Dominated by My Dad's Boss novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Owner

Torin refuses her in front of the whole foundry shift; that night an EMBER tag with a ribbon hangs on her door and she calls him; the back reads Daughter.

He shook my hand like a stranger's.

His palm was warm and dry, and it was the same hand that had steadied my chin on Friday night.

"Pleasure," he said.

"Mr. Sutcliffe," I said.

My father beamed between us, a big tired man who had not smiled that way in months.

"Torin's the one who's keeping every job on the floor," Dad said. "Three years in writing. Not a layoff."

"That's very generous," I said.

I would have said it to a wall.

Torin let go of my hand first.

He put his glasses on, and just like that he was a man in a charcoal suit who had never knelt on anything.

"I'd like a walk through the pour floor," he said. "Ms. Renwick could show me, if she's free."

My father waved us out.

The catwalk above the furnace floor is the one place in the building where nobody can hear a thing.

Forty men were working the afternoon pour below us, and the noise came up through the soles of my boots.

Torin stopped at the rail and watched the ladle tip.

"Friday didn't happen," he said.

He didn't look at me.

"You knelt."

"I do not kneel for the daughter of a company I'm buying."

"You did, for about a minute and a half. I counted."

His jaw tightened.

"Ms. Renwick, you walked up to me in a room where nobody gives a real name. You didn't mention a father, a foundry or a sale."

"You didn't mention a firm."

"No names. I said that, and you agreed."

"I did," I said.

The heat of the pour was on my face.

"Hand the deal to another partner," I said.

"I can't."

"You just said you can't kneel for me. So give it to somebody who isn't a problem."

"The reason your father has a three-year jobs clause is because I wrote it," he said, low. "Another partner at my firm will gut this floor in a year and sell the furnace for scrap."

"So you're staying."

"I'm staying. And Friday didn't happen."

I leaned both forearms on the rail next to his.

Below us a man in a leather apron looked up and waved at me.

I waved back.

"Then I'll find someone else," I said. "A stranger. A worse one."

His head turned.

It was the first time he'd looked at me since the office, and his eyes had gone from polite to something much darker.

"You will not."

"I have four weeks. You said no. Somebody else will say yes."

"You don't know what some of those men are."

"Then teach me."

"I can't, Bronwyn."

It was the first time he'd said my name.

I felt it in my knees.

"You're wasting my time, Mr. Sutcliffe," I said, in front of the whole shift if anyone had cared to look up.

I walked down the stairs without waiting for an answer.

That night I got home to my apartment in Tremont at nine.

I'd taken the long way to put off thinking, and I still had the tag in my coat pocket.

I climbed the stairs with my keys out.

Something was tied to my doorknob.

A brass tag on a black ribbon, swinging a little in the draft.

It was identical to the one in my pocket.

I put my hand in my coat and pulled mine out and held it up beside the other in the hall light.

Same brass.

Same stamped letters.

EMBER.

The ribbon had been tied in a neat double knot that I didn't know how to untie.

My hands were cold.

Nobody had followed me.

I had checked the mirrors the whole way.

I stood there for a full minute listening to my own apartment.

Then I got out my phone and found the business card I had pocketed that morning, the one with the firm's name embossed in grey.

I dialed the cell number written on the back.

He answered on the second ring.

"This is Sutcliffe."

"It's me," I said. "I'm at my door. There's a tag on it. It's the same as the one from Friday, and I haven't told you why I was there."

There was a silence.

Then a chair scraped.

"Don't go inside," he said. "Send me your address."

I sent it.

He was on my landing twelve minutes later, without the jacket, in a shirt with the collar open and his glasses gone.

He didn't touch me.

He looked at the ribbon, then at the door, then at the lock.

"Nobody's forced it," he said.

"I know."

He lifted the tag in the flat of his palm and turned it over.

There was something scratched into the back, thin, deliberate.

He read it first.

I watched his face go still.

"What does it say?" I asked.

He held it out so I could see.

The scratched word was small and neat.

Daughter.

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