Page 6 of Begin Again, Part 2

"Things were never amicable between us," Liam reminded him. "We both know the fire in Port Alfred, and the trucks were just a distraction to stop us from bidding on LUSSO."

"All the more reason to stop the negotiations. LUSSO is the perfect smokescreen for the Ivanovs' smuggling business," Julian groaned in his hands and drank more of the vodka. "This won't end well. My gut tells me to pull out of this deal. It's starting to stink real bad from where I am."

"We lost half a billion," Liam argued. "We have to make it up somehow."

"I don't like this," Julian shook his head, his pale blue eyes wary.

"Security is on high alert. This will blow over in a couple of weeks, two months at most, and things will go back to normal. Stop worrying, okay?" Liam squeezed Julian's shoulder reassuringly, but he shrugged him off.

"No. This shit won't blow over. I've called an urgent board meeting tomorrow. You'd better be prepared to explain your shopping spree and the deal with LUSSO," Julian said and shot out of Liam's office, leaving him bewildered and fuming.

Like Liam expected, the board was firmly on Julian's side. He had to sit and take a tongue lashing over his reckless shopping spree for two hours.

"Why can't you all see this is a good thing for us? All these small towns are light years behind us, relying on postal services for their goods. If we have shipping depots—"

"That was not part of our expansion plan, Son," Clarke said in a voice barely above a whisper. He was still frail and shouldn't even be sitting in such lengthy meetings. But as the chairman, his presence was required.

"Plans are meant to be changed." Liam pushed back, refusing to give up on his vision.

"You can't make up for the loss of life by buying up all these struggling companies," Lois tried to reason with him.

"I'm giving them a new lease on life, creating jobs, restarting economies. What's the issue?" he argued, unable to understand why they couldn't see that they'd save more lives than the three they lost with his expansion plan.

"Liam!" Matthew shook his head sternly. "No one is blaming you for the incident with the trucks. Let this shit go!"

Before Liam could push on with his agenda, Willow quickly called for a vote. She had things to do and a grand opening of a new art exhibition to attend. Within ten minutes, the board delivered its devastating blow. Not one of them had voted in Liam's favour. He could only keep one of his pet projects, the Sparrow Beach depot. But he had a year to turn it into a profitable outpost. They all agreed that pissing off the mob wasn't the smartest of ideas. But since the negotiations with LUSSO were already so advanced, pulling out was no longer an option. Liam wasn't allowed to even think about stealing any more business from the Ivanovs, though.

Highly pissed off with Julian for ratting him out, deeply disappointed with the board for not seeing his vision, Liam stormed out of the boardroom and headed to his office, his assistant hot on his heels.

"Mr Anderson, should I get you something to eat?" Clara fussed over him while she looked through his schedule on her tablet.

Liam shook his head, he wasn't hungry, and if he couldn't go shopping, he might as well drink himself to death.

"Cancel all my appointments, and you can take the rest of the day off," he told her as he shut the door in her face.

Half a bottle of bourbon later, his cousins came to find him.

Julian poked his head inside the door and waved his handkerchief like a white flag. "Is it safe to come in?"

Liam shrugged and returned to the view beyond the glass as he watched the traffic move at a snail's pace on Castle Bridge.

Matthew poured them a round of drinks, and they joined him in front of the window.

"Look," Julian said after a long stretch of silence, occasionally broken by the sounds of their bustling office as all the assistants and other executives on their floor carried on with their day. "It wasn't personal. But you were on a slippery slope, and I had to rein you in."

Liam glared at him for a second, maybe longer, and sipped his bourbon. "I know."

Matthew had the balls to address the elephant in the room. "It's not like you to be so reckless and go on a shopping spree, especially when we've lost so much revenue. Why did you do it?"

Liam twirled the glass in his hands, mulling over his question. It was more complicated than a 'shopping spree'.

"I thought if I saved one struggling company at a time and gave all those men and women a chance at survival, their families would be okay," he said after some time. "And maybe I wouldn't feel so guilty for dropping the ball."

"It's not your fault."

"It is. The signs were there. For weeks there were news reports, and what did I do?"

"We stepped up security," Matthew said.

---