Page 132 of This is a Kissing Book

She stammers.

“If that wasn’t clear. You’re fired.”

“What—why?”

“Before I have security take you into custody, do take this opportunity to defend yourself. I’d like to hear why a promising COO, a person who could’ve been the next chief executive, deceived me.” My father’s voice is cool while Maxine tries not to melt under pressure.

She stammers, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you do. You sent thugs after an employee and my son. You’ve been working on the side with yours. Robbing from the company that has only treated you well, not to mention the headache it’s going to be to correct all the intentional errors you made. Did you really want to make an entire industry’s worth of enemies?”

Changing tack, she snorts with derision, stalking toward my father like he’s prey—that might be her greatest mistake yet. It’s the seasoned hunters you have to watch out for. “I knew you were getting old, Frank. Saw the writing on the wall. Needed to make my stake before you handed over the crown of this castle to someone who’d waste it.” She pitches a scathing glance at me and cackles like I’m a big joke.

My father lets the room fall silent before striking. “Are you admitting to wrongdoing?”

“I’m admitting to being smarter than everyone else on this floor, where I belong. Including you, Frank.”

His face darkens. “Maxine⁠—”

She tuts. “Oh, don’t look so shocked. You’ve been too focused on your presidential legacy fantasies to notice what’s been happening right under your nose. Did you really think I’d just quietly step aside when you decided to hand the company over to your son?”

The words hang in the air like the moments between a grenade’s pin being pulled and the explosion.

“The beauty of the scheme was its simplicity. Commission forgeries of minor pieces, get them authenticated through our own people, insure them, then have my son destroy them and collect the insurance. Clean, efficient, profitable.”

“But the Marchand diptych was from my collection.”

My father’s voice is frigid. “Did you really think you could steal from my family’s legacy?”

“I was your legacy,” Maxine shoots back. “Twenty years of building this company, and you were going to hand it to a boy who doesn’t even want it. I earned more than a gold watch and a pat on the back.”

“Who was your partner?” my father asks.

“Veronica and Misha?” Jules asks, referring to her assistants.

She caws a laugh. “No, they were just pawns. Useful to keep an eye on you. Remind you of your place. No, my partner was part of the family, though you’d know about that.”

Jules lets out a soft gasp at the same time I make the connection.

“Aiken the Demo King,” I say, referring to his viral channel that makes the perfect cover.

Jules explains to my father, who would think it’s far too pedestrian to be worth a second of his attention. “‘Aiken the Demo King’ destroys priceless artifacts and costly items, making ‘new art.’ But in this case, insurance pays out, and according to them, everyone wins.”

Maxine smirks. “Well, everyone except the people who thought they were buying authentic pieces.”

My father digests this information like a sand worm.

Maxine scoffs. “I wasn’t expecting you two to interfere.”

My dad says, “I put them on a special assignment.”

The pieces are falling into place with devastating clarity. She orchestrated everything—the fraud, the threats, and maybe even the fire lit by Jules’s father’s debtors.

My father ordered me not to seek the letters because he knew I would disobey.

Jules points her finger at Maxine. “You changed the Echo & Answer signature from Clement Marchand to D. Kinnard. You wanted to hide that they were a diptych.”

So far, I’ve been following Jules’s line of thinking, but she’s lost me now.