Page 27 of A Conflict of Interest

She leaned in closer, clearing her throat, and she dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Veronica had it coming to her. That was a nice throw. I didn’t know you did taekwondo.”

“Oh—thank you.” I sat up a little taller. “I actually don’t know where it came from either.”

She sighed, giving me a sad little smile again. “If I had all the power, I’d say you’ve learned a lesson and we’ll pretend nothing happened. But… Berg and his CFO are upset, so wherever they meddle directly, my hands are a little tied. Only person who can put Berg in his place seems to be my mom, and I am not bringing her in.”

“Why was she even at this event? There’s no waymom privilegesare a thing.”

She hung her head. “She tried that line on you, too, huh? I’m hoping I can get her to lay off since her showing up meddling got Veronica hurt this time…”

I winced. “Sorry… is she okay?”

“It was just a bruise. She did worse to you.” She sat up taller. “We have… another project to put you on.”

My breath caught a little. That meant I wasn’t completely useless, right? “I’m listening.”

She strained a smile. “There’s a lot of data records that need checking to make sure there’s no corrupted or bad data on them… it’s a tedious task, but Berg wanted me to assure him you’d take care of it.”

I stared at her for a minute before I said, “Um… I’m positive we could just run a script to check them…”

“We’ve already run a script over them, but just the… human touch to make a hundred percent sure. Higherups wanted to invite you to work remotely while you’re on the project, so you don’t have to worry about commuting in just to handle data scrubbing.”

I folded my hands in my lap, looking down. “So, um… you’re telling me to leave the office and not do anything.”

She sighed hard, hanging her head. “It’s not that I don’t think you can do it… it’s just that the rest of the team is irritable right now and they’re not going to work very nicely with you at the moment.”

“The executive board wants to get rid of me but they don’t want to upset my grandfather by firing me.”

She winced. I think she tried not to, but I knew her expressions pretty well. I saw her weigh her options for a second before she softened. “I know it’s not much relief to hear, but Lucy and I both stuck up for you in the meeting. Talked Berg down from moving you to acontracted role.Lucy and I have your backs as much as we can…”

“I have a good sample clip,” I said meekly, suddenly feeling like I was letting Nic’s efforts go to waste—that she’d gone and put in the overtime over the weekend doing the animation parts that were typically somebody else’s job anyway, just to try to stick up for me, but I was too useless to save. Despite Anna, Lucy and Nic all trying to save me. And implicitly, my grandfather. “We were making good progress.”

“I know… and we’ll get the project finished up from what you have on it, and we’ll do what we can to make it as clear as possible that you were the major contributor on it. We’d like to have you properly back in the office by the new year.”

Everybody tripping over themselves to try to save me from my own incompetence was not the reassurance I needed right now. I sighed, standing up slowly. “Would it be easier if I quit?” I said, and she frowned at me.

“Kelcey, I understand why you’re taking this hard, and I would too, in your situation—”

“It’s not this. Not really. Just… realizing how much I’m here as a nepotism hire. Like… maybe it’s fairer if I step aside and let someone more competent fill the role.”

She gave me a lopsided smile. “Kelce, you are not the least helpful person in this building. Not by far. Even if you don’t know how to get the work done sometimes, you’re a pleasure to work with and you listen to people, which puts you above a good seventy-five percent of people here.”

I stopped, prickling, and I felt my eyes watering embarrassingly. “Yeah…?”

“I mean it. Lucy will back me up.”

“Just because I don’t complain as much as Miranda does?”

She put her hands up. “You said it, not me.”

“Just… just because I don’t watch porn at work like Richard does?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Jesus, I forgot about that.”

“I mean, technically, it’s just his last open tab when he opens it. I guess he just watches it at night and then doesn’t use the tablet again until morning.”

“I do not want to think about the porn consumption habits of a man in my office old enough to be my grandfather. Please never speak to me of this again.”

I hugged myself, looking down. “I feel like everyone’s always making allowances for me because I’m stupid. I don’t want you to feel like you have to… coddle me too.”

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