I'm just saying I know what kind of world you live in. A world of spreadsheets and profit margins. You cut away the fat to save the machine. I get it. He walked over to the fireplace, kneeling down to sand the edge of the hearth.
But you can't run a human life like a corporation, he said quietly. Eventually, you run out of things to cut. The words hung in the air, heavy with sawdust and truth. Claire gripped her coffee cup until her knuckles turned white. She wanted to fire him.
She wanted to scream at him. She wanted to tell him he had no idea what it took to survive in her world. But she didn't. Because looking at Dean, kneeling in the dust, covered in sweat and grease, raising a boy in the quiet aftermath of a tragedy, she realized something terrifying. He was stronger than she was.
She turned and walked out of the library, the silence of the house pressing in on her from all sides. She had millions of dollars. She had thousands of employees. She had power, status, and fear. But as she stood in the empty hollow foyer of her massive empty house, Claire Montgomery realized she had absolutely nothing to say.
Thursday brought a cold snap that froze the mud in the driveway into jagged ankle-twisting peaks. It also brought a dock worker strike in Rotterdam that immediately paralyzed three of Vanguard Logistics' most profitable shipping lanes. Claire took the call standing in the gutted kitchen. The temperature inside the house was hovering around 45°. Her breath plumed in the air as she listened to her chief operations officer explain that six freight ships were currently idling in the North Sea, hemorrhaging fuel and money.
"I don't care what the union reps are demanding," Claire snapped, pacing a tight circle around a stack of drywall. Her voice echoed off the bare studs, sharp and metallic. "You tell them they have 12 hours to unload those containers, or I will reroute the fleet to Antwerp, fire the entire Rotterdam Logistics team, and replace them with automated cranes by Q2. I will bleed them dry. Do you hear me?
Starve them out. " She didn't wait for a response. She hung up. Her pulse was hammering against her ribs. She immediately dialed her legal counsel, her boots stomping aggressively on the subfloor. "Get me injunctions," she barked the second the line connected.
"I want lawsuits filed against the union leadership by noon. Personal liability. Hit their pensions. I want them terrified to even look at a picket line. " She was in her element. This was the war she knew how to fight.
Crush the opposition, sever the weak links, protect the bottom line at all costs. She was shouting now, dictating terms, completely consumed by the adrenaline of corporate violence. A heavy hand clamped down on her shoulder. Claire spun around, startled, dropping her phone. It clattered loudly against the plywood floor.
Dean stood there. He wasn't wearing his tool belt. His face was a mask of cold, hard stone. He didn't look like a carpenter right now. He looked like a man who used to tear down buildings with his bare hands.
"Pick up your phone," Dean said. His voice was terrifyingly quiet. "And take your poison outside. " Claire stared at him, her chest heaving. The residual anger from the call burning in her veins. "Excuse me.