Page 69 of The Boss

That was step two to our game. “Paris.”

“The moon,” she countered.

“Miami.”

“Virginia Beach.”

“That could be doable,” I said. “And since I’m newly unemployed, I can be ready to go in twenty minutes and have no specific time I need to be back.”

“Great! I’ll call you before I leave. Pack as much as you can.”

Mom ended the call before I could agree, and that was when I realized that she was actually serious about us going on a vacation. I wasn’t normally this spontaneous, but I was starting to think that my normal way of doing things wasn’t working for me, so maybe it was time for me to try something new.

Like suddenly joining my mom on a trip to Virginia Beach to get away from my asshole boss who’d fucked me and then fired me without letting me defend myself.

I’d earned this vacation.

Forty-Four

Nate

“What do you want?”I barked without taking my eyes off my computer screen.

How the fuck was I supposed to get any work done if people kept interrupting me?

“An assistant or two would be nice.”

Stu’s mild voice from the doorway almost made me regret snapping at him, but his comment buried any hint of guilt I felt.

“Considering how the last two assistants were fired, I think we need to take a little more time vetting our people.” I kept my tone even but still didn’t look at him. “Talk to Carole in HR.” Silence for a moment, but I could feel his eyes on me. “Is there something else, Stu?”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m working, and apparently, I’m the only one.” I clicked send and finally turned toward him. “Believe it or not, being the CEO doesn’t mean I get to sit on my ass all day and screw around.”

“Can I speak frankly?”

I turned back to my computer screen. “No.”

When I didn’t hear anything for half a minute, I risked a glance at the doorway and saw that Stu was gone. The way my office was set up, I couldn’t see down the hall, but I doubted anyone else was coming. I’d spent Monday snapping at anyone who spoke to me, and a couple people who’d only looked my way. Yesterday, no one had talked to me at all, which should have made me grateful, but instead just pissed me off even more. Nothing anyone did would be the right thing.

I pulled up the email I’d sent to Stu and Suzie on Monday, letting them know that they would need to borrow runners or interns from other departments to do various tasks until a new assistant or assistants could be hired. I felt a minor twinge of guilt that I hadn’t told them about Ashlee face-to-face, but as I’d done when I first decided to handle the situation this way, I reminded myself that if they hadn’t hired Flora and Ashlee in the first place, none of this would’ve happened. Technically, they hadn’t hired either of the women for the company, but they had been the ones who’d selected them both for their assistant positions.

While I was brooding for the hundredth time, a new email popped up. I saw the subject line first –“Ashlee Webb” – and my heart gave a funny leap. Then I saw the email address it’d come from and scowled. Stu. He couldn’t have just talked to me like a man about the reasons why I’d fired Ashlee? All I’d told him and Suzie was that I’d found a couple discrepancies in her original application. Neither one of them had asked for details so I’d assumed the subject was closed.

I was tempted to trash the email without reading it, but it was a business document, and I needed to maintain at least some semblance of professionalism. Once I opened the email, I was glad I had. It wasn’t about Ashlee’s termination, at least not directly. It was, however, about a problem that we had because she’d been fired without warning.

On Monday, she’d left the building immediately after gathering her personal items from her desk. I’d had security watching even though I hadn’t asked them to escort her out. Almost immediately after she’d left, I’d had IT wipe her computer and HR deactivate her accounts. It’d been a clean break all the way across. No second-guessing, no dragging out things.

I hadn’t considered any negative repercussions from that until right now.

Stu’s email was professional and polite, but I knew him well enough to know that he wasn’t happy with me at the moment.

Mr. Lexington,

It has come to the attention of the A&R department that access to all of Ashlee Webb’s systems has been cut off, and her computer has been wiped clean. After two days of searching for hard copies and speaking to IT about retrieving data files, we regret to inform you that two of our upcoming projects must be started over from scratch as Miss Webb had been in possession of that information when her position was terminated. Several other projects have lost work as well.

Due to the company’s policy on electronic copies versus hard copies as well as recent concern regarding leaks to the media, we had instructed Miss Webb to keep everything on her desktop for the time being. We attempted to contact Miss Webb to inquire if she had a thumb drive, notes, or anything else we could use to reconstruct at least some of what had been lost. Unfortunately, we have been unable to reach her.

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