My Holiday Bonus Was a $5 Million IOU! I Quit and Their Company Collapsed novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Bonus
At the party her brother gets a sports car, her sister a loft and the intern fifteen thousand dollars; Mara's envelope holds a five million dollar debt. She tells sixty staff the account is hers, locks the company out and quits. Ends: an email from the sponsor, and the renewal twelve days away.
At the company holiday party, my brother got the keys to a sports car.
My mother held them up on a red ribbon so the whole floor could see.
My brother kissed the key fob, and sixty employees clapped.
The intern streamed it live on the company page.
Next my sister got the keys to a loft downtown, three bedrooms with a view of the lake.
She cried and hugged my mother, and my mother cried too.
Brynn had been out sick for most of the year.
She came back to work in November, thinner and brighter, and nobody in the office ever asked what had changed.
The intern had started in October.
She got an envelope with fifteen thousand dollars in it.
"Best first quarter anyone's ever had," my mother said into the microphone.
I stood by the coat rack with a paper plate in one hand and the other pressed to my left side.
At noon my mother had squeezed my arm and said, "Yours is the big one, honey. I'm saving it for last."
I had believed her.
My name is Mara Sjoberg, I'm twenty-nine, and I have worked eight years at my mother's company, Sjoberg Creative.
My mother is Constance Sjoberg, and she has run it for twenty years.
My brother is Luther, and my sister is Brynn.
"And last," my mother said, "our Mara."
People clapped.
She walked over and put a cream envelope in my hand, with my name on it in her handwriting.
The intern turned the camera on me.
Inside was one page.
At the top, in bold, it said ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF DEBT.
Under that: "Unapproved leave, November 4 to 6. Medical costs advanced by the company. Lost revenue."
Under that: "Total owed: $5,000,000.00."
I read it twice.
"This says I owe the company five million dollars."
My mother's smile didn't move.
She turned the microphone away from her mouth and spoke low.
"It's a formality, sweetheart. Sign it tonight, work it off with overtime, and we never mention it again."
Luther laughed. "Merry Christmas, Mar."
"For what?" I asked.
"For the two days you took," my mother said.
"I asked for one day. The surgery needed three nights in the hospital, and I posted from the bed on the second day. You told me that was fine."
"Not in writing."
"The hospital bills went to insurance. I never saw one."
"Then you'll never see this one either, if you sign." She patted my arm. "Mara. Everyone is watching."
They were.
The camera light was red.
Brynn had come up beside me and was reading the page over my shoulder.
"Mom, what is that?" she said.
"Go enjoy your loft, baby," my mother said. "This is business."
Brynn looked at me.
I looked at the paper.
I thought about eight years of Sundays in my own kitchen, filming bread and soup and roast chicken until my wrists were scarred with burns.
Four point eight million people followed Sunday Table, and everyone in that room knew which account paid for the party.
"Luther," I said. "Open Sunday Table on your phone."
He grinned and did it.
His screen showed the company dashboard, with my videos lined up in rows.
"Who owns that account?" I asked.
"The company does," he said. "Obviously."
"I made it with my own email when I was twenty-one. When Mom hired me she asked for my login so you could schedule posts. I gave it to her."
My mother's hand dropped from my arm.
"Nobody ever signed anything," I said. "The company just manages it. Or it did."
I took out my phone and removed the company's access with one tap.
Luther's screen went white and then showed a login box.
"It says I'm signed out," he said.
The intern's phone chimed.
So did the phone of the woman from accounting, and the phone of the man at the buffet table.
Every device in the room that had touched Sunday Table went dark.
"You can't do that," my mother said.
For the first time that night her smile slipped.
"I just did."
"Mara, sign that paper, or you walk out of here owing me five million dollars."
I laid the page on the cheese tray, face up, where the camera could see it.
"Then I owe you five million dollars," I said. "Come and collect it."
"Mara," Brynn whispered.
"Merry Christmas, Brynn," I said. "I quit."
I reached for my coat on the rack.
Hattie Lund, who had run the front office for twenty-two years, was already holding it out for me.
"Call me tonight," she said under her breath.
I walked out through sixty people who had never once asked me what Sunday Table had cost me.
Nobody else stopped me.
In the parking lot the cold went straight through my sweater, and my side ached where the stitches had been.
My phone buzzed with an email before I reached my car.
The subject line said: Is this finally you?
"Ms. Sjoberg, I'm Ansel Strandberg, president of Strandberg Home. I just watched your mother's live stream of the party."
"For three years I've written to the person who makes Sunday Table through your mother's office. I was always told you don't take meetings."
"If you just took that account back, I'd like to hear it from you. Our contract with Sjoberg Creative renews on January 2."
I read the last line again.
The renewal that paid for everything in that room was twelve days away, and what it depended on was now in my coat pocket.
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