“I’m going to bribe a congresswoman,” he said. “You take care of this mall bird situation.”
“Right,” Carlyle nodded. “Gotcha.”
Alex knew when he was being placated. He also knew when he was losing control. Control was one of the few things he understood instinctively. It was like a seventh sense. There was blood in the water of his world. He could smell it. It was faint, but growing stronger by the second.
“Knock knock.”
Sophie looked up from her desk. Usually she hated it when people said knock knock instead of just knocking, but she was too busy freaking the fuck out quietly and internally to be bothered getting upset.
“How is it going?” Mr. Carlyle smiled the question they both knew the answer to.
Things hadn’t been going well. Ellen’s smirks had told her as much, as had Sandy’s silences. Over the past week, she had systematically fucked up basically every single one of her projects, special and otherwise.
It was harder than she’d thought it was going to be. People didn’t want malls on their beaches, weirdly enough.
“Have you considered that maybe beach malls are a bad idea? I mean, building that close to the ocean in general? You can’t trust the ocean.”
“These have been planned for the better part of a decade. We’re just in the final stages, so if you can ensure that we have planning permission, that would be great.”
“Shouldn't we have gotten planning permission already? Why would you plan an entire chain of beach malls without making sure you were allowed to put them there?”
“Apex doesn’t seek permission first. We manufacture permission. You’ll get used to operating the way we need you to work.”
They needed her to work unethically. Destroying beaches. Putting malls with shitty plastic packaging right next to endangered sea birds who would swallow the plastic and then starve to death. But hey. At least she got paid.
“I’ll do my best, Mr. Carlyle. There’s one councilor in a position to swing approval on one of the sites who has a mother with cancer. We could leverage paying for her treatment?”
Sophie resisted the urge to physically throw up at the words which had just emerged from her mouth.
“There we go. Working the angles. That's what you’re employed to do," Carlyle said with an encouraging smile. “Keep at it.”
His approval felt all liquidy warm, and sort of made the objective evil of what she was doing feel reasonable. Mr. Carlyle was a nice man, and therefore whatever they were doing had to be nice too. Right? Yeah. Right.
The second Carlyle had left the floor, Sandy was in Sophie’s office. She moved faster than an Olympic sprinter when she wanted to.
“Oh my god. I can’t believe he was down here talking to you. The C-classes never come and talk to us directly. There's a whole org chart between them and us. There’s like, seven floors! That’s a really long elevator ride for them!”
“I guess he’s invested in the project?” Sophie wasn’t concerned with his attention, she was more worried that she was fucking up and being corrupt all at the same time.
“If he were invested, he’d be getting regular updates from… who is your manager?”
“Umm. Mr. Carlyle is my manager?”
“That’s really weird,” Sandy said confidently. “Something’s really weird with your whole hire. You're like, outside the org chart. Do you think he likes you?”
“I don't think so. I mean. Not the way you’re implying. You’ve seen him as much as I’ve seen him. Maybe he likes you.”
“Maybe he does,” Sandy put her hand to her chest and looked around dramatically. “Maybe he’s making excuses to come down to our floor and completely ignore me while he talks to you. Maybe he’s playing the long game and seducing me by paying absolutely no attention to me and not even noticing that I exist. Wow. Player got game.”
“Player got game,” Sophie laughed. “I guess he does.”
Chapter 5
Three months later…
Alex ran his hand through swept-back hair and scowled at the tablet in his hand as if punishing stares could have an effect on technology. The screen looked back at him, rebelliously displaying the same data it had been displaying the entire time. People were so much easier. If you looked at them the right way for long enough, you could change almost anything. Data remained the same no matter what.
The tablet in his hand did not contain good news. It contained several emails marked in bold red, each one of them more urgent than the last. He had vendors, managers, clients, politicians, and even one president all complaining vehemently about the same problem — a problem which, by all rights, should not have existed.
Gritting his teeth, he swore vengeance on whoever was responsible for this absolute fucking mess. Half their second quarter shipments had been changed to a low emissions carrier. Sounded good in principle, but the change had delayed the goods by a month. The clients weren’t happy. Their usual shipping channels weren’t happy. Apex was about to take it from both ends, all because of what must have seemed like a harmless decision at the time.