Page 8 of Vicious Arrangement
No.
“You need to get your shit together, Noah. No more partying. No more scandals.” He takes his phone. “No more crap like this.”
“I don’t tend to do scandals. People like to talk about me. I can’t help that.”
“They’ll stop if there’s nothing for them to talk about, Noah,” he says. “You are CEO, so the partying stops, the late nights stop, the bleary-eyed look you’re trying to hide stops. All of it. Act like a responsible head of a company.”
I lean forward in the chair, hands on my thighs, and pin him with a look. “Maybe you should mind your own business, old man.” The fire streaks up my spine to the back of my brain. “Or you might find yourself out of a job. I get it, you’re good. There’s work out there, but I’ll hazard it’s not as lucrative as what Templeton brings you, both in terms of our business and others.”
“I’m the only living heir of Grandfather’s estate, and I’m already named CEO. There’s no question I’ll be inheriting everything, including Templeton Industries.”
I stand, suddenly furious at Grandfather and, by proxy, this man who I know hasn’t done anything wrong.
“There’s the merger, Noah?—”
“Fuck the merger.” We don’t need it. I don’t need it. I don’t know what Grandfather was up to, but fuck it all.
“This merger was between Grandfather and?—”
“His friend, William Sanderson. This deal should go through. It’ll cost to get out of it.”
“Templeton doesn’t need the merger. At all.”
“Mergers happen, but…” He trails off.
Fury dances in my eyes, and my breath catches on what feels like jagged shards of glass in my lungs.
The but.
The fucking but.
Peter means my grandfather did this to help his friend, help him out of a rut. I told Grandfather that it was a bad idea, and he didn’t listen. He said sometimes a man needed to show kindness.
I almost laugh.
Because that’s how my fucking grandfather was. Help out someone who needed it, even if it didn’t benefit him.
Unless, of course, that person was me.
Oscar was kind and willing to help everyone but me. In fact, I’d never met someone so cold, so hard on me, that could flip like a switch when it came to others.
Deep down, I know it was because he hated and resented the fact he had to raise me.
Maybe William needs the merger, but the merger isn’t done, and kindness doesn’t make a man money.
The merger, by my calculations, will ensure we lose millions. Grandfather said we had more than enough and we could build it back, but fuck that.
I need to stop it.
So I sit. “Okay, I won’t fire you. I need you to put a stop to the merger. Nothing’s been signed, so we end it and walk away.”
“It’s not that simple, Noah.”
“My grandfather’s dead, therefore so is the merger. It’s that simple,” I say, sitting back and wishing Tiffany, or whatever her name is, would come in and offer me a drink. I’ll take water because the time Peter’s taking to answer me is making my mouth dry and my heart start to thud. “I own the company now. It’s simple.”
“Actually, it’s not.” Peter eyes me through his thick-rimmed glasses. “Your grandfather put in place several conditions surrounding your inheritance of both his fortune and the company.”
This time I do laugh.
