The Boss(hole) by Penelope Bloom
Jules
“Istill can’t believe you’re not at work right now,” I said.
Adrian was driving a SUV I assumed was a rental. He was even dressed far more casually than I’d ever seen. He had on a teal polo that hugged his biceps and let me see hints of the tattoos on his arms. He wore a simple pair of jeans and sneakers with the outfit. He looked good enough to eat. “I put in some extra time last night. You’ve got me all to yourself today.”
I’d noticed the bags under his eyes. He was home late, even by his insane workaholic standards. The apartment he got us had two bedrooms, but I’d casually decided we were sharing a bad. We were sleeping together, after all. Even if my draconic childhood made me feel like I was going to get in trouble for sharing a bed with a guy I wasn’t married to, I was an adult, damn it. I could do what I wanted.
“How has Coleton Central been so far, anyway?” I asked.
He waved his long finger, grinning. The morning sun was in his face, making him look unfairly good. Each of his long, thick eyelashes was bathed in golden light. “No work talk today.”
“Ooh,” I said. “This is new.”
“It’s good,” he said. “I can’t remember the last time I took a true day off.”
“So you’ve really been doing this ten years?” I asked. “I mean, I know you said Noah made his own business and then the rest of you all worked on Terranova Holdings. But how did it transition from that to this whole demolition thing? How does that even work?”
“I feel like that qualifies as work talk,” Adrian said.
“Nope. This is prior workplaces. Doesn’t count. Work talk is talk that makes you think about stuff you need to do later.”
He chuckled. “Okay. Well, I had to make enough money to afford it first. By the time we decided to go after Coleton, we all had enough that we could afford to disappear from jobs at the drop of a hat. Some of our demo jobs have cost us tens of millions.”
“What did you do to earn it all?”
“I started a company. We actually learned to fix companies from the inside. We started small with family owned barbecue places or laundromats. We’d take a two-hundred thousand dollar business and turn it into a million-dollar business in a few months. We eventually worked our way up the chain to bigger places. Then we started flat-out buying the struggling businesses with potential and flipping them ourselves to sell for a profit. Learning to fix a business, it turns out, is a great way to learn how to destroy one.”
“Wow,” I said. “So you fixed companies until you had enough money to afford to destroy them. You do realize how backwards that sounds, right?”
“We fixed good companies so we could destroy bad ones. But yes, destroying them sometimes was very expensive work. Once I had to actually take over as the CEO before we could bring this place down. They were bribing port officials and dumping toxic waste and plastics in international waters, among other things. But I had to buy out the majority of their stock shares. When we crashed the company later, I tanked the value of all that stock I acquired.”
“How do you destroy a company from the inside out if you’re not doing it that way?”
“It depends. That’s kind of Noah’s specialty. To be completely honest, I don’t always pretend to fully grasp what he’s doing. Sometimes he can just move numbers around and everything falls apart. Other times it takes a little more brute force.”
“I think it’s admirable,” I said. “What you’re doing, I mean. I feel like every man I’ve ever met has only cared about money or power. You actually want to do something good. And, honestly, when I first met you, I would’ve never guessed that.”
“Bad first impression?”
“Uh, yeah? You were destroying Walker in the middle of your employees. How does that work, anyway? You actually want to help people, but you do it by being the most terrifying bosshole imaginable?”
“This is work talk,” Adrian said.
“Oh, come on,” I laughed.
He smiled, but the amusement in his face didn’t last long. He stared out at the road a few moments, then responded. “I learned early that it’s easier to put up walls, doing what I do. I may be helping people on the outside, but I do it by bringing down companies. All those people who work for me tend to lose their jobs. I put them through hardships and have to hope it’s a net gain for the greater good, or something like that.”
“I hadn’t thought about that.”
“Yeah,” Adrian said. “At some point, I think it stopped being an act and felt more natural. I wasn’t always like this. The bosshole thing, I mean.”
“No? What were you like?”
“Me and the guys were a little like conmen,” he admitted. “Always getting into trouble. Wild.” He shook his head, smiling at the memory. “But things changed.”
“I don’t know if I can picture that.”
“What about you? What was it like growing up a Coleton?”
I sank back in my seat, blowing out a long breath. “Kind of like being an overfed prisoner. I know so many people had it worse than me, so I honestly hate complaining. I just know I needed to get out for my sanity. I wanted a chance to be my own person, you know?”
“You don’t need to qualify your pain.”
“What?” I asked, tilting my head.
“You said you know people had it worse. But that doesn’t really matter. You feel what you feel. It’s not a zero-sum game—suffering—I mean. There’s enough to go around and your suffering doesn’t make anybody’s better or worse. It’s like pain tolerance. What does it matter if the same experience causes someone else less pain than it causes you? You still feel what you feel.”
“I’d never really thought of it like that. I guess I just picture you rolling your eyes if I complain.”
“You can talk to me, Jules.” Adrian gave my leg a squeeze, then took his eyes from the road long enough to make my stomach flutter. “Just not about work for the rest of today,” he added with a warm smile.
I smiled and wrapped both my hands around his. The rest of our drive made me feel like I was getting a taste of the type of family road trips I always saw on movies and shows. We weren’t flying in private jets, riding quietly in different cars because everyone’s schedule was too hectic to travel together. It was just me and Adrian, and I even convinced him to stop at a few gas stations so we could eat junk food.
My stomach hurt a little from the entire bag of Sour Patch Kids I’d eaten by the time we arrived. Adrian had been tight lipped about where we were going.
We parked in a wooded area with signs advertising a nearby campground.
“Camping?” I asked, laughing. “I have to admit, this is the last thing I pictured you bringing me to do.”
“Is that a bad thing?” he asked.
“No. I’ve never camped, but I’ve always been curious. But I do think you’re supposed to bring supplies.” I noted the top of the car was empty and there didn’t appear to be anything in his trunk.
“I cheated. I called ahead and had someone from an outdoors store bring out the things we’d need. Hopefully that doesn’t ruin the spirit.”
“I’m just happy we’re doing this.”
We were in the wilderness of New York, which surprised a lot of people. People thought New York and they pictured concrete and skyscrapers, but outside the city, the state was beautiful.
I walked down a dirt trail with Adrian and entered a campground. It was an elongated loop of dirt trail with individual plots for campers and RVs to park. There were a few campers scattered among the campsites, but more people had opted to park their cars and set up a tent instead.
There was a relatively isolated camping spot at the back of the group and a young teenage guy in a retail uniform waiting in front of it. There was a pile of brand-new looking camping gear in a pile behind him.
“You sure you didn’t want me to help you set up this tent, sir?” he asked once we got close.
“No,” Adrian said. “It’s a tent. How hard could it be?”