After This - Liora Blake

1

Alec

Four words are all it takes to send my morning into a tailspin, almost before it starts.

My office. Ten minutes.

A straightforward text like this one shouldn’t leave a grown man wondering how quickly he can escape a ten-story building while somehow going unnoticed by everyone inside when he does. In fact, very few things in life should affect a thirty-two-year-old man this way, and certainly not a text. Especially when that text is nothing but a to-the-point request about where I need to be and when. Because taken objectively, those words are utterly harmless.

Perhaps.

Unfortunately, I know that a text like this one from my boss—within minutes of arriving at the office—is likely something I’m not going to want to hear. At least not before I’ve consumed enough caffeine to keep up with whatever Alessandra Rossi-Mason is about to throw my way.

Because even though she’s only five foot two, her aura outsizes her physical being a few times over. And good luck trying to outwork her, because despite sleeping just three hours a night, the woman is always ten steps ahead of everyone else in the room. She’s tough, tenacious, and an all-around corporate badass.

She’s also my mom.

That last detail probably explains the low-grade panic I’m experiencing. I don’t care how old I get, being summoned by my mom always has the power to make me feel like I’m eight years old again, caught red-handed eating the cookies I wasn’t supposed to touch. But my mom’s brand of supervising—as both a parent and a boss—is built on healthy doses of love and respect. So no matter what awaits me in her office, I know it won’t involve spite or intimidation.

Now, even if my mom’s love will always trump her badass-ness when it comes to her kids, that doesn’t mean I’m stupid. There’s no way I’m going to walk into her office empty-handed and risk her picking up on how unprepared I feel. My cute grins don’t quite work the way they did when I was a kid, so I’ll need something else to serve as a distraction.

I slide back the cuff of my dress shirt and glance at my watch. Nine o’clock. Also known as the perfect time for a macchiato, prepared traditionally as my Italian mother prefers it. According to her, anything that’s served in a paper cup and topped with a drizzle of caramel should not be considered a macchiato. Avoiding coffee shops where that’s the norm is just one reason she paid five figures to have an espresso machine imported from Milan, where she grew up.

After a quick stop at the espresso machine, I head down the hall toward my parents’ office suite, which comprises the top floor of our family business’s headquarters. I share this floor with them and my sister Marissa while the rest of the building houses the myriad of employees who help make Mason Enterprises one of Houston’s top fifty companies.

Although we do business in forty states, we’re headquartered in Texas because my dad is a good ol’ boy who made it big and he refuses to live anywhere but the place that made him a success, both in business and in life. Over the past forty years, Mason Enterprises has become a powerhouse in not one but two competitive industries. Mom heads up the real estate side, where our focus is on upscale retail developments. Dad handles the oil and gas side, overseeing thousands of drill sites across the country. In short, there’s a strong chance that you have Mason Enterprises to thank for that fancy new strip mall with the big-box store that just opened up by your house, along with everything it takes to heat, cool, and power the store itself.

So you’re welcome… or I’m sorry. Take your pick really. The truth is, we work in contentious industries, and if you ask a hundred people how they feel about a company like Mason Enterprises, you’ll probably get a hundred different answers, ranging from “I love having ten Starbucks stores within a one-mile radius of my house” to “Someone should feed you to the polar bears you’re killing each day with your glacier-melting assault on Mother Earth.” We can be controversial to say the least. Honestly, there are days when I’m not even sure which side of the argument I’m on.

The double doors leading into my parents’ office are propped open as they always are. I stroll in and find Mom slowly pacing the length of her desk, a cell phone pressed to