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“Everyone is hiding something,” he shot back.
He didn’t know how true that statement was.
“We need to close this deal today. We don’t have any time left before the end of the quarter.”
My heart was pounding so hard his words barely registered. “Can we slow down a second and talk about what they hid?”
“Are you trying to blow up months of work, or are you just stupid?”
“You told me to flag anything they said that was off. That’s what I did.”
He ignored me. “I knew you were too junior. You don’t get it. This acquisition is already baked into this quarter’s numbers. We need to close.”
I stated the obvious. “You were going to fire me today no matter what. You’ve already made up your mind.”
I was clearly a goner. No promotion, no raise, and now no job. The conversation I’d overheard made it pretty clear what this was. It hadn’t mattered how prepared I was, if I’d asked too few questions or too many—either way the outcome had been predetermined: a quick chewing out and a summary execution.
He didn’t deny it. “You’ve got ten minutes. Go back in there. Apologize, kiss ass, suck dick, or whatever you have to do, just fix the damage. We have to sign today.”
His tone was not joking. Suck Talbot’s dick? I almost puked at the thought. Wobbly legs carried me to the door.
“Ten minutes,” he repeated.
My blood boiled as I closed the door to his office behind me.
The cocksucker had ruined my family, and now I’d be forced to leave the company withmyreputation in tatters instead of his.
The unfairness of it was staggering. The rich made the rules, and the rules determined the outcome—an outcome that always favored them over the rest of us.
Chapter 10
Dennis
I waiteda minute after Jennifer left to cool down before calling Jay.
“How did the Talbot closing go?” he asked.
“You went too far this time, Jay. Saddling me with a rookie may have blown up the whole deal.”
“Slow down a second. What happened?”
I worked to control my breathing. “I took her into the meeting, and she blew the thing up with some questions about their accounting.”
“Then it’s on you,” he said.
“Fuck that. She screwed the pooch.”
“You shouldn’t have been in such a hurry to take someone new into a meeting like that, then. I warned you. Slow down. If you hadn’t moved so aggressively on the Hydrocom spin-off, you wouldn’t be in this predicament.”
“Let’s not go there again,” I said.
“Lloyd wouldn’t have made that mistake.”
Another thing I didn’t need today was a father-son comparison.
“Get me somebody better for tomorrow.”
“I don’t have anybody better.”
