“You might be my favorite CEO ever.”
He sighs and shakes his head.
“You think your dad will give her back the, erm, job?” I ask.
He stares at me a beat too long, as if there’s something I’m clearly missing. But then he shakes his head. “If he notices.”
“Wouldn’tshenotice?”
“No. She never knew she was getting a salary in the first place. She has zero understanding of how any of the family finances work and very little money of her own. My father screwed her too, and she doesn’t even know it.”
I open my mouth, then shut it again.
That would’ve been me if I’d married into a family in our zip code instead of getting disinherited and deciding to give my family the middle finger by thriving on next to nothing, so I shouldn’t judge.
Not because I don’t understand money.
More because I would’ve been too distracted spending it on good causes to notice if it was mine, his, or ours.
I care less about the specifics and more about the end goal.
“Did you correct that too?” I ask.
“Yep.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“The optics of anyone in the family selling M2G shares the past few years were awful, so instead, I sold several vacation homes and artwork and the rarest dinnerware we possessed to get her set up with money of her own since she insisted on paying for appeal after appeal after appeal the minute he surrendered to prison.”
“My mother would’ve died,” I whisper.
“Mine claimed she was going to. She was counting the seconds until my father got out of prison so he’d fund her shopping sprees again and her friends would quit judging her for wearing fashion that’s four years out of date. He’ll have to sell stock to do it because that’s about all he has left.” He grins. “Especially since I took all of Grandpa’s cash with me when I left.”
“Your family will still have enough shares to keep majority control in the family?”
I don’t know much, but I know that always mattered to my father.
Keep fifty-one percent in the family. Always keep a majority share in the family.
We were born with it, and it was our obligation to die with it.
Or so he wanted us to believe.
I’m sometimes still blown away that in this day and age, he also wants to use Margot’s marriageability to further the goals of the company, but he does.
Easier to keep it than get it back, he always said.So marry people who already have it.
I knew that was part of Margot’s relationship with Oliver, but she seemed to like him too, and shewashurt when he broke up with her.
“I don’t care who has a controlling share in the company,” he tells me. “I’m dead serious about giving everything of mine away. Seeing it go to good use. Making a difference in the world instead of holding on to it.”
I’m not smiling anymore.
My job is definitely toast. I can’t imagine there’s another executive in the world who’d continue to put goodwill over profits.
And this Oliver?
The guy who’s doing everything I ever wanted to do, in his own way, but for the same reason?
