The headline glared back at me: “SysCorp Sets Sights on Cedar.”
I stopped abruptly and set my coffee cup down as I ran my eyes over the columns of text.
“Shit,” I muttered. I’d been in such a happy bubble I hadn’t done my usual news update on the way into the office.
“Um…you’re taking this remarkably well,” Jane ventured. She was right. This was the sort of news that would have elicited a complete shitstorm just a month or two ago.
Today, though…
“Hmm,” I murmured as I continued to read.
“Mr. Walker?” she said tentatively. I didn’t respond. I read further. Seemed Dmitri Sysenov and his cronies had been buying out SysCorp shares. The morning news had erupted when they’d announced their plans for a hostile takeover.
“Strange,” I mused. “Haven’t had any calls about it.” I glanced at my phone, realizing it was off. I’d powered it down the night before when I decided it was time to concentrate on Sasha. She’d relaxed slightly, but I could tell she was still troubled. There’d been a time when I would have ignored it. But that was before I realized my priorities had been fucked up all my life. My woman needed me.
Except, when I switched on the device, it seemed that the rest of the world needed me too.
“Christ,” I muttered as a flood of notifications swamped my phone. “I gotta take care of this,” I said to Jane over my shoulder as I headed into my office. She was still staring at me as if she was looking at a stranger. Perhaps she was.
Twenty minutes later, I’d barely touched the backlog in my mailbox when my door flew open so violently that it hit the wall with a crash.
“Dad,” I responded, looking up at my father, who was a tower of fury. “What a pleasant surprise.”
“Fuck!” he screamed. “Pleasant surprise? Are you fucking kidding me?”
I shrugged.
“Have you seen the news?” he shouted, slapping a copy of the paper onto my desk. I glanced down, then looked back up at him.
“Yup,” I answered. “Dmitri’s been busy, it seems.”
“Busy? Are you fucking…?” he began blustering, then took a deep breath. “Are you fucking kidding me?” He was leaning over my desk now, pounding his fist on the surface. I watched almost dispassionately. “What the fuck do you have to say for yourself?” he was screaming again.
I raised an eyebrow. “What do I have to say for myself?” I asked. I knew it was exactly the type of comment that would set him off like a grenade. And true to form, he blew. He swept the papers from my desk in one vicious motion. Then grabbed up a paperweight and flung it across the room. It smashed into a lamp, and shards of glass erupted.
I leaned back in my chair and folded my arms across my chest. His usually immaculately combed hair was ruffled; his eyes were wild.
“Yes! What the fuck do you have to say for yourself?” He was apoplectic. For a moment, it occurred to me he might give himself a heart attack.
“Take a seat, Dad,” I said, indicating a chair. “You need to catch your breath.”
Perhaps it was callous. The man had just learned he’d lost his business, after all.
“I do not want to take a fucking seat, you fucking imbecile!” he screamed. “I want to know what the fuck you plan to do about this!”
“Why on earth would I be doing anything about this, Dad?” I asked.
He looked at me in confused rage.
“It’s not my company anymore, remember?” I kept my voice level, though it was hard not to crow over the irony of it all. “You took me off the Board and took over my role. So perhaps this is a question you should be answering.” My words stopped him in his tracks.
“This… This is all your fault!” he hissed. “If it hadn’t been for you and that fuckup with the Chinese—”
“Really?” I asked. “You’ve been Chairman of the Board for the past couple of months. You’re the one who has been making the decisions and keeping an eye on the company plans. I’ve had nothing to do with any of this.”
“It’s your fucking fault!” he raged, refusing to acknowledge my words.
“Dad, I told you Sysenov had screwed us. I had that contract in the bag, and they came in and undercut us. Someone must have fed them inside information. That had nothing to do with me, but you were so intent on publicly humiliating me that you refused to see anything else.”
