Griz Rides Tall (Razor's Edge MC #2)

2

Becca’s life fell apart on a day that started out great.

It was one of those days where everything seemed to line up just right; she woke up feeling energized
and full of pep, springing out of bed and opening the curtains to let in what turned out to be a tremendous amount of sunshine.  She’d actually beaten her alarm clock by two minutes; she clicked it off with a little satisfaction at not having needed it,
and went about her morning ritual of getting ready for work.

Even that went like clockwork.  She put on her favorite pantsuit, the one that made her look a solid five pounds lighter, and caught a look at herself in her full length mirror before heading out the door.

I am looking really good today, she thought.  I don’t
know what I did last night to make this happen, but I definitely need to do it again tonight.

Traffic was light.  There was hardly anybody in the drive-through lane at her favorite Starbucks, and the barista gave her an extra-large latte instead of a large by accident.

At this rate, she was starting to feel like she should buy a few lottery tickets.

The first sign of trouble came after she walked into the office.  Up on the twenty-eighth floor of a high rise building that looked to be made almost entirely of glass, the law office that Becca worked for could only be described as sprawling.

The entire floor was filled with people in business attire scurrying about like worker ants, shuttling papers this way and that, answering phones, and otherwise doing all the million little things that go into the operations of a major law office.

As she wandered through the sea of busy legal bees, she slowly began to notice first one sideways look, then another, then another.  At first, she thought it might be a few men harmlessly checking her out as she passed, but soon enough, she realized the looks on their faces didn’t add up with that assessment.

Something was off.  She wasn’t sure what, but the sense of wrongness tickled at the back of her mind right up until she spotted Ryan, who was not only her supervisor, but also over the last few months, her late night booty call.

He wasn’t exactly the best lover… rather mediocre, in fact… but Becca had been putting so many hours
in at work, that she never had any real chance to meet anybody outside of work.  So, she’d been lonely, and Ryan was, well, there, and he could be charming when he wanted to be.

“Oh, look who it is,” Becca said.  “Listen, sorry I couldn’t get together last night, but I was…”

“No, no, forget all that,” Ryan said.  “Forget it.  We need to talk.”

Becca laughed that off.  Ryan had a habit of taking himself way too seriously and she loved to make fun of him for it.  “Ooo, do we need to talk?  Have I been a bad girl?”

“I mean it, Becca.”

“What is with you?” Becca said.  “Two days ago you were dancing around my living room buck naked and now you’re acting like I just took Mom and Dad’s car without permission.”

“I’m trying to be serious,” Ryan said.  “And if you were smart, you’d be serious right now, too.”

Something about his tone, added with the strange sidelong glances she was getting, erased any trace of silly playfulness out of her.  “Why?  What is going on?”

“The partners are on their way down.”

“Which ones?”

“All of them.”

“What?  Why?”

“It’s the Rayak deal.”

The Rayak deal?  That had gone fine, had made the firm a nice chunk of money, in fact.

“What about it?” Becca said.

“What about it?  They’re super fucking pissed, that’s what about it.”

“What could they be pissed about?  You did brief them on everything, didn’t you?”

“I trust you to do your fucking job and give me a deal that I can put forward to them without an issue.”

That’s a no, Becca thought.  He must’ve never bothered to brief them.

“And I did that,” Becca said. “I did my job.  I walked you through every piece of that deal and you okayed it.”

“No,” he said.  “No.  If I had known about those IP rights you let go, I would never have signed off on this.”

“I told you all about that!” she said. “I specifically went over all that, in detail, to make sure you wouldn’t freak.  Like you are right now.”

“I am not freaking out.  You dropped the ball.”

“No, you were probably high on cocaine and Adderall when I reviewed the deal with you, and you can’t remember a goddamn thing,” Becca said.

It wasn’t much of an exaggeration.  Ryan was charming when he wanted to be, yes, but he was also sloppy and careless and liked the smell of
cocaine a bit too much for anyone’s good.

“You lost the firm a ton of money, Becca.  A ton of money.”

“What are you talking about?” she said.  “I didn’t lose anybody anything.  You wouldn’t have even had
that deal if it weren’t for me.  I brought it in, not you.”

“That’s not true.”

“That’s one hundred percent true,” Becca said.  “None of those guys at Rayak like you, Ryan.  I
believe the term they used was ‘pencil-necked weasel’.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Well, start believing it.  The only reason negotiations started at all was that their head of legal reached out to me.  To me.”

“What?  Did you fuck him too?”

“Ugh, you prick,” she said. “You know what? Maybe I should have, seeing as how I have yet to get a
good lay out of you.  Which, by the way, has just come to a screeching halt, in case you were wondering.”

“You’re right about that.”

Becca paused.  Ryan was being an utter douchebag, and she really was in a mood to tell him what was what, but something was up, and she needed to know what it was. 

“What are you talking about?” she said.

“That IP you left on the table.  That stuff was a gold mine and you let it go for pennies.”

“That nerdy guy worked his whole life on that do-hickey whatever it was that he invented.  We couldn’t just steal it from him.”

“Oh, grow up.  This is what we do.”

“No, it isn’t.  We make deals.  That doesn’t mean you have to screw the other guy over.  You look for a win-win, one where everybody gets a good deal.”

“Please,” Ryan said.  “Save the preaching for Sunday.”

“It’s not preaching, it’s called not being an asshole.  And, by the way, it’s how you build a solid reputation for future deals.  If all you do is screw over every person that you deal with, the word gets out and nobody will work with you.  Which, by the way, is exactly why nobody works with you and I end up bringing in all the deals.”

“I’m so glad I’m not going to have to listen to this anymore.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Becca said. “What’s going on here, Ryan?”

“Just… keep your mouth shut and your head down, and maybe it won’t be too bad.”

Becca bit her lip on any retort.  There was no reason for her to be in trouble, none at all, but the way Ryan and everyone else was acting, it looked like somehow, she’d wandered into a minefield.

This is ridiculous, Becca thought.  I brought the firm a multimillion dollar deal, got it signed off on by my supervisor, and now they’re going to complain about the money I brought in for them?  What is going on around here?

She kept her thoughts to herself as she walked into the conference room with Ryan.  It seemed like every one of the partners was in there, sitting around the massive table, all wearing the same expensive dark gray suit.

“We’re going to get right to it, here,” one of them said.  “Some very serious issues have been raised concerning job performance.”

It sounded to Becca like Ryan was about to get chewed out for being sloppy.  She’d warned him about it before, but he never listened.

“What do you have to say to that, Becca?” the partner continued.

“Wait, what?” Becca said.  “Me?”

“According to your supervisor, you were the one who approved those changes in the Rayak deal.”

“That is not… Ryan!  Tell them!”

Ryan shook his head, shrugged his shoulders.  “I tried to cover for you as best I could.”

“What?” she said.

It was suddenly all clear to her.  Ryan hadn’t done his job, he hadn’t briefed the partners fully on the deal, and when the partners found a problem with it, he was trying to lay it all on her.

“Listen,” Becca said.  “Whatever he’s told you, is a
lie.  I brought that deal to him, he approved everything.  If there were any issues…”

“Trying to shift the blame is unprofessional,” another one of the partners said.

“Shift the blame?” she said. “I brought this firm a successful deal.  One that made everyone in this room a boatload of money, I’d like to point out.”

“That’s being overly generous to yourself,” the first partner said.  “Especially when we find out that many millions of dollars were lost due to poor judgement.”

“Poor judgement?” she said.  Just keep quiet and maybe it won’t be so bad, Ryan had said, but
this was outrageous.  “We are talking about the Rayak deal, right?  The one that I brought to you?  The one that didn’t even exist without me?”

“We have allowed you to cultivate some relationships by leveraging our considerable network of resources, that’s true,” another one of the partners said.  “We expect nothing less.”

God.  Now the partners were trying to take credit
for her work.  She’d busted her butt for years, years of hard work, to create her own network of contacts throughout her industry, and now, they were trying to act like it was all just handed to her.  By them.

She looked around the room at the partners and saw a never-ending field of crusty old entitled men.  It looked like the locker room of a country club that required a seven figure bank account and a withered old penis to join.

And that was when she realized.  There was no talking her way out of this.  They didn’t care what the real situation was.  Ryan had been whispering
in their ears and the ungrateful old bastards had swallowed down every word.

“Oh, I see what’s going on here,” she said. “Those guys at Rayak were right, Ryan, you are a little weasel.”

“Becca…” Ryan said.

“You’re throwing me under the bus so that you can make partner,” Becca said.

“That is not what’s happening here.”

“That is exactly what’s happening here.  I can’t believe you.  You’ve been screwing me for months
in your apartment and now, you’re screwing me at the office.”

I really should shut up now, she thought.  Shut up, put my head down and walk out with some dignity.

But she just couldn’t do it.  Something was churning inside of her, burning its way out, refusing to be denied.  It was rising up like flood water and couldn’t be stopped.  This son of a bitch Ryan, who’d been sleeping with her for months, was throwing her under the bus all to save his incompetent ass, and the rest of them were letting him do it.

This was insane.  This was impossible.  She’d left her family to come out here to Denver and spent years and years busting her butt to make a life here.  All those late nights, the six and seven day work weeks, the countless phone calls and dinners and events to build up her list of contacts, and these greedy rich assholes were going to pull it all out
from under her.

Well, the hell with it, she thought.  If I’m going to go out, I’m going out in a blaze of glory.  They think they can get rid of me?  They’re never going
to forget me.

“You guys don’t even care, do you?” Becca said, looking around at the crusty old partners.  “You made up your minds long before you ever
stepped foot in here, to believe Ryan and his lies rather than hear my side.  Well, let me tell you a little something about your new partner.”

“Don’t,” Ryan said.

“You guys were worried about inadequate performance?  This noodle dick knows all about that.  And I don’t just mean on the job.”

“You should stop, Becca,” Ryan said.

But she couldn’t stop.  It was too wrong.  It was the definition of wrong, the epitome of unfair, and she wasn’t going to let it go.

“Oh, yeah.  If he’s been whispering all this bullshit in
your ears about the Rayak deal to cover his ass, I’m sure he’s told you about our affair.  Well, don’t believe the locker room hype.”

Ryan’s face was pale, ashen, his mouth hanging open in disbelief.  He’d thought she was just going to put her head down and walk meekly out of his life.  Well, he’d missed his guess, big time. 

“That’s right,” Becca said.  “Half the time, this little
backstabber’s undersized penis would go soft inside of me.  Oh, he’d try to blame it on the stress, or the half a dozen lines of blow he just snorted up his stupid nose into his stupid face.”

“Becca!” Ryan gasped.

“This is unbelievable,” one of the partners said.

“You can say that again,” Becca said. “It is unbelievable.  It’s unbelievable that I would bring a multimillion dollar deal to you, wrap it all up with a nice little bow, and then this asshole whispers a few lies in your ears and you’re going to fire me?  For
what?  Making you money without your having to lift a finger, you old turd?”

“If you want any future in this profession, young lady,” one of the partners said, “you would be wise
to stop right here.”

“Oh, who are you kidding?” Becca said.  “You grandpas all made up your minds long before I walked in here.  Well, have fun with your backstabbing weasel of a new partner.  You deserve each other.  You can expect to lose a lot of
business once I walk out of that door, but you know what?  You’ll never acknowledge that.  You’ll come up with some other bullshit fabrication about me to explain it away, so that you can go on telling yourself you’re some sort of mastermind.  When, truth be told, you just got played by Mr. Softie here.”

The partner who had started off the entire meeting cleared his throat and said, “There’s clearly no point in continuing this conversation.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Becca said, and walked out of the room.

She was actually feeling pretty good about her take this job and shove it moment, until she had to fill
a box with her personal effects from her deck under the heavy stares of everyone else at the office.  All of a sudden, she didn’t feel like a wrongfully accused person who had righteously stormed out of a bad situation.  Now, she felt like a humiliated criminal, forced to endure a walk of shame as she
carried her box of random belongings all the way across the floor to the elevator, with every single eyeball in the office glued to her.

Becca managed to keep her head held high, barely, keeping her emotions in check until she made it to the elevator.  Then, there was something about the ding of the elevator doors closing shut that seemed to hammer home the finality of the situation; it felt like the ringing of a doomsday clock.

By the time she reached the lobby, she was losing it.  She walked her way across the lobby as quickly as her high heels would allow, ignoring the stares of any and all who happened to be floating past.

Every one of them knew what was going on.  People didn’t carry small boxes of personal belongings out like this unless they just got canned.  Everybody knew, and everybody was judging, she was sure of it.

Once she reached her car, she went into full freak-out mode.  All of the feels jumped around inside of her like out of control kangaroos; outrage, embarrassment, fear about the future, and every other damn thing imaginable. 

Her breath started huffing a little as she started her car, and she decided she shouldn’t drive, not yet, she had to purge some of this terrible emotion out of her before she exploded.  So, she dug out her cell phone and called her sister, Kate.

When Kate answered, a bunch of words came flowing out of Becca’s mouth, jumbled together until not even she was sure exactly what she was saying.  Finally, she managed to get out I got fired, Katie, and it was bullshit, before more of her words turned into mush in her mouth.

“Why don’t you come out here for a while?” Kate said. 

Go see her sister in Pennsylvania?  That might be just the thing.  Get away from this town, get away
from her troubles, and get her head straight before dealing with the dumpster fire her life had turned into out of nowhere.

“Yeah,” she said.  “Yeah, I’ll fly out there tomorrow.”

If the plane doesn’t crash, she thought.