Page 7 of Dirty Boss

In the mouth of the living room, the nanny who had been a lifeline these past couple of years smiled. “Hi, Vaughn. Charlotte had two servings of spaghetti tonight, and a yogurt with orange slices for dessert.”

“I was hungry,” Charlotte confirmed with an exaggerated nod.

Billie smiled, then looked at me. “I have to run. I have a dinner to get to tonight.”

“Still dating Finance Guy?”

Billie laughed and shook her head. “That didn’t work out. I met a guy at my climbing gym, though, and he seems nice. Down-to-earth.”

“Enjoy. Thanks for your help today,” I said, and nodded toward the door with a smile.

The nanny disappeared, and I crouched down into the fort that now dominated the living room. Charlotte gave me a tour of the space, including the area she’d reserved for her dolls. I sat with my knees scrunched up at my chest, letting the tension of the day drain away.

When I told her she was allowed to sleep in the fort tonight, my daughter gave me the kind of smile that felt like a punch to the chest. One of those moments that made me sure I’d do anything for her.

A little while later, when Charlotte was asleep with one arm curled around her pillow and her favorite blanket wrapped around her legs, I leaned against the kitchen counter and ate leftover spaghetti noodles, mulling over my options.

I had to attract some serious money if I wanted to keep the business growing and be able to bid on the kind of jobs that meant something in this city.

But every time I met with an investor, I was told some variation of “no, thank you.” It’s like they looked at me and didn’t believe I belonged in the same room as them, even though my wealth often elapsed theirs. The company didn’t match the risk profile they were looking for. The construction industry was too volatile. I wasn’t offering anything different in a crowded market.

Maybe I was too dumb, or too crass, or too blue collar. I couldn’t hear the language I was supposed to speak, even when it sounded like we understood each other. I was missing something, and I had no idea what it was.

Actually, I knew exactly what it was. The moneyed class were a bunch of shallow, vain liars who licked each other’s boots for fun. They could tell I had a speck of integrity, and they weren’t interested in having anything to do with me. I’d learned that young, when my coward of a father had begged, borrowed, and stolen everything he could to try to be one of them. He’d ruined our family chasing get-rich-quick schemes, and my mother had indulged and enabled him.

It had been a childhood of instability. On multiple occasions, Mother had woken me in the middle of the night and told me to pack my bags, and then we’d be sneaking out of a home we could no longer afford. Moving every time one of my father’s ventures went south. Dodging loan sharks—and being caught by them.

I’d made sure I would never,ever, go back to that life. Now I just needed to take one last step to ensure it for my daughter, for her children, for good.

So what was I missing? Why didn’t any of these bigger fish want to take a bite?

Frustration couldn’t even begin to describe what I felt. Even the waitress at lunch treated me like some kind of fraud. Sassing me as she flicked that blond ponytail over her shoulder. Lookingat me like I wasn’t worth the gum stuck to the bottom of her shoe.

What the hell did she know?

Some pretty little waitress who knew just how to keep a dirty old man on the hook, like she had with Roger at lunch today, thought she was better than me? She didn’t know anything about me or my life.

My bowl clattered against another as I put it in the dishwasher, frustration making me clumsy. From the living room, I heard Charlotte stir.

I gripped the edge of the counter and breathed out my anger. My daughter was the reason I’d done all this. I wanted to give her more than what I had. Every opportunity, every chance, every leg up. She would never wonder if she’d have to be the new kid at school for the umpteenth time. She’d never have to wear clothes three sizes too small and eat peanut butter sandwiches three times a day for a week straight until some money came in.

All I could do was keep trying. I stalked to my home office across from the living room where Charlotte slept, opened my laptop, and went back to work.

In the morning,after eating breakfast with Charlotte and greeting Billie, I stopped at one of our construction sites in Midtown. My company had won the bid to build a twenty-seven-story building, and we’d successfully got it out of the ground before winter. It was meant to be a stepping stone to bigger jobs. It was supposed to be the kind of project that put my company on a powerful investor’s radar.

There was an important concrete pour happening to start forming some of the structural columns, and I stayed long enough to make sure that things were going smoothly.

They were not.

Concrete trucks had to be rejected for quality defects, one of the subcontractors had brought on unsafe equipment, and one of our engineers had caught a mistake on the drawings we were supposed to be casting in concrete that very morning. The weather was colder than forecast, and it was teetering on the edge of too cold for the concrete to cure properly.

In other words, the morning was an unmitigated disaster. My control of the project was slipping, which made my skin itch.

By the time I made it to the office, it was just before noon and I felt like I’d been awake for days. If we couldn’t pull off the Midtown job, all hope of finding an investor would be lost.

The elevator opened onto the forty-second floor that I’d leased and renovated in the first big company expansion. The company logo welcomed me on the wall across from the elevators, and then glass doors slid open to allow me entrance to the executives’ wing. It smelled like recycled air and old coffee. I waved at my CFO, Jim Davis, through the glass wall of his office, and then ducked into my own. I kicked off my work boots and noticed my second pair in the corner. I’d have to remember to tell my assistant to bring one of them back down to the car.

My chair squeaked when I dropped into it, and I braced myself before booting up my computer, knowing from the buzzing of my phone that I’d have an avalanche of emails to attend to.