Working For A Living I
“Susana,” Alcee groaned into her cell phone as she knelt under the desk of one of the administrators from the upper management floor, “I don’t have time for this.”
“Make time.”
The constant demands of her friends on her time was something they fought about constantly. While they were under the protection of their family, she was without and they seemed to always forget she was putting her life at risk each time she stepped outside her front door. Life wasn’t so easy when you were an ex-principessa and the streets knew the Mariani Don didn’t care if you lived or died.
“Can’t. I’m working overtime tonight.”
“Ditch it.”
“Unlike you who still has her trust fund,” she grunted as she adjusted an HDMI cable and sighed, “I need to work.” There was always a terrible fear her money would run out and she’d be struggling to provide for Antero.
“You have money in the bank!”
“There are savings in the event something happens, and I lose my job or get sick or suffer an accident or all of the above. My nest egg protects me and my family. My job keeps us fed and housed.” She backed out from under the desk and shoved back up her glasses which slipped down her nose. She plunked herself down in the chair and booted up the computer on the desk and waited for it to come back on.
“Alcee, you need to live a little.”
“Look, I’m working right now. There are six more computers I need to get set up before I can go home at the end of the day. I would very much like to focus on my task.”
“You work too hard. This isn’t good for you.”
“I work exactly hard enough to keep me alive and out of my father’s crosshairs, Susana.”
“You owe me.”
“How? On what planet does me declining a dinner invite which is a double date, a blind date for me, turn into me owing you one? This isn’t adding up.”
“I don’t know how, but you owe me. We are going do to do this double date at some point so stop putting it off.”
“Whatever,” she hung up the phone and then typed on the keyboard and watched with pleasure as the system came up and running. One down. Six more to go.
When she left her parent’s home six years ago, or more accurately when her father threw her out with nothing but the clothes on her back for being a disgrace, she’d managed to find her footing relatively quickly.
Getting hired on as an IT general specialist straight out of college at a large security firm in Manhattan, she’d been able to make a career for herself. The only hiccup was when three years ago, the company switched hands, and the Lozano family purchased the company lock stock and barrel. She’d been terrified for months they would note her last name on the employee list and fire her, or worse, kill her.
Instead, despite the sale, the new owners of the company hadn’t set foot in the building in the three years they’d owned it. The rumor mill said they were quite happy with the way the current president of the company was running things.
The current president of the company, Kylen, was hired by the previous CEO. Kylen was an ex-Navy seal who hired mostly the men and women he’d worked with in the forces or were referred to him. Alcee who was hired by the previous CEO remained one of the few outliers taken on with the recommendations of one of her college professors. She’d passed the vetting process, all the background checks and even her last name hadn’t been able to stop them from hiring her and the prior CEO took her under her wing and made her his honorary granddaughter. When he’d retired and sold the company, she knew he’d insisted to Kylen to keep her on.
It seemed the new owners presumed the current company president kept staff in place he trusted and as such nobody even breathed her name the wrong way during the transition of the company following the sale to the Lozano family. Mr. Kylen Burgess stayed on as the president and the Lozano family never bothered too much.
She knew they came to attend board meetings and the like, but she was what the upper management group called a troll. She and the other six IT generalists lived in the lower levels of the company, often referred to as the bowels of hell, by the rest of the employees. She personally found the moniker funny because in her Italian Catholic upbringing, hell was supposed to be hot, and the computer lab floor was colder than the rest of the building.
She was smirking to herself at the thought when one of her counterparts came grumbling in her direction. “What’s up, Tank?”
Tank was one of the military-trained IT guys and in command of their department. He reported directly to Kylen. He also lived up to his name in terms of size but he was usually a gentle soul, happy to sit behind his desk and plug along on a keyboard.
“All the fucking bigwigs are upstairs. Kylen let me know the CEO is moving from his office in Europe to New York. He let me know now, as in right this minute instead of, you know, giving me a heads up so I could prepare for this shit.”
She felt her stomach drop to her feet. She’d jinxed herself by even thinking of the Lozano family.
“The CEO?”
“Torquato Lozano.”
Fuck. She was going to puke. She was going to projectile vomit all over the desktop she’d put together.