“See? It’s such a regular occurrence you don’t even remember.”
“If I crushed them, they deserved it.”
I ignore that ridiculous self-justification. “I saw how Webber and Diana looked after leaving your office.” Especially Diana, that poor child.
Emmett curses under his breath. “Did they complain to you?”
“No,” I say quickly, not wanting to get them into trouble. We aren’t close enough for that, and I’m usually too busy to gossip. “But I could tell.”
“Have you ever reviewed their deliverables?”
“No.”
“So you have no idea why I had to ‘crush’ them, as you put it.”
“I don’t know the specifics, but I can guess. You just wanted to give them training for fun.”
Emmett shakes his head. “Are you still holding a grudge?”
“Of course not. I’m a forgiving human being.”
He heaves a sigh. “Okay. What I’m about to say is strictly between you and me.”
“Okay.” I want to hear how he plans to justify his treatment.
“Webber and Diana both fucked up. I gave Webber a handful of proposals and told him to rank them in order of viability. They aren’t for profit. I wanted a preliminary report on which one to invest in for the most overreaching change in the world. For every hundred ideas we fund for profit, we take on one for simply making the world better.”
“We do?” I blink. “I thought everything at GrantEm was for profit.”
“We don’t advertise it because we don’t want them to receive different treatment. Not even Webber knows what they were really for. Anyway.” Emmett continues in a scary-calm tone, “What does he do? Not only does he trash every single proposal for being ‘impractical,’ he CCs the company founders who submitted the ideas in his email to me! I don’t know where he got the balls to pull that kind of stunt, but he’s lucky I didn’t rip them off and shove them down his throat.”
Wow. Emmett’s right. Webber did fuck up, and he’s lucky he didn’t get fired.
“As for Diana, she’s sloppy. I told her she needs to QA her work with more care, but she just won’t do it. You can turn in a sloppy projection to your professor. It’s a class assignment, and the only thing you’re risking is your grade. But in real life, you’re risking millions of dollars and the livelihoods of people who work at the firm and the portfolio companies.”
I wince because that is also a screwup. I make a mental note to see if I can help Diana do better. Webber’s close enough to my rank and year that he might not want it, but she would.
“Don’t bother,” Emmett says.
“Huh?”
“You’re thinking about helping. Right? They wouldn’t appreciate it.”
“How do you know?”
“They badmouth people who are doing better than them. They think the break room is private.” Emmett smiles coldly. “It’s not.”
I’m glad I rarely gossip anywhere in the company, the break room included. But…does this mean Emmett knows about the betting pool about us? Or maybe not, because he hasn’t done a thing to indicate that he’s aware.
He continues, “Anyway, back to the gifts and dates. They’re a must. Non-negotiable.”
“More important than sex?” I ask, stunned that he’s stuck on this poin
t. I can’t picture any of my ex-boyfriends arguing this vociferously about gifts and dates when they could have sex. Gifts and dates were things they did to get laid—the means to a happy end.
“Why does your mind go to that extreme? I never said sex didn’t matter. It’s the trifecta.”
“It’s a fling. Besides, when would we be able to date? I never leave early enough for that, and it’ll look suspicious if I start.”