Grumpy Boss

“Come on, let’s get the fuck out of here,” he said, took my head, and tugged me along after him.

18

Rees

Jack leans back in his chair and stares at me over his computer screen with the biggest frown I’d ever seen. Millie squirmed in the chair beside me, and I let the silence stretch for a bit, waiting for Jack to say something to soften the blow, but it never came.

“How bad?” I asked finally.

“Bad,” he said, shaking his head. “We’re about twenty percent short of our goal. And there are about two weeks left to make it up.”

“Twenty percent is millions,” Millie said, and she leaned back, staring at Jack with a blank look on her face. She wasn’t used to dealing with big numbers like this, so the idea of missing that much likely hit her harder, but even still. She was right—twenty percent was a huge gap to make up, especially without Modesto.

“Franky, it’s even worse if we take our original estimates,” Jack said, drumming his fingers. “These new numbers are severely downgraded. I’m talking, this is the bare minimum to be viable. If we can’t raise this capital, we’re finished.”

I let out a breath and glanced toward the windows. The sunlight glittered off the building across the street and I could’ve sworn I saw a conference room full of people having the exact same conversation we were having, only about a different company, under different circumstances—but the idea was the same.

It was always the same, everywhere. Never enough money when you needed it.

“I could put in my own,” I said. “Make up the shortage myself.”

“You could,” Jack agreed. “But then you wouldn’t make any profit yourself, and it would look pretty god damn pathetic. We’d have to disclose that, you know.”

I shrugged a little, glanced at Millie. “What do you think?”

She shook her head and laughed a little. “I think I’m was over my head,” she said.

I smiled at her and resisted the urge to put my hand on her knee. Ever since Modesto’s, it felt like our relationship bloomed, like it was beginning to take root and deepen between us. We hadn’t done anything more, not physically at least, but we talked the entire plane trip back, and most of the night after that on the phone. Now I wanted to show her affection, but I couldn’t, not in front of Jack. As far as he was concerned, Millie was my assistant, and my fake girlfriend, and nothing more.

Though really, I wondered if it would be such a bad thing, if we made it real.

“Jack’s right,” I said, putting my knee with my palm. “I can’t put in more of my own money. I’ve put in enough, and any more would look terrible. But we also can’t be short this goal.”

“Thank you for so eloquently explaining the issue,” Jack said drily. “But we still don’t have an income source.”

“We need to approach Desmond,” I said.

Millie leaned back and shook her head. “What, you think he’ll invest?”

I grinned at her. “Of course not. But we need to get him to back off.”

“There’s no way he’ll listen,” Jack said. “Not at this point. We’re way too far for that.”

“There has to be a way,” I said, and stood up, pacing to the windows. I tapped the glass and thought back to the way things used to be, back before we got rich, and things got confusing. “He wasn’t a bad guy back then, you know? He meant well. I think he cared about the company.”

“But he changed,” Millie said. “Now he’s trying to ruin you.”

“I know,” I said, and still I felt an odd sense of longing—for those old days before things to complicated, before I got rich. I didn’t miss being poor of course. When folks said money couldn’t buy happiness, they probably never had unlimited money. Maybe it couldn’t cure a depressed person, but comfort and stability was no small thing in the grand scheme, and money made my life so much easier. It was the same for him, and as soon as he got a taste of what it could be like, making so much, I think he got jealous and angry and thought he deserved more.

Maybe I could’ve done something. Maybe I could’ve given him a bonus, or maybe let him have a bigger cut of the profits, or something like that. Anything to how him that he mattered. Instead, I pushed back hard, and the rift between us grew until now he hated me with a passion, and I hated him in turn, and noting would fix it, no matter what.

“There have to be other people,” Millie said. “Maybe people that don’t live in the US, that want to invest?”

“That comes with its own problems,” Jack said, frowning a touch, but looked over at me as I turned. “It’s not a bad idea though. We know some Saudis that might be willing.”