Chapter Twenty-Five
Julian
My new office is a rarefied place, in one of the tallest buildings in the city, high enough to suffocate. I’m the king of the mountain and I can look out my window at everyone scurrying below like ants and realize just how distant I’m going to be from the rest of the world. Except for the other liars, con artists, and sharks who claw their way up to join me in the boardroom.
This is what I fought so hard for.
This is what I gave my heart away for.
And to keep this chair, I’ll be fighting the rest of my life, sacrificing bits of myself until I’m just as much of a bastard as every other Stone man who’s ridden the CEO’s chair for any length of time.
If I’m lucky, I’ll get an out like my older brother.
“Mr. Cunningham is here to see you, sir,” my secretary’s voice says out of the speaker on my phone.
I have a secretary now.
Hell, I have an entirely company. Analysts, brokers, bankers, secretaries, interns, all under my thumb, all dependent on my leadership. It makes me look back on the time when it was just Melody and me, just the two of us, working for each other. Her lies sting, but even so, the time we spent together makes me smile.
“Send him in,” I reply.
Gordon enters, knocking lightly a few times before opening the door. He’s grinning widely, which isn’t the nicest sight, considering he’s British and, like most British people I’ve met, his teeth are a fucked-up mess.
get up and shake his hand. It’s good to see someone today — on my first day as CEO — who I know isn’t entirely a conniving rat.
“Gordon, how can I help you?” I say.
“Oh, I’m not here for any particularly reason, Julian. Other than to pay my respects and offer you my congratulations.”
“Thank you, though I’d hold off on the congratulations if I were you. At least until things are more settled. I have a feeling it’s going to be a rough transition. Victoria is going to try and rock the boat.”
He rolls his eyes and snorts. “She might have inherited some of your father’s stake in the company when he passed, but she’s never had a single bone for business in her body, except when she was fucking your father. That trophy wife is no prize.”
“No, she isn’t. Even when they were together, she was a shit partner for my father. I don’t think they had a single loving day in their marriage.”
“I’m not surprised. The higher you get, the more you have, the harder it is to find someone to trust. And when you do find someone, it takes a lot of sacrifice to maintain it. To be honest, neither your father nor your mother struck me as the type to sacrifice. It all makes me thankful I met my wife back before I made my money — I knew that when she told me that she loved me, she really meant it.”
I might be up at the highpoint of the Los Angeles skyline, but, emotionally, I’m somewhere in the subway system.
“Gordon, let me ask you something — after my father died and they put Alex away, did you ever think about making a move to be CEO?”
He shrugs. “The thought crossed my mind. If I had thought your mother’s play had any chance of succeeding, I would’ve thrown my hat in the ring. This company means something, and it’s more than just money. Think about what you have, Julian — a fourth generation tower of wealth, with you at the top. There’s a lot of potential, there.”
“And now? You have no ambitions to run it?”
Gordon laughs a full-body laugh, shaking his head. “Thankfully, that burden’s fallen to you. The CEO’s chair is as much a sentence as a reward. There’s a reason your father and your grandfather were such bastards, you know. I’d say the same about your great grandfather, but I didn’t have the pleasure.”
“It wasn’t a pleasure,” I say. “Every story in our family about the great Mason Augustus Stone in some way revolves around how much of a colossal prick he was.”
“And just think, now you get to join them in the pantheon of assholes.”
“At least now I’ll get to answer that age old question about whether money buys happiness.”
He gives me a sage look. “It doesn’t. Doesn’t matter how much you have. You find the things that make you happy, and you hold onto them. Doesn’t matter if that’s charity or a wife or something else. And now that you’re at the top, you need to hold on for dear life.”
* * * * *
“Gentlemen, if you’ll turn to page sixty of the prospectus and check chart G-4, you’ll see the projections for our holdings in Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania…”
I zone out.
This is a level of stultifying boredom I didn’t think existed in humanity. I’m grateful I’d skipped most of the board meetings up to this point; otherwise, I’d probably have thrown myself out the windows.
I flip through gigantic prospectus while the European regional director drones on about energy futures in Eastern Europe.
This is my future, now. And not even thoughts about my enormous net worth bring me much comfort — even though it took me running the numbers three times to actually believe that I’m worth that much money. It also doesn’t help soften the blow that I’m going to have to actually give a damn now about natural gas pipelines in Bulgaria.
Fucking Bulgaria.
I traded my happiness for revenge and a literal mountain of money.
No wonder dad was such an asshole — a lifetime of this would kill anyone’s soul.
I let my mind wander while the board meeting drags on.
I think of the good things, and everything leads back to her. My happiest moments were with Melody, or whatever her name is. She took me up on my crazy offer and helped me pull off this ridiculous coup. I gave her up for this because I wasn’t brave enough to let go of this spiteful dream and chase after her.
My phone buzzes and I flip it open. There’s a new headline with my name on it.
And hers.
“Exposed: The Playboy and the Con Artist defrauding Stone Capital.”
Victoria’s at it, and she’s not going to stop raking my life, and Melody’s, over the coals. She knows she can’t win, but she can sure as hell make our lives miserable.
It makes me sick. Melody doesn’t deserve this.
Her betrayal still stings, the wounds are still fresh, but I can’t get over the look on her face when Pierce and Victoria confronted me. Pain, regret, fear, it wasn’t the look of a con artist; I don’t know what it meant, but I know I want to find out the truth.
I owe her that much.
It was the one thing we insisted on throughout this whole misadventure.
I stand. Every eye in the room turns to me.
“Sir, did you have something to add about our Australian mining project?” some paunchy man in a suit asks.
There’s some chart on an easel behind him.
I wave my hand dismissively and head for the door. “Fuck it.”
He blinks and looks from me to he chart. “Fuck Australia?”
“No. Australia’s great. What I mean is: fuck you. And fuck this.”
I slam the door.