My head still hurt terribly. The outside world felt like it was going to swallow me whole and shit me out as soon as I set foot outside of Luke’s house. Here, nobody could find me. Nobody could judge me.
Nobody could remind me that I’d failed.
Luke got to his feet. “What would she tell you if she were here?”
I rubbed the back of my neck. Laila certainly would have delivered Luke’s same message, but she’d have done it in a kinder, more gentle way. “She’d tell me the same thing you did. She’d show me that I wasn’t as free as I thought I was. That… shit.”
“That what?”
“I didn’t know, Luke. I swear, I didn’t know.”
I meant it.
I hadn’t known that I was living so desperately in my father’s shadow. I was trying to please all the wrong people and “failing” because we didn’t have the same values or intentions. I was butting heads with people who didn’t want the best for me or my vision of the company. They just wanted things to stay the same.
Maybe for a while, I had too.
Change could be scary.
After my father died, I’d felt a weight lifted off my shoulders, but it hadn’t been the full weight of what having him as a father had cost me. Now, sitting in Luke’s living room, I could feel the remaining heaviness of that burden alleviating.
I drew a deep breath into my lungs and exhaled.
Luke nodded matter-of-factly, the same way he did when he was impressed with a heavy set at the gym. “I know you didn’t know, but now you do. Now you can’t be anything else but aware. You just have to decide what you’re going to do about it.”
I stood and closed a hand over Luke’s shoulder. He closed a hand over mine.
“Thank you.” I needed friends like Luke in my corner. He had always been there, honest and true, and he’d never once held out his hand expecting something in return. People like that were hard to come by.
With the social circles I grew up in, I wasn’t used to seeing this kind of friendship. I didn’t think my old man had a single real friend in his life. Everyone who came to his funeral was family there by obligation, or people from the office, who only knew one side of him. People who might have been his friend at some point had wised up somewhere along the way and realized Mr. Thornton wasn’t worth their time.
And he wasn’t worth mine, either.
I’d fought for him when he was alive. I tried to save him from himself. I tried to show him what he had right in front of him in his wife and son, but he chose to look the other way.
I was done trying.
“I have to go,” I said.
“Where?”
“Headquarters.”
“The media frenzy might be insane. Are you sure that’s where you want to start?”
I laughed and moved to his front door. “After all that shit you just threw at me, now you think I should show some restraint? Fuck that. I have a thorn in my side I need to pluck out once and for all.” I stepped outside into the cold February air and breathed in. Luke hovered in the doorway while I descended his front steps to my car parked in the driveway. I assumed he’d driven us here last night. Before I got in, I turned to my friend. “Luke? Seriously. Thanks.”
“Get the fuck out of here.”
Luke had been right. Headquarters was wild with reporters and paparazzi, and each and every one wanted a piece of me, regardless of how small. I kept my head down as I pushed through them, not giving a damn at all when I shouldered one guy out of my way, knocking him over and sending his camera crashing to the ground. He shouted obscenities at me and I flashed him a smile.
“Stay out of my way. Take your pictures. Write your garbage articles. I don’t give a damn. But don’t expect me to tolerate this shit anymore.”
The rest of the crowd parted and let me through.
The ride up the elevator was tense. A few women who worked in my office stood shoulder to shoulder against the back wall, pretending to be busy looking at their phones, when I knew they were just texting each other talking about being stuck in the elevator with the likes of me. With everything circulating online, I was sure this would be a high point of their week.
It was about to be a low point for someone else’s.
When the elevator spat me out, Anita stood up from her chair. “Storm? Are you okay? Do you need anything? I’ve had to take all the phones off the hook. They won’t stop calling.”
“I’m fine, Anita. Thank you though. I’m not staying long and I’ll be out of your hair. All the crazies will probably follow me and hopefully leave you alone.”
She watched me pass. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” I called over my shoulder. “Things are going to get better. Trust me.”
Her look of confusion disappeared when I turned the corner and passed the board room. It was empty. I moved farther down the hall and stopped just before my office to knock on the door of the one beside it.
A few seconds later, Garrett yanked the door open with a look of sheer fury on his face. The hair around his temples seemed to have gone from gray to white overnight. “What the fuck are you doing here, Storm?” He stuck his head out of his office and looked both ways down the hall. “After the shit storm you caused, you should be lying low. I’ll call you when it’s all handled and we’ll devise a recovery plan with the board to undo your mess.”
“I won’t stay long.”
Garrett stared at me before realizing I had no intention of leaving. With a heavy sigh, he stepped back and invited me into his office. “Get in here before someone sees you.”
“I’m not hiding, Garrett. As I’ve had to remind you several times this month, this is my company, not yours. You may think you’re doing right by Thornton Enterprises by upholding my father’s archaic business structures, but my father’s time here came to a close a long time ago. Now it’s time for change. For better practices. For better people.”
Garrett cocked his head to the side. “What are you going on about? Better practices?”
I sighed, wishing he’d put two and two together himself. “You’re fired, Garrett.”
The shared office space behind me went silent and still. The sounds of shuffling paper, fingers typing across keyboards, and photocopiers making prints snuffed out all at once.
Garrett just stared at me, unblinking. “I beg your pardon.”
“Take the rest of the day to get your affairs in order. I’ll see to all the details of your severance package and make sure everything is perfectly legal and fair. You’ll have a healthy sum to retire on and leave to your kids, should you see fit. Or perhaps you could buy your wife something nice or send her on a trip without your cheating ass. She deserves it.”
Garrett took a menacing step forward. “Why you little—”
I held up a finger. “Careful, Garrett. Do you want that severance or not?”
He rolled his shoulders, and I was certain that the gears were turning his head, reviewing every legal loophole he knew to find a way out of this. When he said nothing, we both knew the jig was up, and I’d finally put a nail in his coffin.
The rest of the weight lifted from my shoulders, and I cracked a devilish, taunting grin. “Do you want me to help you pack up your office, or can you handle it on your own, champ?”