“He can’t fire people,” I said. “Make sure they all know their jobs are safe. He doesn’t have that power anymore.”
“All right,” Matt said. “We can try to calm them down. The real problem will be convincing people to stay after they’ve been subjected to such abuse.”
I sighed. “Shit.”
“Yeah, it’s not great.”
“Okay…” I took a moment to think about my options. “Is dad still there?”
“He stormed off a few minutes ago.”
“All right,” I said. I knew I had to go back in. No matter how I felt about my job, I was still the CEO, and these people needed a leader. They needed someone to reassure them, to make them feel better about coming back to work the next day. “I will be there as soon as I can. Tell everyone that they are free to take the rest of the day off, but that if they stick around for a little while, there will be free lunch coming soon.”
“Free lunch?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Adam, can you call Jeremy and see if his restaurant will cater a last-minute event. Tell him we’ll pay through the nose.”
“You want me to call Jer?” Adam said. “We should have Matt do it. He likes Matt more than me.”
“That’s ridiculous, he’s our brother. He loves all of us.”
“Right but…”
I groaned. “Whatever. I don’t care who calls, just one of you call him, and call Ezra while you’re at it. Invite him. I want to see all my brothers today.”
“Is Ezra even in town?”
I frowned. I wasn’t sure. “I don’t know. Call him and find out. I’ll meet you guys back at the office in an hour, okay?”
“What are you going to do?” asked Matt.
I looked at the doors to the humane society. “I just have one quick errand I need to run. I’ll see you guys soon.” I hung up, then got out of the car and ran inside.
ChapterSeventeen
LILY
Tuesday went from bad, to worse, to better, to best, and then back to bad again.
It all started with the fight between David Junior and David Senior.
I had no idea what happened, but something set David off that morning and put him in a bad mood that would rival all bad moods, and he spoke to his father in a way that I don’t think anyone in the office was expecting to witness. I knew he was going to tell his father off one of these days, but I was honestly very surprised when it did happen, right there in front of all the Becker Tech employees to see.
Then, David left in a huff, and David Senior took it upon himself to make everyone else’s life in the office a living hell for the next half hour, including me. He had found out somehow that I was the one who pushed the legal team into going after Mark instead of settling, and he not only let me have a piece of his mind, but he also attempted to fire me.
I was pretty sure he didn’t have the authority to do that, but before I could even make my case, he left the office, pink in the face.
Shortly after that, Matt and Adam gathered everyone in the break-room and said we were all free to go home after all that we’d been dealing with that morning, but that if we wanted to stick around the CEO would be providing a free lunch. I had work I needed to do, and since I was operating under the assumption that I hadn’t been fired, I went back to my office and kept trucking on.
I had a hard time focusing though. I wanted to know what had started the fight between David and his dad in the first place.
I thought about all the things he and I had talked about the night before, while we lay in bed next to each other, but I didn’t remember him mentioning anything about his dad or about standing up to him. He seemed like he was in a very good mood when he left my place, and that morning I caught a glimpse of him walking into the break-room to get coffee. He didn’t see me, but I saw him. He had a sort of spring in his step and a smile on his face. I wondered, at the time, if he was in such a good mood because of me, and that made what I was planning on doing that day even more difficult.
I was planning on ending things with him. Before hearing the very loud, very public fight with his dad by the elevators, I had been sitting on the phone with Michelle trying to come up with the best way to break the news to him. I had a pretty good speech worked out and everything, but then David lost his mind and left the building, and I wasn’t about to chase after him just to give him the bad news. Not when he was in a mood like that. I figured there would be time for us to talk later on that day.
But by the time David showed up at the office again after lunch, things were simply too chaotic for us to get a moment alone. An hour after David Senior left, one of the younger Becker brothers showed up with a crew of people carrying large metal containers full of delicious smelling food, and then David himself arrived not long afterward with a golden retriever mix trailing behind him. Everyone in the office was both delighted and confused by this change to the daily routine, and the food and new canine companion made David the most popular guy in the office. People were coming up to him all afternoon, thanking him for lunch and asking to pet his adorable new dog.
He had a big smile on his face, and in all honesty, it made me start to reconsider the whole break-up thing, if you could even call it a break-up. He looked happy, and I was so glad that he went out and adopted a dog, and it got me thinking—he was nothing like Bret. And it would be wrong of me to put him in the same category as the man who broke my heart. That’s when I started to think that maybe there was a path moving forward for the two of us after all.