If that is how he wishes to treat me then fine.
I’ll be the first to admit that I have a colorful past and yes, I did and have been known to sleep around the office, more so in my younger days. But he’s failed to notice that I’ve changed a lot, and taken my work more serious because I want the responsibility of running the new branch of Tanners.
I know when to be serious and when to play, and I don’t play or fuck around anymore at work. That was the change I made to my life two years ago when the opportunity for this job first came about.
What’s got me in this shit is he heard that I slept with one of the temps and he started to freak. She doesn’t even work here anymore. He thinks this will be history repeating itself from five years ago when I got involved with Marsha, a budding associate.
She got pissed at me when it was clear we were just screwing around, and when she left she took a host of high value clients with her because she was one of the senators daughter’s. Dad has been mad at me ever since. Everything I do now is under scrutiny.
Now there’s this shit. Unfair shit that shouldn’t count. He’s making me compete for the job. Pitting me against Riley; my cousin. A guy I loathe.
Riley and I are both senior partners here but we are always at war.
“Joshua,” he says my name with more insistence. It’s only my parents who full name me. Everyone else calls me Josh.
“Dad… I’m still pissed as fucking shit at you?” I answer and smile at his reaction. He hates me swearing.
My parents had me later in life. I’m thirty-years old. Although he doesn’t look it, Dad is seventy-one. Mom just turned seventy.
They’re what you call old school and they had a strict upbringing. My grandfather on Dad’s side was a lieutenant in the army and fought i
n the second world war. Mom’s dad was a Baptist Minister and I’m pretty sure she blames me for the heart attack that took him a few years back when my asshole of a cousin told him I practically live in the sex club.
“Joshua, you think this is funny?” Dad says, nostrils flared. “Do you want the job or not?”
“Dad… I can’t even with you today. How can you stand there and ask me that?” This whole conversation here is the thing that caused me to lose sleep.
Work is the thing that usually makes me lose sleep because I’m the only attorney at the firm that takes on the difficult cases. I’m the only attorney here that can win a twisted as shit intellectual property dispute, coming out on top every single time, but despite that I have to compete for the job I’ve been working hard for the last two years. A job I thought was mine, hands down.
His shoulders slump. “Joshua, this is a multibillion dollar firm. It’s simple. That is what it is and I can’t run around after you cleaning up the mess you make with a project as big as this. Here I can keep tabs on you and I have a handle on things. If I give you control over the new building, I need to trust that you can be the face of the firm. I need to trust that you will be the man I want you to be.”
I seethe. “I’m not that now? Despite everything I’ve done, I’m not that guy yet? But Fucking Riley is?” That motherfucker has had it in for me since birth.
Fucking asshole… he’s always been in fucking competition with me. What rubs me the wrong way is I know deep down that my parents wish I could be more like him. The Goody Two shoes prick who does everything perfectly.
“Joshua, Riley is a good option to lead the firm. If this was down to a question on expertise alone, you’d win hands down, but it’s not. It’s a lot more than a question of who’s better than who. This is the way it will work, and it starts today with the new associate. Since I have to focus on the new training program I need you to take over her training. The training I was going to give her. Three months with her and getting this department in order. You need a secretary, no more temps, Most of all, I need you to shape up.”
As if I haven’t been shaping up. I keep my silence because he’ll start talking about women and shit again. What he wants is for me to get married.
A small smile spread over his face. “Jennifer, isn’t as bad as what you think. She’s a good woman.”
I bite down hard on my back teeth. Now’s not the time for me to give an answer to that. Jennifer is Corrine’s daughter. Mom’s best friend. So they met at church.
I won’t tell Dad that Jennifer was the reason the Petersons got divorced because Mrs. Peterson caught her riding her husband’s eighty-year-old cock. And I won’t tell Dad it was Jennifer’s fault why Officer Beaumont’s wife to be left him at the altar.
Cheating. The woman is a cheat and loves money and cock that doesn’t belong to her. But I won’t tell Dad that because he still remembers the sweet little girl he accompanied to her first communion. He thinks of her as heaven sent and literally like God loaned the world one of his angels.
I won’t tell him either that while I might be unattached and look like a suitable candidate to the ethereal being he thinks she is, she’d only have me because of my wealth.
I may be a bastard who thinks he owns the world and has women at his beck and call eating out of his hands more often than not because of my wealth, and my looks, but there’s a part of me who wouldn’t want to be married to a woman who wants to be with me just for that.
I’m too possessive to tolerate cheating and I don’t share things that belong to me. Since I expect that, I would be the same. That is how it would be.
But… I‘ll humor him.
Three months. I can look like I’m trying to play by his rules for three months, get control of the new firm and then do whatever the fuck I want.
I have my own stipulations, however.