Mr. Harold G. Wolfe was a fair man. He had a reputation as an old fashioned up standing man with high morals. He was harsh too. Harsh, cold, and, when he needed to be, cruel. Everybody knew this. Most of all though Jennifer Hall and Samuel Colbridge knew this. If you did your job he was good to you. He would look after you. If you did anything that he perceived to be detrimental to the company, the multi-million pound company that he owned and had built from nothing, then he was ruthless. There had never been any second chances for anybody who had crossed him.
Jennifer and Samuel also knew that there was a vacancy in upper management and as always Mr. Wolfe would promote from within. They also knew, as did everyone else in the office, that service was everything in Wolfe's book, and Jennifer and Samuel were holding onto the two longest records. It would be one of them that would be promoted. One of them would, overnight, earn four times as much as the other. One of them would have the opportunity to travel the world on one of the most flattering of expense accounts in the industry. One of them, and only one of them, would have the best insurance, health care, and support that money could buy, because as everyone knew Mr. Wolfe valued his staff above everything else.
There had never been a woman in upper management. This was not because of prejudice on Wolfe's behalf. He had always promoted the best candidate. He was too shrewd to allow petty outdated ideas cloud his decisions. Then again he would not promote Jennifer as some kind of token gesture either. It was quite simple. Jennifer and Samuel had equal lengths of service. Wolfe had his own criteria for selecting the right person for promotion that only he, and the selection committee, was aware of. They were both in with an equal shout just as long as neither of them did anything that he disapproved of in the meantime. It was a two horse race and there could only be one winner.
They were both good looking. Jennifer with her soft short brown hair, her all over tan, shapely figure, and beautifully round bust. And Samuel with his piecing eyes, his strong powerful voice, and his shock of blonde hair. They seemed to be so equal in everything but only one of them would emerge with the great new package that was on offer.
Jennifer and Samuel stopped their conversation for a moment and smiled at Mr. Wolfe as he came back from lunch at The Ritz. In a couple of days time one of them would be joining him. They watched him walk down to the end of the corridor and disappear around the corner on his way to his executive suite. Once he was out of sight Samuel resumed their conversation. "I'd like to say right now Jennifer that I admire your integrity. A lot of women, I'd even go as far as to say most women, would have brought their hem line up if they got even so much as a sniff of a promotion like this one. Not you though, oh no, there it is still just below the knee as it has been for the last five years." He sniggered to himself and looked at her legs under the desk just to confirm what he had said. "And do you know something Jenny, sorry Jennifer, do you know something Jennifer it's the exact reason why you're not going to get the job. A good businessman, that's right I said businessman, would use anything that he could to get what he wanted. Not you though eh? No you're happy to cling to a set of outdated principles and blow your only chance of gaining any kind of advantage over me. Wolfe knows it. He knows that I've got that hunger, that will to succeed, but you... Come on why don't you pull out and save yourself the embarrassment?"
Jennifer smiled at him. He was such a smug little shit. What did he mean by "save yourself the embarrassment" she wondered. She knew that there was something in what he was saying. But then on the day that they had given in their applications for the new post Mr. Wolfe had called them into that plush office of his (the one with the breathtaking view of the city from thirty floors up) and told them that any stunts they might try and pull would count for nothing. It was on their past records that he would make his decision just as long as they didn't screw up in the meantime. "Yes well you'd only try and go one better wouldn't you Sam? I couldn't stand the thought of you walking around the office in nothing but a leather g-string, just for Mr. Wolfe's pleasure. If I wanted to get on his good side I'd drop to my knees and go down on him like you've been doing for the past five years, she grinned back at him, "Go and sit back at your own desk Sam. You are disturbing me and I'm running out of patience with you."
"That's okay I was just leaving for lunch anyway. Of course in forty eight hours I'll be lunching an hour earlier with the rest of the upper management team."
He shot another grin at her. He had the face of a fashion model and the body of an athlete and he knew it, and maybe more importantly he knew how to use it. He had fucked just about all of the girls in the office at some time or another and his wife was, as Jenny had once overheard some of the guys in the upper management team describe her, a walking wet dream. There were a lot of advantages to the company if they, that is Mr. Wolfe, picked Sam. He was popular and his wife would be such a hit at all of those in company dinner parties, not to mention her role in wooing the heads of corporations that they did business with. Jenny was not married and wouldn't be in the immediate future either as far as she could see. Mr. Wolfe liked his staff to be married. He'd talked about his wife enough for her to know that.
She wondered why she was doing this to herself. She knew that Sam was only trying to wind her up but he was right. What chance did she really have? Mr. Wolfe had had plenty of opportunities to tell her one way or another, but then she had never broached the subject. She had not wanted to appear mercenary and she hoped that Mr. Wolfe understood that. But then how could he know how much she wanted this promotion if she had never told him.
Jenny threw her pen down. What was the use she asked herself? It was time for her lunch too. Maybe she should buy a shorter skirt not that it would make any difference to her application but it might just unnerve Sam. She considered this as she picked up her coat and made for her favourite coffee shop.
Sam was actually skipping lunch today as well as a date with that new hot little bitch secretary from accounts with the big bimbo eyes and the stand up and suck me tits. Instead he was making his way across the city to a photography studio run by one of his old school friends. If the pictures came out right, as he wanted them to, then he would soon be sitting in the lap of luxury in an office like Wolfe's with a full view of the city below and the comings and goings of the vermin they called the workers.
He had dreamt about this moment. Now he could almost smell it all, the Champagne and Caviar, the fresh leather seats of the Jag he would ask for, the sweet perfume of the air hostesses in the first class section of the plane, and the musk of the impressed beautiful women who would be more than happy to open their legs for someone earning so much money. He was not going to let prissy Jennifer Hall fuck it up for him. And so he had waited and waited and then about two weeks ago his opportunity finally fell into his lap.
He had been friends with the security guard Bill Houston for quite a while. Occasionally he'd drop by to say hello, either morning, lunchtime, or when he was leaving at the end of the day. It depended on which shift Bill was on. Two weeks ago Bill showed him something very interesting, a video recording from one of the office CCTV cameras. He had not recognised her at first. It was obviously a woman getting changed but the lights were dim and it was difficult to make anything out. It seemed like a laugh, a little bit of homemade pornography of the kind that he was partial to himself. Then she stepped into the light for a moment. She was a fantastic looking specimen Bill had said and he was right. She was wearing a see-through black dress that finished at the top of her thighs. Underneath her pert firm breasts were held in the skimpiest of black bras and the tiniest of tight black panties covered her crotch. She stooped to zip up a pair of black knee high Cuban heeled boots that all the teenagers seemed to be wearing at the moment and then she finished this all off with a slim black mask decorated with sequins which covered her nose and eyes.
