twenty
LOCKE
“The products teamhas been steadily increasing output and profits for the last six months, sir.”
“Are they at the quota I asked them to be?”
The only woman in the board room keeps her hands under the large wood table. I imagine she’s wringing them anxiously. Her eyes are wide in fear, and I know she’s staring at Dad, but sitting next to him makes it feel like she’s staring at me.
I hate it. No singular person should be able to strike this much fear in anyone, and definitely not during a routine monthly meeting. On a Monday morning.
I count the seconds it takes her to answer. When I count past five, my heart drops. She took too long.
“Well?”
My father’s loud voice is intimating, abusive, and familiar. The other department directors drop their heads and press their mouths shut.
“N-No, sir.” The stutter makes him angrier. There’s unreasonable waves of heat flowing off his body, and if I wasn’tso adamantly told to keep my head raised while next to him, I’d look away too. “But they’re nearly there, and most of the top performing team members have been working six or seven-day weeks.”
“Did I ask how much they were working? I don’t care how much they’re working. I care about my numbers.”
The awkward and tense air around the room is suffocating. I readjust my glasses and take the risk of rolling my shoulders. Dad is too caught in his torment to notice.
“We’re close to your numbers.”
“If you open your mouth again, without saying what I want to hear, your final paycheck is going to hit your bank account by the end of the day. Do you understand?”
She nods. There’s a painful stretch of silence before my father reiterates what he was saying before the product department head stood up for her colleagues. He tells everyone they need to work harder, stop making excuses, and to give him the numbers he wants before the next meeting.
That’s it. He never apologizes or acknowledges his tactics are abusive and wrong. Just shoos everyone off until it’s me, him, and his business partner Vaughn heading to that stifling sky-rise office.
The in-and-outs of the stock trading Rosie loves are hyper focused on strategizing numbers, as opposed to establishing a virtual monopoly. Or, at least, that’s what my father’s world of e-commerce business consists of.
But I know there’s an overlap in the way men in power think they can walk all over everyone. It’s never slipped past me that Dad’s patience is shorter with the women in the company. His tone is harsher and more unforgiving to them. The product department head is just one example of his cruelty.
Her shaky voice and scared eyes haunt me when we’re back in Dad’s office and he’s pouring three glasses of bourbon.
It’s a Monday morning, he just ripped a new one into his employees who work tirelessly to give him the life he doesn’t deserve, and he’s drinking whiskey.
“Grab a glass and take a seat, Locke.”
And pathetically, I listen.
Vaughn casually pushes the plaque at the front of my father’s desk to the side, sitting on the edge and smirking behind his glass. Only he has enough authority to pull something like this with my father. Aside from Grant, I think he’s the only person I know that’s not afraid of him, either.
They’re on leveled footing. They own the same percentage of the company and are equally hated by staff. I’m sure he’s the person Dad despises most in the world.
“How’d you like the meeting, boy?” Vaughn’s smile is eerie when he stares down at me.
“It was eye-opening.”
“Good answer.” He nods, gray hair covering his eyes before he whips his head to my father. “That why you wanted him to sit in, Keller?”
I’ve always watched my father closely. Walking on eggshells around him, waiting for the slightest indication I’ve crossed a line and have to prepare for the consequences. I notice now the tiny twitch of his fingers and the extra second he takes before slowly turning away from the window, smiling.
Then, he taps his foot twice
“Yes, of course. Wanted him to get an idea of what a meeting would be like if he chooses to join the software department after university.”
