“So, you spent the night with Mr. Frost?” The way he says it makes it sound less than innocent.
“Well, I…”
“I told you when you hired her, it would lead to nothing but trouble. How is the company going recover from this? Fire her before someone finds out we hired a prostitute to be one of our elves.”
“Prostitute?! I’m not a prostitute! I’ve never even…” I stop myself before I can embarrass myself any further.
“Lumi, I’m sorry. You can see the position this puts us in. I can’t have my elves being call girls, no matter how rich the client is.”
“But, Mr. Dent, nothing happened. I wasn’t even…” He starts with a kind of fake compassion that I imagine every boss having to fire someone they don’t like, even as he looks down his nose at me.
“Enough, young lady!” He barks at me this time. No more faking sympathy. “I hired you despite you having no experience. I cannot condone this behavior. Return your elf suits at once. We’ll bill you for the ruined one.”
“Bill me?” I thought that was already taken out of what Janie paid them. “But…I don’t…I don’t have any money to pay for it.”
“Then I suggest you do what you do best, Lumi,” Doris’s voice is laced with contempt and a sick kind of glee, “get busy on your back.”
My mouth falls open, and I sit forward. The room is spinning, and I’m not convinced it’s because of the bump on my head. I may be sick right here in front of them.
“Please, Mr. Dent, you don’t understand…”
“You seem not to understand, Lumi. You’ve been terminated. Please leave the building and leave the elf outfit you have on.”
“What? I don’t…I don’t have anything else to wear.”
“You should have thought about that before you whored yourself out last night.” Doris gives me a cruel smile as she thinks of me having to walk out of the building in nothing but Luka’s sweater.
I look from one to the other but find no compassion, no understanding. And then the door bangs open. Both Doris and Mr. Dent jump as the massive man before us strides in.
“Mr. Frost? I…” Mr. Dent stands up and offers a hand, but Luka doesn’t shake it. “I can assure you this is not how we run the…,”
“Enough,” He practically bellows.
“You can’t save your…,” my face flushes as I wait for Doris to say the word whore again, and this time in front of Luka, “friend by throwing your weight around this time, sir.”
“You’re fired.”
Shock morphs across Doris’s face.
“You can’t fire me!”
“I can, and I have. You…you’re also fired,” he points at Mr. Dent, “because I now own your company.”
Chapter Nineteen
Luka
Ifight to hold onto my temper. I overheard what they were saying to my little Christmas angel before I came through the door. And it made me see red.
“How? You…you can’t own this company! My grandfather owns this company!”
“And he just sold it to me after I very generously offered to let him stay on as a shareholder.”
The overstuffed man in a bad suit sits back down heavily before reaching for the phone.
“Go ahead. Call him. He wanted to hear from you when he found out how you’ve been running the company and misusing the funds that have been generated. Apparently, hiring young women and accusing them of indiscretions so you can withhold payment that is due them isn’t something new. And my little elf isn’t the first person you’ve tried it on.”
Both of them look as pale as death, and I take delightful satisfaction in the fact that they realize their gig is up.
