Rebel North by J.B. Salsbury

Three

Kingston

My first official week at North Industries has been the equivalent of corporate waterboarding.

Hayes, that fuckface, makes me work all day! I’m his file bitch. And he torments me with a million tiny irritants. Like paper. At the bottom of every mile-high stack is just another mile-high stack—a never-ending hell. He also sends me on pointless gopher runs. Like this morning, when he sent me to the second floor to find a man named Jeremy to get a single silver paperclip. I’d be pissed about his little fake errands if I weren’t so relieved to get out of the closet for even a few minutes.

He only allows one hour for lunch, not nearly enough time for a post-lunch power nap, and he kicks me when he catches me sleeping. When I try to defend my nap, he spouts some bullshit about a power nap being fifteen minutes, not two hours. What kind of injustice is this? And is it going on all over the country?

The only thought that gets me out of bed every morning is the intent to march into August’s office and yell, “I quit!” right in his face, followed by a powerful double birdie. And every morning, I pull up to the all-glass high rise with the words North Industries emblazoned on the side, and I lose every ounce of my nerve.

I push through the double glass lobby doors with a little too much force, sending a gust of wind in behind me. Everyone takes an instinctive step back. Everyone except for Kim, who is in a perpetually good mood, day after day. With. Out. Fail.

She hops up from her chair as I pass by. “Good morning, Mr. Nor—”

“Ugh, fuck off already.” I groan, stop, and turn around. She’s still smiling. WTF? “I’m sorry, that was rude of me.” Her smile brightens. I frown. “Do you snort coke, Miss Kim?”

Finally, her expression falls, and her face pales. “What? No! Of course not, I—”

I hold up one hand to quiet her and plug my ear with the other. “Shhh… too many words.” I drag my feet to the elevators and use my foot to slam the button to the executive level.

I feel gross inside, like spending all this time with Hayes has left his shit-stain on my soul.

With my back to the wall, I close my eyes. The elevator dings, and I hear the shuffling footsteps of someone climbing in at the last minute. I keep my eyes closed because, fuck ‘em, I’m not here to make friends, I’m only here for my paycheck.

“Don’t let me interrupt your nap, princess.”

My insides sour at the sound of my father’s voice. His Tom Ford cologne fills the small space and makes my stomach twist with revulsion.

“Your brother tells me you’re doing some solid grunt work,” he says with a smile in his voice.

My brother is lying. I’ve fucked up every job Hayes has given me. I’m slow, it takes me hours to do what another person could do in ten minutes, and when I ask questions, I never remember the answers.

I turn my head, crack an eye, and thank my mom for her outstanding genetics, which are responsible for the few inches of height I have on the man. “Don’t think I don’t see what you’re doing.”

He shoves his diamond-pinkie-ring-wearing hand into his slacks and smirks. “This should be enlightening.”

I push up off the wall and face him head-on. “You’re trying to make my life suck so I’ll quit and confirm that I really am the slacker loser you think I am.”

“Leopard can’t change its spots.”

“Huh…” I scratch my jaw. “If that were true, you’d still be a whoring old man sticking his dick into anything with a pulse.”

His cheeks flush red, and his jaw pulses. “Watch your mouth.”

Now it’s my turn to smirk.

“You’ll quit eventually, and when you do, you won’t see another penny from me.”

“If you want to get rid of me so badly, why even hire me? Why not just cut me off? Send me back to France?”

The elevator stops and pings as the doors slide open. “Because I promised your mother that I’d get you out of her house and keep you out.”

His parting words leave a nasty sting that I refuse to dwell on. This game of passive-aggressive jabs has been going on since I became aware of him as my biological father.

We find new ways to hurt each other. New ways to insult and inflict pain.

Our mutual contempt is our only father–son connection. Baseball and fishing trips be damned.

Gabriella

I don’t know if it’s something in the air or if Mercury’s in retrograde, but the last twenty-four hours at work have been nonstop. A wave of patient intakes would’ve been an issue if we hadn’t also had a wave of patients passing as if they all agreed to give up the ghost at the same time. We were turning rooms quicker than a motel that rents by the hour. And to make matters worse, we had a nursing assistant call in sick, so I stayed and helped out, with only an hour-long nap in the breakroom to sustain me.

Exhausted to the point of deliriousness, I’m finally free to go home. As I drag the last bag of trash into the alley to toss it into the dumpster, the afternoon warmth ripens the scent. I hold my breath and fling the bag as hard as I can up and over, only to have it snag on a rust-eaten corner. Paper cups, plastic utensils, and uneaten food spill onto my feet. I manage to push the rest of the bag in and then drop to a squat and use my fingers like pinchers to clean up the mess.

Something bright blue catches my eye. It’s a color blue not typically found in garbage. Lapis. Unique. Expensive looking.

A man’s wallet.

I snag the blue billfold. The leather is textured like alligator skin. Part of me hopes there will be six million dollars inside, but the other part of me knows it doesn’t matter because I wouldn’t keep it anyway.

The word FENDI is pressed into the inside in gold letters.

“It is alligator.” This wallet must cost a fortune.

No one with a working brain would throw away a wallet like this. My guess is it was stolen, stripped of cards and cash, and then tossed like, well, garbage. I dig through it, and, sure enough, the money slot is empty, and all the plastic is gone. They even took the owner’s ID.

But I don’t need the ID to guess who the wallet belongs to. My guess is the owner is Mr. Handsome Pants with the great mouth and bone structure.

I’m sure he’d be grateful to get his wallet back. I sift through the slots looking for some evidence of his name or home address.

I pull out a business card with an embossed logo for a company called North Industries. The card is for someone named Alexander North. Is this Mr. Handsome Pants? I think back to his face and imagine him as an Alexander. The name doesn’t seem exotic enough to match the man’s regal beauty. On the back of the business card, scribbled in ink, is the name James and a phone number with a Manhattan area code. I keep digging. Tucked deep into a slot in the back is an insurance card.

“Kingston North,” I whisper. “North Industries.”

That must be where he works. If not, someone there must know him and how to get ahold of him to return his things.

I tuck the wallet into my purse and hit the Uber app on my phone. One stop, then I’m going home to sleep for a week.

Kingston

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

Hayes’ angry voice wakes me from my midday nap, where I’m buried behind a stack of paperwork. I assume he’s barking at one of his employees again—he really is a shit boss—so I rearrange my paper barrier and fall back to sleep.

“Did you get the email?” he yells, startling me awake again.

Earplugs. I make a mental note to bring some with me tomorrow.

“You better not be sleeping in there, asshole!”

I drag my eyes open and slowly push myself up from my hunched-over position at the table. “Are you talking to me?”

I hear the wheels of his chair roll, and I rush to make it look like I’ve been working this entire time. “What’s up, bro?” I say a little too brightly when he pokes his head into my closet office. If North Industries is my prison, my office is The Hole.

He scowls. “You were sleeping.”

“I was not. And I’m insulted you’d accuse me—”

“I can see the indentation from your Montblanc cufflinks on your cheek.”

Shit. “How do you know I didn’t do that on purpose? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some very important ABC order to finish up—”

“Check your email.”

“Why?” I pull out my new phone and see I have thousands of unread emails. I never check email. If someone needs to get in touch with me badly enough, I expect they’ll call. “Did you finally reply to my resignation letter?”

He’s doesn’t look at all pleased with my wildly entertaining sense of humor. “It’s an evite.”

“Who the fuck sends evites?”

“My mother, apparently.”

“Huh.” I search for my stepmother’s name in my inbox. “I thought I’d blocked her,” I mumble. Balloons dance on the screen, and I see my dad’s name. “She’s throwing a party for the Old Man this weekend?”

“Wow. You can read,” he says dryly.

His dig delivers a direct hit, but I school my expression, so he doesn’t know. I’ve been doing it all my life. “I’m not going. I have plans.”

“What plans?”

“I don’t know, but I’m going to make some.”

He leans a shoulder on the door frame, making the space feel infinitely smaller. “You’re going to dip out on your dad’s seventieth birthday party?”

“I—”

“The same man who has been supporting you for the last how many years now?”

I don’t appreciate him throwing that shit in my face. “Don’t—”

“You’ve been on the payroll since you were seventeen years old.”

“Thanks for the news, Hayes. What’s the weather?” Shame and humiliation weigh on my shoulders.

“The weather, Romeo, is stop being a selfish, spoiled prick and go to his fucking birthday party.” He turns and storms away.

I flip him off and mutter a string of curse words.

“I heard that!”

I push up from my desk, which is a very liberal term for the four-legged table I’ve been assigned to work at. “I’m taking a break.”

He checks his watch. “You had your lunch break an hour ago.”

I ignore him and walk right past him and out of the office.

What’s he going to do, fire me?