The Promotion: A psychological thriller with a killer twist Read online

  The Promotion

  Daniel Hurst

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  Contents

  Prologue

  BEFORE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Epilogue

  The Boyfriend

  About the Author

  Inkubator Newsletter

  Also by Daniel Hurst

  Rights Info

  Prologue

  It was a typical morning in the office right up until the police officers arrived.

  Fingers were tapping keyboards, and emails were being sent. Ringing phones were being answered, and calls were being diverted. And the coffee machine was working overtime, trying to satisfy the thirst of all the weary employees who needed its contents to fuel their brains until lunchtime.

  Everybody was in attendance and sitting where they should have been. Everybody except one person. That person’s desk sat empty, the computer still waiting to be switched on and the phone calls going unanswered. It wasn’t clear to everybody where he was and why he had failed to report for duty this morning, but it would be soon.

  The police officers were here to provide the answers.

  But before they walked in and turned this noisy office silent, and barring the one missing unaccounted-for employee, everything else was as it should have been. That’s the thing with office environments. They are familiar. They are predictable. And they are safe.

  Routines. Habits. Schedules. A company and indeed an employee can break down without those things. Nobody goes to work unsure what will happen that day. Everybody has a calendar filled with exactly what will happen, and some people are employed simply to make sure that the calendar is adhered to. But the calendar might as well have been torn to shreds that morning when the police officers came because there would be no meetings, presentations, and deadlines after that.

  That’s because the officers came bearing bad news.

  The missing colleague had been found, and there was a good reason why they weren’t at their desk like everybody else.

  It was because they were dead.

  Shock was the overriding emotion throughout the office once the news began to spread. Hands went over mouths, and tears were shed. Some people had to go home, unable to continue with their duties for the day out of distress, while others simply sat in the staff room and engaged in conjecture about what might have really happened to their ill-fated colleague.

  The death of an employee in a company would always be big news, but this was huge.

  This wasn’t just anybody who had died.

  It was the boss.

  BEFORE

  1

  I notice the trembling in my hands as I go over my notes again. That’s not a good sign, so I put down the pieces of paper and tell myself to get a grip.

  Come on, Imogen, you can do this. It’s just a presentation. You’ve done this before, and you’ll do it again.

  So why am I so nervous? Why do I feel as if this is a big one?

  I think the answer to that might lie in the fact that I know Michael is going to be in attendance. Michael is my boss at this bank and most of all, he is my problem. I have worked with him for twenty years, which is almost all my adult life, considering I am only forty-five. You would think that we would be incredibly close after such a long time working alongside each other.

  But you would be wrong.

  I detest Michael. I hate him with every fibre of my being. The sight of him makes my skin crawl, and the sound of his voice sends a shiver down my spine.

  It wasn’t always this way. We used to be friends. But then something happened, and things have never been the same since. That thing was my fault, and I regret it more than anything else I have ever done, but I can’t change it, nor can I change the consequences.

  Michael is not just my boss. He is my ruler. He literally holds my fate in his hands. At any moment, he could bring my world crashing down and wipe out all the years I have dedicated myself to this bank. That’s not a good position for anybody to be in, and I’m aware of that. That’s why I am trying to get out of it. But there is only one way out. I need Michael’s job. I need to become the boss, and that isn’t as far-fetched as it might seem. I am his second in command, after all. I am the next in line to take his position. I could easily do what he does, and I have certainly earned the chance to prove it. But Michael won’t let me. He is stubbornly refusing to move on and vacate his role for me to move into because he has me exactly where he wants me, and he has no intention of ever giving me my freedom now.

  So why don’t I just leave? I’m certainly senior enough to find myself a good role at another bank. That seems like the easiest option. But that’s where Michael has me beaten again. He knows things about me, things that are so powerful that I cannot leave. If I do, he will expose my secret, and I will be finished, not just in my industry but in my life.

  That’s why my hands are shaking now. It’s not just nerves. It’s anger. Frustration. Years of torment all wrapped up inside me, just bursting to get out. Nobody else knows the predicament I am in. Not my subordinates. Not my clients. And certainly not HR. But the hardest thing is that my husband, Evan, doesn’t know. As far as he is concerned, I am a high-flying businesswoman doing well in her workplace, and my promotion to the top job is just a matter of time. Not even him, one of the two men whom I love and trust more than anyone else in this world, knows what I am going through, and that is tough to bear. I hate keeping secrets from my partner, but I have no choice if I want to preserve the life we have together.

  I said that Evan was one of two men whom I love and trust more than anyone else in the world. The other one is my father, William, and I’m looking at him right now as I stand here in this office corridor, trying to go over my notes before the presentation. This painting of him on the wall is a lifelike work of art, and it’s a testament to the influence that he had in this company that his presence remains even though he actually left this business a decade ago. William was the boss here long before Michael held the job and even before I was old enough to know what a job was. My father is also the reason why I ended up at this company myself. I suppose you could say I am following in his footsteps, or at least I am trying to. But I’m not there yet because Michael is in my way. My goal of bein
g the boss is not just because I want more power or more money.

  It’s because I want to stop lying to my father.

  As far as Dad knows, I am the boss around here. He thinks that because I have told him so. It’s important to him that I have reached the same lofty heights as he did, and it’s important to me too because I want him to be proud of me. That’s why I told him what he wanted to hear.

  I am ashamed of that, not because it is a lie, but because my father is incapable of uncovering it himself now. He suffers from Alzheimer’s, that cruel and debilitating disease of the brain that means he is no longer the man he used to be. It’s Alzheimer’s that forced him into early retirement, bowing out gracefully at the age of sixty-six, when I know full well that he had intended on working for much longer than that if his health had been kinder to him. But it hadn’t been. He was dealt a cruel blow, one that robbed him of continuing his legacy at this bank he had dedicated his life to. He didn’t own the business, the shareholders and the board members over in the New York head office do, but he did play a pivotal role in making it the titan of the industry that it is now. That’s why a painting of him hangs in one of the corridors here in the UK office. It’s to show that his hard work will never be forgotten in these parts. It’s also a prompt to me that he is always watching and always urging me to succeed.

  I like to stand here sometimes and just look at the painting for a moment, not for inspiration but for a reminder. It’s a reminder of the man my father used to be. Bold. Assertive. Confident. Clever. And caring. As his daughter, I’m always going to be his biggest fan, but I do mean it. He was a wonderful man. He still is, but his condition has robbed him of many of the traits that really made him my father. His condition has progressed slowly; I’m thankful for that, but it is getting to the stage now where he is going to need round-the-clock care, and that means putting him into a nursing home. I’ve been dreading this time because I know how fiercely independent my father is, but it’s going to have to be done.

  Drawing strength from the powerful painting before me, I take a deep breath and prepare to go over my notes for the presentation one more time. The meeting room at the end of this corridor is filling up fast with the rest of my colleagues in this office, and I am due to begin speaking to them all in one minute. That gives me just enough time to look through the printouts of the slides on my pieces of paper and refresh my memory before I take the plunge and get this over with.

  Having stayed up into the early hours of the morning rehearsing this at home, I am confident that I am ready. Rolling my shoulders back and holding my head up high, I prepare to walk into the room but not before I give a wink to my father on the wall as I go.

  When I enter the meeting room, I see all the familiar faces of my colleagues staring back at me. Some of them are chatting, some of them look stressed, and some of them have their heads buried in their mobile phones. But all of them will give me their attention when I start speaking because I always make sure to give them mine whenever they come to talk to me.

  As I stand in front of the screen upon which my slides will be presented, I see Michael sitting front and centre, his arms folded and his eyes boring into me. He looks typically intense and typically in control. I make a mental note to try to focus my gaze over his head at the back rows during my talk, which is ready to begin now, so I turn to the young admin assistant sitting at the laptop and give him the thumbs up to bring up the first slide.

  But just as I do, Michael stands and joins me at the front of the room before all our colleagues. He tells me that he has something to say and that I should sit down in his vacated seat while he expresses it. I have no idea what he is doing, but to save any awkwardness in front of the entire office, I do as he says and sit down, presuming he will call me back up in a couple of minutes.

  Unfortunately, that was not the case, and I had to sit there for the next hour while he took the credit for all the work that I had undertaken in putting this presentation together.

  Once again, Michael had ruined all my hard work and effort.

  Once again, he had reminded me that he was the boss.

  2

  MICHAEL

  I took great pleasure from ruining Imogen’s big presentation today, but then again, I always do enjoy making her life a misery. The look on her face as she realised that I wasn’t going to let her get back up from her seat again was priceless, and I could feel the hate emanating from her as I gave her presentation instead. The best thing was that I totally winged it, ad-libbing and improvising throughout much of the slides when I know that she is a chronic rehearser and most likely stayed up into the early hours of the morning practising it. Not only did I give her own presentation, but I did it better than she would have done with it, and it was the very first time I had ever seen the slides.

  She despises me, no doubt.

  And I love it.

  But now the fun is over, and everyone is back at their desks, getting on with their afternoon before we all head back to our homes and our families at the end of the day. Everyone except Imogen, who has failed to go back to her desk after the presentation ended.

  I’m not sure where she is right now. Crying in the toilets? Screaming outside in the car park? Or standing in the corridor, looking at that painting of her daddy and begging him to make things better for her like he used to do when he was a fit and healthy man?

  Whatever she is up to, it won’t do her any good. This isn’t the first time I have ruined things for her, and it definitely won’t be the last.

  Reclining in my leather office chair that provides me with the kind of luxury that none of the other employees around here are lucky enough to be accustomed to, I drum my fingers on my mahogany desk and decide I am going to keep an eye out for when Imogen gets back from wherever she has gone. I will watch her as she makes her way to her own desk, and I will take great delight if I see her look in my direction as she goes. I guess it could be considered sadistic to take this much pleasure in someone else’s misery, but that wouldn’t be the worst thing I have ever been called. Imogen has been the one who has assigned me most of the negative names in my life.

  A creep.

  A loser.

  A psycho.

  She has called me all those things in the past, when she has been at her most desperate and despondent. I wonder if today will be when she graces me with another label. She is certainly angry enough to do so.

  I smile when I spot her re-entering the open-plan area of the office from my vantage point in my comfy chair. My desk is in a separate room behind glass partitions, meaning I can close my door and don’t have to listen to all the chatter and all the ringing phones out there on the floor, but I can look out and see all my workers at any point. It also means that it is clear to them what the hierarchy is around here.

  There’s them.

  And then there’s me.

  Imogen has her desk out there with the rest of the lowly employees, even though she actually holds a senior position at this bank. She is the second-highest-ranking member of the UK branch, just behind me, of course, but she certainly does not have the desk space to reflect this. I have seen to that. Her workstation is to the right of my office, close enough for me to watch her through my windows and close enough for her to be constantly reminded that I am doing so. It’s that desk that she is walking back to right now, but before she gets there, Imogen stops and looks right at me.

  Our eyes lock across the crowded office, but this isn’t a romantic thing.

  This is much more personal than that.

  Now Imogen is coming towards me, and I sit forward in my seat in anticipation of what might be coming my way. I’m not going to lie, I get a thrill when Imogen has a go at me because it lets me know that I am doing a good job of messing things up for her, and that is what I am here to do. Of course, it’s not really what I am here to do. I am being paid a lot of money to manage this UK branch of an international bank and make sure the shareholders are earning profits every ye
ar, and they aren’t aware of this fun I am having with one of my employees when I should be concentrating on how to make more money for them. But it’s not as if this additional duty of mine has to take too much time out of my day. I can make Imogen’s life a misery and get on with the job I am paid to do all at the same time, which keeps everybody happy.

  Everybody except Imogen, of course.

  Imogen is never happy.

  Imogen reaches my office and opens the door without knocking before quickly closing it behind herself so that nobody else will be able to hear what she is about to say to me. But she’ll have to be careful how expressive she is when she speaks because while our colleagues can’t hear us, they can see us through the glass, and they will know something is wrong if she starts hitting the desk and jabbing her finger at me.

  ‘Thanks for knocking,’ I say sarcastically as I lean back in my seat and take in the sight of the furious woman before me.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at? That was my presentation!’

  ‘No, I think you’ll find it was mine, and everybody here would back that up too because, from what I recall, you just sat in the front row and watched me deliver it.’