"You came here straight out of school. All these years, without the company investing in you, would you even have a salary? A design fee? People shouldn't forget where they came from. Show some gratitude."
"Gratitude?"
I laughed. Not because anything was funny.
"My second year here, the company landed a rush project right before the holidays. Everyone left. On New Year's Eve, I was the only person in this entire building, revising design drafts alone. After the contract was signed, you didn't mention my name once at the meeting. No design fee. No overtime pay."
"Two years ago, when Chen's project blew up, I'd just come out of surgery for appendicitis. You called me in to fix the drafts. The strain tore my stitches open and I had to get re-sutured. Afterward, you told Mr. Delgado it was a 'team effort.'"
"And now you want to lecture me about gratitude? Tell me, which one of us actually has none?"
I held his gaze.
"Everyone in this department, yourself included, takes freelance jobs on the side. Have I ever? Not once. Not even a five-hundred-square-foot apartment renovation for a few hundred bucks. Every single project went through the company's books. You told me not to forget where I came from. Have you remembered any of that?"
Edmund's face cycled through shades of red and white before settling into something dark.
"Ronnie! Watch your tone! You want to know why everyone froze you out? Why you got zero votes? Maybe take a look in the mirror!"
"I'll ask you one last time. The designs. Are you handing them over or not?"
"No."
Not a second of hesitation.
"Then I take it you don't want this job anymore?"
"Take it however you like."
He was visibly seething.
"Fine. Don't come crying to me later."
Without another word, I unclipped my ID badge and set it on his desk.
"Don't worry. I won't."
I walked out of the director's office and headed for the restroom.
At the door, I heard Kenneth inside, on the phone.
"Hello, is this Mr. Delgado's direct line at Cloudridge Corp? This is Kenneth Fletcher, the new project lead from Pinnacle Design. I'll be handling things from here on out. Would it be possible to go over some details with Mr. Delgado?"
He didn't have it on speaker, but the restroom was dead silent, and the voice on the other end came through crystal clear.
I recognized it immediately. Alfred Chavez, Mr. Delgado's assistant.