Page 2 of Out of the Shadows
COSMO
“Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.Fuck.”
As soon as we escape the boardroom, I flee. My colleagues are fizzing with excitement, but all I can feel is a rushing sickness and I race to the toilets just in time to throw up the strong coffee that was the only thing lining my stomach. I’m not ready to go back into the office and instead I slip outside.
Drawing hard on a cigarette, I stride up and down the narrow back street behind the West End office of Cleaver Jackson, now a boil on the arse of the Kingsbury Group. It’s the perfect place to work off the torrent of emotions raging inside me.
Daniel Russo. Christ, I hadn’t seen that coming.
Loathing and anger, but also fear and a rising tide of panic grips hold of me as I light up another cig from the remains of the last. I’ve not smoked in almost a year, but somehow I’m not able to jettison the pack that’s always within easy reach. It’s just another reason to hate Daniel Russo; the bastard’s killing my lungs.
I’m not the only one in the back street. Staff from the nearby bars and cafés hang about talking on mobiles, or to each other. Some, like me, are dragging on their cigarettes. A few throw me curious glances but I don’t care. I know I must look like just another corporate clone having some kind of crisis. In the distance there’s a faint rumble of thunder. I look up. The sky’s darkened and the rain that’s been promising to fall decides now is the time. The catering staff dash back to where they work, and I’ve no choice but to do the same.
I pause outside the door to the open plan office, and swallow hard. My breath tastes rancid and it no doubt smells twice as bad, and I fumble out the open packet of mints from my trouser pocket. I go to push open the door, but don’t go in.
Daniel could be in there, right now. He could be doing hislet me get to know youbullshit the way he did with me at the start of my short lived stint at Russo Wealth Management. I’d been impressed and he’d been smooth enough to make me believe he really did give a damn about the freshly minted graduate he’d taken on. I’d been twenty-two, naïve and star struck, a lot in awe, and a little in love (okay, lust) with the hot older guy whose eyes lit up when he smiled. Hot, older,straightguy. But that was five years ago, and naïvety’s been replaced by experience, not all of it good.
I don’t hear him but, just to be sure, I peek around the door rather than barge through full of the bravado and confidence which isn’t always as easy and natural as it looks. He’s not there, and relief washes through me I slump down at my desk.
“There you are. We’ve been talking about the turn of events.” My colleague Fiona nods to the others in the office, all talking excitedly in little groups, as she perches on the edge of my desk. “Being acquired by Kingsbury’s one thing, but Daniel Russo being part of the team? It’s a masterstroke. Are you okay? You look a bit green around the gills,” she adds, quietly
“I’m fine,” I lie. “And anyway, he’s not going to bepart of the team, is he? We’ll do all the graft and Wonder Boy will get all the credit.”
“You’re in a mood.” She huffs. “Didn’t you get any last night?” Her perfectly groomed brows rise up towards her blonde hair, but there’s no ill-feeling to be seen on her open, cheerful face.
I snort and she grins in response. I like Fiona, we’ve shared a few late curries after long nights of drinking, and I feel shitty for snapping at her.
“Something radical had to happen, otherwise it’d have been the end for Cleaver Jackson. I’ve just updated my CV and was about to contact recruitment consultants, but I think I’ll maybe hang around and see how it pans out with the rather scrummy Mr. Russo at the helm.” She twirls a strand of her long blond hair around her finger, and smiles. “I’m surprised you didn’t have any idea about this, Tariq, what with you being Finance Manager,” she throws over her shoulder before shooting a glance at me as she tries her best not to smile.
“Director of Finance.” Tariq frowns. “And yes, I’m a little surprised Mr. Kingsbury didn’t take me into his confidence in my official capacity. If you’ll excuse me,I’vegot work to do.” He clamps a pair of noise cancelling earphones to his head.
“Pillock,” Fiona mutters under her breath. “He’d be kind of okay if he got that long metal rod out of his arse. Or maybe. So, Daniel Russo, the Mr. Hotshot who sold his own company for a squillion gazillion pounds, and now breathes new life into the corpses of once proud finance houses.” Fiona purses her lips, a sign I’ve come to recognise that she’s thinking hard. “Do you know anything about him, beyond the headlines I mean?”
Oh yes, way more than I want to know…but it’s not something I’m going to be broadcasting to my colleagues, including Fiona, any time soon.
“No. Nothing beyond the headlines, as you put it.”
But I’ve got to admit, they’re pretty impressive headlines and not ones which can be ignored if you work in this industry.
It was big news when Daniel sold Russo Wealth Management. It dominated the financial press and I’d devoured all the articles. I hadn’t wanted to, but they’d been as irresistible as a bottle of whisky to an alcoholic. He wanted to step back, do the things he’d never had time to. Like travel. He could get a one way ticket to hell, as far as I was concerned. He was gone, out of the industry with hissquillion gazillionin his back pocket, with plans to take off for some obscure corner of the world where he’d never, ever cross my path again.
Until today, when my feet were kicked from under me.
Fiona slips from the edge of my desk to go and talk to some of the others. I glance around the office. Everybody, except Tariq, is buoyed up on the false optimism the new Messiah’s brought with him. Don’t they realise Daniel Russo hasn’t arrived bearing gifts, but an axe? He’s going to swing it hard in the name of streamlining and restructuring, and some are going to get their heads chopped off. But I’m not going to be one of them.
I’ll resign because there’s no way I want to work with him again,but…I’ve only been here for six months, so why the hell should I? Won’t it look like he’s scared me away? I don’t want to give him the satisfaction. I open up my computer, but ignore the long list of emails and instead tapDaniel Russointo the browser search bar.
The results are instantaneous and everything I’d expect.
Fawning articles on how he built his squillion gazillion pound company from a mailing list, a pay-as-you-go mobile phone and a rented office above a chip shop, to being the wunderkind of tailored financial services. The money he donates to charity… I snort. Yeah, because it’s tax deductible. His practical and financial support of causes furthering the care and welfare of animals… Now, that is a surprise and, okay, it’s a good thing, but it doesn’t make me feel mellow towards him.
I scroll down, past all the business and sector based articles in praise of St Daniel of The Holy Russo, to those which are definitely more of The Daily Sport variety rather than The Financial Times. I scroll past one, but immediately back up, and lean in a little closer, glancing over the top of my computer. Nobody’s taking any notice of me, which is good because I don’t want to be caught looking up Daniel Russo, in an article in… what’s it called?…Hot Fox.
What the…?How can anything be called Hot Fox? Then I read the headline that’s pure cheddar…For News on All The Hottest and Foxiest Businessmen on the Planet!
There’s even a poll of the hottest and foxiest and Daniel is… number one.
It’s like opening a packet of Hobnobs. Once you’ve had one, you have to gorge on the whole packet.
