I knew things were sideways the moment I walked into the Kovali Group boardroom and found a mood board titled Synergy Vibes 2024 that looked like a Pinterest page for a confused golden retriever. That’s my life. I’m the process optimization lead, which is corporate speak for the janitor of executive stupidity. I don’t plunge toilets, but I do flush bad ideas before they clog the revenue stream.
And let me tell you, the pipes in this place are backed up with pure unadulterated ego. I’ve been at Kovali’s for five years. It’s one of those legacy Dallas firms that started with steel and ended up trading data futures or whatever it is we actually sell. I don’t ask questions about the product.
I just make sure the spreadsheets don’t lie. I’m the person you call when the numbers don’t add up, or when the VP of sales tries to expense a team-building trip to a strip club in Vegas as stakeholder engagement. I’m the mechanic. I pop the hood, look at the smoking engine, and tell them they’re idiots.
They pay me well enough to afford a mortgage and a decent bottle of bourbon, so I stay. But the ecosystem changed six months ago. That’s when Avery showed up. Avery is the CEO’s niece.
She’s twenty-four, has a degree in communications from a university that probably accepts crayons in the application, and her job title is strategic vision coordinator. Do you know what that means? Neither does she. It means she walks around the office holding an iced latte that costs more than my hourly rate in 1999, making suggestions that usually involve changing the font on a report I spent three weeks building.
She’s a human glitter bomb. Shiny, invasive, and impossible to clean up after. I was sitting in my cubicle, strategically located behind a structural pillar so I don’t have to make eye contact with the marketing team, when Avery clacked in. You can always hear her coming.
She wears heels that sound like a tactical assault on the linoleum. Karen, she chirped. It wasn’t a greeting. It was a summons.
She leaned against my partition, smelling like expensive vanilla and unearned confidence. Quick question. Why is the Q3 forecast so gray? I slowly rotated my chair.
My joints popped. I’m forty-five and my patience is older than that. It’s a spreadsheet, Avery. It’s black and white.
That’s how numbers work. They aren’t mood rings. Right, but it’s just not giving success, you know. She took a sip of her latte, leaving a lipstick stain on the straw that matched her nails.
I was thinking we could color-code the revenue streams. Maybe a sunset gradient. Uncle Phil loves sunsets. Uncle Phil.
The CEO. The man who thinks process optimization is a type of yoga. Avery, I said, my voice dropping to that register I use when I’m explaining why you can’t put metal in a microwave. If I add a sunset gradient to the financial audit, the IRS isn’t going to think it’s pretty.
They’re going to think we’re cooking the books on acid. Leave the formatting alone. She rolled her eyes. It was a practiced motion, something she probably perfected in a sorority house mirror while complaining about the quality of the cocaine.
God, you’re so analog, Karen. You need to vibrate higher. She pushed off my desk, knocking over a stack of invoices I had just reconciled. She didn’t apologize.
She didn’t even look down. She just strutted away, texting someone on a phone with a case bigger than her head. I looked at the invoices scattered on the floor. This was the routine.
I build the house. They spray-paint graffiti on the walls and call it renovation. Most people would snap. They’d storm into HR and file a complaint.
But I know better. HR in a family-run company is just a suggestion box that feeds directly into the shredder. You don’t fight the niece. You survive her.
You keep your head down. You fix the leaks and wait for the rust to eat them alive. I picked up the papers one by one. I’m used to cleaning up.
My dad, Allan, was a mechanic for real. Not a corporate one like me, but a grease-under-the-fingernails, pack-of-Reds-in-the-sleeve guy. He taught me that machines don’t care who your daddy is. If you don’t maintain the pressure, the boiler explodes.
It doesn’t matter if the CEO is standing next to it or the janitor. Physics is the great equalizer. And Kovali Group was a boiler with the safety valve taped shut. Later that afternoon, the office was buzzing about a prospective client, some billionaire named Dorian Fleet rumored to be buying a twenty percent stake in the company.
The marketing team was blowing up balloons. Balloons, for a billionaire investor. The sales guys were practicing their golf swings in the hallway. I just opened Excel.
I had data to scrub. Around two, I went to the break room to refill my coffee. The coffee at Kovali’s is sludge. It tastes like burnt rubber and despair, but it’s free and hot.
I was staring at the microwave, watching the seconds tick down on someone’s reheated fish taco, because there’s always one sociopath in every office, when Avery walked in with two of her minions, junior associates she’d poached from actual work to follow her around and laugh at her jokes. She saw me and stopped. A smirk curled up her face, toxic and sweet. Karen, she said, loud enough for the whole room to hear.
I was just telling the girls about your vibe. It’s so retro. Like you gave up on your dreams in 2004 chic. Her minions giggled.
I poured my coffee. I didn’t turn around. Do you need something, Avery, or are you just narrating my life for sport? I just think it’s cute, she continued, stepping closer.
How you just exist here like furniture. I turned then. My hand was wrapped around my mug. On my ring finger, the fluorescent light caught the dull glint of silver.
Avery’s eyes dropped to my hand. She squinted. And that ring, she laughed, pointing a perfectly manicured finger. God, Karen.
Did you get that out of a gumball machine? It looks like something a trucker would trade for a pack of gum. The room went quiet. Not the respectful quiet of a library, but the awkward quiet of a car crash.
The minions covered their mouths. I looked down at the ring. It was heavy, sterling silver, engraved with a pattern of gears and ivy, worn smooth by fifty years of friction. It wasn’t jewelry.
It was a knuckle-duster disguised as a keepsake. I looked up at Avery. I didn’t smile. I didn’t frown.
I just looked at her with the flat, dead eyes of a woman who knows exactly where the bodies are buried because she dug the holes. It has sentimental value, I said, my voice gravel. Sentimental. Avery scoffed.
Please, it’s scrap metal. You should melt it down. Maybe buy yourself a personality. She spun around, her hair whipping the air, and marched out, her minions trailing in her wake like exhaust fumes.
I stood there for a long moment. My pulse wasn’t racing. I wasn’t crying. I took a sip of the burnt coffee.
It tasted like gasoline. I like gasoline. It meant something was about to burn. That ring wasn’t from a vending machine.
It was from a dead man’s hand. My dad, Alan Harwood, wasn’t a soft man. He was made of calluses and cough suppressants. He didn’t hug, he fixed things.
If my bike broke, he didn’t buy me a new one. He handed me a wrench and told me to figure out the torque ratio. When he died, he didn’t leave a portfolio of stocks or a summer home. He left a garage full of half-restored engines and this ring.
He wore it every day. It was custom-made, he told me once. Forged in the fire, just like us, Karen. He’d tap it against the table when he was thinking.
Clink, clink, clink. The sound of a problem being solved. When the cancer finally ate the last of him, I took it off his finger. It was still warm.
I had it resized, but I kept the grit. I didn’t polish it. I liked the scratches. Each one was a story of him busting his knuckles to put food on my table.
Avery calling it scrap metal didn’t hurt my feelings. It insulted my religion. And my religion is competence. I went back to my desk and sat in the silence of my rage.
It wasn’t a hot, screaming rage. It was a cold, calculated assessment of structural weakness. Avery was a rust spot. And you don’t paint over rust.
You grind it out. At three, the summons came. All senior staff to the war room. I’m not technically senior staff, but I’m the only one who knows how to project the financial models without crashing the server, so I was required.
The conference room was a scene. The table was mahogany, polished to a mirror shine that reflected the desperation in everyone’s faces. Uncle Phil sat at the head, sweating through his dress shirt. He looked like a ham left out in the sun.
Next to him was Avery. She had changed into a power suit that looked like it was made of aluminum foil and hopes. She was arranging a stack of color-coded binders that I knew for a fact contained zero actual data. Karen, Phil barked when I walked in.
Did you fix the projector? Avery says the vibes are off in the HDMI cable. The cables don’t have vibes, Phil. They have pins.
I fixed it. Great, great. Now sit in the back. Don’t speak unless asked.
We need to present a youthful, dynamic front to Mr. Fleet. Energy. Synergy.
Disruption. I sat in the corner in the shadows, just the way I like it. I opened my laptop and pulled up the real numbers, just in case the youthful dynamic decided to drive the presentation off a cliff. At 3:15 precisely, the doors opened.
The room temperature seemed to drop ten degrees. Dorian Fleet walked in. He wasn’t what I expected. He looked like a retired hitman.
Tall, sharp features, gray hair cut with military precision. He wore a suit that cost more than my house, but he wore it carelessly, like it was just a uniform. He didn’t smile. He didn’t shake hands.
He walked to the empty chair opposite Phil, sat down, and placed a single slim folder on the table. His eyes scanned the room. They were predatory. He swept over Phil’s sweating face, over the marketing team’s balloons, over Avery’s shiny binders.
Then, for a split second, they landed on me in the corner. He paused. A flicker of something crossed his face. Confusion, recognition.
Then it was gone. Mr. Fleet, Phil boomed, his voice cracking. Welcome to Kovali’s.
We are so thrilled—
Skip the foreplay, Phil, Dorian said. His voice was quiet, deep, and absolutely terrifying. I have forty-five minutes before I have to be in Tokyo via Zoom. Show me why I shouldn’t let this company go bankrupt and buy the IP at auction for pennies.
Phil turned pale. He looked at Avery. Avery, go the presentation. Avery stood up.
This was her moment. She flashed a smile that was all teeth and whitening strips. Mr. Fleet, she purred, clicking a remote.
The screen behind her exploded into a kaleidoscope of meaningless charts. Here at Kovali, we aren’t just a company. We’re a family. We believe in organic growth, holistic synergy, and leveraging our core competencies to ideate the future.
I physically winced. Ideate the future. It sounded like something a cult leader would say before passing out the Kool-Aid. Dorian didn’t blink.
He stared at her. And what exactly is your strategy for the fourteen percent drop in operational efficiency over the last three quarters? Avery froze. The smile faltered.
She hadn’t prepared for numbers. She had prepared for vibes. Well, she stammered, flipping a page in her binder. We feel that the efficiency metrics are antiquated.
We’re pivoting to a more employee-centric happiness model. Happiness doesn’t pay dividends, Dorian said. He leaned forward. I’m looking at your process flow.
It’s a mess. Who handles your optimization? Avery looked at Phil. Phil looked at the table.
I do, I said from the corner. Dorian’s head snapped toward me. The room went silent. Avery shot me a look that screamed, shut up, you peasant.
You, Dorian asked. Karen Harwood, I said, not standing up. Process lead. And the efficiency drop isn’t because of happiness.
It’s because we switched supply chain vendors to a company owned by Phil’s brother-in-law, which increased lead times by twenty-two percent. Phil made a choking sound. Avery’s mouth dropped open. Dorian stared at me.
A slow, shark-like smile touched his lips. Come closer, Miss Harwood, he said. I want to see your data. I stood up and walked toward the table.
I placed my hand on the mahogany surface to lean in and point at a figure on the screen. The hand with the ring. Dorian’s eyes went to the screen, then down to my hand. He froze.
The silence in the room changed texture. It went from awkward to heavy. He reached out, his hand hovering over mine. He wasn’t looking at the data anymore.
He was staring at the battered, scratched silver ring on my finger. Where did you get that? he whispered. The menace was gone from his voice, replaced by something that sounded like shock.
Avery laughed, a nervous, jagged sound. Oh, ignore that, Mr. Fleet. It’s just some junk—
Quiet, Dorian snapped without looking at her.
He didn’t raise his voice, but the word hit her like a slap. He looked up at me, his eyes intense. I asked you a question. Where did you get that ring?
I looked him dead in the eye. I didn’t know why he cared, but I wasn’t going to lie. It was my father’s, I said. Alan Harwood.
Dorian sat back in his chair. He looked like he’d been punched in the gut. He looked from me to the ring and then to Phil. Alan Harwood, he repeated.
He let out a long breath. Well, that explains the competence. He looked at me again. You have no idea, do you?
Idea about what? If you’re Alan Harwood’s daughter, Dorian said, his voice ringing clearly in the silent room, and you hold that ring, then you aren’t the process lead. He paused for effect. You’re the majority heir to this entire company.
The silence that followed was absolute. It was the kind of silence you get after a bomb goes off, before the screaming starts. Uncle Phil’s face went from ham to ash gray. Avery looked like someone had just told her Gucci was discontinued.
Excuse me, Avery squeaked. She’s the IT lady. She fixes the printer. Dorian ignored her.
He stood up, buttoning his jacket. This meeting is over. Everyone out except Miss Harwood. Now see here, Dorian, Phil sputtered.
You can’t just dismiss my board in my own building. Dorian turned on Phil slowly. Alan Harwood was a mechanic. He fixed the boilers in the eighties.
Alan Harwood was the silent partner who patented the thermal regulation algorithm this entire company is built on. You built the shell, Phil. Alan built the engine. And you know damn well what the founding charter says.
Phil slumped back in his chair. He knew. The realization washed over him, and he looked small, defeated. They scrambled.
Avery shot me a look of pure distilled venom as she grabbed her binders, but she left. The door clicked shut. It was just me and the billionaire. I didn’t sit down.
I crossed my arms. All right, I said. Cut the crap. What is this, a prank?
Am I on a reality show? Dorian walked over to the window, looking out at the Dallas skyline. He pulled a silver cigarette case from his pocket. Do you mind?
I smoke Marlboro Reds in my truck on lunch break. I think I can handle secondhand vapors. He chuckled. A dry, rusty sound.
Alan smoked Reds. Filthy habit. I told him it would kill him. It did, I said flatly.
Dorian turned back to me. I’m sorry. He was a singular man. We started Kovali together forty years ago in a garage in Dayton.
Phil was the money man. I was the strategy. But Alan? Alan was the genius.
He wrote the code on napkins. He designed the hardware with scrap metal. He never told me, I said. He just said he worked maintenance.
He hated the suits, Dorian said, gesturing vaguely at the boardroom. He hated the politics. When we went public, he refused the shares. Said he didn’t want to be a paper pusher.
He took a cash buyout and walked away. Or so we thought. Dorian sat on the edge of the table. But he didn’t trust Phil.
He knew Phil was a corner-cutter. So he made a stipulation in the charter. A dead man’s switch. He kept a fifty-one percent controlling interest in a dormant trust, locked behind a physical key.
He pointed to my hand. The ring? I asked, looking at the beat-up silver. You’re telling me this ring is a key?
It’s jewelry, not a USB drive. It’s not digital, Karen. It’s symbolic, but legally binding. The charter states that the trust activates only when the bearer of the founder’s seal is recognized by a fellow founding partner.
That clause was buried so deep even the IRS missed it. It was Alan’s way of ensuring that if the company ever lost its way, his bloodline could step in and reset the breaker. My head was spinning. It was absurd.
Something out of a bad movie. But it also sounded exactly like my dad. He loved fail-safes. He loved hidden latches and secret compartments.
So, I said, trying to steady my voice, because you recognized the ring. You triggered the clause. Dorian nodded. As of ten minutes ago, when I acknowledged you as Alan’s heir in front of witnesses, the trust unlocked.
You own fifty-one percent of Kovali Group. Phil owns thirty. The public owns the rest. I sank into a chair.
I own the company. Technically, yes. Effectively, not until we file the paperwork. But the law is on your side.
Suddenly, the door burst open. Avery marched in, phone in hand. This is ridiculous, she shouted. I just Googled it.
There’s no Alan Harwood on the board list. You’re lying. She’s just a sad middle-aged—
Dorian didn’t even look at her. Karen, he said to me.
Would you like to handle this, or should I? I looked at Avery. She was vibrating with entitlement. For five years, I had fixed her mistakes.
I had covered for her incompetence. I had listened to her mock my clothes, my car, and my life. She had called my father’s ring trash. Something inside me clicked.
The sound of a safety valve finally blowing. I stood up and walked over to Avery. I was taller than her when she wasn’t wearing those ridiculous stilts she called shoes. Avery, I said.
My voice was calm. Dangerously calm. What? she snapped.
Are you going to fix the AC because it’s hot in here? No, I said. I’m going to optimize the process. I turned to Dorian.
How fast can we get legal here? Dorian checked his watch. My team is already in the lobby. They travel with me.
Good, I said. I looked back at Avery. Get out of my office. Your office?
She laughed. This is the boardroom. Exactly, I said. And I’m the chairwoman.
Get out, and take your mood board with you. Avery stared at me, mouth agape. She looked to Dorian for help, but he was just smiling that shark smile. You heard the lady, Dorian said.
Avery stomped her foot, literally stomped it like a toddler, and ran out. I looked at Dorian. I need a cigarette. Me too, he said.
We didn’t smoke in the boardroom. We went to the roof. The roof of the Kovali building is a gravel-covered wasteland of HVAC units and pigeon crap. It’s my favorite place in the building.
I know every chiller unit up here by serial number. It was fitting that I became a billionaire standing next to a rusted cooling tower. I leaned against the parapet, lighting a Marlboro with shaking hands. The wind whipped my hair across my face.
He never wanted this for you, you know, Dorian said, joining me. He didn’t light up. He just held his silver case like a talisman. This?
To be rich? To be one of us, Dorian corrected. He thought corporate life was a disease. He wanted you to have a trade.
Something real. So he let me struggle. A hint of bitterness crept in. I’ve been scraping by on a mid-level salary, driving a 2014 Ford while he was sitting on a dormant empire.
Protection, Dorian said. If he had given you the shares when you were twenty, Phil would have eaten you alive. Manipulated you, diluted your stock, bought you out for pennies. Alan knew Phil.
He knew Phil couldn’t resist a worker. So he let you work. He let you learn the machine from the inside. He paused, looking at me.
And it worked, didn’t it? You know where the bodies are buried because you’re the one who had to clean up the blood. I laughed. It was a dark sound.
I know every line of code in the logistics server. I know that Phil pays for his mistress’s condo through a shell company listed as consulting fees. I know Avery’s degree is from a diploma mill in the Caribbean. Dorian raised an eyebrow.
You have proof? I have backups, I said. I’m the IT lead. I back up everything.
Paranoia is best practice. Dorian smiled. Alan raised you well. The legal team had already set up in the lounge.
They spread the documents on the glass table. There on yellowed legal paper dated 1984 was my father’s signature. Jagged, rushed, like he just wanted to sign and get back to the garage. The Harwood Trust, effective upon identification of the heir by a founding member.
Fifty-one percent controlling interest. It’s ironclad, the lead lawyer said. The recognition event was witnessed. The ring matches the description in the addendum.
Sterling silver, custom forge, gear motif. You are the majority shareholder. What about Phil? I asked.
Phil is currently vomiting in his office, the lawyer said dryly. But legally, he’s a minority partner. He serves at your pleasure. You can vote him out.
You can fire him. You can dissolve the board. I ran my finger over my dad’s signature. Alan Harwood.
He had played the longest con in history. He planted a seed forty years ago and waited for the perfect storm to water it. And Avery? I asked.
Dorian leaned in. That’s up to you. She’s an at-will employee. I thought about Avery.
I thought about the mood boards. I thought about the way she treated the janitorial staff like they were invisible. Not yet, I said. Firing her is too easy.
She thinks she’s a visionary. Let’s see how she handles actual vision. What’s the play? Dorian asked.
I looked at the lawyer. Draft a memo. Effective immediately, the Office of Process Optimization is assuming direct control of all executive operations. All departmental spend over fifty dollars requires my signature.
All strategic initiatives must be vetted by me. The lawyer blinked. You’re putting the CEO on an allowance. I’m putting the whole company on a performance improvement plan, I said.
If they want to act like children, I’m going to treat them like children. No more mood boards. No more retreats. We’re going to audit the hell out of this place.
Dorian chuckled. You’re going to make them miserable. No, I said, standing up and smoothing my skirt. I’m going to make them work.
And to people like Avery, that’s a fate worse than death. By the next morning, the atmosphere in the office had shifted from panic to haunted house. I walked in at eight o’clock sharp. The security guard stood up and tipped his hat.
Morning, Miss Harwood. Morning, Dave, I said. Your badge reader is lagging again. I’ll reset the controller later.
When I got to my floor, someone had placed a vase of cheap carnations on my desk with a card that read, So happy for you. The Sunshine Committee. That was Linda from HR, Phil’s velvet glove. My phone rang.
Karen, Linda chirped. Listen, Phil and I were hoping to have a little sync-up about transitions. I’m busy, Linda, I said, logging into my computer. I now had admin rights to everything.
Tell Phil that if he wants to talk, he can come to my cubicle. There was a long silence. Yes, the one behind the pillar. Tell him to bring a chair.
I only have one. I spent the next two hours digging. Now that I knew what to look for, the corruption wasn’t even subtle. It was lazy.
Phil had been draining the company dry. Consulting fees to a firm in the Caymans. Marketing research paid to Avery’s LLC. I pulled up Avery’s file.
Salary: one hundred and eighty thousand dollars. Job description: to facilitate cross-functional synergy and elevate brand resonance. Experience: social media manager for a capybara account in 2019. I was making sixty-five thousand to keep the servers from melting, and she was making triple that to post selfies.
Around ten-thirty, I heard the footsteps. Heavy, angry footsteps. Phil rounded the corner, tie loosened, looking like a man who hadn’t slept. Behind him trailed Avery, less shiny than yesterday, wearing sunglasses indoors.
Karen, Phil hissed, leaning over my partition. What is the meaning of this? You can’t demand the CEO come to a cubicle. I didn’t look up from my monitors.
I’m reviewing the travel budget, Phil. Did you know we spent forty thousand dollars on client entertainment in Miami last month? Because the receipt is from a club called the Boom Boom Room. Phil turned a shade of purple that shouldn’t exist in nature.
That was confidential business development. It’s fraud, Phil, I said calmly. And since I’m the majority shareholder, that’s my money you’re stuffing into g-strings. Avery piped up.
You can’t talk to him like that. He’s your boss. I spun my chair around. Actually, Avery, according to the bylaws, which I just read, the majority shareholder has the right to freeze executive assets pending an internal audit.
Which I did about ten minutes ago. Company credit cards are suspended. Also, I revoked your parking pass. You’re in a visitor spot now.
Hope you paid the meter. They tow after two hours. You! Avery screamed.
Phil held her back. His voice trembled. Karen, let’s be reasonable. A raise.
A bonus. A corner office. I don’t want a corner office, I said. I like this spot.
It’s near the server room. The hum soothes me. I stood up. I want you to resign, Phil.
Resign? He laughed nervously. You can’t be serious. I built this brand.
You built a shell, I corrected, using Dorian’s words. And now the shell is cracking. You have two choices. Resign with a severance package that I will determine based on how much you actually stole.
Or I release the Boom Boom Room receipts to the board and the IRS. Phil looked at Avery. Avery looked at her phone. I need time, Phil whispered.
You have until five o’clock, I said. Now get out of my cubicle. You’re blocking my light. They retreated.
I sat back down. My hands were shaking slightly, not from fear, from adrenaline. It was the same feeling I got when I finally traced a complex electrical short after hours of searching. The feeling of finding the fault line.
At one o’clock, I sent an email to Avery. Subject: Strategic Realignment Special Project. Since you are the strategic vision coordinator, I have a task that requires your unique skill set. We need to physically audit the archive room in the basement.
Five thousand boxes of legacy contracts need to be digitized and tagged for synergy. Report to the basement at one-thirty. No interns. This is sensitive data.
I knew she wouldn’t do it. Avery didn’t do basements. I pulled up the security camera feed for the basement hallway on my second monitor and ate my ham sandwich. At one forty-five, Avery appeared on the grainy black-and-white screen.
She was wearing a surgical mask and holding her phone away from her face as if the air itself was infectious. She kicked a box. She took a selfie next to a stack of files. Then she did exactly what I expected.
She walked over to the fire suppression system panel on the wall. The basement held the paper archives, but the server room was directly adjacent. The suppression system was halon gas, safe for electronics but expensive to refill. But the sprinkler override for the paper archive?
That was water. Avery was messing with the valves. She was trying to flood the basement. If she ruined the files, she’d have an excuse for not doing the job.
Oops, a pipe burst. So tragic. I watched her twist a red valve. What she didn’t know was that I had installed a digital pressure sensor on that valve three years ago because the janitor kept bumping it with his mop.
A warning light flashed on my dashboard. Water pressure spike, Zone Four. She twisted it fully open. Nothing happened.
She frowned, twisted it back and forth, kicked the pipe. I had shut off the main water feed to the basement archive six months ago because of a leak I hadn’t gotten around to fixing. The pipes were dry. Avery pulled out her phone.
I tapped into the internal VIP line. She was calling Phil. Uncle Phil, the pipe won’t break, she hissed. What do you mean it won’t break?
Phil’s voice was strained. Just open the valve. I did. It’s dry.
This whole building is garbage. Avery, listen to me. You need to find something on her. A compliance violation.
Hack her email. We need leverage. I can’t hack. I don’t know how.
Then make something up. Plant a file. Say she stole data. Anything.
I hit the record button. This was it. The smoking gun. Not only was she incompetent, she was actively conspiring to frame the majority shareholder.
It was stupid. It was desperate. It was beautiful. I picked up my desk phone and dialed the basement intercom.
Avery jumped about three feet in the air when my voice boomed through the dusty speakers. Avery, I said, my voice echoing in the concrete room. The water is shut off. But the security cameras aren’t.
Smile. She looked up at the camera, her face a mask of pure terror. Come upstairs, I said. Bring your badge.
Avery arrived at my cubicle ten minutes later. Dust from the basement streaked her white blazer. She looked like a fallen angel who had landed in a dumpster. Dorian was there too, leaning against the pillar, looking amused.
You were spying on me, Avery accused. That’s illegal. It’s a secure facility, Avery, I said, not looking up from my screen. You signed the consent form when you took the badge.
Paragraph four, section C. All activities on company property are subject to monitoring. You should read the things you sign. I was checking the valve, she lied, her eyes wild.
It looked loose. Really? I asked. Because I have a recording of you asking your uncle why the pipe wouldn’t break.
I hit play. The pipe won’t break. Just open the valve. We need leverage.
Avery went pale. She looked at Dorian. Mr. Fleet.
Surely you can see this is AI. She faked it. Deep fake. Dorian laughed.
It was a genuine laugh this time. You think she deep-faked a conspiracy in real time? You give her too much credit and yourself too little. He looked at me.
She’s all yours, Chairwoman. I stood up and walked around the desk until I was standing in front of Avery. You know, I said quietly, I didn’t mind the incompetence. Every company has dead weight.
I can carry dead weight. I’m strong. I took a step closer. But I do mind the disrespect.
You mocked my father’s ring. You mocked my work. You mocked the people who actually keep the lights on. You think you’re better than us because of your last name.
But names don’t keep the boiler running. Sweat does. I held out my hand. Badge.
Phone. Laptop. Now. Avery stared at me.
Her lip trembled. Tears started to well up. Big crocodile tears meant to gather sympathy. But where will I go?
she whispered. This is my career. You don’t have a career, Avery, I said. You have a nepotism scholarship.
And it just expired. She slowly reached into her purse and handed me her badge, then her phone. Security will retrieve your laptop, I said. Dave is waiting for you at the elevator.
You have five minutes. She turned to leave, shoulders slumped. Then she stopped and looked back. The venom returned for one last second.
You’re still just a janitor, she spat. You might own the place, but you’ll never fit in. You smell like stale smoke and desperation. I smiled.
And you smell like unemployment. Get out. She fled. Dorian clapped slowly.
Brutal. I liked it. I’m not done, I said. Phil is next.
Phil is in his office shredding documents, Dorian said. My team is already there stopping him. Good. I don’t want to fire Phil.
Dorian looked surprised. Firing him gives him a golden parachute, I said. He has a clause in his contract. If he’s terminated without cause, he gets two million dollars.
With cause, he gets nothing. Do you have cause? I pointed to my screen where the Boom Boom Room receipt was still glowing. I have cause.
But I don’t want to fire him yet. I want to demote him. Put him in the basement. Dorian’s eyes widened.
You’re joking. He started as a manager. He forgot what the work is like. I think he needs a refresher course.
I’m going to offer him a choice. Immediate termination with legal action for embezzlement, or he becomes the new archive clerk. Dorian stared at me for a moment, then burst out laughing. You are definitely Alan’s daughter.
That is twisted. It’s not twisted, I said. It’s process optimization. I’m putting the resources where they fit best.
The emergency board meeting was scheduled for four o’clock. I didn’t change my clothes. I was still wearing my slacks and cardigan. I wanted them to know exactly who was beating them.
The boardroom was full. The other minority shareholders, mostly Phil’s golf buddies, were looking confused and nervous. Phil sat at the far end of the table. He looked like a man who had aged ten years in ten hours.
Dorian sat at my right hand. I walked to the head of the table. Phil’s chair. Excuse me, Phil, I said.
You’re in my seat. Phil looked up. His eyes were red. He looked at the other board members, hoping for an ally.
Nobody moved. Phil slowly stood up and moved to a side chair. I sat down. All right, I said, placing my notebook on the table.
Let’s keep this brief. I have actual work to do. As of today, the Harwood Trust has exercised its controlling interest. I am the acting CEO and chairwoman of the board.
A murmur went through the room. One brave soul, a guy named Chad who wore too much cologne, raised his hand. Uh, Karen, no offense, but do you have any executive experience? You’re the IT support, right?
I looked at Chad. I know that you use your company laptop to mine Dogecoin. I suggest you stop asking questions before I audit your hard drive. Chad shut up immediately.
Now, I continued, regarding Phillip. We have discovered significant irregularities in the financial reporting. I slid a file folder down the table. Embezzlement.
Fraud. Misuse of corporate funds. The board gasped. Phil put his head in his hands.
However, I said, Phil is family, and we value legacy. I looked at Phil. I am offering you a settlement. You will repay the stolen funds.
We will garnish your wages. And you will remain employed at Kovali Group. Phil looked up, hope flickering in his eyes. Really, Karen?
Thank you. As the archive manager, I said. In the basement. The room went dead silent.
The basement? Phil whispered. We have five thousand boxes that need scanning, I said. It’s a big job.
Requires synergy. And since Avery is no longer with us, the position is open. Salary is forty-five thousand dollars a year. No benefits.
You start Monday. Phil stared at me. He looked at the folder of evidence. He knew that if I went to the police, he was looking at five to ten years in federal prison.
I accept, Phil said, swallowing hard. Good, I said. Don’t wear a suit. It’s dusty down there.
I stood up. Meeting adjourned. Get back to work. I walked out of the room.
I could feel their eyes on my back. Fear, respect, terror. It felt good. A week later, Dorian insisted on taking me to dinner.
A victory lap. We went to the most expensive steakhouse in the city, the kind of place where the waiters wear tuxedos and judge your shoes. I wore my work clothes. I didn’t care.
I owned the company that probably owned the building. We were halfway through our steaks when I saw her. Avery. She wasn’t eating.
She was working. She was the hostess. Apparently, social media skills didn’t transfer well to the job market, and her uncle couldn’t bail her out anymore because he was currently sorting invoices in a windowless basement. She saw me.
She froze. She was holding a stack of menus. I waved. A small, polite wave.
She turned red, pivoted, and fled into the kitchen. Was that the niece? Dorian asked, sipping his wine. That was the glitch, I said.
Glitch resolved. I took a drink of my bourbon. It was smooth. Expensive.
But honestly, I missed the burn of the cheap stuff. So, Dorian said, you fixed the company. You purged the rot. You have the power.
Are you happy? I thought about it. Was I happy? I was tired.
I had spent the last week firing useless VPs and renegotiating vendor contracts. My back hurt from sitting in that ergonomic chair. But the hum of the office was different now. It wasn’t the frantic buzz of anxiety.
It was the steady thrum of an engine running clean. Engineers were talking to the sales team. The money was going into research and development, not mood boards. I’m satisfied, I said.
The system is optimized. Dorian raised his glass. To Alan. The mechanic who bought the world.
I raised my glass to the ring. The key that started the engine. Later that night, I drove home in my 2014 Ford. I didn’t upgrade my car.
I liked knowing the quirks of the transmission. I pulled into my driveway and sat there for a minute, the engine ticking as it cooled. I looked at my hand. The ring caught the light of the streetlamp.
It was still scratched, still battered, still looked like something from a vending machine. But it was heavy. I took a drag of my cigarette and blew the smoke out the window. Turns out you can’t polish a turd.
But you can definitely flush it. And if you have the right wrench, you can rebuild the whole damn bathroom while you’re at it. I flicked the butt into the darkness. Back to work tomorrow.
Phil probably jammed the scanner again.