The Old Man

Kaden

Being out on the street energized me, recharged me. All morning, I’d been dealing with shit and screw-ups. My office was a sanctuary in this building, but the events of the morning had tainted it.

My one occasional concession to my “I’m actually only twenty-seven” side was a walk along the sidewalk, blending in and becoming anonymous. It allowed me to breath and regroup before coming back to the firm I was being groomed to take over when the time came.

Not that my dad was anywhere near turning over the reins. The man would probably come back to the office to check on a few last things before his own damn funeral. He was a machine.

John, however, wasn’t. And he was starting to eat into the few minutes I would have for my walk before my next round of meetings this afternoon. Hooking my hands into my pockets, I turned back to him. “Well?”

He glowered at me, his eyes narrowed. “I’m a good worker, and you know it. That’s why you should keep me on. My mistakes aren’t that bad in comparison to my billables, and I’m signed up to be a mentor when the new recruits come in next week.”

This guy planned on mentoring some of our fresh blood? I nearly snorted. Whoever he would have ended up mentoring wouldn’t have lasted long either. They would have been taught wrong from the get go, and they wouldn’t have stood a chance.

No, I couldn’t let him near our new recruits or our clients. What I was about to do was a public service, really. “That’s not good enough. You’re fired, John. You have two hours to pack your shit and get out of the building. If you’re still here after that, I’ll have security escort you out, with or without your stuff.”

“You’re going to regret this,” he spat after a moment of stunned silence. It was clear he hadn’t been expecting me to fire him, but he should have.

“Don’t threaten me,” I replied calmly. “It makes you look pathetic. I’m not concerned. You’re not performing, and you refuse to take responsibility for it. If you don’t plan on making yourself better, we can’t help you here. In order to make yourself better, you need to acknowledge you’re not where you should be, and you’re not doing that. So it’s game over. Goodbye, John.”

Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on your way out, I was tempted to add. But that would be juvenile, and as much as I wanted to act half my age sometimes, I couldn’t. Not in this situation and not in many others.

John didn’t put up much of a fight. He glared at me some more before turning on his heel and storming out of my office, a string of muttered curses ringing out behind him. I didn’t give a shit about being sworn at or threatened, so I stuck to my word instead of having him thrown out right away.

While he was packing, I swung by my dad’s office. John had been a liability to us for months, and now, I needed to let my dad know I’d taken care of the problem. He liked to have his finger on the pulse at all times. There would be hell to pay if I didn’t tell him what I did right away.

Our offices were all chrome and glass, with huge flat-screens mounted on almost every flat surface. Our clients never came back here to the offices and the bullpen, where every employee had at least two computer monitors on his or her desk.

It was loud and pulsing with frenetic energy. I loved it here. My dad’s office was on the far side of the building from mine. It took up the corner and several hundred square feet around it. There was a large window out to the bullpen, allowing him to keep an eye on his minions.

I knocked on his door as I walked in, crossing the expansive space to lower myself into one of the two leather chairs across the desk from him. My dad looked up, annoyance sparking in his deep blue eyes.

“Don’t sit,” he snapped. “Whatever you want to talk about, you shouldn’t be in here long enough to have to sit.”

Well, okay then. I came to a stop behind the chair I’d been about to sit in and put my hands on its backrest. “John Honeyball. I wanted to tell you I just fired him.”

“What?” He frowned, his ice-cold demeanor shifting to severely irritated. “Why the fuck would you do that?”

“Because he was a liability,” I returned confidently. My dad was not a gentle man. Even as a child, he never mollycoddled me. He was all business, all the time. I wasn’t intimidated by him, but I did respect him.

At fifty-four, Dad was still as imposing as ever. I was tall at six-two, but Dad was an inch or two taller still. I’d inherited my eyes from him, but I got Mom’s blonde hair, whereas Dad’s was almost jet black. It was flecked with graying streaks nowadays, but that only added to his air of authority and power.

He was a tough nut, as evidenced by the hard gleam in his eyes and the angles of his face being sharp enough to cut glass, but I held my own against him. “He was a liability, and he has been for months. He fucked up the Christie deal last night. It was time for him to get out before he started causing real damage.”

“I’m aware of the Christie deal,” Dad bit out, the familiar coolness seeping out of him. “I’m also aware that he was a liability. What I meant was why the fuck would you fire him now when the new recruits are starting next week?”

“We needed him gone now,” I replied. “Who knows how much more damage he could have caused in a week? It’ll be fine. Don’t worry about it. It’s only one week.”

“It’s one week, during which you’ll be taking on all of Honeyball’s work on top of your own.” There was no arguing with Dad when he used that tone of voice.

Fuck. I didn’t understand why he was being such a dick about this, but it wasn’t like I couldn’t do John’s work on top of my own. I would get it done and do it faster than anyone else would have been able to do it. “Fine. Consider it done.”