My Boss & Me

“Just sign and initial where indicated, and the deal is done. There’s no need to be dramatic about it.” Adrian Vale turned those cold, blue eyes on me and slicked back his short, black hair. He looked…bored. 

Meanwhile, my world was falling away. Sunlight filtered through the half-drawn blinds and the scent of burnt coffee filled my nostrils. My team whispered as my heart pounded with frustration and adrenaline. I’d been up all night preparing arguments to save my team, but this asshole didn’t even want to hear them!

It took agreeing to an abysmal interest rate and promising way too much to an investment shark, but I did it. While my peers were spending their 21st birthdays passed out and flirting with alcohol poisoning, I was going from bank to bank trying to get a business loan. The world needed NovaTech, and I was going to make it happen.

I hired game devs, artists, writers, and put my nose to the grindstone. For five years I fought to break into the video game market. I poured every ounce of myself into success. We made multiple games, small at first, with our largest yet set to drop next month.

Only to end up here, sitting in front of Adrian Vale, CEO of ValeCorp, and staring at buyout paperwork. Dude was prideful enough to name his stupid company after himself! That should tell you everything you need to know about him. His features were sharp, eyebrows even sharper, and his tongue the sharpest of all.

“NovaTech is making decent profit for a startup, but your structuring is sloppy. The first matter of business is layoffs and restructuring. We’ll need to optimize the human capital to keep the company afloat.” His tone was calm, almost insultingly so. “You’re paying far too much and expecting far too little. Half the team size and the same amount of output is the goal.”

My stomach twisted into knots. Optimizing human capital? He makes it sound like we’re spare parts! Every word sounded like a death sentence for my team. Around me, my coworkers stared at the table, too afraid to speak. I could feel my pulse in my temples as my anger crept up my throat.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I pushed my chair back, the scraping sound loud in the otherwise-quiet room. Adrian stopped mid-sentence with the slightest lift of an eyebrow. I straightened my tie for the fifth time, my hands slightly sweaty, but kept my voice steady. “If you’re going to dismantle everything we’ve built, at least have the decency to look me in the eye and listen to our argument before you do it!”

Adrian’s crisp, charcoal suit and silver cufflinks were perfectly pressed and shined. His tie looked like it might be holding his head in place, it was so tight. Every movement was efficient and deliberate. His presence was magnetic, but in a cold way. Like…gravity with teeth. His gaze swept the room and when it settled on me, it felt like a weight landing on my chest.

“Brazen are we, Mr. Navarro?’” He regarded me for a long moment, his eyes narrowing slightly. The air felt heavier and my pulse began racing. Heat burned beneath my collar and I clasped my hands together to keep them from shaking. I hated how much I felt, while this man seemed to be made of ice. His jaw tightened and a muscle in his cheek flickered before he gave a faint, clinical smile. “If you have a better plan for profitability, I’m all ears. Otherwise, sit down and let me do what I do best.”

I could sense everyone watching. My coworkers were terrified. Adrian was unreadable. I remained standing. My throat was dry, but something reckless pushed the words out. “What you do best is turn companies into spreadsheets! But NovaTech isn’t just a column of numbers. You’re gutting a company full of people who actually care about what we’ve made. You can’t just force half the people to do the same amount of work and expect the same quality of results!”

Silence met my words. Adrian’s gaze sharpened, assessing. But he didn’t seem angry. He looked more…curious? For a moment, something flickered across his expression. Interest, maybe? But before I could figure it out, it was gone. My skin prickled as those eyes seemed to both see me and strip me bare at the same time.

“You have plenty of fire in your words, Mr. Navarro. And yet I’m the one here to buy up your debt and keep your little company from going under entirely. Your method hasn’t worked thus far, while mine has made me a multi-billionaire. Whose plan do you think is going to be more successful?” He leaned forward across the table, a wicked grin on his face.

Everything in his posture screamed ‘I win.’ But I wasn’t going to back down that easily. “That depends on how you define success. If all we wanted was money, then sure. Your charts and expecting your employees to produce like olives in a press would be the way to go. But NovaTech was born from passion, heart, and pride in our work. It’s hard to be proud of something squeezed out of an overworked robot.”

He should have thrown me out right there. Instead, he just looked at me like it’d stepped into a game he’d been waiting for someone to play. He closed his folder slowly. “Noted.” His voice was smooth again, like the surface of a refrozen lake. “And Navarro? I always look directly at what I’m about to break down.”

He gathered his papers and stood, glancing once more at me. It definitely lingered more than was necessary, long enough to show me this wasn’t over. Then he just…walked out. No paperwork signed, no back-and-forth, nothing. The air seemed to rush back into the room only after the door closed behind his sculpted butt.

My shoulders dropped and adrenaline crashed into shaky disbelief. My coworkers stared at me like I’d just signed my own termination papers. Honestly, I probably had. My chest still felt tight, but underneath the anger, something else was stirring. Something even worse, actually: intrigue. Against my better judgement, I started to wonder what Adrian Vale looked like when he wasn’t wearing such a thick coat of armor.

“That went…well?” My lead developer, Andrea, attempted a smile. It came out as more of a pained grimace, but I appreciated the effort just the same. “He didn’t immediately shoot you down, Eli. Which is more than I expected when I found out ValeCorp was the company buying us out.”

“He does have that type of reputation,” I agreed. “But I couldn’t just sit there and let him turn us into some money-printing, soulless game mill. There’s already too many of those. Our spirit and attention to detail are what set NovaTech apart.” I ground my knuckles into my thigh in irritation. People like Adrian would never understand what it feels like to pour your heart and soul into a business that you love. I wasn’t even convinced he knew what love felt like!

Andrea shifted uncomfortably in her chair and flipped through the copy of the buyout paperwork in front of her. “So…what do we do now? I’m well aware we can’t just back out of the deal. We’d be bankrupt in less than six months. But Mr. Vale didn’t say if he was still going ahead or not.”

I sighed and sank into my chair. “For now…we keep doing what we’ve been doing. The deal states that the launch of Endless Skies will be unaffected. So let’s focus on getting that to the finish line with the fewest number of bugs possible. Maybe if we can capture enough players, we’ll have more say when Adrian comes back around.”

It wasn’t much, but it was something for the team to latch onto. Their smiles came back and their shoulders lifted. “Hey, that looks more like the NovaTech team I assembled! There’s no time to waste on worrying about what comes next. You focus on building a kick-ass space game, and I’ll figure out what to do about ValeCorp.” I gave each person a high-five as they passed me on the way to the door and tried to maintain my positive demeanor.

As soon as the door closed behind the last dev, my head collapsed onto my arms on the table. What was I going to do? These people trusted me for their livelihood. But I was failing them. The buyout had promised to be a way to solve our financial woes and give us a chance to recover from the flop of Hidden Galaxies. Instead, it was proving to be a sterile takeover, intent on turning us into another corporate drone academy.