Chapter 1 - Basement Dweller

Chapter 1: Chapter 1 - Basement Dweller

Coughing up blood in a dark alley wasn’t how Jesse expected the day to end.

As he laid on the cold ground a huge enraged figure stood above him landing heavy kicks to his stomach with all his might whilst cussing at him.

He bit his lower lip hoping for this nightmare to end, but it didn’t.

"Stop!! Kicking him. We have the money already, there’s no need to keep doing this," a young lady wearing a short black skirt and sleeveless blue blouse yelled, taking steps away from the scene.

"Stop! You are going to kill him!"

But the big brute didn’t stop

With the pain coursing through Jesse’s body, his mind drifting in and out of consciousness he couldn’t help but wonder if this was how he was going to die.

’But would it be such a bad thing? Do I have anything worth living for if not revenge?’

Seven hours earlier, Jesse was already dead inside, but he put on an act like this was just another Wednesday.

Even with his composed demeanor, his eyes were puffy like someone who hasn’t slept in days. His shirt was the same one he wore to the funeral, the collar gone soft and gray from being washed and worn too many times.

He needed to buy some new work clothes, and he will as soon as he gets that long awaited promotion, hopefully today.

Jesse sat in the basement office of luxury fashion brand Standard & Silk, a windowless room surrounded by old mannequins and rolls of raw textiles, staring at logistics agreements for the upcoming fashion show for the fall collection.

"You didn’t get it," Buster walked in and sat down at his desk.

Buster was the only other person who worked down here, a heavyset man in his forties who’d given up caring about his career sometime in the 2010s. He was holding a printout like it was a winning lottery ticket.

"I didn’t get what?" Jesse asked, praying to high heavens that it isn’t what he thought.

"The promotion. Rudy Mazer got it. The kid who started last year."

Jesse’s pen stopped moving. "That’s not funny, Buster. I get that you like to joke about everything but not this one, please."

"Do I look like I’m joking?" Buster wasn’t. He looked almost sympathetic, which was worse. "I just came down from upstairs, that’s what everyone up there is raving about. Guess I won’t be the only one down here. You’ll be stuck with me in this basement till I resign or get fired."

Something in Jesse’s chest went cold and then hot. He stood up so fast his chair rolled back and hit the filing cabinet.

Andy promised me that promotion . His father promised that promotion to VP of Brand Operations & Supply Chain Strategy before he died. What the fuck is going on?

Jesse shoved his desk forward without meaning to. Buster flinched at the sound.

He looked up at Jesse’s towering frame, taking note of his now-red face.

"Dude! Are you looking at me or the door? You know I can’t tell with your crossed eyes."

Jesse breathed in and out for a minute and walked out of the office without saying a word. The last thing he wanted was to lash out at Buster.

Jesse walked past rows of cubicles, his loud footsteps catching everyone’s attention.

They murmured amongst themselves.

"Jesus! Who the fuck is that and who let him in?"

"Someone looks like he was scorned."

"What is this ugly basement dweller doing up here?"

"Damn! That face is atrocious."

Jesse rarely came up here even though he was the one keeping the whole business going.

’This is the high fashion scene in New York, of course they find my looks atrocious.’

He ignored them all. They were of no importance to him.

He needed answers—why and how he didn’t get this overdue promotion—and there was only one person who had them.

Andrew Hyland.

Jesse made a beeline for Andrew’s office. Halfway there, Andrew’s secretary tried to stop him.

She stood up from her desk, hands out like she was trying to calm a spooked dog. "Mr. Byrne, he’s in a meeting, you can’t just—"

Jesse was already past her.

He pushed the door open without knocking. Andrew sat behind his desk with a glass of red wine in his hand, laughing at something. Across from him, also holding a glass, was Rudy Mazer, grinning like he’d just won the world cup.

And in a way, Rudy had won. From bullying Jesse in highschool to now taking the position he had fought tirelessly for by just doing nothing, there was no victory bigger than that.

"So it’s official," Jesse said. "He got the promotion. Over me."

Rudy’s grin didn’t move. Andrew’s did, freezing into something careful. He looked past Jesse at his secretary, who’d followed him in, and the look he gave her could have stripped paint.

"I tried to stop him, Mr. Hyland, I swear, he just—"

"Everyone out," Andrew said. "Except Jesse."

Rudy stood, still smug, "You just had to ruin a good time, don’t you? How typical," he said and left without waiting for Jesse’s response.

The secretary practically ran. Andrew waited until the door clicked shut, then gestured at the chair across from him.

"Sit down."

"I don’t want to sit down."

"Sit down, Jesse." Andrew poured a second glass and slid it across the desk. Jesse didn’t touch it. "Before you say anything—I’m sorry I missed your mother’s funeral yesterday."

Jesse stared at the glass like it had personally offended him. "I understand why you missed it. You’re a busy man." He said it flat, without an atom of warmth.

"Now let’s get back to me not getting the promotion you and your late father promised me. I did everything you asked and more to get out of that basement. For five years, Andrew. Five hectic years. You know people still come in there to fart? They see me and Buster sitting there and they still do it. Like we’re one of the many rolls of fabrics in there."

Andrew laughed before he could stop himself, a short surprised bark of a laugh. "I’m sorry. I’ll look into that, and make sure it stops."

"I don’t care if it stops or not." Jesse’s voice climbed. "I care about getting out of that windowless basement. I work eighty-hour weeks for this company. I live and breathe this place. I worked so hard I wasn’t even at my mother’s side the night she died, Andy. She died alone, Andy."

A tear ran down Jesse’s cheek before he could wipe it off with his left hand.

Andrew looked away, like he was avoiding catching something just by looking at him.

"So tell me, Andy. What else do I have to do to get promoted around here? I don’t even care if it’s the VP position or something lower than it, I just want to get out of that basement."

"It’s not good for me."

Andrew took a long sip of wine, longer than the moment needed, buying himself time.

"I can’t promote you," he said finally. "Right now. And I think deep down you already know why."

Jesse’s jaw tightened. "Let me guess. It’s because of my looks or.... my father."

Andrew didn’t deny it. "It’s your father. I wanted to give you that promotion. Genuinely. But then your mother passed, and the news picked it up, and just like that your father’s name is trending again. Jamie Byrne’s wife is dead. Everyone’s talking about him again, and you share his last name."

Jesse said nothing. There was nothing to say. He’d heard some version of this his whole life.

His father, Jamie Byrne, was one of the biggest names on Wall Street. In New York as a whole. A respected investor and venture capitalist—until it came out that he was a fraudster who’d taken all the money people gave him to invest.

Jesse’s father had left both him and his mother to deal with the fallout while he stayed on the run, somewhere no one could find him.

"Think about it from my side," Andrew went on. "If I give you the VP position now, the press covers it. This isn’t some no-name fashion brand, Jesse, people watch us. Every eye in the building turns to you, and then I’m forced to fire you because of the bad press. So really, I did you a favor. There’s still a chance. Just not now."

The two of them went to the same private school like most rich kids, and when the news about Jesse’s father broke out Andrew was the only person who didn’t participate in bullying him or treating him like the pariah he truly was.

That history, coupled with the fact that Andrew was the one who’d convinced his late father to hire him at all when everyone turned him down made Jesse believe what Andrew said.

Of course it’s my father’s fault. I can’t catch a break with that deadbeat.

Andrew talked him down slowly, the way he always did, circling back to the fashion show that needed to be done properly, telling him the extra hours would matter, would count for something, eventually.

Jesse wanted to believe there was still a shot. Some small, stupid part of him did.

But a bigger part of him—the realistic part that constantly reminded him how unfortunate he had been suspected he was going to die in that basement.

Just as he was about to leave, a sultry voice exchanged greetings with Andrew’s secretary outside.

Jesse was at the door when he saw the owner of the voice. She had an oval face, high cheekbones, and a set of piercing blue eyes that cut straight through him as she strutted past—ignoring his attempt at a hello like he wasn’t even there.

This was what he’d come to expect from Andrew’s fiancé, Natalia Meadows. He kept being polite to her anyway.

Natalia slammed the door shut the moment she stepped into her lover’s office.

"What is that filthy low-life still doing here?"

Jesse heard her. He exchanged a look with Andrew’s secretary, who’d heard it too. He shook his head. ’If only she knows that I know her well kept secret she won’t be this nasty to me,’ Jesse thought to himself.

By the time he left the firm, the sky over Manhattan had gone dark.

Jesse’s back ached from the desk chair.

He hadn’t eaten since breakfast, so he stopped at a drive-through on the way home and ordered chicken and fries. Extra fries, because Tatiana liked to steal his.

He smiled a little thinking about her. She was the love of his life. The only bright spot in his dark world.

They have been together for two years now, most of it in the apartment his mother had somehow held onto before they lost everything else.

He was already rehearsing how he’d tell her about the promotion—how he’d spin it into something that didn’t sound like another loss.

Tatiana complained more than she should, spent more than they had, but she was his and his alone. He considered it a miracle that she was still with him even though with her looks she could do so much better.

He was still smiling when he pulled up outside the building and a guy on a bike rolled past, calling his name.

"Jesse Byrne?"

Jesse turned around. "That’s me."

The guy tossed him a yellow envelope without slowing down. "You’ve been served."

Jesse stood there holding a bag of chicken and fries in one hand and a legal envelope in the other. He opened it right there on the sidewalk. Eviction notice. His mother’s siblings were going after the house before the ground on her grave had even settled.

"They’re really going through with this," he muttered.

They want me to be homeless because there’s no way I can possibly fight this.

I only have two grand in my account, that can’t afford a half decent lawyer or studio apartment in New York.

He almost laughed at the absurdity of it, but the laugh caught in his throat when he noticed the car parked across the street— a classic red Chevy that looked exactly like Andrew’s. He stared at it a beat too long, then told himself there were plenty of red Chevys in New York, and walked inside.

He set the food down on the coffee table and was about to call out for Tatiana when he heard it.

Moans and grunts. Coming from the bedroom.

Jesse’s stomach dropped before his brain caught up. He walked toward the sound slowly, some part of him already knowing, the rest of him refusing to believe it even as the sounds intensified.

"Right there! Right there, daddy!!" Tatiana screamed.

He opened the door.

Tatiana was under Andrew Hyland, and neither of them heard him come in.