Page 18 of Hard to Forgive

I couldn’t. It seemed I’d have to deal with the less comfortable chair.

My uncle finished up within a few minutes and rose from his seat. My eyes followed his progress around the office. He opened a closet and I grinned as he revealed a hidden mini-fridge with a microwave and coffee-maker on top. “Shhh,” he whispered, like it was his dirty little secret.

I highly doubted that the other executives didn’t know about his secret food stash.

“What’s lunch?” I asked.

“Rose made pork roast last night, and she made me promise that I’d share with you.” My mouth watered. That sounded somuch more appetizing than the peanut butter sandwich I had languishing in my computer bag downstairs. “There are roasted potatoes and baby carrots with it too. I think she may have even packed a salad.”

“Are we telling her if we skip the salad?” I questioned.

He shook his head, grinning conspiratorially as he put the food in the microwave. “We willnevertell Rose if we skip the salad.”

I laughed at my uncle. So few people ever saw that side of him. He had to remain buttoned up and professional in the office, and it never seemed like he had many friends outside of work. I’d heard the way several of my colleagues had talked about him. They’d said he was friendly, but cold, in their interviews. Isabel had even suggested that the executive team were robots in disguise.

I wondered what Uncle Jacob would say about that. He’d probably find it amusing. Not that I would ever tell him. If it hurt his feelings, I’d feel like shit.

“How are you liking it here?” he asked when he sat down.

He placed a steaming container of Aunt Rose’s cooking in front of me and kept the other for himself. I waited as he withdrew two wrapped sets of plastic cutlery from his top drawer and handed one to me.

I busied myself with opening it as I thought about his question. Even if he was my uncle, when he asked questions like that, he was the CEO of the company I worked for. He was my boss, and anything I said would be me reporting something to the boss. He cleared his throat. “It’s not a test, Silas.”

“I’m sorry, Uncle Jacob,” I began. “I’m enjoying it. My team’s mostly great, and Yvette has a very interesting way of doing things.”

“The market research?”

He knew about that? I nodded. “Yeah. I was a bit surprised that you hadn’t already hired a team for that.” I thought for a moment before adding, “or that the client hadn’t included one.”

“They did and I did, but Yvette pointed out that a group of middle aged men would get different answers than members of the target demographic,” he explained. “The fact that she said it so bluntly was the reason I decided to entrust the project to her. Everyone else that had been up for it had seemed eager to fall in line with exactly what we laid out. Yvette brought something different to the table, and then she argued her case well to both the Executive Board and the client themselves.”

That was both impressive and surprising. Yvette must have had brass balls. Jacob Brighton was my uncle, and I didn’t even feel comfortable saying something like that to a man who had been on the cover of Modern Tech no less than four times. But then, she hadn’t been wrong. Our research had shown that the average user would be younger than thirty-five. What did my fifty-four-year-old uncle know about what someone from a completely different generation might have been looking for?

“Is that why everyone on the team is so young?”

“Another Yvette suggestion,” he confessed. “While I couldn’t rule out anyone who was well-qualified for the project from being placed there, she had a very good point with having it created by users within the target demographic. Outside of Yvette, the oldest member of your team is only thirty-two, and his portfolio was impressive.”

I raised a questioning eyebrow, but Uncle Jacob shook his head. I should have known better to think that he might have told me which of my colleagues had the impressive portfolio. At least I could rule Jonas out.

Though…

I cleared my throat. “What about Jonas Koetter?”

My uncle raised a knowing eyebrow. “He’s been with us for a few years, and he’s made favorable impressions on each of his team leads. His last team lead stated that his documentation is immaculate, and for a project like this, that seemed mission critical.” That wasn’t helpful. “Why do you ask?”

“Oh, we went to high school together.” My words came out too fast.

He took a bite of his food, but didn’t call me on my obvious bullshit answer. “Just remember, Silas, this is a place of business. Even if you are my nephew, Human Resources does still exist, and you are not immune to their summons. Please do not flirt with a member of your team and make them uncomfortable.”

I focused hard on spearing one of the baby carrots with my fork. “I’m not,” I defended, before taking a bite of the carrot. It wasn’t a lie. I wasn’t making Jonas uncomfortable by flirting with him.

I was making him uncomfortable just by existing.

7

Silas had been watchingme, but at least he’d not attempted to engage in conversation that day.

I’d been trying to focus on the rough sketch for my UI proposal. Instead, I was too aware of the prickling feeling of eyes on me. Judging me. It made my palms sweat so bad that I’d almost dropped my pen multiple times. As it was, I’d messed up one of my meticulously drawn lines and had to start the entire process over.

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