Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
That left Lucas off the floor downstairs more often than he liked, and it was out of his control. There was something to be said for being seen by one’s employees after a stint out of the city that tended to draw out the problem areas.
Be it a spat between coworkers, or a concern about a machine; even personal problems that someone might otherwise hide for the sake of professional appearances came to light when a boss gave his employee ten minutes of undivided attention. It probably helped that Lucas had been the willing shoulder to cry on—God knew they were big enough to hold others’ weight—for a while, and his father didn’t have the time or patience for things he called nonsense.
Like caring.
The brewery ran as it should, a well-oiled machine, when everyone was happy. From the loading docks at the far end of the plant to the high school student running the cash register in the gift shop at the front where the public was welcome to sign up for tours and tastings. They all made a difference to output, quality, and production, not to mention, experience, when they spent their shift working with a genuine smile.
It all mattered.
Lucas had to remind himself of those things more often lately. More than he should, honestly. He’d worked in the brewery from the time he was a teenager. Doing the same shit out front that everybody else who couldn’t work in the back had to do. After high school, he maintained employment under his grandfather—who owned the majority shares of Dalton Brewery back then—while he worked toward a degree in business and management. The diploma guaranteed him a position managing the small army of employees until his late thirtieth birthday when he moved off the floor and upstairs where suits and ties made a daily appearance. Up here, he spent more time on the phone than he didn’t.
Five years later, and Lucas still put more time in talking on the phone than he did getting his hands dirty downstairs.
But it was never enough.
“Is it piss off Lucas day?” came a holler from outside Lucas’ office.
Followed by that booming laugh.
“Fuck my life,” Lucas muttered under his breath.
Forgetting his place for the moment.
The phone conference was still live.
“My apologies, Mr. Dalton. Could you repeat that? It was a bit low.”
“No need, something came up,” he told the head of human resources who had him on a three-way call with the team of managers at the call center. “Can you finish this without me this week, Oliver?”
Never missing a beat, the man on the other end said, “Sure, absolutely. I’ll debrief you in an email.”
“Great, goodbye.”
He didn’t have time to consider if his reply had sounded as short to the others on the call as it did to his own ears before he cut it off entirely. Lucas barely had the chance to posture his body toward the opened doorway to brace for the oncoming visitor before the barrel of a man with energy that instantly filled the room darkened the space.
His little brother—by a whole decade—grinned wide and slapped the frosted glass door with his palm. “Did you miss me, fuckhead?”
Lucas tried, but the pulse of pain between his eyebrows had him pinching the spot to relieve the sudden tension. “Jacob, just try to give a shit when you’re inside this place, okay? Try, that’s all I’m asking.”
“I give a shit.”
Glaring at the twenty-five-year-old in the doorway who clearly didn’t notice the giggles and jokes filtering down the hallway from the other offices, Lucas offered to Jacob, “Then get better at showing it, maybe?”
Defensive in a blink, Jacob straightened a bit with hunched in shoulders as he folded his once-beefy arms over his broad chest. Despite all the time his brother proclaimed to put into the gym, he’d yet to gain back a lot of the muscle mass that he’d lost in his earlier twenties.
“Jesus, man—why do you gotta sound so much like Dad, huh? I haven’t seen you in like a week and a half, so I come all the way across the city when all I’ve got are trash morning classes, and you’re being a prick. Whose talking about getting better at showing shit between us again?”
Goddammit.
Like a dagger to his heart, Jacob knew right where to hit Lucas when it really counted. A weakness in the older Dalton brother that only his younger sibling could latch onto because while a lot of differences separated the two, the things that mattered were exactly the damn same.
“I’m not like Dad,” Lucas spat back.
Then, he did a double-take of the door, and his brain decided to remember the people just beyond his office.
“Close the fucking door,” he snapped.
Jacob did, but he put in no effort to look happy about it. In fact, his arms remained crossed, and he refused to look at his older brother sitting behind the desk, opting to inspect the wall of shelves showing off the company’s many awards.