Because She Stepped In Right Foot First

Chapter 3 The Company

I went to work the next morning.

That was the part nobody expected, including me. I put on a navy dress and the only pair of heels that were mine, and I took the train downtown, and I walked into the Mercer building at eight forty-five, right foot first, because the door was automatic and I wasn't going to think about my feet ever again.

The lobby smelled like fresh flowers. There was a new arrangement on the reception desk, white lilies, huge. The receptionist, Dana, looked up at me and then looked down very fast.

"Morning, Dana."

"Morning, Miss Vale."

Two years and she still called me Miss Vale. I had asked her not to, twice.

I got in the elevator. On the sixteenth floor, the doors opened onto the glass-walled corridor that led to the executive offices, and the first thing I saw was Corinne through the window of the conference room, standing at the head of the table with a clicker in her hand.

She was presenting the Mercer account.

My Mercer account. My slides. My model. I could see the title page from the doorway, and it was the same font I had chosen, the same layout, the same everything, except the name at the bottom said Corinne Ashford.

I stood there and watched my work be presented by someone else.

"Miss Vale."

I turned. It was the head of HR, a woman named Pamela Reyes, standing in the doorway of her office with a folder.

"Can I see you for a moment?"

I looked back at the conference room. Corinne was laughing at something. Two men in suits laughed with her. On the other side of the table, Julian sat with his hands folded, watching her like a man watching the sun rise.

"Miss Vale," Pamela said again.

I followed her into her office.

The meeting was short. Pamela was kind, in the way people are kind when they are doing something they have practiced. She explained that the firm was restructuring, that my role as associate was being redefined, that they valued my contributions, that they would be offering a severance if I chose to leave voluntarily, and that they hoped I would consider it carefully.

"How carefully?" I said.

"By Friday."

"By Friday," I repeated.

"Unless you'd prefer to discuss your options with Mr. Mercer."

I thought about Julian sitting in that conference room with his hands folded while Corinne took my work.

"No," I said. "I'll take the severance."

Pamela blinked. She had expected a fight, I think. She had been prepared for a fight. She had a folder full of documentation, and a prepared speech about how I had signed a non-disclosure agreement, and a memo about the ownership of work product developed on company time.

"Are you sure?" she said.

"I'm sure."

"Miss Vale, I want you to know that this is not a reflection of your performance. Your work has been—"

"Whose proposal is she presenting in there?"

Pamela's face didn't move.

"I know what I built," I said. "I want to hear you say it."

Pamela closed the folder. She looked at me for a long moment. Then she said, "I don't think that would be helpful."

I laughed. I don't know why. It just came out.

"All right," I said. "Then I'll go."

I stood up, and Pamela stood up, and we shook hands like people who were going to have a follow-up meeting.

I walked out of her office and past the conference room, where Corinne was still presenting, and I went to my desk.

My desk was in the open-plan section, which meant everyone could see me. I sat down. I opened my laptop. I looked at my screen, which still showed the file I had been working on before I left it, and I opened a new document.

I wrote three words.

Mercer account audit.

Then I stopped, and I looked at the screen, and I understood something I hadn't understood before.

The shredder had been about the proposal. But the proposal was not the point. The proposal was never the point.

The point, I realized, sitting at my desk with everyone in the office pretending not to look at me, was that Julian Mercer's company had been building something for a long time, and the Mercer account was not just a client. The Mercer family owned forty percent of the firm. The firm's entire future was tied to the family's trust, and the family's trust was tied to Julian, and Julian was tied to Corinne.

Nobody who built anything in that company ever really owned it. That was the rule.

I had spent three years learning the rule without knowing it.

I had one week before the severance offer expired, and I had a laptop, and I had everything I had ever learned about how that place worked.

I didn't know yet what I was going to do with any of it.

But I knew I wasn't going to leave quietly.