Page 37 of Driven By Desire
“You’re fired.”
The smarmy, soon to be ex-General Manager, Operations stared at him in shock. “You can’t do that.”
Leaning back in his chair, Krish smiled. “Watch me.”
Across the table, the man quaked a little at the sight of that feral smile. “Sir, you don’t understand-“
“No?” The painfully civil tone whipped out of him even as he idly tapped a pen against the table. “Explain it to me then.”
“Sir.” Swallowing nervously, the other man’s eyes followed the almost gentle tap-tap of the pen. “You can’t believe the workers.”
“Why not?”
“They’re lying.” When his boss only continued to look at him with that scarily polite expression, he took it to be an invitation to continue. “These worker class of people are like this only. Good for nothing, lying scum.”
The pen stopped tapping.
“You have to trust me. They’ve been filling your head with rubbish.” When he didn’t get an immediate response, he straightened in his chair and adopted a paternal tone. “I’ve been managing this factory from your father’s time,beta. I know what I’m talking about.” Leaning forward confidentially, he continued, “If your father had been here, he would have known at once that I’m telling the truth.”
The soft chiming of a phone had Krish glancing down at the table. He let the jackass in front of him continue to ramble in the background as he picked it up and opened up Max’s message. A picture of a man clobbering a very surprised looking snake with the message‘Get that snake in the grass.’Fighting a grin, he looked across at the aforementioned snake who was still pontificating at him.
“You have ten minutes to clear out your desk.” The brusque interruption stopped the man mid-sentence. “Security will escort you off the premises.” Gesturing to the two men standing on the other side of the glass door to come in, he stood. Shoving his hands in his trousers, he watched in grim silence as they ushered the blustering, struggling man out the door.
Signaling to Mr. Mishra to wait in the other room till he finished his phone call, he dialed Max.
“OOOOH. I rate a phone call in the middle of a workday. Can you smell the rarefied air up here?”
Lips twitching, he asked, “Up where?”
“At the top of your priorities.” A loud sniff. “I think I might be lightheaded from the lack of oxygen.”
Chuckling, he basked in the warmth of her rich laughter pouring through the slightly fuzzy connection.
“Got the snake?”
Mentally holding on to the smile he could still hear in her voice, he looked out the office window to the dry, dusty yard full of men and buildings set against acres and acres of land. Men whose livelihoods he was responsible for, factories built from his father’s sweat and blood and land that his father had bought as a gift for his mother the day Krish was born.
The weight of it all settled more heavily on his shoulders making him yank at his tie even as he said lightly, “Clobbered him.”
“Awesome.” An abrupt pause followed by, “Not physically I hope.”
Grinning, he resettled his mangled tie. “Didn’t need to.” Knowing he couldn’t ignore Mr. Mishra with a clear conscience for much longer, Krish said, “Max?”
“Ya?”
“Thank you.”
He heard a distant metallic thunk in the background before he heard a surprised, “For?”
“For helping me see more clearly. Giving me a fresh perspective.”
“All I did was give you an idea. The rest was all you.”
“Us.” He corrected, his eyes on the distant horizon that framed the bustling industrial scene. The weight on his shoulders shifted and settled more comfortably. “It was us.”
“Yay us.” The hope in her voice couldn’t be ignored.
The husky murmur had him fisting his free hand in his pocket. Speaking past the sudden dryness in his throat, he agreed. “Yay us.”
