Crimson Footprints II: New Beginnings (12 page)

“My apologies, Mrs. Tanaka, but professionalism dictates that I not dally.” He gave a curt nod. “Expect to hear more from me regarding our disagreement.”

Daichi headed for the door. 

“Conference meeting in an hour,” he reminded her, as if she suddenly needed such reminders, and disappeared from sight.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Deena entered the conference room, a massive and windowless space with an elongated table for twenty-four at its center. Around it were black leather swivel chairs, each occupied by the senior-most members of the firm. There was no board of directors at the Tanaka firm, no board for one of the largest architectural firms in the world, because, despite its size, Daichi considered it a family company. Only a Tanaka would sit at the helm of the company, and when one was no longer available, its doors would close. Such was the belief of Daichi Tanaka.

Deena took a seat at the far end, on what would be Daichi’s right side, where he preferred her. The seat to his left and across from her was empty. It was where Kenji sat, and it would remain glaringly empty until his arrival. Despite the earliness of the hour, all partners were present and only two seats sat vacant. However, Daichi stood over his, surveying his partners with an always critical eye.

“Deena, I’ve been meaning to tell you. Your work on Kansas City National Bank was stellar. Guaranteed to win an award, I think,” Jennifer Swallows said carefully.

As with any words she spoke, Deena took them in, turning and inspecting for the true meaning beneath. Given that there were but two women in the highest ranks of a near-exclusively male firm, it would’ve been natural to assume that Jennifer, the older woman, and Deena, would’ve bonded instantly. But from the moment of Deena’s hire, the senior architect made it clear that she was a threat. Instead of the support Deena anticipated receiving, Jennifer criticized her loudly and often on issues both great and small, making a point of masking advice with obvious challenges to her intelligence. When Daichi first sought to mold Deena and prop her up, Jennifer and her flunky, Walter Smith, gossiped religiously and worked covertly to undermine her efforts. Finally, when it became apparent that Deena had surpassed her both in reputation and prestige, Jennifer sought out a more demure, though no less hostile, stance, despite her increasingly advanced age. 

Seventy.

It seemed to Deena that seventy brought a maturity with it that should’ve admonished against malicious gossip, distasteful jokes, relentless criticism, and pointless insults. But Mia had been two years old before even the jabs about the inherent benefits in screwing a Tanaka finally wore off. At the height of it all, an openly gay Walter Smith approached Deena at the annual winter cocktail party and inquired as to whether Daichi’s younger son happened to be homosexual. When she indicated that he wasn’t, Walter insisted that Deena hurry up and get married so that the men of the firm would have means to screw their way to the top of the Tanaka firm too. Though Deena hadn’t shared their exchange with another, Walter had been fired by Monday morning just the same.

Already, her thoughts were with the prison designs upstairs and all she needed to do. With a sigh, Deena skimmed the meeting’s itinerary in an effort to gauge the amount of time she’d be forced to sit and wallow. Attendance, a call to order—as if anyone dared be out of order with Daichi Tanaka present—and a CEO/Principal Architect report by Daichi. There would be no way of estimating how long such a report could take. Deena did know, however, that any report by Daichi would be weighted with numbers, figures, percentages, and performance measures not just of architects at their principal location, but at Rio, Tokyo, Mumbai, and more. Each time Deena considered the twenty-six locations with the Tanaka logo at its helm, she remembered the meeting so many years ago, when her inattentiveness had caused her to inadvertently make the case for laying off fifteen percent of the architects, engineers, planners, interior designers, graphic designers, and administrative staff throughout the world—a number that totaled nearly fourteen hundred people. Both the guilt and hate mail she subsequently received served as catalyst for many a sleepless night.

With Deena’s marriage to Tak, Daichi awarded her partnership as a wedding gift of sorts. The gesture was unmistakably clear. Tanakas did not, as a rule, believe in divorce. And Deena’s marriage to Tak was as much a merger of her interests to that of the Tanakas, in so far as his father was concerned. Her career goals became Daichi’s and vice versa. As a Tanaka, he could only benefit from any strides she made in the field.

Both Deena’s expanded role at the firm and her marriage were still new when the economy finally began to turn up from its drastic decline. When Daichi sought to expand into new territory, this time Shanghai, Deena insisted on coming along. Her father-in-law took it as a sign of unshakeable ambition. A blushing bride with her career still in sight? It seemed to make him love her all the more. And so it was that the newlywed couple packed, halted work on the construction of their new house, and moved to Shanghai for two months. Now, as Daichi stood before her, he undoubtedly toyed with the idea of expansion once more.

Kenji stormed in, whirlwind that he was, adjusting his tie with fumbling fingers. Deena rushed to meet him, thereby blocking the board’s view of the Tanaka they swore would be the end of the firm. 

“Where’s your briefcase?” she demanded, adjusting his knot with practiced fingers. “How will you take notes? And did you remember the research you were supposed to do on aggressive minority recruitment?”

“No time.”

There was nothing he could have been doing more important. Nothing.

“Kenji—”

“Deena, would you move so I can sit down? I mean, seriously. You—”

She had a thousand questions for him, each more exasperated than the last, but his cheeks were scorched, and his father was glaring, so she scrambled back to her seat. A last look at the poorly adjusted fabric about his neck reminded Deena that it had been she who’d tied his tie the night of his prom, for his high school graduation, and for graduation from college.

Daichi rounded the room to Deena, slammed a hand on the hardwood table hard enough to make Deena jump, and leaned in, expression severe.

“I would recommend that you take your own advice, Mrs. Tanaka, regarding professionalism, and curtail your behavior so that it complies with standard decorum in
my
conference room. Any further distractions from you or Mr. Tanaka will result in both of you receiving a standard reprimand under Article III, Section 2.15 of the Effective Code of Conduct Policy. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes—yes, Daichi,” Deena murmured.

She glanced at a wide-eyed Kenji, who looked from father to sister, as if waiting for further explanation.

Daichi stalked to the front of the room.

“What?” Kenji whispered.

Deena shot him an exasperated look.

“Article III, Section 2.15 of the Effective Code of Conduct Policy gives him the right to levy disciplinary actions at his discretion, up to and including suspension and a monetary fine,” she hissed.

Deena righted herself immediately and set about ignoring him, her attention now on Daichi.

He was one of those people who commanded attention when he entered a room. Dignified, masterly, refined—Daichi Tanaka gave off an air of importance, probably from the day he was born. Salt-and-pepper hair, steel-brown eyes, and a stubbornly square chin were more than enough to intimidate. Couple that with power, extraordinary wealth, and unequaled prestige, and the outcome was a recipe for unbridled fear.

Today, Daichi wore a twenty-five hundred dollar Armani suit, tailor-made, smoke-gray. His briefcase, of the same gray, was a limited edition Prada, retail price close to five thousand. He retrieved the bag from a chair and tossed it on the table as though it cost nothing, before jamming two big hands in his pockets and turning away from a stark and attentive audience.

“An architect by the name of Jayashree Verma has approached me with the aim of firm expansion into Sydney, Australia. I would like to hear partner thoughts before making a decision.”

He faced them and waited.

It was always that way with Daichi. Testing, ever testing. Giving them little information so that he could glean what they knew, what they didn’t know, and why.

No one wanted to speak. Deena could see it in the way eyes studied the brown swirls on the table, life lines of a tree that once lived. When she glanced over at Kenji, his eyes were downcast, not on the table, but a spot just below it.

Kenji smiled down at his phone. His buddies Zach, Brian, and Cody were heckling him for being absent as of late. Text message after text message rained in on him, each listing the plethora of activities they’d undertaken without him—all of which, coincidentally enough, happened to be far more fun without him. Their assumption was that he’d been getting lucky more often than not, with the blonde accountant, Paige. He hadn’t corrected them, not because he wanted them to think him a stud, but because she required little explanation and Lizzie, by contrast, too much. 

Zach, former college teammate and self-proclaimed ladies’ man, now sought to tell him about the opportunity of a lifetime of which he’d missed out. In it, he and Cody had been at their usual South Beach haunts when a potential one-night stand indicated a willingness to go home, not just with Zach, but Cody, too.

That could’ve been you,
Zach concluded in a text.

Kenji thumbed in a response.

Appreciate the thought, but like 2 leave the random sex 2 U.

The answer came instantly.

34” 26” 36”,
Zach wrote.

Kenji tried not to smile.

To his right, a frumpy old lady who Deena couldn’t stand, stumbled over words. “Of course, I’m familiar with Verma’s work. He’s a—”

“She,” Deena snapped.

Kenji looked up.

“What?”

“Verma’s a ‘she,’” Deena corrected.    

“Oh.” The old lady shifted. “That detail escaped me.”

“Fascinating,” Kenji’s dad said, in the unmistakable tone that meant he was honing in for the kill. “Considering that her early acclaim was mostly due to being such a young and successful woman in patriarchal India.”

Kenji grinned, barefaced, as he looked from father to that old menace. Maybe she’d finally get fired after all. Lord knows she’s tortured Deena long enough.

“Son, glad to see I have your attention. Now do tell us your thoughts on expansion into Australia.”

Heat rushed through Kenji. Inadvertently, he shot a look at Deena. She stared at her lap.

“Well, Dad . . .” He took the time to swallow, grasping for snippets of conversation. Nothing. “It all sounds okay. But you’d know best.”

Kenji waited, eyes on his father, who never even blinked as he watched his son. Finally, Daichi nodded his approval.

“Off the cuff, I’d have to decline the venture,” Jennifer Swallows cut in. “A twenty-six office firm is pretty substantial already, I’d say. And we want to guard against artificially inflating ourselves.”

Lines now creased the otherwise sharp-featured face of Jennifer Swallows. She reminded Deena of a bird at times—not the beauty of a majestic eagle, swarming high above others, or the charm of a sweet blue jay. No, Jennifer Swallows reminded Deena of a starving elderly vulture through both deed and appearance.

Deena shot her an impatient look. “Your argument is the same each time we consider expansion. ‘The firm is large enough already,’ as if each new job created somehow lessens your bottom line.”

“We expanded into Buenos Aires,” Jennifer said. “At your insistence.”

“And we stayed out of Singapore, at yours!”

Strom Wilson groaned. “Please, could we not rehash Singapore, Deena?”

Strom was the newest partner of the firm, in position for two years, at the firm for seventeen. Hair a stark white, face a constant frown, he made no qualms about his impatience with younger, less-experienced architects, Kenji included.

“Seven percent of the world’s top architects graduate from the National University of Singapore,” Deena said. “Other firms with a direct presence are capitalizing, not only on those numbers, but on the cultural viewpoint which shapes the architecture of—”

“Stay on topic, Mrs. Tanaka,” Daichi said, but there was no mistaking the smile of appreciation. She knew it well.

“Fine,” Deena said. “What are we considering here? Expansion into Sydney. It’s a great idea if the bottom line can support it.”

“What a surprise,” Jennifer said. “But then again, maybe I’d be perpetually interested in expansion, too, if I sought to profit.”

Daichi silenced her with a hand. But it was a fair point. Up until very recently, the Tanaka firm only offered non-equity partnership. In it, partners received a fixed salary plus their rate of commission; however, their fixed salary proved significantly higher than that of the other associates. With Deena’s marriage to Tak, she became the first equity partner in the Tanaka firm, garnering a stake in its operations, profiting when the firm did, and earning on every project, regardless of whether she’d contributed or not. And while non-equity partners had only cursory voting rights, Deena could weigh in on any subject, though Daichi still wielded power of the veto. Deena had, in essence, become the second-most powerful individual among the firm’s 9,000 employees. Kenji became the third.

Kenji dropped his phone on the floor.

“It stands to reason that we’d want a strong presence in Australia,” Deena said loudly, horrified that Daichi might see his son palming the floor for his phone. “The Tanaka firm has a reputation of excellence;” she continued. “We should seek to expand that as far and wide as possible.”