Dean Walsh was happy with his new life, his job, his girlfriend. Until his boss, billionaire Salomon Ellis, discovers his darkest secret. From then on, he will hold Dean hostage to his whims in exchange for his silence.
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The small video window popped up on the right bottom corner of my screen as I finished setting the new password for a Marketing guy upstairs, who got kicked out of the systems at least once a week. Maybe he was among our top graphic designers, but he just couldn't type ten characters in the right order.
"Hey, Dean," Tom said from his fishbowl when I clicked on the video window. "I need a hand."
"Forgot your email address?" I replied.
He shook his head, chuckling. "I wish. Listen, Jane T. just called. Her child woke up with a little fever."
I didn't know who Tom was talking about, but I guessed it was one of the junior ITs in the noon or the afternoon shift.
"Need me to cover for her?" I volunteered. Whoever she was, this Jane T. couldn't come to work until her kid and she herself were cleared, after a one-week quarantine and three negative tests.
Tom's smile widened. "Thank you. Only half her shift, though. You'll be free at six, and somebody from the evening shift will take it from there."
"Great. My girl doesn't like dining late."
"I owe you. I'm sending your number upstairs right away, so they process the extra hours."
"That's nice of you."
"You know me. I stink of nice."
We disconnected still laughing and I turned to my next world-saving quest: retrieving some Word files a secretary had deleted by mistake.
At noon, back from my lunch break, I saw Tom handing the baton to Aisha, the afternoon supervisor, a big lady in her mid-forties I liked a lot. They were talking by the fishbowl while a janitor disinfected everything before letting Aisha take over.
With shipments moving all over the country all the time, the company had operators working around the clock, and they always needed ITs at hand. While the big shots upstairs and their minions did weekdays nine to five, the ground floor of the Square was a sleepless hive twenty-four/seven. To stick to sanitary regulations, Operators and ITs worked in rolling six-hour shifts that started every three hours, so the open offices never surpassed two thirds of capacity.
For some reason, the afternoon was easier than the morning, and I wasn't tired when I logged out at six. My phone buzzed before I could grab my stuff. A smile pursed my lips as I opened the message, like every time Steph texted me.
"Coming? Dinner at seven."
"You cooked for me?"
"Me? Cook? Share whatever you're having, please. I ordered pasta with meat balls."
"I'm all but done here. See you in a while."
I was heading for the exit when Aisha called me out loud. I turned around and found her waving me over from the fishbowl.
