Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 98398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 492(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 328(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 492(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 328(@300wpm)
So in my mind, she was always Mary Quinn Astrid.
It was fitting to use all three names when thinking of her, like how society referred to any sociopathic killer.
Under usual circumstances, when her meddling pissed me off this much, I would head to the gym and work out my frustrations on a punching bag.
Unfortunately, with the situation such as it was, that was a luxury I didn’t have tonight.
Mary Quinn Astrid’s antics had reached the toxic point of actually impacting my career, so much so that I had to work even harder to keep my upward mobility and reputation intact.
Not that I didn’t already put in more hours than everyone else in my entire office. But as pompous as it sounded, my privilege required me to work constantly. If I didn’t show up and prove myself to be the better man each day, then people would say I hadn’t earned my job and that my daddy bought it like he bought my brother’s cushy military officer position.
Not that my brother didn’t work hard, he did. But strings were pulled, and because of that, he lost a fair bit of respect, and it had taken far more time and effort to regain it than if he had just earned the position outright.
He had people who were paid to respect him, a clear-cut chain of command that rendered his subordinates’ smack talk mostly unimportant. It didn’t matter if a soldier didn’t respect the man giving the orders. Those orders still had to be followed.
The way I viewed it, for better or worse, the armed forces required people to be sheep. You did what you were told when you were told, and unless your parents paid for a position, you worked your way up, or didn’t, in a logical manner. Independent thought and initiative were generally not rewarded.
Lawyers, even ones who worked in public office, were not sheep. They were sharks.
Every last one of them would make it their mission to take me out if they smelled blood in the water.
If they didn’t respect me, my days as an effective district attorney would be numbered, and I would be replaced at the next election.
Like Machiavelli’s prince, I had to be respected and feared at all times.
This was why, after dealing with the walking headache that was my mother, I was back in the office instead of at home or at the club enjoying a drink and maybe a waitress.
The office was dark and quiet. Peaceful. And although I didn’t like it when I had to come in this late, I preferred it like this. There were no office politics to navigate, polite small talk to engage in, or other social niceties to observe, wasting my time. I didn’t even have to lose work time wondering who was gunning for my job or, worse, who was actually good enough to do it.
This time was perfectly productive.
Occasionally, when it was like this, I would sit back and wonder what it would have been like if I hadn’t insisted on proving myself in the public sector. What if, by now, I was a named partner at some large corporate law firm, and I could work from home most days? Where my office would always be completely devoid of the mindless chatter of office gossip and drama.
Not that I hadn’t run into the occasional intern or first year ADA burning the midnight oil trying to make a name for themselves. A trait I admired, and I always made sure to note the names of the people I saw here often. I kept track of which assistant DAs and staff were dedicated to their jobs, who had a well-formed work ethic, who was ambitious, who was too ambitious…and who was lazy and lacked any ambition at all.
At least I hadn’t seen any evidence of anyone using the quiet of the office to sneak a little extra-marital affair or rendezvous with a prostitute, a trait I admired less and which I knew happened in some of the private firms around town. Many of the higher-end escorts in the city slept with a lawyer or a judge to keep their records clean. They called it “community service,” which would have been amusing if it weren’t so accurate. Or perhaps that was what made it funny?
I wasn’t sure. My sense of humor had been crushed under my workload in law school and never recovered once I entered the public sphere.
Those men all joked that a bit of stress relief in the office made them more productive or made it easier to deal with the pressure of their jobs. I had always thought they were making excuses, but after the day I’d had, part of me wondered if I shouldn’t follow their lead. Not for stress relief but to work out some of the tension and frustration running through my muscles.