Chapter 5 - The Fall of Carl Vance
While the seventieth floor of the Bennett Tower was soaring to unprecedented heights of ethical prosperity, Carl Vance was living in a very different reality down at Luigi’s Slice & Subs.
Stripped of his management credentials, his keys confiscated by corporate security at 6:00 AM, Carl stood outside the locked front doors of the pizza shop in the freezing drizzle, holding a cardboard box filled with his desk items: a half-empty bottle of antacids, three coffee mugs, and a stapler.
He had called his regional supervisor twenty times; every call went straight to a disconnected carrier tone. He had tried to log into the inventory system; his employee profile had been permanently deleted.
A sleek, obsidian-black Cadillac Escalade pulled up to the curb, splashing slush across the sidewalk.
The rear window rolled down, revealing the cold, impassive face of Marcus Vance—no relation to Carl, but the Senior Vice President of Regional Operations.
Marcus leaned his head out of the window, looking down at Carl with undisguised disgust.
"You absolute idiot," Marcus hissed, his voice dripping with venom. "Do you have any idea what you've done? You threw out the grandson of the man who saved Harold Bennett's life during the founding winter of eighty-four. You cost our regional division its primary commercial real estate leases across the entire North Side."
Carl’s jaw hit the pavement. "What?! I was following inventory protocol! The slice was three dollars and fifty cents!"
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"It wasn't about the slice, Carl," Marcus replied coldly, rolling the window back up. "It was about the soul. And you don't have one."
The Escalade pulled away, leaving Carl standing alone in the rain with his cardboard box, finally learning what it meant to be completely disposable.
