Page 4 of Effortless

“No,” his father murmured. “I’m surprised you went this long without knocking somebody out, honestly. What was it today that got to you?”

Tom shrugged under the weight of his Armani suit. “Nothing in particular. I’ve heard it all before. I just had enough, maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“I’m bored out of my damn mind, Dad. I work with those same idiots every day. As long as they think they can get away with it, they don’t leave me the fuck alone. I’m starting to think there isn’t much point to keeping my cool when breaking their faces gets me better results.”

Tommas let out a thick cloud of gray smoke, and set the cigar on the edge of a crystal ashtray. “You know, nobody ever told you that the way we handled our business as young, made men is the same way you have to handle it, Tom.”

He eyed his father, considering the words.

“Kind of seems like it.”

“Why, because nobody’s jumping in for you when it’s happening?”

“I mean—”

“You know that won’t do anything for you at the end of the day, don’t you? It’s you who is responsible for making your name and position with those men clear, Tom. Nobody else can do that for you, son. If the way you want to do that is with fear and brute force, then so be it, but do so and be fucking consistent about it.”

Tom laughed under his breath. “You think?”

“We all have to do what we have to do.”

Yeah, he knew that, too.

“I am, though. Bored. Tired.”

Tommas sucked air through his teeth, and nodded like he could see all of those things. “Frustrated. Restless. Irritated. Why, though?”

“I don’t know. I’m not …”

“What? Tell me, and then maybe I can help.”

“I’m twenty-one, Dad. Isn’t it time for me to figure out my own shit?”

Tommas cracked a smirk—the closest thing he ever got to a smile when Tom’s mother wasn’t involved. “Still my boy, no matter your age.”

“And my boss.”

His father’s grin faded fast. “And that, too, yes.”

“I don’t know what I want, Dad. That’s half the problem.”

“I don’t understand.”

Tom scratched at the underside of his jaw—a nervous tic, and one of his only tells. “Have you ever felt like you wanted something, or were missing something, but you just didn’t know what in the hell it was?”

Tommas lifted a single brow high. “No, I can’t say that I have. I always knew what I wanted—she was simply out of my reach for a while.”

Abriella, his father meant. Tom’s mother.

“I don’t think it’s a woman,” Tom said. “I’ve just been at a point lately where nothing is doing it for me. I’m bored.”

“You said that already.”

Tom lifted an empty palm and tipped it over as if to say, That’s what I got.

Nothing.