Page 2 of Accidentally Joining His Cult

But he’s gone.

Any chance I had of being nice today officially disappears with him.

* * *

After walkingthe two blocks to Caldwell Tower, I head past security and use my badge to scan into the private elevator on the right, which only goes directly to the top three floors.

My younger brother, Oakley, is the only one waiting with me, which means I can avoid awkward small talk with employees. They’re usually either trying to impress a Caldwell—or worse, shrinking into themselves like I’m the Big Bad Brother to avoid.

“Good morning,” he says around a sip of his coffee once we’re inside. He looks a lot like me, but slightly shorter and with fewer tattoos. Oakley’s one of my favorite people, but I’m still too distracted by my coffee shop experience to be polite.

“Is it though?” I ask with more attitude than I’d intended.

“Your shining disposition is always so refreshing first thing in the morning.”

“Fuck off.”

“Do everyone a favor and finish that coffee before you talk to someone you’re not related to,” he says with a smile, used to my shit. “See ya.” He waves as we exit, heading toward his own office.

Our whole family works here. My father is the current owner and CEO of Caldwell Corporation, which my great-grandfather founded after making some lucky real estate investments back in his day. My grandfather still likes to show up occasionally to “see how things are going” when he’s in town and not away on some extravagant golf trip or cruise my grandmother has planned.

The Caldwell Corporation is a successful holding company with ownership or controlling interest in dozens of other companies. My siblings and I each act as president of one of these companies. And if they’re not done with their degrees, they still spend all of their free time at “their” future company learning the inner workings.

Most of them are headquartered in this building, with offices taking up as many floors as fit their needs. Each sibling has an office in their respective company’s dedicated space and a second office on the top level, where official Caldwell business is conducted.

I always start my day up here in the Caldwell offices to check in with my assistant, Adrian, and to see if any of my family members are around. Then I make my way down to my much cooler office inside the Werewolves headquarters.

I usually bring Adrian his favorite coffee in the mornings. Technically, he’s my employee, but he’s also my best friend and one of the only people I’ve ever met who’s never cared about my last name.

He grew up in a small town in Arkansas, so it’s possible that he didn’t know the Caldwell name when we met during freshman year of college, but as time went on, his attitude toward me never changed. When his homophobic roommate started harassing him, my childhood best friend, Jordan, and I insisted he move in with us, and he's been a constant in my life ever since.

Then we graduated, I went to grad school, and Adrian worked for my dad for a few years. When it was time for me to take over with the Werewolves, Adrian had made himself so valuable as one of my father’s assistants that I had to win a bet against my dadandagree to find his replacement before Adrian could officially come to work for me.

Despite my protests, he always arrives over an hour before me and seems to do way more actual work than I do. So, I like to show him how much I appreciate everything he does by bringing him his favorite fancy drinks as a small thank you.

“Shit, I had a weird morning and forgot your coffee,” I say as soon as I see him at his desk in the reception area outside of my office. “I’d offer you mine, but I know you’d never drink plain black.”

“Eww.” Rolling his eyes, Adrian gives me a disgusted look despite the fact that we’ve had this exact conversation a few hundred times. “I’ll never understand why you choose to torture yourself with that garbage when you can literally add chocolate. Who turns down chocolate?”

I roll my eyes right back. “Do you want me to go get you your fancy mocha and pretend I was running late?”

He dramatically sinks into his chair, the disappointment on his face evident.

“First, you need to stop doing nice things for me, or people are going to realize that you’re not a scary asshole,” he starts, and I shoot him a small smirk. “Second, you don’t have time. You’ll be at the executive empowerment program thing all day.”

I drop into the seat across from him, groaning loudly. “Pleeeease tell me that this isn’t another bullshit HR seminar that we’re all required to go to so that they can post pictures on the company’s socials about how we’re ‘Such a fun place to work!’ and how we ‘Encourage personal success for all of our employees’.” I use air quotes and a fake peppy voice to really get my point across.

Adrian doesn’t even pretend to feel sorry for me as he replies with an enthusiastic, “That’s exactly what it is! Have fuuuun.”

“How is it that you always seem to get out of these things when my siblings’ assistants will no doubt be there?”

He grins conspiratorially. “I tell them you’ve excused me to handle ‘very important Werewolves business’ with Hudson Roy. Nobody questions me when I name-drop the star players.”

Being the eldest child meant I had my pick of which company I wanted to work for back in high school. The goal was to start early and learn everything that I possibly could so that I was prepared to take over after graduating with my master's.

Naturally, my fifteen-year-old self chose the NHL team, and I have spent every day since being grateful for that decision. Now, I’m acting CEO of the Chicago Werewolves Hockey Team, which is still the coolest job in the world.

The team manager, president of business operations, and coaches handle most of the actual hockey stuff. My dad is also still the official owner of the team. My job is everything behind the scenes—financial strategies, operational success, and long-term goals.

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