkel will be joint owners. What better way to cement an alliance than to bring her onboard for the preparations?”
Trystan’s arms interlaced across his torso. His defensive posture is guarded, unlike Sabrina’s outright hostility. When I first floated the idea of the three of them overseeing the research on the Grenfer deal, I thought she was going to be sick.
“You do realize you want this little task force to include the bully of one of your executive staff?”
“For fuck's sake, why is everyone acting like children.”
Sabrina sits rigid, Trystan to her left. If I hadn’t demanded her attention, I’m sure she’d be gazing out the window, willing this conversation to be over.
“No one is acting like children, Mas. Bri is obviously uncomfortable with this woman, and I don’t blame her.”
“It’s business.”
“Yeah, it is. But you heard her line about Bri losing twelve more pounds. That’s not business, that’s bullshit.”
“It’s done. One of you, and I don’t care who, is to email Ms. Nesta-Vrees and set up a meeting with her next week, or the week after at the latest. You are going to need financials, projections—”
“I’ll do it,” Trystan replies curtly.
Bri remains stock-still, cross-legged in the chair, turned to face me, perched on the edge of the desk.
When I tap her knee to attract her attention, she flinches before curling away from my hand.
Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I sent her home last night in the car, taking Trystan and Aydra, because I wanted more time to talk with potential allies at a private men’s club in the opposite direction to her apartment.
Perhaps it’s the collaborative group she’s been thrust into.
Either way, she has a job to do. A job for which I’m paying her an excellent salary.
“If that’s all, Mason, perhaps Bri can get back to her tasks with Helen. Do you mind if you and I have a word?”
“Sure.” It’s a verbal representation of my current frustration.
Not with my staff, but more my inability to secure an accurate read on her mood.
Bri senses her freedom and dashes from the room like a startled rabbit with the hounds of Hell snapping at her heels.
The moments of silence tick on until Trys breaks them with a sledgehammer.
“Jesus, you are a fucking hypocritical prick sometimes.” Ouch. Why don’t you tell me how you really feel, buddy?
“Careful. Last time I checked, it was my name on the foyer, not yours. I don’t pay you for your opinion of me.”
“I’m raising an issue with your behavior as a friend and human being. Not your subordinate.”
“Nice backpedal. You saving your nose this time?”
“Asshole.” And he’s right. A furious haymaker thrown in a fit of rage half our lives ago broke his nose and destroyed the cartilage.
Even with stellar surgeons, you can still see the slight bow of the bone when it didn’t heal as well as expected, nor did a second surgery correct the almost undetectable deformity.
“You do this on purpose,” he thunders, unperturbed. “You make their lives miserable, and they leave. It might be a game to you, but it’s not to them. Not to Bri, at least. Why must you behave like such a fucking caveman?”
Now, I’m a lot of things, a cave dweller isn’t one of them. Mercers are way too polished, too refined. Years of finishing school, behavioral and etiquette lessons, and butlers whose job it was to teach me how to tie a tie. I was four years old and expected to perfect a full Windsor knot.
“Bri is… excellent. I don’t want her to leave,” I say, my voice rising higher in volume than expected.
Walking around the desk to resume my seat, I met his steely stare.
“I expect her to understand the difference between business and childhood bullying. As a professional, Ms. Broe should be more than capable of separating the two.”
At twenty-four, Sabrina is close to the absolute basement age for an EPA.
The contract stipulates that any woman between twenty-three and forty-five years of age can be recommended.
Too young, and they tend to lack the maturity to understand business practices, and this being a no attachments contract.
All too often they get hung up on a designer dress not fitting, or accommodations in Europe being too old and too dated.
At the other end of the scale, women in their forties can be notorious clingers.
Torn between accepting a mediocre, suburban life driving a late-model SUV and listening to Michael Bublé, or wanting to mother me to the point of cloying asphyxiation; I pass on both, always.
As soon as the signs start to glow like the Bat-Signal, they are terminated on the grounds of a misdemeanor, and the interview process begins again.
“You could have fooled me,” he barks back, cold and bitter.
“Perhaps you’re easily fooled, Trystan.” It’s a low blow, but I’m pissed.
A vein throbs at his temple. “Perhaps I am. But I possess some shred of fucking decency that skipped your prestigious DNA. You didn’t even notice Bri come back from the restroom with red-rimmed eyes, or her food untouched on her plate.
No, you were too busy flirting with Aydra or trying to cement some unnecessary alliance that didn’t require fortification.
Tell me, Mason, was your mask so firmly in place that you didn’t even notice how affected she was by the reappearance of her teen bully? ”
My resounding scoff is met with a look of pure derision. “Everyone handles stress and pressure differently, Trystan, this might be an excellent lesson for Sabrina. How she handles this could define her. She might tap into a reservoir of resilience she never knew she had.”
This time his laugh echoes through the space like a sound wave. “As long as she fits into the box deemed acceptable and appropriate by a Mercer, right? Or she might end up with a broken nose too? You said it yourself not five fucking minutes ago. It’s called life, right?”