You Fired a Tech Genius novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: The Chairman's Room

At the old chairman's bedside Braxton offers Axel his job back with a gag clause and a million dollars; Axel refuses in front of the nurse; Bridger is locked out and waiting outside his building.

Gilbert Hallett's house was a brownstone in Lincoln Park with a ramp bolted over the front steps.

A home nurse in blue scrubs opened the door before I knocked.

"He said you'd come," she told me. "He's been staring at the clock for an hour."

I had walked in this house a hundred times with a laptop under my arm.

I had never walked in with a cardboard box and nowhere to put it.

Gilbert sat in the front room in a recliner, wrapped in a grey cardigan.

He held a pillow against his chest the way the doctors tell you to.

He was sixty-seven, and in two weeks he had gone from a big man to a folded one.

"Axel," he said.

"You texted me," I said. "Before I'd left the garage."

"I watched the all-hands," he said. "On the tablet. My son sent me the link himself."

His mouth trembled once and went flat.

"Why did he want you to see it?" I asked.

"So I'd know who runs the company now."

I set the box on the carpet.

"You said she wants more than my code," I said. "Zoe Kostas. What does that mean?"

Gilbert looked at the window.

"It means don't rush," he said. "Come home to Hallett first. Let Braxton cool off. Let me talk to him."

"He fired me in front of six hundred people."

"He'll apologize."

"Will he?"

Gilbert didn't answer, and the silence was the answer.

The front door opened behind me.

I didn't need to turn around to know the walk.

"There he is," Braxton said. "The martyr."

He came in with his hands in the pockets of his quarter-zip and the platinum watch showing at his wrist.

He didn't say hello to his father.

He looked at the pillow on Gilbert's chest and said, "Dad, you look terrible."

"Braxton," Gilbert said weakly.

"I'm doing you a favor, Axel," Braxton said, turning to me. "Sit down."

"I'll stand."

"Fine." He took a folded paper from his pocket and tossed it on the coffee table.

"That's an advisory role. Twelve months. A million dollars in four installments."

The nurse stopped moving in the doorway.

"All you do is sign the second page," Braxton said.

I picked it up and read the second page.

It said I would never speak publicly about Hallett Systems or its leadership.

It also said my work on Ledgerline was done as an employee under the direction of Braxton Hallett.

"Under the direction of," I read aloud.

"It's boilerplate."

"I wrote the engine in an office your father gave me," I said. "Before you knew what the engine was for."

"And now it has my name on it," Braxton said. "Funny how that works."

"Braxton," his father whispered. "Please."

"What?" Braxton turned on him, and his voice rose in a way it never did in public.

"You want me to say it nicer? He made me look like an idiot in front of the whole building."

"I said it would lock," I said.

"You said I was wrong."

"You are wrong."

The words dropped into the room.

Braxton smiled at me with every one of his veneers.

"Here's the thing about being brilliant, Axel," he said. "Nobody pays for it twice."

"A million dollars is more than your father ever made piloting an ore boat, isn't it?"

I stood very still.

My father had died three months before I took this job.

I had never told Braxton what he did for a living.

That meant he had looked it up.

"Take the money," Braxton said, almost kindly. "Go to Duluth. Fish."

I put the paper back on the table.

I tore it once down the middle, then again, and let the pieces fall on the carpet next to my box.

"That's your answer?" he said.

"You've got nineteen days," I said. "I'd spend them on the check."

Gilbert closed his eyes.

He didn't tell his son to stop, and he didn't tell me to stay.

He lay there with the pillow against his heart while his boy stood over me in his own front room.

I picked up the box.

"You'll get nothing from me," I said to Braxton. "Not a line, not a favor, not a warning."

"You already gave the warning," he said. "It's on video. Everybody laughed."

"Not everybody."

The nurse held the door open for me on the way out, and she didn't meet my eyes.

Braxton followed me onto the porch.

The October wind off the lake pulled at his collar.

"One more thing," he said, quiet now, so his father couldn't hear. "The founders' wall in the lobby. Your plate comes down tonight."

"Take it down."

"I'll have it ground off. By morning the paint will be dry."

He went back inside and shut the door.

I stood on the ramp with my box and my hands shaking, and I let them.

My phone buzzed against my hip.

It was Bridger.

They locked me out for asking where you went. I'm outside your building with a box too.

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