“Who gave you permission to be in my office? It certainly wasn’t me.”
“No one did,” Damien admitted. “But no one’s ever given you permission to enter mine, have they?”
“You can’t prove I did.”
“And you’ll never convince me that you didn’t.” Damien uncrossed his arms and smoothed the front of his suit jacket. “Now that you’ve caught me, I guess you’ll be running off to tattle, just like you always do. Well, except for that one time you tried to turn Matthew against me and made me tattle on myself.Thatwas some evil genius shit right there. I’m honestly surprised you haven’t tried anything else over the last few months. Performance anxiety?”
“No.” Bankes shrugged. He looked at Damien from down the length of his nose. “I haven’t needed to do anything. You’ve been doing a fine job of sinking your own career. You think Whitcroft hasn’t noticed that you’ve been leaving the office at six every day? That you routinely arrive late in the morning? That you’ve been taking half days? That’s not the behavior of a man who’s serious about this profession. Everyone sees it. Do you really think you’ll be considered for partnership when you can’t even be bothered to show up on time?” The corner of Bankes’ lips lifted in smug satisfaction. “Everyone’s starting to see what I’ve seen all along—that you don’t have what it takes to make it. Life isn’t a joke you can laugh your way through, Bigg. It’s hard fucking work. You’ve always half-assed it, but no one’s ever believed me. I’m so glad karma is coming to bite you in the ass.”
“Well, fuck you very much.” The adrenaline pumping through Damien’s veins demanded he punch Bankes in his stupidly chiseled face, but Damien’s dedication to seeing his plan through superseded his primal instincts. He fixed his cuff instead. It was a poor replacement for the sweet crunch of Bankes’ cartilage under his knuckles, but ultimately it’d be worth it. “What makes you think you’d be a better partner? No sooner would you get partnership than you’d start stabbing them all in the back just like you’ve done with me.”
Damien stepped away from the doorframe, and like he’d anticipated, Bankes stepped in. The door closed behind him. “You think I care what you think?”
Damien shrugged. “I mean, you are the embodiment of corporate evil, so I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that you don’t give a shit, but go ahead—tell me all about how you want to fuck over Whitcroft and the other partners. Oh, and me too, right? I imagine once you get brought into the fold that your first order of business will be terminating me.”
“Get out, Damien.” Bankes went to sit behind his desk and folded his arms on its surface, fixing Damien with a bored look. “I won’t have to terminate you if you quit. It’s that easy. Save your reputation while you still can and maybe you can kiss some hedge fund manager’s ass until he hires you. This is your last chance. Once Whitcroft brings me on and I start taking down the old guard from the inside, things are going to change around here. I’m tired of the partners casting a blind eye on people like you—people who don’t deserve to be where they are. I’m the only one willing to do what it takes to make a change, and I’ll take down anyone who tries to stop me.”
“You know, you might be on to something.” Damien tapped his finger on his lip, furrowing his brow in a theatrical display of thought. His phone buzzed with a three-minute warning. Damien internally acknowledged it, but didn’t otherwise act. He still had shit he needed to say. “I’ve spent more than a decade clawing my way up the corporate ladder, building a name for myself and cementing my position in the industry. You’d think after all this time, I’d notice what an absolutely shitty career path this is.”
Bankes, who’d spent their conversation exuding superiority and elitism, lost his composure. Confusion cracked his confidence. To him, Damien had to look crazy. No one so close to partnership would concede.
“The hours are shitty,” Damien continued. “The pressure to succeed is shitty, and the people are shitty. Not all of them, but enough. You alone are enough of a shitlord that you negate the few good people I’ve met over the years.”
Bankes gawked.
“The only thing not shitty about this job is the pay, which is why we’re all here, isn’t it?” Damien’s phone continued to buzz, but Damien wasn’t done. “None of us pursued our MBAs because we had dreams of becoming investment bankers—we were all looking to get rich. That’s it. It comes down to money.”
He set his hand on the doorknob and turned it, but didn’t leave. Not yet.
“So I can understand why you’re such a total dickwad, Bankes. Some people feel threatened by others’ successes. I get it. You don’t like me because I threaten your dream of hitting it big. There’s a joke in there somewhere, I’m sure, but my time’s running a little short, so I’m going to leave it as-is.”
Bankes said nothing, which was a welcome change.
Knowing he had precious few seconds left to make his point, Damien endeavored to wrap up the conversation. “Anyway, all that to say: you were right to be afraid of me.” Damien opened the door and stepped into the hall. He kept his eyes on Bankes. “In the words of a great man whose first vacation in years was stolen from him by a total jackass, ‘don’t start none, won’t be none.’ Well, guess what, Bankes? You started this. I could have let this slide if you’d only targeted my career, but then you went after Matthew. No one, fuckingno onetargets my boy and walks away from it.”
Bankes laughed. “What, you’re going to fight me, Bigg? You’re already backing away scared. Get the fuck out of here. You aren’t worth my time.”
“No, I’m not going to fight you. Bruises fade and bones heal. But do you know what lasts forever, bitch?” Damien took his phone from his pocket, smirking so wide, his cheeks ached. A barrage of texts from Nadja and private messages from his brother waited there. Damien sent them both an auto-reply:ready.
As the message sent, he cocked his head and locked eyes with Bankes. “Glitter.”
As soon as Damien spoke the word, all of Bankes’ desk drawers popped open at once. Micro-glitter exploded from inside of them like mushroom clouds. Bankes gasped and wheeled his chair back, but it was a mistake. Not only did he pass through the clouds of multicolored glitter spewing from his desk, but he aligned himself perfectly for the next onslaught. Motors clicked on all throughout the room. Sheets of glitter rained down from atop every shelf and elevated surface, propelled by high-speed fans that spread their destruction across every square inch of office space. The glitter war had turned Damien from man into unstoppable killing machine, and he used his knowledge of glitter warfare to his advantage. The ultra-fine glitter loaded into the machines hung in the air like smoke and coated every surface. It would be next to impossible to clean.
But that wasn’t where the fun stopped.
Not even close.
There was only so much Damien could see from the door, so he tabbed into the live video feed that his brother had helped him set up as part of Operation: FUCK YOU. The four carefully concealed cameras that Damien had installed in Bankes’ office as part of the first initiative recorded the carnage from every angle.
Those same cameras had also picked up Bankes’ plans to oust the current partners once he rose into power. Plans which were now sitting in Whitcroft’s inbox in high quality definition.
Bankes had fucked with the wrong family.
As Damien watched, Bankes launched from his chair and hit the floor, where he hastened to scramble under his desk to take shelter. There, he had to assume, he’d be safe from annihilation.
Oh, that poor, sweet summer child.
Life was about to teach him a hard lesson—namely that nowhere was safe when a Bigg was after blood.
