Page 56 of Empowered

“Shyam,” I choked out.

“Are you okay?” he asked quickly.

“Yes,” I lied even though I was so close to falling apart.

He paused before speaking, as if knowing I had just lied to him. “Are you happy?” he asked.

He knew my answer, so I didn’t bother indulging him. “Are you?”

Silence.

I redirected the conversation. “Thank you—um—for what you did with TrackCloud.” This was the reason I had called in the first place, right?

“You deserve the position. They made the right decision.” Hearing him compliment me made my heart soar. He had always been so supportive of my career. “When do you start?”

“In a week. I train under the current Vice President until I take over in about two months.”

“I’m proud of you.” I could hear his smile through the phone.

I grinned goofily in response. “Thanks. How are things at Sethi Tech?”

“The same. More acquisitions. Jai driving me up the wall.”

I chuckled.

His voice grew quiet. “I missed that sound.”

The pain resurfaced. I remembered why I had stopped laughing in the first place. It was because of him. Nothing had changed. He still didn’t trust me enough to share everything with me. His first response was always to push me away instead of letting me decide my own fate. I couldn’t live with someone who’s first choice was to run.

“I should go,” I said, trying to end the call before I burst into tears.

He sighed. “Jaan.I wish I could tell you everything. You have to trust that what I did was only to protect you.”

I lost my temper. “And you should trust me enough to let me decide what’s best for me. Take care of yourself, Shyam.”

He let out a bigger exhale than before, signaling his loss of will to fight with me again. “Goodbye,jaan.” His voice sounded defeated.

And just like that, I revisited the nights of crying into my pillow until I fell asleep.

Chapter XXXI

Amelia

10 months later

“…and with the new features implemented in the recognition application, we can expect our social media clients to increase their match accuracies to a level of 99.99 percent accuracy.”

“So, there’s a 0.001 percent chance that there could be a miss?” Andrew, the VP of Marketing asked trying to throw me off my game with his sarcasm.

I plastered on my most professional smile and leaned one hip against the wall next to the projection monitor that displayed the statistics I had organized into the presentation for today. I crossed one leg over the other and did the same with my arms over my chest, standing with my spine long and an air of coolness as I looked down at him in his seat. His hair was usually perfectly coifed on his head and shiny from tons of product, but today his head looked like it had gotten into a fight with a weed-whacker. “That small percentage only accounts for human manipulation, like getting plastic surgery or…a bad haircut.” My voice was even and lacked any apparent hint of sarcasm, even though my meaning was laced in it.

The entire room caught on and chuckled as Andrew shifted uncomfortably in his seat. It wasn’t the nicest thing to say, but that man had been out to undermine me since I started at TrackCloud nearly fifteen months ago. At first, I was quiet and let him make his snide remarks, not having enough courage for retaliation. However, I quickly learned that wasn’t how to handle jerks like that. It was better to put them in their place.

He had been with the company for about three years now, so he wasn’t a total idiot, but the tech side was my domain. His job was to market whatever my departments made, and he needed to remember that. He wasn’t my superior in the hierarchy of the company, though he felt he was because of the small thing he carried between his legs. I say “small” because it probably was, from the way he had been trying to prove himself by dumping on my work every chance he got.

I continued, assuming he would shut up long enough to let me wrap up without interrupting. “Our next step is to draft roll-out schedules for each of our clients. Facebook is anticipating to fully integrate the feature in six weeks, while Twitter has asked for a four-week time frame.”

I took about fifteen minutes worth of questions from the group before thanking everyone for their time and offering a promise to have notes emailed out from my assistant in the next hour. Colleagues approached me on their way out of the boardroom, excitedly discussing the new feature and congratulating me on a job well done—everyone except Andrew. However, that didn’t ruin my mood. It always felt great wrapping up a project that the company was excited about.

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