"Escort work"—what a convenient excuse to throw around.
"Fine." I kept my voice flat. "Tell me what it'll take to get you to attend the mixer."
"Simple." Arlene Lambert didn't miss a beat. "Double our year-end bonuses. Double our salaries. Do that, and we won't report you for trying to pimp us out."
She crossed her arms, satisfaction oozing from every pore. "Otherwise? We're not going. Which means you won't close that contract—and I'm guessing the penalties for that will be brutal."
Four years.
Four years since I'd built this company from nothing. No clients, no reputation, no safety net. Now we were worth hundreds of millions.
And I'd made damn sure my people were taken care of. Compensation packages that topped the industry. Weekends off. Overtime? Practically nonexistent. A subsidized cafeteria where chicken wings cost a dollar and fresh lobster ran ten bucks a plate.
Craig Norris. Gertrude Lawrence. Jonathan James. They were among the handful who'd been with me since the beginning.
Back then, they'd known nothing. Craig claimed to be a college graduate, but the man couldn't operate a basic spreadsheet. Jonathan could barely string a sentence together when he first walked in—no confidence, no presence, couldn't pitch to save his life. And Gertrude? High school diploma, rejected everywhere she applied. She'd broken down crying during her interview, begging me for a chance, saying she couldn't afford her next meal if I turned her away.
Limited skills, all of them. I'd trained them myself, one painstaking lesson at a time. Raised their salaries year after year as they grew.
And now they were using my own success against me.
The contract Bartholomew Walker had offered would net us profits in the hundreds of millions. But deals like that required relationship-building—our teams needed face time with his. Skip the mixer, and the partnership would sour before it started. The penalties for breach would be catastrophic.
They knew I was cornered. That's why they'd come.
"And if I refuse?"
My voice dropped. The temperature in the room seemed to follow.
Arlene's smirk didn't waver. "Mr. Hughes, cooperation benefits everyone."
I turned to Craig and the others. "When you first walked through my door, you couldn't do a single useful thing. I taught you. I built you. I pay you salaries no one else would match. And this is when you decide to twist the knife?"
Silence.
It stretched for a long moment before Craig cleared his throat. "Boss, we just... we just want better benefits, that's all..."
"Craig." I lifted my teacup, took a slow sip. "Do you remember what you were like when you started? You didn't know the first thing about tech. I could've tossed your resume in the trash, but I didn't. I sat with you, walked you through everything step by step, turned you into our Technical Director. Fifty thousand a month. That's what I pay you now."
My gaze shifted. "Maria Swanson. Last year, your mother was diagnosed with kidney failure. Surgery cost three hundred thousand dollars. You were drowning—no options, no way out. Who gave you that loan?"
Three hundred thousand. She still hadn't paid it all back. I'd seen how hard she was struggling, so I'd forgiven the remaining hundred thousand and change. Told her to forget it.
"And you—Nelson Finch. You couldn't scrape together the fifty-thousand-dollar bride price your girlfriend's family demanded. She was about to leave you. You got on your knees in my office, begged me to help, swore you'd work yourself to the bone for me." I let the words hang. "This is how you repay that?"
"And you..."
I pointed at them, one by one, naming what I'd done for each.
Heads lowered. Eyes dropped to the floor. Not one of them could meet my gaze.
Without me, most of them would be delivering takeout or working assembly lines, screwing bolts into circuit boards for pennies.
"Mr. Hughes." Arlene's voice cut through the shame-thick air. "They're your employees. Employees hit hard times, bosses help out—isn't that just how it works?"
"Then by that logic," I said, "I've helped every single person in this room. Now I'm the one in a bind. Shouldn't you be helping me?"
"We work for you," she shot back, not missing a beat. "We show up, we generate profit for the company. We've already helped you."
"Boss, if you're going to be this stingy about it..." Craig shrugged. "Then I don't see why any of us should bother with this mixer."
He nodded to himself, as if that settled it. "Yeah. I don't think we will."
With someone leading the charge, the others found their nerve. Voices rose. Fingers pointed.
At me.
