Chapter 38: King of Pride: Chapter 38

The CEO transition ceremony took place at a hotel ballroom in London. Every Young Corporation executive was in attendance along with a smattering of local employees and VIP “friends of the company.”

It was the perfect occasion for a takedown, but I couldn’t savor the moment as much as I would’ve liked.

The memory of Isabella’s anguished voice and face ate at me like acid. I hadn’t talked to her since I left her apartment last week, but she haunted me every second of every day.

Everything reminded me of her—books, alcohol, even the color purple. It was particularly unbearable tonight, when the company’s purple peacock logo adorned everything from the podium to the gift bags at every seat.

I set my jaw and focused on the stage, trying to ignore the agonizing cramp in my chest.

The evening had progressed smoothly so far. Dinner went off without a hitch, and my mother was finishing her speech with remarkable composure. If Leonora Young was upset about ceding control of her family’s company to an outsider, one couldn’t tell by looking at her. Her voice sounded genuinely sincere as she thanked the board and employees for their support during her tenure and introduced Russell onstage.

I knew the truth. Inside, she was incandescent with rage.

My ears were still bleeding from our post-vote call. She didn’t know about Russell’s manipulations and had blamed my loss on Isabella.

We hadn’t spoken since.

The room greeted her speech with thunderous applause. My mother shook hands with Russell, her face a canvas of carefully constructed professionalism, before walking back to her table.

My hand closed around the stem of my wineglass as Russell took the podium after her to a more muted reception.

Average height, average build, average brown hair and brown eyes. He was the type of person who blended into the background so seamlessly he practically disappeared. I’d dismissed him as a non-threat, but I finally saw his unmemorable facade for what it was: a masterful disguise, honed and perfected over years of operating under the radar.

My skin prickled.

Russell was the one talking, but all eyes were on me, waiting for a reaction I’d never give.

If people wanted a show, they’d get one soon enough. Just not from me.

Across the table, Vivian’s concern—over Isabella, the CEO vote, or both—burned a hole in my cheek. The Russo Group accounted for over fifty percent of our company’s print advertising, so Dante received invites to every important function. He normally declined, but he’d showed up tonight for “the entertainment,” as he called it.

He and Vivian were the guests of honor at my table. Most of the big advertisers were. My mother reigned over a table of board members while Tobias, Laura, and Paxton occupied seats near the stage. They watched Russell speak with varying expressions of anger, distaste, and contemplation. He hadn’t deemed Laura or Paxton threatening enough to blackmail, but I wondered what they would say when they found out he’d been spying on them.

“I want to give a special thank you to the board members who believed in me…” Russell droned on, unaware his fifteen minutes in the spotlight were about to expire.

I ignored Vivian’s concern and scanned the room. I appreciated her solicitude, but I had one goal and one goal only tonight.

My anticipation spiked when the ballroom’s service door opened and a half dozen servers entered. Each one carried a stack of menu-sized packets, which they quietly distributed to guests while Russell spoke.

Their reaction came swiftly.

Confusion rippled through the crowd when they received the papers, followed by shocked murmurs.

Russell faltered at the swell of noise but forged ahead. “…promise to execute my duties as CEO to the best of my abilities…”

The murmurs grew louder. People were getting agitated; silverware clinked, bodies shifted, and coughs and gasps punctuated the gathering tension.

“That bastard.” Dante’s soft laugh traveled over the din. “Didn’t think he had it in him.”

I’d given him an overview about the Russell situation last week, but I hadn’t shared the details printed for all the one hundred-odd guests in attendance.

“What’s going on?” Vivian whispered. “I thought this was a handover ceremony.”

“It is, .” Dante was still laughing. He placed an arm around his wife and kissed the top of her head. “Just not the kind you were thinking of.”

I sipped my wine and returned my attention to the stage. Satisfaction rattled in my chest at the perspiration coating Russell’s face.

With Christian’s help, I’d put together a special highlight reel of Russell’s transgressions—payments to private detectives; instructions for said detectives to follow board members and high-ranking executives; emails conspiring with Victor, a competitor, to damage my reputation.

The clamor reached a point where it drowned out Russell’s speech.

He finally stopped, his eyes bouncing around the room. A mix of alarm and anger peeked through the cracks of his affable demeanor. “What is this?” he demanded. “What’s going on?”

I typically didn’t relish other people’s misfortune, but in his case, he deserved it.

I smoothed a hand over my tie. At the agreed on signal, the techs dimmed the lights and turned on the projection screen behind Russell.

The earlier slideshow of my mother’s career highlights flipped to photos of Russell and Victor meeting in person. Of the threatening note to Tobias, blown up and sharpened in high resolution. Of similar notes to key board members, coercing them into various votes. He’d had them split their support among himself, Paxton, and Laura so he won by a tiny margin, thereby reducing suspicion.

The room exploded.

Laura jumped up, expression murderous, hands gesticulating wildly at a stunned-looking Paxton. On her other side, Tobias’s eyes gleamed, his mouth twisted with grim pleasure. A glass shattered several tables down, and several blackmailed board members tried to sneak away before my mother’s cutting glare froze them in their tracks.

Unlike a majority of the guests, she didn’t react to the revelations on-screen. Her expression mirrored that of someone waiting in line at the grocery store, but when her eyes found mine, they glinted with surprise and a fierce, unyielding pride.

She didn’t have to ask whether I was the one responsible for the mayhem. She already knew.

I stood, and the room fell silent so quickly it was almost comical. Every pair of eyes swung toward me as I walked up to the podium and took the mic from a frozen Russell’s hands.

He hadn’t moved since the projector switched on. The color had slipped from his cheeks, but otherwise, he seemed to have trouble grasping the abrupt turn in events.

“Apologies for interrupting your speech,” I said, deceptively polite. “I realize you’re quite excited about your selection as CEO. However, before we officially conclude your transition, I thought you might like to share your extracurricular activities with the company. It seems fitting, given how prominently they feature in said activities.”

Since the evidence was there for all to see, I kept my rundown short. Spying, conspiring with a competitor, using employee records for personal and unethical purposes. The list went on.

“That’s preposterous.” Nerves pitched Russell’s laugh into a higher octave. “I understand you’re upset about losing the vote, Kai, but to frame me for—”

I tapped the podium. A second later, a video replaced the photos on-screen.

Russell and Victor in Black & Co.’s Virginia satellite office, discussing in detail how and when to publish the articles about me and Isabella. The conversation soon shifted to Victor’s payment—a considerable sum of cash plus Russell’s promise to give him several future news scoops if he was selected as CEO.

The photos and documents were damning, but the video was the death blow.

Panic pooled in Russell’s eyes. He turned, but he must’ve realized he had nowhere to go, because he didn’t attempt to flee while I closed out the night’s show.

“You’re right. I upset about losing the vote,” I said. Iron underlaid my voice. “I’m upset about losing it to someone who cheated his way into winning. You were a decent COO, Russell. You could’ve competed fairly instead of lying and manipulating the very people you promised to serve.”

“Fairly?” The word brought a violent tide of crimson to his face. “

There was nothing about the process, and you know it. I worked my ass off for the company for two decades, ten of them as COO. I’m supposed to be the second-in-command, yet the minute you swan in, fresh out of school with your fancy degrees and family name, people defer to you like you’re in charge. Well, I’m sick of it.”

Russell’s hands fisted. “The CEO selection process was a farce. Everyone knew you were going to win simply because you’re a Young. I was included as a pity candidate despite everything I’ve done for the company. While Leonora was busy traveling and you were busy chasing pie-in-the-sky deals, kept the lights on and the offices running. I deserve recognition, dammit, and I to serve under some arrogant, peacocking upstart who thinks he’s better than everyone!”

His voice escalated with each word until it boomed like thunder through the stunned room. A vein throbbed in his forehead, and flecks of spittle sprayed from his mouth. The stench of rage and indignation poured off him in thick, rolling waves, making my stomach turn.

This was a man who’d been bottling up his feelings for years, if not decades. A man who believed so firmly in his martyrdom that he saw nothing wrong with what he did. In his mind, he was well within his rights to lie, cheat, and blackmail his way to the top because he “deserved” it.

I wasn’t immune to my shortcomings. Looking back, I could admit I felt as entitled to the CEO position as he did. The only difference was, I didn’t fuck other people over to try and get it.

I kept my gaze steady on his. “You say that,” I said, each syllable sharp enough to cut. “Yet you considered Tobias strong enough competition to threaten him into withdrawing. If it were truly rigged, you could’ve stopped with me and left him alone. But you didn’t, did you? Because you know that underneath your justifications and excuses, you simply aren’t that good.”

The low blow landed with unerring accuracy. The remaining color leached from Russell’s face. His mouth opened and closed, but nothing came out.

I typically wouldn’t resort to ad hominem attacks, but he’d made my and Isabella’s lives hell the past few weeks. Even if he hadn’t targeted me, I would never forgive him for what he and Victor did to her.

The lull finally prompted a measured reaction from the board. To my surprise, Richard Chu was the first member to speak up and declare Russell’s selection invalid. Others fell in line, and things moved quickly after that.

By the time the dazed guests filed out of the ballroom half an hour later, Russell had been stripped of his company titles and responsibilities, his deputy had been appointed his interim placement, and the date for a new CEO vote was set for two weeks from now. There would also be a criminal investigation into Russell’s activities plus a reckoning for the board, a quarter of whom had succumbed to his blackmail for various reasons, but those were issues for another day.

“Kai.” My mother stopped me after I said goodbye to a wildly entertained Dante and a shell-shocked Vivian. “Quite an evening you directed tonight.”

“Thank you. If I lose the vote a second time, perhaps I’ll pursue a career in show production,” I said dryly. “I seem to have a knack for it.”

A smirk touched her lips.

Between Isabella, my mother’s surprise visit, and my initial loss, our relationship had been strained to its limits the past month. However, I sensed a tiny thaw as we faced each other in the now empty ballroom, both too proud to back down first but too exhausted to leave our relationship on bad terms.

“You did well,” she finally said. Giving the first compliment after an argument was her version of an apology. “I never would’ve suspected Russell. After so many years…”

“He fooled a lot of people, myself included,” I said in my own admission of fallibility.

Another silence descended. Neither of us were used to bending, and our concessions rendered our standard modes of operation obsolete.

“It’s been a long night. We’ll talk later this week, after things have settled,” my mother said.

I nodded, and that was that.

It was a short conversation, but it was all we needed to reset our relationship. That was the Young family way. We didn’t indulge in heart-to-hearts or drawn-out apologies; we acknowledged the problem, fixed it, and went on with our lives.

I exited the ballroom after her and returned to my suite, but I didn’t make it halfway before my adrenaline flatlined. The high from successfully exposing Russell faded, replaced with a familiar, piercing ache.

Now that I was alone, away from the noise and distraction of other people, Isabella’s voice crept back into my head like a ghost I can’t escape.

The ache sharpened into a spike.

I set my jaw and headed straight to my suite’s mini-bar, but no matter how many glasses of alcohol I tossed back, I couldn’t blunt the impact of her memory.

Six days. Four hours. One eternity.

Tonight should’ve been one of my greatest victories, but in the quiet, luxurious confines of my room, I found it hard to celebrate anything at all.