The Wrong Bond

18

They were all familiar with why we were here. An entire room of people from different parts of the company. People who ran and controlled quite a number of districts in the city. People who were controlled by my father’s every whim.

Surely, they knew why there was a Code Red I’d seen coming from a mile away.

“Um…” Gloria cleared her throat, squared her shoulders, and started speaking. “There was a break-in at one of our companies on the east side of the city.”

I gingerly took another sip of my scotch. “What was the damage caused?”

Gloria was about to speak again, but I stopped her. “I’d like to hear someone else speak this time.”

A lady to my right piped up. “There was a lot of equipment and cash stolen.”

I tried to keep my anger in check. “And what have I said about keeping cash in buildings?”

“We’ve never had any rogue activity before now,” a man spoke up. I couldn’t remember his name, but he looked mousy and reported all the happenings in the company back to my dad.

“Oh, so the attackers were rogues from downtown.” I straightened up in my seat. “I’ve proposed so many objectives to get rid of rogue activity downtown so it doesn’t spill uptown, and now that’s exactly what’s happening.”

I swiveled in my chair slowly, my eyes on the other members of the team.

“It was just a little breach in our security. Nothing dangerous happened. It was just theft,” the mousy man spoke up, annoying me even more.

“One breach will lead to more. Do we just sit around until it comes to that, or do we act?”

Silence ensued, and then a low mumbling started, with no one actually speaking.

“When I was called into the office this morning for a Code Red, I expected that at least one person would have a solution to our problem. So what. The f**k. Is. The. Solution?” I said in a clipped voice.

My blood was boiling, but I tried to keep myself in check.

“Okay, I have a solution written down here.” A woman with a full head of dark curls started speaking. “We can create a barrier between⁠—”

I cut her short. “Gloria, why won’t that plan work?”

Gloria tapped on her iPad and said, “Because creating a barrier between uptown and downtown would cause segregation, and we don’t want that.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because—”

I didn’t let her finish. “Because we are all one city. But when it comes time to actually help out a district, we chicken out. We can’t deal with our problems like that anymore. That’s why.”

“Yeah,” Gloria agreed.

I glanced back at Curly Hair, sarcasm weighing heavily on my voice. “You see how that solution is stale, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Anyone else?”

I took another sip of my scotch, the heaviness settling on my tongue and rolling into my stomach. It wasn’t the best idea to start drinking by ten in the morning, but with the way this meeting was going, I needed as much alcohol as I could get.

I’d tried to convince my dad that this would happen numerous times, but he’d ignored me, and now the company had to deal with this theft on top of everything else.

Just as I was thinking of how to mitigate the losses from the break-in, my dad waltzed in. Alexander Elton.

The faces of the team were pale under the harsh lighting of the conference room. They all shrank back into their seats. My father’s gaze focused on the blank projector.

“Good morning all,” he greeted, sliding into his seat at the head of the conference table, not caring what was being discussed before he’d walked in. “Let’s look at the numbers from the South District.”

The mousy man quickly projected his laptop screen so we could all see the charts of the profit margins from the South District.

“The numbers look very promising,” his voice rumbled. “Profit margins are up again, thanks to the expansion in the South District.”

Murmurs of agreement ran down the conference table, and I wished Ethan had ditched his last-minute work trip and stayed back with me to tackle this storm.

My father’s side project, the South District venture, had brought in more money to the company, and that was all he cared about: milking as much money from the districts as he possibly could.

“We had a security breach,” I reminded him, just in case he’d somehow forgotten.

“Yes,” he said, waving off my remark nonchalantly. “We’ll double our security or put up a border.”

“We can’t build a border. It’ll enforce segregation, which we are battling already.”

He stroked his beard. “Maybe enforcing segregation of the districts is the way to go. After all, we are not the same, and we never will be.”

“We are only separated by money,” I said through gritted teeth.

“And money clearly creates a vast distance.”

“Anybody can have money,” I responded.

“But not everybody can be an uptown elite,” Alexander countered.

“You and your lackeys rigged the game.”

He raised his hand in mock surrender, an annoying smirk on his lips. “We just made sure our investments were fine-tuned.”

“Fine-tuned my ass,” I muttered under my breath, trying to be as in control of the situation as I possibly could.

“If you want to discuss downtown, we can. There seems to be a discrepancy in the allocation of funds for the downtown renovation project.”

“There is no discrepancy.”

The downtown project was merely that, a project, since it wasn’t approved by my dad yet. It was a vision I’d tried to champion, but it had been shot down numerous times.

“But I can see it, right there on the screen.”

I slammed my fist on the table, the loud thud jolting everyone back to attention. My voice was tight and filled with the anger I’d been trying to suppress all morning.

“With all due respect, Father,” I started. “The discrepancies are urgent ones, and they’re needed because the downtown situation is becoming an emergency. The crime rate is spilling into the uptown districts.”

“It was just one breach.”

“That can turn into a million if not properly handled. It’s escalating quickly.”

“Escalating? Shawn, don’t be dramatic. A few petty thefts here and there are nothing we can’t handle.”

“A few thefts?” I scoffed. “Those ‘thefts’ are turning into full-blown destruction. They’re tearing down buildings, disrupting our businesses, and creating fear uptown!”