Page 113 of Bargain With the Boss

“I bet you didn’t, you jackass. My mother is three times the fucked up of your parents. You have no idea what Sydney’s been dealing with.”

“She was here to sabotage the business, that’s enough.”

“And yet she didn’t.”

I frowned. “She said?—”

“She said she was sent here to do it. And the part you missed is that she couldn’t go through with it.”

I sat down—hard.

“Would a woman sabotaging our business get those permits through? And troubleshoot all the other properties that Maitland has been blocking?”

“No,” I said quietly.

“My mother blackmailed her.”

“What.” I stood and took a step toward Jude.

“Yeah. Changes things up a little doesn’t it?”

Blackmail. The word sliced at me. “With what?”

“Her people. The ones who work for her department and depend on their paycheck. Not people like you and me who could survive a career change. On top of that, Sydney’s been dreaming up her own offshoot of the company.”

“Plants,” I said quietly.

He frowned at me. “Did she tell you?”

“She didn’t have to. Henry.” I thought back to that day I first showed her the FHK offices. The way her eyes went sad talking about Henry and how he taught her all about gardening. The longing looks at the plant beds until she closed herself down.

This time it was Jude who sat down. “She told you about Henry?”

I nodded. “A little. That he was patient and kind. How he taught her about plants and soil. I got the idea that he made time for her unlike her parents.”

“You’d be right.” Surprise laced his voice. “She doesn’t talk about Henry with anyone.”

“Why not?”

“Because when our mother found out she was playing in the dirt with our gardener, she sent her away to boarding school.”

“What the hell?”

“We are fifteen ways of fucked up because of that woman. Either Mother was pitting us against one another or she was finding ways to manipulate us. And when Sydney went to our mother about her ideas for A Garden You Love, she made sure to make a proper proposal. Sydney learned to dot every damniand cross everytthree times before going to the almighty Michelle Keller. Because she was a businesswoman first above blood. There was no nepotism in the company—we all earned our places. Then our mother used it against Sydney to get what she wanted.”

“Sydney would pick her idea for a company over you? That’s fucked up.”

“No.” His voice was sharp and annoyed. “You really are missing the whole point. Remember how I said her team was under fire?”

I paced the room, pushing aside my butthurt feelings. I knew business. Hell, I ran two of them for fuck’s sake. A formal proposal could cause a lot of strife if it wasn’t handled properly. “So, her proposal would need first refusal from the board even if she wanted to leave the company and go off on her own.”

“Now you’re getting it.”

The thing that rocked me back was that a mother would do that to her child. Even when my parents were at their worst it was more about social appearances and their version of traditional values. They didn’t act like some narcissistic supervillain. “Losing a large portion of their staff would hurt the bottom line of the main business.”

“In my mother’s mind, everyone is disposable.”

“Even her daughter?”