Total pages in book: 136
Estimated words: 135847 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 679(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135847 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 679(@200wpm)___ 543(@250wpm)___ 453(@300wpm)
This again.
He already had enough intruding in his life, he didn’t need some guy following him around everywhere.
“Tom—” Hale started.
“No. Hell no, son. It isn’t just whoever this person is. You can’t go for a jog without fifteen photos surfacing of you running down the sidewalk. There are people out there who are not right. Your father never went anywhere without a bodyguard.”
“I’m not my dad,” Hale said tightly.
“I know you’re not,” Tom returned. “But you aren’t immune to the anger people have about anything they can dream up. He made more money than any one person should own, and you’re finding good ways to use it. You’d think no one would have an issue with that. But I’m a father. I worry. I look at the shit people say about you, and it makes my skin crawl. There are alt-right crazies who think you’re the devil incarnate. They’re pissed about your position on the environment. They’re pissed you give money to pro-choice organizations. They’re pissed you give money to justice initiatives. They’re just pissed they’re not you. And a lot of those assholes have guns.”
Hale had no response because all of it was true.
“Kateri tells me your team feels the same way,” Jamie added. “You’ve got ex-Delta Force who used to look after your dad pinned in a room vetting email and watching monitors. If you didn’t pay them so much, they’d leave. And they still might. These are not men to sit in a room.”
Hale glanced at Rix, who was studiously looking at his knees.
He then moved his gaze to Judge, who immediately said, “It terrifies Chloe.”
“Fuck,” Hale bit.
“And Genny, Sasha, Matt, Mika, Cadence, Duncan, Sully, Gage, Dru, Nora,” Tom put in. “It’s as simple as giving a team you already have who know what they’re doing the go to do what they do best.”
Shit.
“I’ll sit down with them tomorrow,” Hale promised.
Tom stared at him hard for a beat, then ascertaining Hale would be good on his promise, he nodded.
“What’s topic two?” Hale asked, even if he didn’t want to.
Tom didn’t delay. “You work too hard. You need to ease up or learn how to delegate.”
“Tom—” Hale tried, and failed, again to intervene in what Tom was trying to push.
“I know you feel like Corey gave you the power to save the world, but he didn’t. The world has to have some part in saving itself. In the time since we lost your dad, which hasn’t been long, every single arm of his business, of any business he owned majority shares in, and any organization he held sway in at all, you’ve forced them to rewrite hiring, diversity, equality and harassment policies and demanded gender and race neutral remuneration. This has cost them millions, because they had no choice but to bow to your demands or be exposed for having shit policies in the first place.”
Tom barely took a breath before he went on.
“You’ve then forced them to go green and establish strategies to be carbon neutral within a decade. You then significantly cut or even eliminated executive bonuses, which has lost you a lot of talent, I’ll add.”
“Not one company has suffered from that. We’ve replaced them with fresh talent who have a vision of the future. Not everyone with a head for business is a greedy fuck,” Hale got in.
“Maybe so. But it’s pissing off your shareholders.”
“They have the means to get rid of me.”
“And court that public relations disaster?” Tom demanded. “Ousting the man who’s leveling the playing field? Another thing that pisses off the alt-right, you’re the human equivalent of woke, and even though the vast majority of them don’t even know what woke means, they hate you for it.”
“If you think I haven’t played that trump for all it’s worth and will continue to do so until I have no cards left, you’re crazy.”
“What I think is that you’ve done a lot of good work in a short period of time, so you can take a break. But you don’t. You buy up things like Core Point, a massive multi-national athletic company, then dive in to make it a social for-profit. This is a corporation with six headquarters on six continents and nearly eighty thousand employees, every one of them felt you rattle their cages, and you’re going for a run without a bodyguard.”
“Core Point stumbled after their bullshit was exposed, but we’re poised to distribute ten billion in profits from last year to charities and social investment organizations.”
“I’m not saying what you’re doing is wrong, son,” Tom noted. “Far from it. I admire you and what you’re trying to do. I’m proud as hell of you. I’m saying you’re thirty and you should enjoy your life and live it. And working is not living.”
“You watched Elsa’s interview,” Hale deduced.
“Of course I did. You know that,” Tom replied.