Page 15 of Omega's Midlife Love
Chapter 7 - David
Mr. Beischel perched on one of the counter stools while I fed pasta dough through the machine. However, his silence told me that something was on his mind.
We’d taken to speaking often in the weeks since we’d discussed Samantha in his office, and I found him an easy person to be around. Granted, that did nothing for my continued crush on him, but I was better at controlling my reactions than I’d originally given myself credit for.
There was still a part of me that wondered what it would feel like to take his knot, but the rest of me saw a man who’d been cut off in ways I didn’t yet understand and needed companionship by whatever means he could get it.
“You’re quiet today,” I stated as I changed the setting on the pasta machine, lifted the dough and started to feed it through again.
He glanced up, our eyes met, and I saw worry in them. He rubbed the back of his neck, but said nothing, returning to his thoughts.
One thing I’d learned was that he was more than willing to let me talk, to chatter about Samantha, or cooking, or almost anything. He’d listen with a soft smile, as if he just appreciated the company. But there were days, like today, where his thoughts turned inward, and I’d learned that companionable silence was what he needed. It was as if he was used to being surrounded by people, and didn’t quite know how to handle solitude.
That was ok too. If it made him feel better to just be around me, then I’d take his silent presence.
I checked the thickness of the dough and nodded to myself. I spread it out on the prepared surface, making sure that it was smooth and flat. Then I grabbed my bowl of prepared filling and started adding dollops onto the pasta sheet.
Mr. Beischel sighed, and I glanced up again.
“I wonder if it’s all futile,” he finally said.
“If what’s futile?”
He motioned to the ravioli in progress. “This. The dinner parties, the meetings, attending all the banquet fundraisers I can.”
“Worried that you’re wasting your money?” I asked as I finished the row and brushed egg wash around the filling.
“No,” he sighed. “Never that. These are good charities, doing good work. I support what they’re doing. But I feel like I’m barely being tolerated. They’re accepting my donations, but secretly treating me like a pariah.”
I remembered my conversation with Samantha, when she’d claimed that he’d left multiple companies hurting.
“Why would you think that?” I asked.
Another moment of silence as I draped another sheet of pasta over the first and started sealing the edges between pieces.
“My grandfather was an accountant,” Mr. Beischel started. “He was good at what he did, and his business grew. My father, on the other hand, wasn’t good with numbers. But he was good with people. When he was old enough he joined my grandfather’s firm anyway, but grandfather saw the potential and expanded their services to include consulting. The firm grew quickly, and by the time my older brother, Clarence, was born, our family was already considered quite wealthy.
“The company grew during my youth, and like our father and my brother, I joined the company after college. It was doing good, but Clarence and I noticed a trend. We’d see companies that asked for our help, but didn’t have the capital to implement the changes we suggested. Many of them folded because what they could do wasn’t enough.
“When our father retired and Clarence took over, we changed the course of the company again. The consulting firm became a subsidiary of the new Beischel Equity Group. We had the money, and we were able to pair our consulting with strategic buyouts of companies that we saw potential in. It was good work, and I loved it. There was always a sense of immense satisfaction to watch a company that had been on the edge of collapse come back and flourish. That it made us both very very rich men was just a byproduct.”
He sighed. “Clarence was the CEO, and I was the COO. It was a good arrangement. As the elder son he had the controlling shares, while I had a smaller stake, and since I had no family of my own it was decided that those shares would pass to his son, Robert, who’d been groomed to take over since he’d graduated college.”
He ran a hand down his face. “I loved my brother. He was a good man, and he would be appalled at what Beischel Equity has become, and I don’t think he would recognize his own son.”
There was a pause, and I knew the best thing to do was listen. So I cut the ravioli while he gathered his thoughts.
“Clarence and his wife were ten years older than me. But we were incredibly close. My world shattered the day I was informed that both of them had been killed in a car accident. A drunk driver ran a red light and slammed right into the back of their sedan on my brother’s side, killing him instantly. My sister-in-law didn’t survive but for a few hours. Their chauffeur was severely injured, but the drunk walked away with only minor injuries.”
Silence fell again, and when I glanced up I saw that he was fighting his emotions. I crossed to the fridge, grabbed a bottle of water from it, and handed it to him.
“Thank you,” he said, opening it and taking a sip.
I nodded, waiting for him to continue.
“I knew there would be changes, there always are. I was prepared to support my nephew as he transitioned to the CEO role. I was going to stay on as COO and make sure everything went smoothly until I decided to retire. I never had any intention of challenging him. But he treated the entire thing less like a peaceful transition, and more like a bloody coup. He was already interim CEO, due to Clarence’s wishes. But Robert acted as if that wasn’t enough. He used his shares to fire as many board members as he could, then installed sycophants in their places. The ones he couldn’t outright fire he started to harass and bully until more left on their own. At the time I thought it was all unnecessary. The board knew him, and knew that both Clarence and I wanted Robert to take over. But he was younger, and I thought perhaps he felt like the support wasn’t there.”
Mr. Beischel took a deep breath. “It turns out that the reason he moved so swiftly to replace the board wasn’t out of apprehension, it was because he knew they would never support his plans. Replacing them at that stage didn’t look great, but it was a much easier thing to handle from a public relations perspective than him being named CEO, the board removing him when their views and his didn’t align, him firing them anyway and being reinstated.”
