first valuable thing I’ve ever learned from being employed by you.”
“You might learn more if you actually bothered to show up every once in a while.” Well, he had, once upon a three years ago when he’d started doing those summer internships for his father. The problems were quick to follow. Firstly, Alex had no damn interest in public relations, which was sort of a bad quality in an employee who was supposed to navigate in that field.
Secondly, he had a fancy job title, but to everyone else who worked for Ellison Group, he was the boss’s son, who’d gotten where he was thanks to the grand tradition of nepotism. Which was absolutely true. Every other intern in his father’s firm had at least three years of college under their belts and had gone through a rigorous selection process, so none of them had been that impressed by the sixteen-year-old kid who got his foot between the door, courtesy of his dad. For a while there, Alex had tried to contribute, but he had learned almost immediately that absolutely nobody was interested in what he had to say. So much for fresh, new ideas. Granted, most of his ideas were probably shit. He was way too straightforward to be of any use when the goal was to minimize the public backlash of a footballer cheating on his wife with a prostitute.
He tried for a while, but eventually, he gave up. Nobody seemed to give a shit if he actually showed up to work or not, so he wandered into the office only occasionally.
His father was on a rant now. “I’m handing you internships on a silver platter people would kill for, and you just keep blowing me off.”
“Then why do you do it? For a supposedly smart man, it takes forever for you to figure out that you’re being given the brush-off.” Alex was genuinely curious. For three years now, he had received an internship contract at the beginning of summer. Like clockwork. Last year, he didn’t even bother to fill the thing in, just threw it away, and he still had a position in Ellison Group.
For a long while, Alex didn’t think his father would give him an answer. Eventually, though, the man spoke. “I guess I still have hope for you.”
Alex felt anger in his gut. Like a hot ball of fire, it gathered and spread through him. Leave it to his father to make it sound like Alex was the only one to blame for how messed up his life had become. He tamped those feelings down mercilessly. He was not going to give the man more ammunition by showing how affected he was by those words.
His father cleared his throat and straightened himself, clearly uncomfortable with the direction this conversation had taken. “So, what now, Alexander? Would you like me to reconsider and arrange for you to repay your debt to society while working for me?”
Alex raised his brows. That was what his father had gotten out of that exchange? Talk about not being able to read the room.
“Look, I don’t know what kind of a scheme you’ve cooked up while rubbing elbows on the golf course with the almighty judge, but judge-ordered or not, I’m not going to waste my summer sitting around in this hellhole when none of your other employees actually want to see me here anyway.”
His father nodded. “That settles it, then.”
“Sure, whatever,” Alex mumbled.
“Have fun in Oregon.”
His father stood up, buttoned his suit jacket, and sailed out of the room. It took Alex a little while to compute what his father had just said.
“I’m sorry, what?” he called after the man as he opened his office door. Alex scrambled to get up and strode after his father. “What the hell do you mean by Oregon?”
His father turned around and measured Alex with a steady look. “It’s a state on the West Coast. I should hope you know that, considering I pay enormous amounts of money for your education.”
Alex gritted his teeth. “I’m not moving to fucking Oregon.”
“Oh, but you are. And I’m even giving you a choice, so you can’t blame me for being unreasonable. Let me put it this way, you either go to Oregon for the summer, where Judge Renner has provided you with a very generous opportunity to do your community service in a wildlife center run by his brother, or…”
“Just spit it out,” Alex said, fed up with this game.
“Or I will stop meddling in your life