My Childhood Friend Fired Me for His Girlfriend. I Took My Millions With Me! novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Three Days, Paid
Jessamine takes her usual three days, comes back to a dead badge, and is fired in front of the whole floor. She claims her eleven percent, and the buyer in the lobby says Keaton told him he owns every share.
I asked for my three days off at the Monday stand-up, with the whole floor listening.
Keaton sat on the edge of the long table with his coffee.
He grinned at me, the same grin he'd had since we were nine.
"Same deal as always, Tess," he said. "Paid. Go."
Sienna looked up from her laptop. She had come in with him that morning and taken the chair beside his.
"Sorry, can I ask something?" she said. "It's a fair question, honestly. Does everyone get paid days like that?"
Nobody answered her.
"Tess isn't everyone," Keaton said.
"I know." Sienna laughed and touched his sleeve. "I'm just asking what I tell the others. You're my boyfriend, babe, not hers."
A few people looked at their phones.
Keaton shrugged and said, "We'll figure it out," and moved on to the southern routes.
He hadn't answered her. I noticed that, and then I let it go.
At noon I was waiting for the elevator with my small blue cooler when Sienna came down the hall with two coffees.
"I'm so sorry about that," she said. "I should have asked you privately. Take this for the drive."
It was a good coffee. It was the right order.
"I'll watch the alert dashboard while you're gone," she said. "Could you send me your admin login?"
I gave her a read-only one. It was a habit, not a decision.
Keaton texted me while I was in the parking garage: Nothing changes. Go. Love you, weirdo.
I put the cooler on the passenger seat and drove.
I came back on Thursday morning, three days later, with my hair still damp from the motel shower.
I pressed my badge to the reader at the front door.
It beeped red.
I pressed it again.
The guard at the desk stood up. He had known me for seven years.
"They told me to call upstairs if you came in," he said. "I'm sorry, Jessamine."
"Call, then," I said.
He called. Then he came around the desk and walked me to the elevator himself, without touching me.
The whole floor was waiting.
Every desk was empty. Every person was standing around the long table.
Keaton sat at the head of it. Sienna sat on his right. On his left was a woman from HR with a folder.
Somebody near the back was holding up a phone.
"Tess," Keaton said. "Sit down."
"I'll stand."
He rubbed his jaw. He had done that when we were twelve and he'd broken my bike.
"I'm letting you go," he said. "Effective today."
Nobody spoke. I could hear the printer on the far wall.
"The paid leave is a liability," he said. "One person on a special deal makes the whole company look informal. We need one structure."
"You approved that leave seven years ago," I said. "You said it every year."
"It was a favor. Favors don't scale."
Sienna looked at the table. She didn't look at me.
"Sienna is taking over operations," Keaton said. "It's already done."
"Already done," I said.
"Tess, don't make this ugly. You'll be fine. You were always going to be fine."
The woman from HR opened her folder.
"You'll receive two weeks of severance," she said. "Your stock options are forfeited on termination, per the plan."
"Which options?" I said.
"Your grant of two percent," Keaton said. "Your option plan."
"I don't have options," I said. "I have shares."
He frowned.
I took out my phone and opened the one folder I had kept on it for seven years.
"It's a stock grant," I said. "Eleven percent of Hallam Freight Systems, issued in my own name the day we incorporated."
I turned the screen so the HR woman could see it.
"It's signed by you, Keaton. Your signature is at the bottom. So is mine."
Keaton's grin was gone.
"That was a placeholder," he said.
"It's a signed grant. Shares don't vanish when someone is fired."
Sienna lifted her head at last. "Keaton?" she said quietly.
"I uploaded the data room for the buyer myself," I said. "The offer on Friday was forty-eight million."
The room moved. Someone near the back said, "Forty-eight?"
"Eleven percent of that is five million, two hundred and eighty thousand dollars," I said. "I'll be taking that with me."
"You can't," Keaton said.
"Watch."
I picked up my cooler, which I had never put down, and I walked to the elevator.
Nobody stopped me.
The doors closed on a floor full of people who were all looking at Keaton.
In the lobby, a man stood up from the leather bench by the window.
He was tall and broad in a charcoal overcoat, and he had been sitting there long enough that his coffee had gone cold on the table beside him.
"Ms. Odell," he said. "Emmett Stroud."
He held out a card.
"I came for the board meeting," he said. "On Friday Mr. Hallam told me he owns every share of this company."
He waited until I took the card.
"I'd like you to repeat what you just said upstairs, in front of my lawyers."
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