"Are you coming or not?"
"Let me spell it out for you. Once my family gets into this company, every single one of them will outrank you. If you don't start kissing up to me now, you'll regret it later."
I listened to Maureen Fox's threats and bribes from the other end of the line, and I couldn't help but laugh.
"What a coincidence. I've never been the type to kiss up to anyone. Since your family is so well-connected, figure out your own ride home."
I hung up.
Maureen must have been seething, because a string of messages came through almost instantly:
"You're a factory floor grunt and you have the nerve to talk back to me?"
"Just wait."
"I'm not just going to have my cousin fire you. I'm going to have you blacklisted from the entire industry!"
I stared at the messages and was genuinely speechless.
I ran over a dozen companies. My net worth cleared ten billion dollars. And here I was, being threatened with career destruction by an intern.
If word of this ever got out, my friends in the business world would laugh at me for a solid year.
But Maureen's arrogance wasn't what actually concerned me.
It was her cousin.
A single HR director shouldn't have had that kind of reach. Which meant the rot inside the company had already spread to the upper ranks.
With that thought, I sent a message to Vice President Gallagher:
"Send out a notice. Tomorrow morning at nine, I'm holding a company-wide meeting. All employees must attend. No exceptions, no leave requests."
The message barely went through before Desmond replied:
"Understood, Mr. Henson."
The next morning, I drove to the office as usual.
The moment I stepped out of my car, I spotted Maureen standing at the front gate with her arms crossed over her chest.
Next to her stood a man in his early thirties, sharply dressed in a tailored suit, radiating the kind of smugness that came from unchecked authority.
I glanced at his name badge. Rupert McClain, HR Director.
The second Maureen saw me, she darted forward to block my path and turned to him.
"That's him, Rupert! That's the one!"
Rupert looked me up and down with the slow, deliberate appraisal of a man who believed he held all the cards. "So you're the factory worker who disrespected my cousin?"
"Who hired you in the first place? I don't recall ever seeing your face."
To avoid the tedious formalities that came with my position, I always kept a low profile at the branch office. Plain clothes, no entourage, and the cheapest car in my garage. Only the core executives knew who I really was.
An HR director didn't come close to qualifying.
When Rupert said he'd never seen me before, Maureen's eyes lit up like she'd just stumbled onto the find of a lifetime.
"Rupert, even you don't recognize him? Then he definitely got in through the back door!"
"Fire him. Right now!"
Rupert let out a short laugh, his expression dripping with contempt. "A back-door hire. That explains the attitude."
He tilted his chin up, every inch the petty tyrant savoring his moment.
"Tell you what. Out of the goodness of my heart, since you did chauffeur my cousin to and from work for a month, I'll let you keep your job. But you'll need to agree to a few conditions."
"First: a placement fee. Fifty thousand dollars, wired directly to my personal account. Otherwise, one word from me and you're gone."
"Second: from now on, you drive my cousin to and from work every single day. You do whatever she says, whenever she says it. No questions asked."
"Third: last night, you ignored my cousin's request to come pick us up. That requires compensation. Cab fare, one thousand. Drinks and karaoke, four thousand. And since my cousin was so upset she couldn't sleep all night, that's another ten thousand for emotional distress."
He held up a hand, ticking off the total like a loan shark settling accounts.
"That puts you at sixty-five thousand. Cash or transfer?"
I stood there, taking it all in.
Never in my life had I imagined that as the owner of this company, I'd have my own employees shaking me down for a hiring fee.
