“I’d appreciate it.” Marissa exhaled and then turned to me. “Yaseer, this is Tech and Jury. My son’s older brother.”
“Sup,” I nodded.
“Sup,” Tech reciprocated, and Jury waved with a bright smile. “As long as he treating you right we cool with it, Mama Marissa.”
“So far so good,” she noted.
“I think things are doing more than good. Don’t you?” I opened the rear driver’s door and helped her inside.
“You’re right. So far things are phenomenal,” she bubbled as I passed her the cake that was strapped to the top of her suitcase. After one final peck, I closed the door and placed the suitcase in the trunk.
“I’ll call you when I get settled,” Marissa promised after letting her window down.
“Whenever you call I’m going to answer,” I leaned in and kissed her one final time before she rolled the window up and they pulled off.
I finally claimed the passenger seat in the Suburban, and we pulled off.
“You saw that, Wayne? That nigga is smitten,” Gina teased.
“Oh for sure. Do me a favor and send some purple flowers to her house. I want every shade they have. Lilac, violet, magenta, all that shit.”
“Is that her favorite color?”
“Dang, I should’ve asked to confirm without assuming. She was wearing a purple jogger set and shoes today, plus her Stanley cup and luggage were purple, so I’d assume so. Even if it’s not her favorite color, she likes the shit.”
“You hear that overthinking, Wayne? She got bossman head gone,” Gina joked again.
“Just send the flowers and mind y’all business,” I requested.
“I ain’t said shit,” Wayne added in. “But you probably on some love at first sight shit. Got to be after this morning.”
“Shhhhhh,” I cut Wayne off. Didn’t want to scare Gina off.
“What happened this morning?” Gina pried.
“Nothing. Y’all doing a lot of talking. Relax,” I turned in my seat to look at them.
The car fell silent and remained that way until we arrived at the office. Wayne paid the driver and went to handle things with my local car while me and Gina went into the office.
“Would you like me to place a lunch order?”
“Nah. I’m good, but take a break and order yourself something. When Zay gets here I need him to see what records we have in our database for Quinten Bentley. I need anything he can find. Let me know what he finds. He is tied to the Bentley family out of Miami. I know we completely cut ties with all of the families down south, but I wanna know anything we may know from working with him in the past.”
“I’m on it,” Gina confirmed, heading for her office across the hall from mine.
I veered off into my office and opened my emails for the first time since I left for Miami on Thursday. The latest email was from Gina, and the subject made my heart sink.Potential Replacements. I printed their resumes, cover letters, and LinkedIn and spent the next hour sifting through them. I had two piles, one for the candidates I didn’t even want breathing the same air as me, and one for those I would have Gina set up an interview for. So far there were maybe two potential replacements.
I lifted another resume, scanned its contents, and saw nothing but job hopping. A new job every year for the last ten years was a hell fuck no. Once an assistant learned myways, I wanted them to stick around. A job hopper wouldn’t be dedicated to this shit.
The next resume actually looked promising. She was an executive assistant for the CEO of another financial firm in the city. Then I went to find her Instagram profile, like I did all of the other applicants, and quickly dropped her shit in the hell no pile after viewing her first post. It was from Tuesday night. A bottle of Casamigos sat on top of her head with the captionGuess who’s calling out tomorrow?
Clicking off her page, I grabbed the final resume.
It belonged to Ellis Bryan. Mid-twenties. He worked as a scheduling coordinator for a high-powered law firm for three years, then transitioned to serving as a personal assistant for a political consultant. His resume was perfect. Tight language, clear responsibilities, and a list of references with direct numbers and corporate emails. Not some random friend he slid in to fake their credibility. Ellis had a degree in communications and a minor in business with a notation indicating experience in nondisclosure protocol and crisis management.
Ellis didn’t have an Instagram, but I found his Facebook. Nothing wild, just a couple of photos with his frat brothers, a post his mom tagged him in on his birthday, and a photo of him at a networking mixer in a suit and tie. The caption was really what caught my attention.
“Move like somebody’s watching.”
