Love In Secrets (Love Distilled #3) - Scarlett Cole Page 0,94

the skyline. To be in the midst of a property development boom.

Instead, she was dealing with this shit.

You could do all this by yourself.

Her inner voice was a whisper, but it resonated through her as clearly as if Elijah had yelled the words at her.

“I don’t know, Elijah. Can we? Because since I walked in the door, you’ve thrown a document at me I know nothing about. You’ve got mad at me for a delay I didn’t cause. And your lead project manager tried to throw me under the bus. You tell me, Elijah. Can you act professionally?”

“Listen, Cass, if you can’t make this work as part of this team, then I—”

“You’re kidding me, right? Let me lay this out for you. I warned you that Brandon was not ready for a project like this. My dad had a life-changing accident, and you forbade me from going home to help him out and used it as an opportunity to fire me. You give a guy with a crap degree and five minutes’ experience my job, and then you offer me his. He’s the lead. Not me. You want answers for the fuckups, ask him. You want to know who caused them? Check the record log. Our software monitors who makes all the updates. Your so-called lead project manager knows all this. And right now, I don’t even know what you’re most pissed about. Are you pissed about the north wing delay, which, by the way, I woke up at three in the morning today with a solution to, or are you pissed that I’m not playing nice in the sandbox because of your shitty human resources management skills?”

“Six weeks with a backwater building firm and you think you know how to run a construction firm?” Elijah scoffed.

“If I had people who worked for me, I wouldn’t treat them like shit.” She remembered how her father’s skeleton team had rallied behind her to carry the load. She remembered how good it had felt to interview and hire people who were brimming with potential and possibility. She remembered what it felt like to harness all of that talent and steer it in such a way they were able to recover so much of the progress her father’s firm had lost. She remembered what it felt like to be in charge, to be the one making the big decisions. Jake had been right, there’d been a thrill to it. “And you could learn a thing or two about people management from my father.”

Elijah’s pulse throbbed at his temple and he ground his jaw, but Cassie remained silent. She’d said enough.

“I need you to make this right,” Elijah said.

“Make what right?”

“The plan. I need you to get it back on track.”

“That’s Brandon’s job.”

“I’m making it yours.”

“If you’re promoting me back to a lead project manager and giving me full control of The Grosvenor, then I accept.”

Elijah tugged his hand through his hair. “I can’t have two lead project managers on this project.”

“Then get rid of Brandon, demote Brandon, or move him off The Grosvenor.”

“I’m right here, you know,” Brandon said.

She snapped her head in his direction. “Grown-ups. Remember?”

“I’ll reduce your probationary period to six months and—”

“Do you know what, forget it,” she said. Why was she wasting time bickering with men who held her back? Why bother with the Mark Powells, the Brandons, the Elijahs? She was done taking orders from others. Working at Cunningham Construction had shown her one vitally important thing: She was capable of running the whole damn show. She could build her own firm.

What if leaving New York was not running from, but running to her dreams?

“What?” Elijah said, clearly frustrated by the interruption.

“There are two ways to the top. You get your qualifications, get on the job experience at the biggest firm you can find. You start small, walk your way around the organization, and before you know it, you’re in the C-suite. That was my plan. Here. With you. Because, somehow, you were regarded as the biggest firm to work for. The other is, you do it on your own. You start a small firm and grow. Grow the types of projects, grow the organization, grow the turnover. And before you know it, you’re the CEO of something important.”

“So, what does any of this mean?”

Oh, God. I’m going to do it. Exhilaration rushed through her.

“One day, Elijah, that darling three-year-old daughter of yours, Ruby, is going to walk into a boardroom, a construction site, a hospital, or a