Fired? Part I
She was quickly trying to get the desk set up with dual monitors, ergonomic keyboards, state of the art laptop with all the bells and whistles as far as printers and speakers and all the other accoutrements went.
The longer she worked, the more she realized she needed to resign. She’d worked for three years too long here. The minute the company shifted hands, despite the fact the CEO was rumored to be in Italy and intended to keep his base there, she should have sought employment elsewhere. She’d taken false safety in hiding right under the enemy’s nose.
The clicking of heels on the tiled floor coming in her direction made her cringe as she heard Tank utter a muffled “fuck me”. She looked into the open doorway of the CEO’s office where the giant of a man was working and saw the shudder go through him as he heard the woman approaching before, he saw her.
The woman’s muttering in Italian, a series of curses about how slow the staff was and how uncultured New Yorkers were made Alcee’s head throb and suddenly Alcee forcing herself not to divulge she could speak the language. Instead, she kept her head bent and unravelled a long cord. If she didn’t engage the woman perhaps, she’d be left alone. Her thought was incredibly short lived.
“Make sure those cords are not anywhere I am going to trip on them.” The woman’s voice shrilly skittered along Alcee’s spine.
“Yes ma’am,” she nodded, not looking up to make eye contact. She held up a clip which would conceal and pin the cords to the underside of the desk. “This will keep them off your feet.”
“Ugh, how much longer will you be?”
“Another thirty minutes, forty max.”
“Not acceptable. I want it done in fifteen minutes.”
Alcee shot a glance at Tank at the other desk, and he pressed his lips together in frustration. She felt the same sense of foreboding at the woman’s tone and knew she would not like the answer. “I’m afraid it’s impossible.”
“Make it possible.”
“And if I can’t?”
“Then you’re fired.”
This time the look she shot to Tank had him sitting up and getting ready to rush towards her. She knew the glint in her eye was not anything he could miss. This woman gave her a get out of jail free card and she’d never lost a game of Monopoly in her life. She was taking this little card and running with it.
“No, no, no, Cee, let me help.” Tank moved far faster than a man his size should as he vacated the desk he was working to prepare to come assist her.
“You cannot help her. You need to finish Mr. Lozano’s set up. He needed in his office hours ago. Instead, he is working at an uncomfortable table.”
Her accent was thick, and Alcee was convinced she was exaggerating it because she knew she could do the exact same thing if she wanted. Despite sounding as American as apple pie most of the time, if Alcee were in Italy right now, she’d blend in with her family as if she’d never left the country. The woman was trying to act as if she were better than them because of her Italian background. It made Alcee want to leave all the more. Phony bitch.
“You are given fifteen minutes, or you’re done.” The woman glared at her.
Alcee stood up from the desk, ignoring Tank’s groan and dropped the cords. “You don’t need to fire me. I quit. Ciao stronza,” she bowed deeply at the waist and turned to look at Tank with a smug grin. “Call security to meet me at my locker since it’s protocol to escort all employees who are fired or resigned from the premises.” She considered skipping to her locker.
“No, Alcee, you can’t quit,” he chased after her.
The other woman was blinking incredulously as if she’d expected Alcee to argue and try to keep her job. Did the woman actually believe she’d beg? As if. She was a Mariani. Mariani don’t beg. She might not be her father’s principessa but the name on her birth certificate was deep in her DNA. Her pride ran in her blood thicker than any other of her traits.
Kylen happened to be coming out of the board room as she hit the button for the elevator. “Tank, where are you two going? The set up can’t be done yet.”
“The ice princess over there, fired Alcee because Alcee said it would take thirty-to-forty minutes to finish the desk set up. I’m trying to beg her not to leave. Genevra wanted it done in fifteen minutes and it’s impossible. Not only that but the physical set up can be done in thirty or forty minutes but then I need to get into the computer and get it up to the standard of the company. If their laptops hadn’t gotten destroyed, then we wouldn’t be in this situation, but Mr. Lozano made it clear his personal computer is not to be associated with the business and the one he brought from Italy was destroyed in the car accident this afternoon.” He mumbled under his breath about bullets in a laptop making Alcee’s spine straighten. “We’re setting up a brand-new system for the pair of them and she’s making impossible demands. We were rushing as best we could. As it was, Alcee was supposed to be setting up the new marketing department upgrades this evening, and we let it go until tomorrow. I arranged for a crew to come in at six tomorrow to do what Alcee was taken away from completing downstairs.”