CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Once, when I was just a little girl, my father brought me to his office. It was not ‘take your child to work day’; it was just something he had decided to do, and that day had moved on to become the best day of my life.

My father had packed in the garage below the company’s building, in the executive spot reserved for people like him, and then we had made our way into the company’s building. My father’s company had been huge—not as big as BlackBrick, of course, but in my small eyes, it was the biggest building I had ever seen.

People respected my father then—they stopped while he passed, bowed their heads, and stuff. I had thought they respected him just because that was how it was supposed to be, but I came to learn later on, when I was much bigger, that they respected him because of his position, and if he were to lose that position, he would also lose all the respect that came with it.

My father sat us down in his office and began to show me things about the company on his compu