Page 27 of Bossy Trouble

“Your friend is an unforgivable bastard,” I announced to my brother in a tone that was not nearly quiet enough. I got a few stares from the other pedestrians on the road, but I didn’t care. I needed to let out all the animosity bubbling up inside, or I would explode. “He’s an asshole. May he never find two matching socks in his life. I hope he gets afflicted with a very painful but treatable illness. I hope he goes bald.”

“Can you stop raining moderately inconveniencing curses down on Donovan and tell me what happened?”

“Everything happened!” This time I was even louder, and the person walking in front of me glanced back and then suddenly began walking faster. “First of all, the bastard made me wake up at 3:30 a.m. to get to work. 4:30 a.m.? Do you know who else is awake at 4:30 a.m.? No one except hobos and possibly a few street cats. Then I had to go find this obscure coffee that only one coffee shop had, and the only open location was halfway across the city. So I had to take an Uber there and back, which cost nearly forty dollars. And then I showed up at his doorstep, and the asshole was still in his bathrobe. That’s right; he hadn’t even showered yet. And for the next few hours, we did exactly nothing but drive around and see some warehouses. So why did he have me wake up that early, you ask? Well, I have no fucking clue because everything we did could have been done after 7:30 a.m. like a decent human being. And you know what the worst part is?”

“What?”

“I couldn’t take Avery to school this morning.” The thought made me even angrier, but there was also a sadness that weighed heavily on my heart. I knew I would be hearing it from my daughter the moment I got home. “I had to get out before she even woke up, or I knew she would cause a ruckus. Oh, and I now owe Macy a huge favor because she had to come to my house at 3:30 a.m. to be with Avery so I could go. And guess what? I have to do this every single weekday for the next few weeks or so. I don’t even know how I’m going to manage it or convince Macy to do that every single day. I guess she can just sleep over at this point? And I can pay her for her time, even though I know she’d never accept it. She has to, though. I’ll make her. But how do I make her? Ugh, it’s all so just fucking annoying.”

“I’m sure it is. But Georgie—”

“Oh, and that’s not even the ultimate worst part.” Now that I’d started, I couldn’t stop without getting it all out. “The worst part is that when I get there, he introduces me to his secretary and then immediately tells her that, pretty soon, I’ll be telling her what to do. That she’ll take her orders from me like we’re in the damn army or something. And keep in mind, this woman already doesn’t like me. So now she has even more reason not to. We’re walking around, and she’s shooting me dirty looks and making these comments and trying as much as possible not to be helpful to any of the questions I’m asking her. And she gets my name wrong. And once, she introduced me to another employee as ‘Donovan’s new something,’ then volunteered me to fetch lunch for the entire office for the week.” The assignment didn’t annoy me as much as being introduced as “Donovan’s new something” did. It was the only time during the whole tour that I saw the woman smile, and I knew she enjoyed inflicting that barb.Like I don’t have a name.“Oh, I wanted to smack her so bad or at least tell her how unprofessional she was being. But I didn’t. Because it’s my first week, and I need to keep my head down and do good work no matter how determined everyone is to drive me crazy.”

“That all sounds awful, but Georgie, I have a very important question.”

“What is it?” I asked, finally having gotten the worst of it off my chest.

“Explain to me why you’re working for Donovan again.”

I let out a deep breath, carefully crafting my words before I spoke. “I need to. It’s the only way to get my company back.”

A few days ago, I called my brother, and during our conversation, I told him about what Donovan had done. As expected, he’d said the dreaded ‘I told you so,’ but he was also suitably incensed on my behalf.

“That’s too much,” he declared. “Even for him. I’ll talk to him.”

“No,” I said immediately. I knew that Garrett and Donovan weren’t all that close anymore, and even if they were, Donovan would not take what Garret said into account anyway. He’d be just as likely to end their friendship once and for all as he was to letting Garrett get in the way of a business decision. And despite what Donovan did, I knew that Garrett valued their friendship.

Donovan was the only one of his friends who still spoke to him after we found out about Garrett’s addiction. It’d been a few years ago, around the same time Garrett squandered our parents’ savings with poor business decisions. At the same time, he started drinking from the stress and then soon moved on to some other harder drugs. Luckily, he knew pretty early that he had a problem, but it was the day he freaked out at a family wedding and nearly attacked the groom when he couldn’t find a lighter that we truly knew something was going on. Garrett didn’t bother to hide it at that point. Still high off his mind, he confessed everything to the entire congregation and then proceeded to pass out on the floor.

After that, Garrett checked himself into rehab and has been there since then. He now claimed he was sober, but he still refused to leave. A part of me thought that he was likely scared to face the outside world after that incident. Someone took a video of it, and it went semi-viral, especially in our city. He lost his job and a bunch of his friends and became the laughingstock for a while. It was rough for a few years, but I was happy he was getting back on his feet now.

And from what Garrett told me, the only one who stuck around through it all was Donovan. And Garrett owed him a lot in that regard.

The truth was that, as a friend, Donovan wasn’t all that bad of a guy. He’d helped my brother (and me, admittedly) out on too many occasions, and he’d never asked for anything in return for that.

He only turned into a complete asshole when intimate relationships or businesses were involved.

So it was likely my fault for trying to venture where I shouldn’t have.

But I learned my lesson.

“No,” I said at the time. “Don’t say anything. We already agreed, and he said that he would give me the company back if I worked for him.”

“And how exactly does that work?”

I explained to Garrett everything Donovan and I discussed, as well as the contract I hired a lawyer to draft. Of course, I didn’t mention the other deal I made with Alexander Lupin. I didn’t want to put Garrett in a difficult position, and I wasn’t sure what the deal with Lupin was either. I mean, I didn’t know much about the man except that he was very rich and hated Donovan Dresden.

Well, we have that in common, at least.

“And you trust him?” Garrett sounded incredulous after I finished explaining the deal to him. “After Donovan stole your company, you think he’ll just give it back like that?”

“No,” I said. “That’s why I hired one of the best lawyers in the city to draft an iron-clad contract that had absolutely no loopholes.”

“Where on earth did you get the money for that?”

From Alexander Lupin. He’d been the one who suggested the man to me, and when I’d tried to pay, the lawyer shook my checkbook away.

“Mr. Lupin has already taken care of it,” he’d told me.

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