The Perfect Escape (The Perfect Escape #1) - Suzanne Park Page 0,39
Jeeves, are you going to tell my dad?” Jeeves had just undergone a software installation a few days ago that gave him the ability to pick and choose which minor infractions he would upload because the server storage was filling up quickly and getting overloaded with insignificant reporting, like robot deliveries that were only ten seconds late. Birds and squirrels repeatedly triggering alarms. Minor curfew infractions. I pleaded, “I already feel like this is a prison. Please don’t send the data. Please?”
“Your home is pleasant, with a steady temperature of seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit and moderately low humidity. The floors are clean. These are not prison-like conditions.” He blinked once. “Perhaps you mean the household policies. The rules. But there is no similarity with living here and being in a penitentiary.”
“Please don’t report this,” I begged.
He paused. “This infraction, being your first and being so minor, will not be uploaded.” He turned on the lights in the hallway leading to my room.
“Thanks, Jeeves.” I puffed my cheeks and blew out.
He rolled up to me. “Your father is awake and in the kitchen, eating a ham-and-mustard sandwich on wheat bread, drinking Yamazaki whiskey on the rocks. Have a pleasant evening, Kate.” He whirred to the corner of the room and went into sleep mode.
Japanese whiskey was Dad’s BFF when work stressed him out. The last time he pulled out a bottle was when he was unexpectedly promoted to CEO due to a shareholder ousting of most of the executive team at Digitools. But it wasn’t the new job title that drove him to drink hard. It was the product launches that were fast-tracked to make the shareholders happy when the software wasn’t nearly ready.
The product launch that made the news (in a bad way) was meant to be simple one: when a Digitools security alarm was triggered, instead of alerting the police, it would immediately send real-time texts to authorized neighbors/friends/family so they could check on the situation. Aside from the flood of complaints the company received for false or unwarranted SMS alerts, one snooping elderly neighbor of one of the shareholders was attacked during a home invasion. Startled by the sound of the curious neighbor rattling the back door, the prowler armed himself with a metal rake he grabbed from the utility closet and went on offensive attack. The old woman was hospitalized and sent home, lucky to only have long scratches down her arms. The prowler got away with the rake.
My dad glowered at me. “It’s late.” Unkempt, with deep, dark circles under his eyes, uncombed graying hair, and a newly formed stomach bulge, he barely looked like CEO Dad. More like a weather-battered, old sea-captain version of him.
He scratched his dark stubble, then looking downward, pressed his palms into the white marble counter. “Where’d you go with Raina?”
I plopped down on a barstool. “We went roller-skating. It was fun.”
He studied my face, squinting a little, like he was looking for any sign of lying. “You hanging out together now?”
“More like, I’m hanging out with her again, like I used to.” Surely he didn’t need me to spell that the last time we “hung out together” was at Mom’s wake.
Dad took a gulp of his drink and winced. “There’s something I wanted to talk to you about before I fly out tomorrow.”
Something about this didn’t sit right with me. His serious tone, his heavy drinking, him wanting to have a conversation. My stomach twisted into pretzel knots.
He poured more alcohol into his glass but didn’t bother to add more ice before he sipped. Just straight, zero rocks. “At my company, things are happening. Big things. I’ll be traveling a lot for a few more months, but once the ink dries on some of these upcoming deals, I’ll try to be home more, hopefully before you go off to college.”
He was barely home these days anyway, and now he was going to be gone all the time? Dad was more like a roommate than a parent. He came and went as he pleased, made sure the bills were paid and groceries were delivered. Our relationship had become completely transactional.
Thunder rumbled nearby, and the deafening, roaring crash distracted me from my