Evelyn's lips twitched. "It might have been the ghost of a smile. She liked ruthlessness when it was applied efficiently. The demands are steep for a man who lives in a building that smells like boiled cabbage." She said, "The demands are cheap for a woman losing $40 million an hour," Jack shot back.
Silence stretched across the room. Only the sound of Greg's ragged breathing broke the tension. "Done," Evelyn said. She hit a button on her tablet. "My legal team will have a binding digital contract in your inbox in 3 minutes, subject to your immediate restoration of the Omnicorp network."
Jack pulled his phone from his pocket. He waited. 2 minutes and 40 seconds later, an email pinged. He opened the PDF. He read every single line, looking for loopholes, escape clauses, or poison pills.
It was pristine. He signed it with his finger on the cracked screen of his phone and hit send. Contract signed, Jack said. He pulled the encrypted USB drive from his pocket and held it up. Let's go fix your company.
He walked over to Khloe's bedroom door and opened it. She was sitting on her bed, oversized headphones swallowing her ears, watching a cartoon on a battered tablet. Jack gently tapped her shoulder. She pulled the headphones off. "Get your shoes on, Bug," Jack said softly, his tone completely shifting from the cold negotiator to the gentle father.
"We're going for a ride to school," she asked. "No," Jack smiled. To dad's work in a really big car. The ride to the Omnicorp Tower was a surreal blur. Jack and Khloe rode in the back of Evelyn's primary SUV.
The interior was a cavern of black leather and glowing screens. Khloe was wideeyed, her hands running over the plush seats. One of the imposing security contractors had silently handed her a chilled juice box from a mini fridge before taking his seat in the front. Evelyn sat opposite Jack. She didn't speak.
She worked tirelessly on her tablet, firing off emails, orchestrating the public relations nightmare unfolding in the financial press. She was a machine of pure efficiency. Jack watched her, realizing for the first time that the executives he despised at Omnicorp were just middle management sickants playing pretend. Evelyn Cross was the real predator. Greg was not in their car.
He had been unceremoniously shoved into the third SUV, stripped of his company phone and badge on the sidewalk. The motorcade pulled up to the mirrored glass monolith of Omnicorp Solutions. The rain had stopped, leaving the city slick and gray. The plaza in front of the building was chaotic. Employees were huddled under awnings, smoking nervously, whispering about the massive system failure.
When the four black Escalades breached the executive driveway, the whispering stopped. Security guards scrambled to open the heavy glass doors. Jack stepped out of the SUV holding Khloe's hand. He was still wearing his faded flannel shirt and grease stained jeans. Beside him, Evelyn Cross emerged, projecting a localized field of absolute authority.
They walked into the lobby. The security turnstyles were dead. The digital display boards behind the reception desk were black. The entire building was running on emergency backup power. A gaggle of junior executives and nervous developers were clustered near the elevators.
Jack recognized several of the faces from the basement the day before. The ones who had snickered when Greg fired him. They parted like the Red Sea. Their eyes darted from Evelyn's furious, focused stride to Jack's calm demeanor down to the little girl in the oversized t-shirt holding his hand. Confusion morphed into sheer unadulterated terror as they realized the man they had laughed out of the building yesterday had just returned with the grim reaper of corporate restructuring.