Page 9 of Vivacity
That small item of household admin covered off, I call Miles Montague. There’s no point in hesitation or overthinking. I’ve been ready to make this call for five years, give or take.
He answers after three rings, and my pulse quickens. I leave the phone on the desk and jam my hands in my pockets, turning to face the window. Our headquarters on the Embankment are architecturally stunning, the executive suite as quietly luxurious as one would expect from a luxury hotel group. It’s a sunny autumn day, and the view of the river never ceases to calm me. I feel like a king surveying his empire from up here.
An empire that’s about to double in size.
‘Ethan.’ Montague’s tone is clipped but not overtly hostile.
‘Miles. How’s tricks?’
‘Can’t complain. You?’ His reply strikes me as unnecessarily stoic given that the shit’s being kicked out of his share price, but maybe when his hot little wife slides down his body at night it makes matters like market capitalisation seem downright trivial.
‘Good, good. How are Saoirse and the kids?’ God, I hope I pronounced her name right.
‘Everyone’s well, thank God. And Jamie?’
‘He’s…’Emotionally distant. Unreadable. Seemingly indifferent to me.‘Fine, thanks. Look, I’m sorry about the planning curveball. I don’t know what those pen-pushers over at the Planning Department are smoking. It’s beyond irrational.’
He blows out a breath. ‘I appreciate it. Yeah, it’s never good to feel like your hands are tied.’
It’s certainly not, mate. Remember that. Hold onto how much you dislike that feeling of powerlessness.
‘Damn right it’s not. Look, we’d love to help you turn things around. Do you think you and I could sit down for a drink and a chat in the next day or two?’
He hesitates, and I have the impression he’s choosing his words carefully. ‘I’m not interested in what strings Richard thinks he can pull with the council. It’s not how we do business.’
I ignore his wholly accurate character assassination of my father. I also ignore the tiny, fleeting, and most unwelcome suspicion that rises up that Dad and his “string pulling” could have had any impact whatsoever on Westminster City Council’s decision to kibosh both Montague projects. Even Richard Kingsley wouldn’t stoop that low to engineer a favourable acquisition price.
‘That’s not what I’m offering, and you know it. It’s time, mate. Time for us both to stop plodding along on parallel lines and at least consider joining forces. Think of the—think of the scale we could command.’
I almost saidthink of the costs we could cut, but that is categorically not the way to go. No proud business owner wants to consider that an acquirer, no matter how friendly, would swoop in and axe a ton of extraneous people. Even if that side of the equation is one of the most attractive parts of the deal. HR, payroll, finance, marketing: all areas we could cut back to the bone.
This time his pause speaks volumes.
‘Ethan. I’m only going to say this once. We’re not for sale.’
‘That’s not your call, and you know it. That’s your shareholders’ call. Believe me, you want to sit down with me so we can discuss this like adults. It’s not black and white, and it doesn’t have to be an end. It could be an amazing new beginning for both of us.’
‘I’m not interested in discussions with competitors who circle like vultures the second we hit a stumbling block.’
‘You should be,’ I spit out. ‘You know damn well we can do this the easy way or the hard way.’ I’m losing my hold on the conversation now, showing my true colours. I may as well have bared my teeth at him. Shit. I’m not sure how the hell this discussion is unravelling so quickly.
‘Listen very, very carefully, Kingsley.’ A pause. ‘You and your corrupt father can go fuck yourselves.’
And with that, he ends the call.
I spin around, tugging my earbuds out and throwing them on the desk. Fuuuuck! He’s holding a losing hand, and he fucking well knows it, and he’s refusing to play ball, refusing to engage with me on a professional level, despite it being his clear fiduciary duty to do so. Stupid fucking incompetent arsehole. There isnothingthat pisses me off more than dickheads who don’t understand when they are powerless and won’t respect when I am powerful. I hold every fucking ace here, and he won’t do me the courtesy of even acknowledging it.
I pick up my phone and throw it on the floor, and when that fails to make me feel one iota better, I take the great pile of research reports that the various banks have compiled on our sector recently and sweep them off the desk. They land on the carpet with a flurry of dull thuds. They can damn well stay there.
Still fuming, I stride across my huge office to the recessed bar in one wall. Decanter. Tumbler. Three, four fingers of scotch, sloshed inelegantly in. Done. I knock the entire thing back, and for a single blissful moment, the burn in my throat, in my sinuses, consumes everything else.
The whisky floods my bloodstream, but it’s not enough. I’m looking around for something else I can throw, some other outlet for this useless fury, this impotent frustration, when there’s a knock at my office door. It opens, and Alexis, our receptionist, peers timidly around it.
‘Mr Kingsley? Ms Petrakis is here for her interview.’
CHAPTER 5
Ethan
