Max’s veiled threat: It might be a pretty long and ugly drop back down to Eighteen.
A few minutes later, I stormed inside my office suite. Anita stared up at me in disbelief. “Ellice, what’s going on? Please tell me.”
“Get Willow on the phone. Tell her it’s urgent. Better yet, tell her I desperately need her help.” I knew she’d respond to the latter plea. If she was so willing to give me sisterly advice about how to handle “the guys,” maybe she could do it on my terms.
“Sure.” Anita picked up the phone, cautiously looking at me as she dialed Willow’s extension.
I rushed into my office and slammed the door behind me. I sat at my desk. Waiting. Simmering. A few minutes later, I heard a light tap at my door before Willow walked in.
“Hey, Ellice, honey, Anita told me you need my help on something urgent?” She eased into the chair in front of me with a sympathetic expression, like she was really concerned. “Is everything okay?”
“Why the rush to promote me to this office? And don’t bullshit me this time.”
Willow’s eyes widened in surprise. “I . . . I don’t . . .”
“Everyone on this floor used the party in Savannah as a convenient excuse to skip Michael’s funeral. You and Nate hustled me into this job so fast, I barely had time to think about it. And neither Jonathan nor Max wanted Nate to promote me. Why?”
“What?”
My entire body was fueled by rage. “In one of Nate’s lucid moments, he told me some people on the Executive Committee didn’t think he should promote me. I happen to know through a couple of sources that Jonathan is not my biggest fan. Neither is Max. So why? And tell me the truth because if you don’t and I go down, I’m dragging everybody on this goddamn floor down with me. So tell me what the fuck is going on!”
Willow stiffened. “I’m not sure myself. A couple weeks before your promotion, Jonathan and Michael got into a big row about something. I don’t know what it was. But Jonathan said he thought Michael wasn’t cutting it around here and that maybe we should look into finding a replacement for him. Maybe it was time to force him into an early retirement or something.” She looked down at the huge sapphire on her finger, avoiding my gaze. I never took my eyes off her. When she looked up again, she gave a deep sigh. “Ellice, honey, what does that matter now? You’re here. You’re in this beautiful office and Nate is pleased with his decision.”
“So why are Jonathan and Max out to get me?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“My promotion was discussed in that boardroom right down the hall. I’d have a hard time believing the vice president of HR didn’t participate in those discussions.”
Willow blew an exasperated sigh. “Actually, you got it all wrong. It was Jonathan’s idea to promote you. He said you’d be perfect, that you had things in your background that would make you perfect for working on the kind of deals he brings into the company.”
“Oh, he did, huh?”
“Yeah. He said he had a feeling you two would see eye to eye.”
If Jonathan said that, I knew he wasn’t referring to my résumé. He’d dug up all my secrets to threaten me, blackmail me into going along with him. “So who was Nate referring to when he said someone didn’t want me promoted? Max?”
“Max’s thinking hasn’t evolved since the Ice Age. He’s a dinosaur.”
“I know that, but why was he trying to thwart my promotion?”
“Same thing he thought about me. He seems to think anyone who doesn’t have an appendage hanging between their legs is a second-class citizen.”
“So he’s not fond of strong women.” I tossed Willow a bone with my comment and she snapped it up with a grin. “But I’m sure he’s never threatened you.”
“Threatened you?! What do you mean?”
“A little side conversation we had. Don’t worry about it. What did he say about me during the meeting to discuss my promotion?”
“Ellice—”
“What did he say?”
“He thought you’d fail, that you couldn’t bring what Michael brought to the table. He said he didn’t want to sit on the Executive Committee with a—” Willow stopped.
“With a Black person? Or did he freely express himself in the meeting and use the N-word?” Had Max’s hatred for having to work beside me driven him to kill my brother? Black people had been killed for less.