Chapter 8
SULLIVAN
Iwas on my way down to meet the head of the construction crew in the lobby when I saw a flyer taped to the bulletin board. A bright red slash against the white paper caught my eye and I slowed, irritation pricking at the base of my skull before I’d even fully processed what I was looking at.
A slice of cake sitting in a red circle with a line slashed through it, the lettering underneath printed in a crisp font. NO CAKE ALLOWED.
I stopped walking, white hot rage sweeping through my veins as I stared at it. My fingers clenched into fists at my sides, but I felt my features smooth into that iron-hard mask I knew so well before someone snapped a fucking photo of my face and posted that online too.
If this was meant to have been a joke, which I was assuming it was, it was so profoundly unfunny it bordered on defamation. Okay, maybe not, but fuck.
My eyes darted from one side of the hallway to the other.
Then I reached up and tore it down, not even giving a fuck if the empty hallway should suddenly become filled with witnesses.
Paper ripped satisfyingly under my fingers and I crumpled it up, shoving it into my pocket and planning on burning it later.
I took two more steps toward the elevator before I stopped again, spotting another bulletin board on the other side of the elevator bank that held another flyer. Same cake. Same smug red slash.
“You have got to be kidding me,” I muttered, marching over and tearing that one down too.
By the third board I found bearing the same flyer, I wasn’t heading to the lobby anymore. I was on a detour, stalking the halls like this was personal affront requiring immediate correction, which frankly, it was.
Every flyer I found wound my temper tighter.
Someone had planned this. Someone had designed this on a fucking computer—possibly even one that now belonged to me—and printed them specifically to fuck with me.
They’d distributed them to make me a laughingstock in the very place where I had to command respect.
Bree Bennett.
Her name jumped into my head unbidden, but this had her fingerprints all over it.
Metaphorically, anyway. She had the audacity and the moral superiority to come up with a juvenile prank like this and actually follow through, and she also had a grudge and a fondness for theatrical rebellion involving baked goods.
On my righteous march through the halls, I pulled down one flyer after another. Then I saw the signs—and not in an existential sense. The literal, actual signs. The brand-new Crowne Medical signage I’d had installed had been vandalized.
The r had been scratched out and replaced with an l, so they now read Clowne Medical.
Red flashed at the edges of my vision and my jaw locked as I stared at it, my chest as tight as polished steel. This wasn’t just a subtle protest. It was playground nonsense and the kind of thing I hadn’t tolerated since I’d been old enough to pay people not to waste my time.
Right then and there, I turned on my heels and headed straight for security, bursting through the double doors of their offices without breaking stride. A bank of monitors sat at one end of the room, a thick-necked man sitting on a chair in front of them.
“Pull the footage,” I barked. “Someone has been vandalizing the signage and posting unauthorized material. I want to know who and I want to know now.”
He nodded, already swiveling back toward the monitors after having briefly spun when the doors had crashed into the walls. “Sure thing, sir. Which area?”
“All of them,” I snapped. “Start with the bulletin boards.”
He clicked through feeds, fast-forwarding and rewinding through video of the hallways, the elevators, the entrances and exits, but the problem became obvious within minutes. None of the bulletin boards that had been hit were on camera.
“How is this possible?” I muttered. “This is a goddamn hospital. We treat dignitaries here. Celebrities. We have more drugs than the fucking cartels and more expensive equipment than an airport. Why do we not have a single camera pointed at any of the areas where these were posted? There were two dozen of the fucking things, and those are just the ones I’ve found so far. ”
The man glanced up at me. “Sir, if you want coverage there, we’d need additional cameras installed. Our current system only covers high-priority areas and strategic points. We don’t have a birds-eye view of the entire building and property.”
I exhaled through my nose, slow and controlled. More money. More expenses.
This project was already operating on a razor-thin budget.
All the costs so far had left little wiggle room for all the maintenance and improvements that needed to be made to the hospital as a whole, and having to upgrade the security system was borderline criminal.
How had the previous owners not ensured sufficient coverage?
It was unthinkable, yet another act of negligence that certainly made it a little more obvious why the employees suddenly had such a big problem with being properly overseen and managed.
From the looks of things, they’d been allowed to run amok in the past, and now that someone was actually taking control, they couldn’t handle it.
I stared at the dark screen and thought again about Bree Bennett, so infuriatingly principled and far too comfortable challenging me.
This hospital wasn’t supposed to have been a difficult project, and yet, here it was, testing me with cake flyers, vandalized signs, and more expensive problems to fix.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the head of security said, drawing my attention out of my thoughts and back to the present. “We can ask around and try to find out if somebody saw anything suspicious, but it’s unlikely they’ll turn on each other.”
Gears churned in my head. I spun around again and left before I said something that would require an apology I had no intention of making. The lack of cameras in those areas wasn’t this guy’s fault. I got that. I also understood what he meant about going to the employees being useless.
No doubt they were all secretly applauding whoever had done this. There was no way they’d side with me by providing us with any information, but the fact that the head of security could sit there and shrug it off was appalling.
Marching out of the security room, I was fuming, but I finally got back on course and went to meet the construction crew. The foreman was waiting in the lobby, hard hat tucked under his arm, and he stepped forward when he saw me coming, extending a hand after pointedly checking his watch.
Yeah. Yeah. I’m late. I know.
“Mr. Crowne,” he said, bowing his head slightly as we shook. “It’s a pleasure, sir.”
“I apologize for the delay,” I said, because I wasn’t a completely arrogant buffoon like the people who worked in this godforsaken hospital seemed to believe. “An urgent matter came up that had to be dealt with. Right this way. Let’s not waste any more time.”
The man nodded and fell into step beside me as I headed for the elevators, but while he immediately launched into discussing the project, my mind was still on cake flyers and scratched metal signs. I was paying top dollar to be mocked by my own employees and I was not pleased about it.
We took the service elevator up to the fifth floor and the doors opened onto a gutted space that smelled like dust and old insulation. Right now, the space was only exposed beams, plastic sheeting, and concrete floors, but soon, it would be so much more.
This was the part that mattered, the reason I’d bought the hospital in the first place.
As I strode across the space, I told them what I wanted, watching the foreman scribble notes as we went.
“Diagnostics here. Imaging should go over there. We’ll need reinforced flooring for the new equipment and clean rooms along that wall. ”
He nodded, asking a few questions and stopping me when he needed to. I answered them without thought, my mouth on autopilot while my brain replayed Bree Bennett’s face when she’d looked at me like I was the problem.
It was annoyingly distracting, but unavoidable at this point.
Finally, one of the guys on the crew cleared his throat behind me. “Hey, uh, boss. Can I ask you something?”
I glanced at him over my shoulder, already moving into the next hallway. “If it’s about timelines or permits, yes.”
He grinned. “Is it true you banned birthdays in the building?”
The others snorted. I stared at him, temper flaring again while I wondered if no one in this world had manners anymore. For heaven’s sake.
“Stop asking stupid questions,” I said flatly, then kept walking, but by the time I showed them out after our meeting was done, my face hurt from clenching my jaw so hard.
Back in my temporary office, I tossed my jacket over a chair and poured a drink. Liana was already there, leaning back on one of the chairs and scrolling through her phone.
“You’re still trending,” she said without looking up.
“I don’t care.”
“Of course, you do.” She finally lifted her gaze to mine, concern shining in those green eyes despite the flicker of amusement also still in them. “You have to and this is me you’re talking to. There’s nobody else here. You can be honest.”
“Fine.” I gripped my tumbler so hard, I was aware that the glass might crack, but I didn’t give a shit right now.
“I don’t get it. What I’m trying to do here will make this place a cutting-edge medical center.
These people will be able to help more patients than ever before.
They’ll be able to do it faster, with more resources and equipment than almost any other hospital in the country, and this is how they treat me? ”
“Let me play the devil’s advocate for a minute.
” She exhaled long and slow. “This is basically what you were asking for when you said you didn’t give a single fuck if they like you or not.
Now they’ve turned the tables and they’re letting you know that they don’t, in fact, like you. The ball’s in your court, Sullivan.”
“There’s a difference between not liking me and vandalism,” I seethed. “There’s being displeased with your boss and actively tanking your workplace’s reputation. Those things are not the same, Liana.”
“I think you might just be realizing why it’s bad for business to run things like a dictator,” she reasoned gently.
“The day you got here, you tried to demand their respect instead of earning it, and it got their attention. Perhaps not in the way you wanted it, but given what you said and everything you’ve done, this is what you were always going to get. ”
I waved her advice away. Not mean. Just stubborn. “I’ll turn things around my own way.”
She sighed. “You always say that.”
“And then I always do it.”
She studied me for a moment, smiling faintly as she stood up.
“Just don’t underestimate them, okay? Right now, they don’t believe that you’re really going to do all those things you set out to do.
They believe you’re here to make their lives a living hell, because that’s pretty much what you told them in the only meeting they’ve ever really had with you as a group. ”
“I will not bow to disgruntled idiots who cannot see or understand what I’ve pointblank told them I’m going to do,” I said.
“They’re not my friends, Liana. I truly don’t care how they feel about me, but I draw a line at deliberate sabotage.
It’s affecting my stock price and I won’t have that, nor will I kiss their asses to do their fucking jobs. ”
My sister lingered in the doorway, a resigned mask on her face that I didn’t particularly enjoy seeing there, but what she wanted me to do was simply never going to happen.
If any of my employees got so much as a whiff that I was considering conceding this battle, they’d print out flyers every time I made any move whatsoever.
“No one is asking you to bow or to kiss their asses,” she said. “These people are professionals and they’re a solid team at that. They want to do their jobs because they love it, but surely it can’t be beyond your realm of comprehension that they don’t want to work under a tyrant.”
After giving her words a moment to sink in, she left and I picked up my phone, hitting speed dial on my assistant’s number.
When Todd picked up, I didn’t mince my words.
“Do some research and find me the best PR company in town. I want someone who specializes in damage control and is available today.”
Clowne Medical was trending and that was unacceptable. Thankfully, Todd, at least, was the one person who worked for me who didn’t insist on arguing these fucking days. “I’ll get right on it, sir.”
“Call me back as soon as you’ve got an appointment.”
I ended the call and carried my drink over to the wall of windows overlooking the city. The assholes in this building might think they’d won, but the hospital would fall in line.
One way or another. I would personally make sure of it.