Lauren

The moment I entered the 30th floor of the Astor empire, I knew I was in deep, deep trouble this time.

The previous two times I was late for work by just three seconds, Mr. Astor roared at me as if I was asking for his kidney. That man didn’t back down to punish me for the tardiness for which I worked in this damn office, arranging all the company marketing department files from 1990 to 2022.

Moreover, that malicious man demanded I finish the entire work before he came back to the office the next morning. So yeah, I spent an entire 24 hours and more in this office. No sleep and no rest were granted.

Sometimes I just wanted to snap this man’s neck out of his body. The sort of inhuman behavior that he did with me and the employees around here. It was clear as water that not a single person in this building liked him. Except for one, Mr. Astor himself.

Every time I went to the cafeteria or the break room, I would be able to enjoy the story of the latest victim of Mr. Astor, a.k.a. the son of the devil. It was his nickname among the employees around here. Some used callous words to refer to him whenever he yelled or did something that would boil the blood of any human creature on this planet.

It was one of his specialists. He held the power to make the most claimed person in the world cry out in anger due to the hurtful words and the horrid manner that he exhibited.

Gosh, this man was insufferable in so many ways. Some days, I thought of punching him right in the face. I wanted to kick him in the knee so badly that I considered burning down his entire office whenever he showed me his ugly side.

I took a deep breath as I stopped just an inch away from his cabin door. The sound of his shouting was coming from the other side of the door, which made my heart beat faster. This was going to be a disaster. I could feel that in the air. Perhaps he was going to fire me the second he saw me, even worse, the letter was in his hand right now. He was just waiting for me to enter the room so he could throw it on my face and say those words that I wasn’t ready to hear.

“You are fired, Mrs. Kennedy.” I slapped myself. No, that couldn’t happen yet, not yet. I was trying to get another job. I even gave a few interviews, but there wasn’t any news from them yet. The last one that I gave a week ago didn’t say anything.

I needed to have something in my hand before I let this one go. Of course, I had another job. The waitress one, which I did on the weekdays, but that money wouldn’t be enough for us to have a stable life in this expensive California state. Moreover, I needed money more than I needed to take my next breath, otherwise, there was no reason for me to tolerate this vicious man for such a long time. Three years actually was a long duration to bear this man’s attitude, and unlike the rest of his previous assistants, I was helpless. I needed the money by the hook or by the cook.

It wasn’t like I never thought of leaving this grueling job. I did, but there was no way for me to get out of this place as there wasn’t another job in the line that would provide me with the same money and security that Astor Empire was paying me. It was either this wearing job or any strip club in this state. I walked this path that gave me stability despite killing me every day.

I pushed the door of Mr. Astor’s cabin, pasting a smile on my face along with raising my hand where I held his morning coffee. The Coconut Kahula latte that you could only buy from a shop that was 3.1 miles away from this damn office. And for that reason, I was half an hour late.

“Your coffee is here,” I uttered as I set my foot in the room.

The papers were all over the floor. His desk looked as if some hurricane hit it a few minutes ago, and the phone was resting on top of his expensive computer. This man had anger in his nose, which was well known, but this was something that had never happened before, at least, I didn’t witness in my three years with him.

My eyes roamed all over the room before stopping at Mr. Astor, who was standing near the massive windows with a glass of wine, which was the reason for the frown on my face. It wasn’t like that he didn’t drink; he did, but it was always in the evening after 7 pm. This was the first time I saw him devouring whiskey, something that he hated consuming at 8 in the morning.

“Mr. Astor, are you okay?” I asked to keep the cup on the desk.

“Totally,” he said, finishing the rest of his whiskey. “You are late,” he looked at his watch. “Thirty-two minutes. What happened to you?“

“I am extremely sorry I slept over,” I whispered.

“Did you have a good sleep last night?”

That was weird. Mr. Astor never asked about my private life, let alone how I was doing. This was the first time he asked about something like this.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Good. Every human should sleep peacefully at night. It’s their right.“

He didn’t sound drunk in any way, but the words that were coming out of his mouth made me wonder if he was sober or not. He was standing straight. His posture was perfect as usual, despite that, there was something different about him that I was finding hard to pinpoint.

On any normal day, he would have shouted at me for coming to the office late, told me a thousand other things while I listened to all of them while keeping my mouth shut, and after all of these, he would assign me to something totally ridiculous for which I would have cursed him all day long.

That was how I thought today would be, but I was wrong. It replaced the fear of losing this job with something else that was more scratchy than the one I was feeling earlier.

“You have a meeting with Mr. Ashborn in half an hour. After that, you have to attend a conference meeting via Zoom with Mr. Rodrick and your father. That’s it for the day.“

“Thanks, Cancel all of them. I’m not in the mood to do anything today.“ He said.

My jaw almost hit the floor, and so did my eyebrow that was on its way to touching the ceiling of this room. Thanks. He thanked me. For the first time in three years, Mr. Astor thanked me and didn’t shrink at me. It was something truly magical. Today was going to go down in history as being the most wondrous day of my life.

I should be happy with all of this, but I wasn’t. Something didn’t sit well with me, given the entire situation. There was tension in the air, yet Mr. Astor was calm as a dove. As if everything was in his control, but I knew something wasn’t right here. But what?

“Can you please call someone to clean this room?” He told me, picking his coat from his chair, “I am going home and have no intention of coming back to this place. I will see you tomorrow.“ With this, he was out of the room, leaving my curious mind with a hundred other questions that I couldn’t know.

I made my way towards the cafeteria during lunchtime after cleaning up all the messes that my lovely boss happily created by saying “cancel everything”. Only if it was that easy for me to do.

Mr. Ashborn, one of our newest clients, wanted to have this meeting with the devil for the past three months, but the busy schedule, of Mr. Astor, made it impossible to happen. Today was the day that was decided by the devil himself, but just half an hour before the meeting, he walked away without giving much explanation.

The first thing I did was call the poor man, informing him of the much-awaited meeting of his cancellation due to the illness that Mr. Astor had suffered. Also promised him that as soon as Mr. Astor recovered from this unknown, God knows what sickness, I would fix a meeting for him.

One of the many talents of the assistant that I learned in my three years of work time was to protect your boss from everything, even if he was a total asshole. The next call that I made was to Astor Senior.

My boss’s father, who was also the boss of my boss.

Jamie Astor was a man of his word. I never worked with him, but what I heard from his assistant Julia was that he was the most indecorous person she had ever come across. No one really talked about him in this office, as he rarely showed up to the office. Most of the time, he worked from home. And the bizarre rumor of the relationship between father and son was wildly known in the business area.

When I informed Jamie that his son revoked the meeting, he was outraged. For some reason, I was afraid that the man might come out of the phone and growl at me like a tiger. This wasn’t my first time talking with Jamie; however, it was the first time for me to experience something this terrifying. In that two-minute phone call, it felt like my soul left my body.

If junior Astor was the devil, senior Astor was the Grim Reaper, as he was ready to take the soul away from anyone who crossed his threshold.

On the other hand, Mr. Rodrick was compassionate and sympathetic. He laughed and wished a fast recovery to the one who was probably having his tenth drink at this moment.

All this stuff drained the energy from my body awfully, and now I wanted to take a little nap. I sat down in my regular seat in the cafeteria, taking a tray that was full of food. This is exactly what I need right now. Today’s lunch was nothing but a delight. The Asian food all around my plate watered my mouth, along with the growl in my stomach. So I did what I had to do: I shaved the food in my mouth.

“Hey, work bestie. How was your morning?” Selena asked as she took her seat beside me.

“Awful, but better than yesterday for sure,” I said without looking at her. I rarely gave anyone any attention whenever I was with food. It was a trait of mine that Selena found annoying at the beginning, but now she coped with that pretty well.

The complaint that she used to make when we became friends three years ago somehow died before our friendship crossed its one-year mark.

“How so?” she asked, pouring me a glass of water.

“Devil walked out of the office as soon as I arrived,” I said, sipping water. “He didn’t yell or anything, instead he thanked me and said please to me.”

“What?” She dropped the spoon, which was full of white rice. “What are you saying? He thanked you?”

“Also, said please.”

“It’s impossible.”

“Not anymore, I guess.”

The astound on Selena’s face wasn’t something out of the book. The stories I told her over the three years, the frustration and anger that I vented out in front of her due to the stress that the devil caused me were the reason she loathed him. Although he was our boss (the one who was still paying us), we were allowed to odium whoever we wanted.

Today was a little different. Even though he did cause a little chaos, however, I didn’t feel any sort of antagonism towards him. Seeing him that way this morning, as if he had lost something valuable in his life, the vulnerability in his manner, the sadness in his eyes, and his shaken voice made me concerned about him.

This was the first time I underwent any other emotions rather than wrath toward this man.

Somehow, silently, I prayed for him. I prayed for his well-being.