I told him that sounded like a perfect arrangement and we began walking toward the exit together. Jeffrey tried to intercept us one last time with a crooked tie and a desperate look in his eyes.

“Cassidy, wait, I truly didn’t know about your work,” he pleaded while trying to act like it was all just a sibling misunderstanding. Xavier looked at him with a coldness that made the air feel heavy and told him that the problem was not his lack of knowledge.

“The problem is that you never cared to see her value because you were too busy looking at yourself,” Xavier said. He then told Jeffrey to bring a box to the office on Monday because his position at Vanguard Tech was no longer secure.

Jeffrey stood there in total silence as his world crumbled around him on what was supposed to be his biggest night. We walked out into the cool night air and I felt a sense of peace that I had not known in a very long time.

Xavier mentioned that he was not actually going to fire my brother but was instead transferring him to a small regional office in the Midwest. “He needs to learn how to value people based on their character rather than their status,” he explained.