Friday, 2:02 pm

“What’re you doing here?”

Having heard that question for the fourth time today, I rolled my eyes as I laid down my bag and set my water bottle down on the countertop. I turned to see my cubicle partner Gerald, returning from getting a fresh cup of coffee, judging by the topped-off mug in his hand. He was a good guy, albeit a little too nosey into my personal life for my taste. I put up with it though, because it sure as hell beat some of the possible alternatives. He knew all about my situation with Jessica, so I decided to rip the band aid off.

“Jessica killed our relationship this morning, and it didn’t end well.” I leaned against the wall of my cubicle. “Apparently she found someone she liked more in Kansas over the last month and apparently she thought I’d like it better if she let me buy her a ticket so she could look me in the eyes when she broke the news to me.”

Gerald’s eyebrows raised, he let out a whistle and said, “That’s a lot… and she waited till the last day to tell you?”

I felt my phone buzz in my pocket, pulled it out, and immediately silenced it. “Yeah… she waited the full week to tell me.” I waved my phone in the air. “That was her calling, by the way. Seventh time she’s tried to call my phone in the last half-hour. She probably ran into some trouble getting to the airport or passing through TSA or something. Fucking useless…”

“Well, her using you like that… it shows a serious lack of character on her part. Consider yourself lucky, pal. You could have been in a marriage with that young lady.” He blew on his coffee and took a sip, nodded, and continued, “It’s probably for the best.”

“What’s probably for the best?”

The feminine voice behind me immediately caused the contents in my stomach to turn, and I gave Gerald a silent snarl of contempt before turning around to face the voice’s owner. Standing before me was one of the most gorgeous women I’d ever seen in-person - Bobbi Nanford. She was slim with golden-brown hair that fell in waves around elfin features. She had a fair complexion and a long, graceful neck, and beautiful light-grey eyes that seemed to pierce into my soul when she looked at me. Her nose and lips were waifish and delicate. She could have easily been an influencer or model making a lot more than she did here if it weren’t for the fact that she was so goddamn lazy. An alternative could have been finding some rich asshole to date, but the only real flaw to Bobbi was her personality. She didn’t just suck. She was a complete psycho bitch.

“Nothing, Bobbi,” I said, immediately disappearing in my cubicle to hopefully communicate that I didn’t want to talk.

Not taking the bait, she followed me.

“What are you even doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be at home with your long-distance fuck-girl?”

Fifth time that question was asked.

I wanted to whirl around and lash out at her. I wanted to tell her that I didn’t have to tell her a goddamn thing and that she should mind her own business. Honestly, I wanted to do more than that. I wanted to shove her head-first into a trash can and lock that trash can in a closet. The problem was that I’d had two infractions in the last six months and a third would probably lead to serious repercussions. Both infractions had come from complaints made by Bobbi. The first had been due to sexual misconduct in the workplace. It was a bullshit claim, and everyone knew it. For starters, I was too mild-mannered and introverted to be that brash. Second, I was too level-headed to make unwanted advances in the workplace and jeopardize a good career. Third, I wouldn’t have tried to force myself on someone like that because I consider myself a relatively good person. And fourth, Bobbi was a raving, foaming-at-the-mouth bitch, and despite the fact that she was stunning, I wouldn’t have touched her for a million dollars.

Okay, that was a lie. I’d sleep with one of the hottest girls in the office for a million dollars, but then I wouldn’t really have had to worry about my job then, would I?

The other infraction occurred when she somehow managed to convince upper management that I’d been mishandling financial information. While I hadn’t been directly accused of anything, my supervisor made it crystal clear that I was on thin ice. The point was, Bobbi had it out for me, and no one with any actual power had my back.

So instead of physically abusing her, I simply allowed myself to imagine several ways of ending her life and made due. It was hardly satisfying, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. Trying my best to keep things civil, I moved my desk into a standing position and removed a couple of snacks from my bag as I set up for my half-day.

“We broke up this week,” I said without looking at her. I turned on my computer, still trying to convey the message that I wasn’t interested in talking to her.

She laughed at me and said, “Damn, Upton. You had to find some internet rando desperate enough that she flew out regularly to fuck you, and you still couldn’t keep her? Why can’t you just date someone who lives in your city like a normal guy? Got tired of the rejection?”

I’d mastered the art of not talking to this woman, and now I was having to use every trick in my belt to keep looking forward and not say anything. Why did she hate me so much?

“Have you given up yet, incel?” she prodded. “Or do you think you still have options? Maybe you need to look further away? Some poor woman in a third world country might see you as her ticket out of her shithole. Ever think of that?”

“Now that’s enough, Bobbi,” Gerald said. Him speaking up at all demonstrated that she’d probably gone too far. Gerald wasn’t exactly the confrontational sort.

Bobbi snorted, “Mind your own fucking business, coffee stain. It’ll never be enough. I know Marcus’ type. He seems all nice and sincere. It’s just an act. Don’t let him fool you, grandpa.”

“Why would you even say that?” I whirled on her, but still kept my distance. I saw her eyes grow fractionally… probably from the outrage she felt that I’d bother to question her. “What have I ever done to give you that impression?”

“Because you’re all shit-bags,” Bobbi spat. “The more nice and chill you are, the more of an asshole you are underneath it all. You’re just an opportunist who probably used that poor, desperate girl. You probably broke her heart, and now you don’t have to look her in the face because she lives halfway across the country. So now you can go about your little life and try to find some other low self-esteem girl who lives far away and woo her into sucking your dick for a while till either you get tired of her or she wises up to the fact you’re a loser.”

I could feel the blood pounding in my head and the nails digging into my palms.

She looked me up and down and contorted her face into a sneer. “You want to hit me, don’t you?”

I did. I really fucking did. But I knew better.

“That’s what I thought,” she muttered. We stared each other in the eyes till moments felt like weeks, and when it became clear that I wasn’t going to give her a reason to sue me, she turned and headed for the exit.

“I have better things to do than breathe your air. Later, loser.”

She turned the corner and walked away, firmly shoulder-checking Gerald on the way just enough to jostle him, but not enough to make him spill any of his coffee. She was a master at that sort of thing. Gerald and I watched her walk away, both of us a little dumbfounded at how hostile she could be… but more than that. Despite my feelings toward Bobbi, I was captivated by the way her little ass looked in her tight, grey skirt. It didn’t matter how horrible of a person she was, Bobbi Nanford was a work of art.

I glanced over at Gerald and caught him staring at the exact same thing and gave him a nudge. He tore his eyes away from the view as if he’d just been caught cheating on his wife and looked at me with a confusion in his eyes that I fully understood.

“I know, man. I know,” I said before stepping back into my cubicle and getting to work.

Thirty minutes passed and I was starting to fall into a rhythm, letting the work drown out the fresh wounds Jessica had inflicted on me and the proverbial lemon juice Bobbi had decided to rub in it. I found some sort of zen in staring at rich people’s numbers all day and manipulating them to make them bigger. Numbers often made much more sense than people, and they rarely surprised you.

In fact, I was so engrossed into what I was doing that it took me a second to realize that someone was saying my name. I was pulled out of my headspace by the exact same question I’d been asked multiple times already, “Marcus? What are you doing here?”

What was this? Number five? Six?

I rolled my eyes and started to turn away from my computer. “You know, I do work here. I get to…” The rest of my words died on my lips as I saw who’d asked the question.

Natalie was standing in the doorway of my cubicle, leaning against the frame. She wore a thin, white, knit sweater and a black skirt that ended just above her knees. The sweater did wonders to show off her generous chest and the skirt hugged her hips in the same way. She looked up at me with those big brown eyes of hers; her eyebrows were subtly knit together in curiosity, and an amused little smile played about her full, lush lips.

Over the course of the last year, Natalie had become one of my best friends. We shared a lot of common interests, had similar taste in music and movies, and similar brands of humor while maintaining just enough of a difference to keep things interesting. I found myself enjoying life so much more when I was around her, and she’d made working at Marduke an absolute pleasure despite the existence of pains in my ass like Bobbi. Gun to my head, I would have had to admit a serious crush on this girl. Unfortunately, for the entire duration of our friendship, one or both of us had been taken - she’d had a boyfriend of three years until a month ago. She never really told me why they’d broken up. And of course… I’d been with Jess.

Her looks helped with my crush. She had caramel skin and black hair that she wore down just past her shoulders. Unlike Bobbi, hers didn’t quite have that silky smoothness to it; it was thicker and a bit more wiry, a result of part of her mixed ancestry. She complained about it all the time being a nightmare to work with, but she did a fantastic job. Her hair framed a round, heart-shaped face with high cheekbones. My favorite feature was her lips though - they were thicker than Jessica’s or Bobbi’s… more plump, and more than once I’d wondered what it would be like to kiss them, or have them explore some of the other parts of my body.

Seeing this woman in front of me warmed my heart, and I couldn’t help but smile. Her smile grew... God, it was infectious - big, and accompanied by cute dimples in her cheeks.

“Sorry,” I said, unable to finish my retort. “That was the seventieth time someone’s asked me that question today and it was starting to get old.”

“Ah,” Natalie said. “Makes sense. I can’t imagine someone asking me a question seventy times. I get annoyed if someone makes me repeat something more than once.”

“I’m aware.” I leaned back against my standing desk, crossed my arms over my chest and said, “Jessica broke up with me this morning.” I felt my smile fade a little. Despite the warmth from Natalie, the pain of getting dumped by someone I genuinely cared for was still a cold presence.

“Aw, Marcus! I’m sorry to hear that,” Natalie said, stepping forward to envelope me in her arms, pulling me into her. I could feel her large breasts press into my chest, and I adjusted my stance so she couldn’t feel the sudden half-erection I had going on in my pants. I wrapped my arms around her waist and laid my chin on her shoulder as she rubbed my back.

“You okay?” She asked.

“Surprisingly okay,” I said, which was honest. Sure… being broken up with hurt. I’d thought about keeping my day off. Thinking that I would be too broken up about it to actually get anything done. But despite the pain, there were some realizations that were starting to dawn on me. The long distance had been hard, and Jessica did have her problems, and Natalie’s hug seemed to dull that icy ache in my chest and make me realize that this wasn’t the end of the world.

After a few more moments, the hug started to feel a bit inappropriate; Natalie pulled back to look me in the eyes, and I let my hands slip from her waist. We were in the privacy of my cubicle, but there was no door, and anyone could walk by and see something that looked inappropriate for the workplace.

“Why did she do it?” she asked.

“She said there was someone else.”

“That fool.”

I smiled at that. “Thanks. I’d like to think so too, but you never know… she might have found someone much more high-value than me.”

“Not possible,” Natalie said, taking a couple of steps back and leaning against the wall. “You were way out of her league to begin with.”

“You’re just saying that because I got broken up with,” I retorted.

“That’s not true! You could have done way better than her. You always do that, Marcus. You think too little of yourself and you end up dating needy women with no ambition and they just suck you dry. Aim higher next time.”

There was a moment of silence as we just looked at each other. I gave her a half smile and she returned it.

“Maybe I will,” I finally said, hoping there was some implication in my words. My nerves were a little raw and asking her out right now would be horrible timing, but maybe…

She stared at me for a long moment before her half-smile grew a bit more and she nodded. “Good. But you’ve lost dating privileges. I have to approve whoever you date next.”

I hesitated there. Had she missed the meaning behind what I’d said? It’d been pretty subtle. “I guarantee you, you’ll approve of the next one I date.”

“Good,” she said with a slight air of superiority, and then she shifted the tone.

“You said you guys broke up this morning?”

“Yeah,” I responded.

“But she’s been here all week.”

“Yeah. Exactly.”

“God,” Natalie huffed, “What a cunt!”

“Everyone thinks I dodged a bullet,” I said.

“Everyone is right.” Natalie shot back. “I suspect everyone thinks you can do better.”

“Thanks. Well anyway, I decided to not spend a full vacation day in abject despair and instead at least salvage it by coming into work, which is why I’m here, to answer your question. And it was a good call. Especially getting to see you.”

She gave a miniscule curtsey. “Glad to be of service. It’s what I’m here for.”

“It’s not financial analytics for rich people?” I raised an eyebrow.

“No. I’m the floor’s source of morale. We need one to offset Bobbi and Gina. Analytics is just tangential stuff that happens to get done as a byproduct. Probably more collateral damage than anything.”

That earned her a snort, but she wasn’t wrong. Natalie wasn’t just a ray of sunshine for me in this place… she was the whole goddamn sun.

“Okay, I need to get back to work,” she said as she reached out to squeeze my arm. “Let me know if you need anything. Even if it’s just to talk.”

“I will. Thanks, Nat,” I said as she turned and left. I watched her leave too.

Bobbi might have been a work of perfection, but Natalie was a goddess in her own right, and as my friend walked away, I had to admit that Bobbi’s ass couldn’t compare to Natalie’s. I poked my head out of my cubicle to watch her walk down the hallway. Gerald’s head poked out of his cubicle next door and blocked my view.

“Hey Gerald,” I said. He snapped his head around to look at me. “I see you looking.” The older, conservative man blushed and grinned before he disappeared back into his cubicle like a prairie dog slipping back into its hole.

The next hour proved difficult for me to get back into work mode. My head was full of the conversation I had with Natalie, thinking of what could be a possibility in the next few months. I had to keep telling myself that Jessica had literally broken up with me that morning, so I needed to calm the hell down and do some navel gazing, but that was hard to do when I could still smell her perfume lingering in my cubicle.

So I was annoyed when the phone rang just as I was starting to quash those thoughts and get back into a work groove, ruining any momentum that I had. I picked up the receiver.

“Marduke. This is Marcus Upton speaking.”

“Mr. Upton? This is Karl Yunger. I’m a lawyer for your grandfather’s estate. Is this a good time?”

“Yeah… I’m available. I’m confused though… my grandfather died five years ago. Was there something missing?”

“No Mr. Upton,” Karl said. “I’m not referring to that grandfather. I’m referring to Colin Gerrard Senior - your father’s father. Are you familiar with him?”

Had I not switched from standing to sitting twenty minutes ago, I would have fallen on my ass. I never met my birth father, or any of his family. My mother never talked to me about them, and had shut down the conversation anytime there was an attempt to pry information from her. I hadn’t even known my father’s family name.

“I uh…” My mind was racing as I tried to make sense of this crazy thing coming out of left field, right on the heels of being dumped by my girlfriend this morning. “Are you sure you have the right guy?”

“Marcus William Upton. You’re twenty-eight years old. You work as a financial analyst for a firm called Marduke LLC. Your mother is Shawna Louise Smith Upton married to Henry David Upton, who adopted you and gave you his name? You have a step sister and two half-brothers. Is that accurate?”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s me.”

“Your grandfather passed away recently, and you are the sole recipient of his estate. We would like to meet with you and discuss the details. When would be a good time?”

“I’m… at work right now,” I said, but curiosity was quickly eroding any desire I had to finish my work day. I’d technically had the day off, so I was pretty sure no one would mind if I bounced early today. I pulled up an online map of New York. “What firm do you work for?”

“I’m one of the partners for Yunger, Price, and VanCamp.”

The location appeared to be about forty minutes by taxi. “Would this afternoon be okay? Say four?”

“That would be fine, Mr. Upton. A car will be outside of Marduke at 3:15 to pick you up, if you’d like.”

That took me by surprise. “Seriously?”

“Of course. You don’t have to take it if you’d prefer to drive yourself.”

I hesitated. What the hell was going on? Was this some sort of prank?

“Is this some sort of prank?”

Yunger laughed on the other side of the line, “I assure you this isn’t any sort of prank or anything nefarious. I would recommend discretion until we’ve had a chance to talk to you though.”

I sighed. This sounded weird, but there was no way in hell I was going to last the rest of the day not knowing what this was all about. “Okay. I’ll take the car.”

“Excellent. See you at four o’clock this afternoon, Mr. Upton. I look forward to meeting you.”

“Yeah,” I said and hung up the phone.

“Hey Gerald,” I said as I popped my head in his cubicle. “If Gina pops by, could you tell her I opted for the rest of my day off?”

Friday, 3:47 pm

As I emerged from the black sedan that had come to pick me up, I saw three old white guys in thousand-dollar suits standing at the foot of the stairs watching me emerge. As I approached warily, the one on the left reached out his hand and gave me a smile.

“Mr. Upton? I’m Karl Yunger, and these are my associates - William Price and Roger VanCamp. Pleased to meet you.”

I shook his hand. “Pleased to meet you too.” I took turns shaking the hands of the other men who all looked at me as if I was the return of Christ. I’d be surprised if they couldn’t tell I was confused by all this. “What’s this all about?”

“If you’ll come with us, we’ll go ahead and explain everything,” Roger said, turning to lead the way. The rest of us followed with Karl striding along next to me. We entered the building and went through metal detectors. VanCamp held up his hand as the security guard stationed at his desk stood up and started to approach us. “It’s alright LaDarius. He’s with us.” The security guard nodded and returned to his seat.

“Thank you for agreeing to come on such short notice, Marcus,” Karl said as we continued through the building. “I’m aware of how confusing this all is for you.”

“You’re not wrong. Until you called, I didn’t know anything about my birth father. His name… nothing. How did you find me?”

“Your grandfather only became aware of who you were eleven years ago. He understood that you had a good life with a loving family and didn’t want to disrupt that, so he decided not to reach out to you, but he kept up with you.”

I blinked. “My grandpa kept tabs on me for eleven years but never reached out?”

“You have to understand, he was an eccentric man. A workaholic… it didn’t leave a lot of time for family. He seemed to see the situation as beneficial for everyone involved.”

“What happened to my father?” I asked.

“He died about a year after you were born in a boating accident. He never married or had any other children that we are aware of.”

To go from having no information at all, to finding out that my father and grandfather were both dead and that they clearly left me with some sort of inheritance was flooring. Especially on top of the fact that my dating life had taken an upside-down turn less than twelve hours ago. I chewed on all that information as we continued down the maze of austere hallways. We finally arrived at a conference room where several other people in suits were already sitting at a large, dark mahogany table. Papers and computers were scattered across its surface… it looked like they’d been there for a while.

Karl indicated to a seat and took the one next to me. “Thank you for joining us, Mr. Upton. As you know, we’re here to discuss the matter of your grandfather’s death. As I informed you, you are your father’s only child. About five years ago, your grandfather drafted a new will that stated you were to inherit the entirety of his estate. We’ve been tasked with executing his will upon his death.”

“Congratulations, Mr. Upton. You’ve just inherited nine-hundred thirty billion dollars.”