Page 21 of Marcellus: House of Drakos
“Thank you!” said Oliver.
“Thanks a lot,” said Kalayna.
Freddy laughed. “Can’t please everyone,” he said.
But what he and Kalayna also had in common was that they, like their other siblings, looked up to Olivier. Although he and their other half-brother Scottie were both thirty-two years old, and Olivier was the oldest by only four hours, he was their big brother, the undisputed leader of the siblings. And they knew he was going to take the most heat from their father.
“He’s here,” Freddy said wide-eyed as they all looked out at the motorcade pulling up.
They also saw the press go wild as soon as their father’s bodyguard hopped out of the front passenger seat and opened the back passenger door. Marcellus stepped out buttoning his suit coat. But even though four security personnel were waiting to escort the chairman into his own building, the media was pressing hard against the security ring around him. The questions came fast and furious. So fast that Marcellus, even if he wanted to, couldn’t answer one before another one wascoming. Since he wasn’t answering any of them anyway, he couldn’t care less.
“What’s wrong with your airplanes, sir?”
“Why didn’t you ground them all after that second crash?”
“Why are you making American skies unsafe?”
“What do you have to say to the families of the deceased, sir?”
“How can you live with yourself after what’s happened?”
“Why haven’t you addressed the media, sir? The public has a right to know.”
“Why did you install your own children to run your corporation?”
“Critics believe it was the youth and inexperience of your corporate leadership that led to these disasters. What say you, sir?”
“Have you spoken to Alex Drakos about this disaster?”
Marcellus almost stopped in his tracks when he heard his half-brother’s name. All his life he lived in that man’s shadow. All his life he tried to run away from his name because of Alex Drakos. Alex was the son of the married wife. He was born in Greece and lived there with his wealthy parents. Marcellus was the son of the French whore. He was the left out and forgotten bastard child, and his mother, a Parisian courtesan, was left near-penniless. She gave him his father’s last name in spite of his complete abandonment of them, but that only made Marcellus determined to make that name his own. He didn’t even know Alex Drakos on any personal level, and Alex didn’t know him personally either. And neither had ever tried to change that.
But he didn’t stop in his tracks to air his grievances with that man and that side of his family. He kept on walking.
When he entered the lobby and saw three of his children staring at him with even more stress on their faces than was on his own face, his hard heart melted inside.
There was his oldest child Olivier, who tried to be the rock of the family in his absence, but was perhaps more vulnerable than all of his other children combined.
There were Fredrick and Kalayna, his two youngest children and the only two whose mother he still adored. Freddy, like Niko, took after him in temperament. They both were the most unyielding of his children. But Kalayna took after her mother. Inwardly he always smiled whenever he saw her gorgeous face. He would do anything for all of his children, but he’d go even beyond that for Kalayna. It broke his heart that she was caught up in this crisis too.
He wanted to pull each one of them into his arms and tell them not to worry, that he would make it right the way he always did, but he wasn’t built that way. He never wore his feelings on his sleeve and didn’t care to see such outward displays of weakness on his children either. They were enduring a very rough patch, but they had better man up. It was only going to get rougher while the NTSB dragged its feet investigating. They could have months, even years of nothing but negative publicity. Their company stock was already beginning to tumble so badly, and was taking other stocks with it, that many feared the markets might have to initiate a circuit breaker.
And that was why he didn’t placate them or massage their wounded egos. He also never aired dirty laundry in public spaces. He walked right past them even as they were greeting him, and headed straight for his private elevators. All three looked at each other, not to mention the members of the lobby staff staring at all of them. What kind of father was he, the staff wondered. But his children wondered it more.
They hurried behind their father.
CHAPTER TWELVE
As the Drakos family was getting onto the elevator, and as the press outside were packing up and moving on to other angles of the story, Savannah walked into the lobby and headed for the reception desk.
Just walking into Drakos Aeronautics Corporate Headquarters building was daunting enough. Almost as tall as Saint Regis, there was a richness and elegance to it that immediately made her feel out of place. If she didn’t care about Niko so much, and was just that worried about him, she would do as Tyla suggested and forget about it too. Thanks to his fashion director, who fired her, she had her own problems to deal with.
But she knew Niko. They’d worked hand-in-hand for over a decade. Everything within her was telling her something was wrong. She couldn’t ignore it any longer. Olivier wouldn’t do anything, and his other siblings didn’t know her from Adam. She had to take it higher.
“Hi. May I help you?”
The receptionist was kind and cheerful. That helped. Savannah was a working girl all her life and never made any major money. But working at a fashion house all those years made her sophisticated. She had to deal with all kinds, from the richest to the poorest. She knew how to handle herself. “Yes, hi. My name is Savannah Richardson. I work for Nikolas Drakos. I’m here to see Mr. Drakos please.”
She quickly picked up the phone. “Which one, ma’am?”
