But when she got off the elevator in the building lobby and saw Cory stuffing papers into his bookbag over by the coffee shop, she smiled. “Hey Core!” she yelled out, but he didn’t respond. When she said it again, and he still wouldn’t respond, she knew he heard her. Which meant something was wrong.
She went over to him. “Didn’t you hear me calling you?”
But when he looked up, she could see the pain in his eyes. Her heart dropped. “Cory, what’s wrong?”
“He fired me.”
Joy frowned. “Who fired you?”
“Mike. He kicked me out of the junior executive training program.”
“But why?”
“He claimed I was sexually harassing another student. But that’s a total lie, Joy. Being an executive here at Skeffington is my dream job. My whole focus was to graduate at the top of my class, which I was going to do, so that I could get a good placement. I would have never sacrificed my dream over some white boy I don’t even talk to and he knows it. That white boy knows it, too, but he wouldn’t say a word. Mike knows it’s all bogus.”
“Then why would Mike fire you if he knows it’s bogus?”
“Because he don’t want a black man to be the top of nothing! He gets rid of me then his little pet Ashley will be at the top of the class. That’s all this is about.”
“I’ll be damn,” said Joy. “What did Mr. Skeffington say? Did you go to him? He told you to go straight to him if you have any problems like this.”
“That’s what I did. I went straight to him.”
“And?”
“And he believed Mike. He talked about how I’m on leave and woo-woo-woo, but then he said what Mike says goes.”
Joy was stunned. “Get your things and come with me,” she said as she began heading right back toward those elevators.
Cory grabbed his backpack and hurried behind her. “Where are we going?”
“Where you think? To Mr. Skeffington.”
“But he already told me what Mike says goes.”
“And I say like hell it does. He’s railroading you. But don’t worry,” she said as she began pressing those elevator buttons, “nobody’s firing you today. And you just have three weeks to go before you graduate? And you’re graduating at the top of that class? Oh hell no. No way!”
Cory smiled through his pain. “Meeting you that day in this lobby was the best thing that ever happened to me,” he said.
But as they got on the elevator, Joy was still nervous. William could be a hard, hard man when his mind was made up. And from what Cory was saying, it was definitely made up. But right was still right and wrong was still wrong. Mike was as wrong as he could be. Surely William would see that.
Or would he?
“Where were you headed?” Cory asked her.
“To pick up Tess from the bus station and take her and her old man to my apartment. She just called and told methey were in town. But I’ll do that after this,” she said as the elevator doors opened on the top floor, and they hurried to the suite of offices of the Chairman and Founder William Dabner Skeffington the Fifth.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
“I don’t golf like I used to believe it or not,” Mike was saying as he stood beside William’s desk small-talking with the boss. “There was a time I’d be on the links from sunup to sundown every Saturday. It was my passion.”
William’s intercom buzzed. “I’m sure your wife was pleased-as-punched with that passion of yours,” William said and Mike laughed.
William pressed one of the buttons on his desk phone. “Yes?”
“Miss Johnson is here to see you, sir.”
William had a pile of work to attend to. That Cory situation was already a distraction he didn’t need. “Tell her not now. I’m in a meeting.”
