Page 3 of The Show

* * *

I stalked out of the elevator on the executive floor and down to the huge white reception desk outside my grandfather’s office, flanked by another four smaller desks. Two of my grandfather’s five assistants looked up, the rest of them too busy typing away at one document or another, managing his schedule, or organizing general company admin.

“Mr. Shepherd, you can go right in. They’ve been expecting you.” Wanda, assistant number three, waved me through with a smile.

I nodded to her as I passed without slowing. Usually, I took a bit of time to chat to them all, but not today.

I held my tongue at her announcement - they’re expecting me? Yeah, I bet they have been!

I wouldn’t put it past Nancy to have been sleeping here since my summoning, but no doubt security alerted them to my presence the second I crossed the threshold seventy-five floors below.

I marched in and shut the door behind me, though I stayed where I was. I didn’t plan to be here long so it was pointless walking any further into his vast office, which took up one end of the entire floor. Enormous floor-to-ceiling windows wrapped around three quarters of the room. My grandfather was standing in the far corner, looking over to the United Nations building on the Hudson where he’d no doubt be trying to hatch his next plan if he wasn’t already working on ruining my life.

Being in my grandfather’s office was akin to playing a modern day game of Who’s Who. Dozens of picture frames were spread around the room containing photos of him through the years with every president since Kennedy, several members of European Royal Families, political leaders, business associates, even Beyoncé - though she was the only ‘celebrity’ in there, and only because she’d sung at Nancy’s fortieth birthday party last year.

Speaking of whom, the snake herself was sitting in one of the chairs opposite Grandpa’s enormous desk, furiously shooting off a text message on her phone. I glared at her as she looked up at me.

“Oh, grow up, Penny.”

I gritted my teeth, but other than that I ignored her except to make a mental note placing her in a permanent spot on my shit list.

I fucking hated being called Penny.

My grandfather spun round. “Ah, Pennington my boy, hello. Good of you to come. Sit down.”

Normally I’d give my grandfather a hug, but I wasn’t in the giving mood.

“No thanks. I’ll stand.”

“SI’DOWN!” he bellowed, pointing at the chair next to Nancy.

I sat, though I moved the chair further away from her and aggressively crossed my arms, making it clear I was only sitting under protest.

My grandfather sat too, leaning across the empty space between the frames winging the surface of his desk.

If all other space around his office was considered a shrine to his services to the world of business, his desk was a shrine to his family. Photos of the five of us kids through the ages, plus all of my cousins, my mom and dad, aunts and uncles, my nieces and nephews, and my grandmother, were scattered over his desk. You could accuse Lucian Shepherd of a lot of things, but not loving his family would never make the list.

An imposing presence ninety-eight percent of the time, in his youth my grandfather could have passed for a linebacker, and I’d inherited my size from him. Even now, at nearly eighty, he was still as fit as a fiddle, working out daily with his trainers, and his thick mane of white hair had cemented his status as a silver fox –The Robert Redford of the Business World -The New York Times had once called him much to his chagrin, though I did see him checking his reflection more often than normal that week.

His face softened as he held my annoyed glower.

“Thank you for coming, Penn,” he sighed. “It’s good to see you.”

I didn’t point out I’d seen him for lunch less than a week ago. Or that I see him a minimum of three times a week, with the exception of this one. In my periphery, I noticed Nancy turn toward me and open her mouth to speak, but I got there first.

“If it’s all the same, I’m here to listen to what Gramps has to say, not you.”

She pursed her lips and looked at my grandfather who nodded subtly. She stood down. I moved back to face my grandfather.

“Penn, I want to talk to you about your role in this company,” he began. “Since you were a kid, and your dad died, you’ve known you were going to take over from me. It’s what I wanted for you, what we all wanted.” He held his hand up before Nancy the snake could disagree. “You would make an excellent leader, the perfect replacement for me. But I’ve done some reflecting this past year, and while you taking over might be the best thing for me, it’s not the best thing for you. So I’ve made the decision that following my retirement in a couple of months, Nancy is going to take over.”

I could almost feel her crowing next to me, like she’d beaten me at the final hurdle… Except, she’d been the only one jumping.

“Your sister will make a great leader. Her work is and has always been exemplary. She will take this company forward so it’s ready for the next century. I have no doubt my legacy, what I’ve built for our family, will thrive under her.”

I stayed where I was, unsure whether he expected me to react. It wasn’t like this was news to me; he already knew I knew given the email I’d fired off. The pair of them stared at me until I realized I was supposed to say something.

“Okay. Cool, congrats, Nance. Can I go now?” I pushed out of my chair.

---