Chapter Ten
Natalie
There was a knock at my door. I looked up from my computer as it opened, and Brett poked his head inside.
"Natalie?"
"Good morning Mr. Hamm," I said.
"Morning," he said, walking in with his hands in his pockets. "Busy?"
"What do you need?" I asked. It had been about half an hour since I had gotten to the office. After the drama and the past couple weeks with Cameron, Brett's visits to my office had had something to do with him. He might have disappeared into the mountains, but he wasn't gone.
The rumors around the office swirled like tornadoes, and the truth was that it didn’t matter where he was—the mountains two hours out of the city or the fucking moon—because he was supposed to be here. Brett was a capable leader, more than Cameron seemed to be if you asked me, but I was keeping that opinion to myself. It didn't matter so much who was better because Cameron was it. He plainly didn't have a choice in the matter. It wasn't fair, but it was what it was.
"You haven't heard anything from Cameron, have you?" he asked.
"Nothing since we talked last week. Has something happened?"
"Something is about to," he said, taking a deep breath. "There's a meeting starting in about ten minutes upstairs. Stockholders. I wanted you there in case any of them wanted to discuss legal."
"Oh, of course," I said, standing.
"This is going to be the first stockholder meeting since the accident. I've been pushing it back because of the situation with Cameron."
"It's going to look bad that he isn't present," I commented.
"Not being present is one thing. Disappearing off the map after making massive property sales is another thing entirely. They're going to have questions, and if we don't have answers, they'll come up with their own."
"How would they know all that?"
"The deaths of his parents shot him into the public eye. It's never been a secret that he was next in line to take over Porter Holdings. People in the industry have known as long as he has, and they noticed when he disappeared." God, Cameron. What are you doing? I didn't understand why he acted how he did, but with this, I could imagine how stressful it would be having people breathing down your neck so soon after a tragedy.
In reality, expecting something to happen doesn’t always mean it’s going to be easy when it does. He could have known all his life that he would be replacing his dad, but now that it was real, he was finding out the hard way that knowing that it would happen hadn’t really made him ready for it. I didn't think he was handling this the best way, but it didn't matter what I thought. It should have only mattered what he thought, but at the moment, the impatient stockholders upstairs didn’t give two shits about his feelings.
He was in trouble; that was what I was hearing. I had been more concerned about the scores of people on the lower end of the business that would suffer because of Cameron playing truant than the people up there at the top with him, but maybe I should have brought it up with him when we had had lunch the other day. Maybe he would have cared when the people he was screwing over were as rich and powerful as he was.
I went up to the top floor with Brett. I had never sat in on a stockholder meeting at Porter Holdings before. Mr. Porter had tended to look for legal advice if he ever needed it before or after the meetings, not during. We went to a conference room where four men were already seated, talking amongst themselves. They kept quiet when Brett and I walked in. Large leather chairs surrounded a long, black conference table. He introduced me as we sat, him at the head and me on the chair to his left. I had never met any of the men before, but they were all middle-aged. Brett tried to run through introductions before they started.
"Are we really wasting more time on introductions after starting late?" one man asked. He was in a slate gray suit, and his hair had thinned to almost nothing. Mr. Granger; I had caught his name before he had interrupted Brett.
"We thought you were leaving to get the boy," another said. Black suit and blue tie. Copious facial hair and a faint foreign accent.
"Where is the boy? Surely, she's not here as his representative," Mr. Granger said, referring to me.
"Ms. Cooke is here as legal counsel," Brett said tightly.
"So are you the one who did it?" the third man asked me. His hair was fair and his face angular and kind of sallow.
"Did what?" I asked.
"Where is he, Hamm?" the last man who had remained silent ‘til then asked, directing the questions back at Brett. He was a big man. His face was round, and he was glaring at Brett like he owed him money.
"He doesn't know either," Mr. Granger raged.
"Of course he does. He's hiding him," the fat man retorted. I sat there too stunned to say anything. I hadn't been to one of these meetings before, but I wanted to guess this wasn't how they usually went. I didn't have that high an opinion on rich men who wore suits, but I wanted to believe they behaved better than this. The rumors of Cameron's location, it appeared, had traveled outside the walls of Porter Holdings.
"Gentlemen," Brett said, trying to calm them. "Mr. Porter's absence follows the tragic accident that took both his parents. It isn't unreasonable that he's retreated from the public eye."
"Alright. Then, where is he?" the man with light hair challenged. Brett was silent.
"It's not his house, is it? How can it be when he listed all his properties?" he asked. Good question. As far as I knew, which was what Cameron himself had told me, this was all supposed to be temporary. Why would you sell all your property if you didn’t mean to come back? It wasn't like he couldn't get more but—why did I even bother? I didn't understand a thing the man did, but finally, I could see the consequences his actions were having on the people he left behind.
"You're part of this, Hamm. What kind of stockholder meeting happens without the majority holder present?"
"I've been in contact with Cameron. There's no need for alarm."
"We're not scared for him," one of the men scoffed. "We want to know what next. Grayson's gone and apparently so is his replacement."
"He isn't gone."
"Well he isn't here," the man said. They argued like that for a while, back and forth about Cameron. They all knew that Cameron had made impromptu sales of his property assets and then dropped off the face of the earth. Where he was seemed to be a mystery to them though, which I didn't want to say was good or bad. Everything at the moment was bad. The consequences of Cameron's bad moves had come to a head. This was only the beginning. If he stayed out there too long, this would only get worse.
Eventually, they would stop waiting and do something about it. I wondered whether he would make them angry enough to get rid of him. A dark part of me wanted that, since Cameron was letting his personal life get in the way of his professional one, and that alone should have earned him a ticket out. All he had to do was come here and sell, but no. If he didn't care about the hundreds of people below him, didn't he at least care that he was fucking things up for his fellow stockholders?
"He's not here, Hamm, so we're looking at you."
"You have nothing to worry about," Brett said calmly, reassuring the angry men. They started talking timelines, how long they were willing to wait before they moved forward, with or without him. The Cameron issue had been their main concern. Once that had been resolved, they hadn’t had much else to discuss.
The room emptied out. I stayed where I was ‘til everyone but Brett and I had left. I exhaled and buried my face in my hands. Holy hell. It was worse than I thought. I heard Brett finally stand up.
"Do you have a minute?" he asked me. I nodded and followed him out of the room. He led me into his office and waited for me to sit across his desk before he did.
"Are they always like that?" I asked finally.
"No. The circumstances this time were a little tricky." That is one way to put it, I thought.
"What now?"
"We don't have that many options, Natalie. Everything leads back to Cameron. Whether he decides to sell or decides to take his father's place, he has to be here to do it."
"You don't really think he's going to sell, do you?"
"I don't know what to think anymore. I've known Cameron since he was a kid, but everything that’s happened lately hasn’t been like him. He’s never run away before. He’s in a bad place, and he wants time alone, but I always thought his sense of duty was stronger than this."
It might have been, but whatever anchor he had had was gone. My parents are probably the only reason why I went to all the parties and events, pretended to like and respect all those people. They're gone, and I don't have to be part of it anymore. His actions when I remembered those words made sense but didn’t justify them.
"If he ever felt a sense of duty, it was to his parents, and he doesn’t have them anymore."
"I can give him that, but this isn't a surprise to him. He's been training for this his whole life. His father told him clearly what he expected from him the day he wasn't at the head of this company anymore. Cameron knows what he has to do, he simply isn't doing it, and nobody here can afford to let him get away with that anymore. It's only going to get worse the more he makes those people wait."
"I think he's telling us what has to happen, Mr. Hamm. Even silence is an answer."
"Not the right one."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Hamm. I can understand why it's important that he comes back, but I won't pretend that I get chasing him like a child to take responsibility of something he knows very well is his to take care of. At this point, wouldn't it make sense to let him go? Let him do whatever he's doing up there in the mountains in peace instead of putting everything on hold for when he feels like gracing us with his presence again?"
"If that was an option, we would take it," he said sagely.
I wanted to throw my hands in the air and give up. What were these codes and expectations the people around here operated on? Why did it make more sense to chase a grown man around instead of cutting our losses?
"Mr. Hamm, I think Cameron is showing us just how much he cares about Porter Holdings and the futures of everyone who works here. I don't think it's a jump to suppose his clear lack of passion and willingness would affect the way he ran things even if he did take his rightful place in charge."
He sighed and leaned back in his seat, obviously exhausted even though it was hardly ten in the morning. He was over it. So done with Cameron's ridiculous games. I remembered the conversation we had had a few weeks ago about how he wanted to retire soon.
He was doing what Cameron had asked him: taking the wheel while he was gone, but like everything Cameron had done lately, it didn’t seem that he cared very much what that meant for the older man. He hadn't signed up for this. Angry stockholders calling him names because Cameron wanted to play in the snow. A position he had probably never wanted at Porter Holdings despite how readily he had taken it.
"I'm only doing what his father would want me to do, Natalie," he said quietly. "There are a lot of things they said to each other that I never heard. Cameron knows why his father wants him here, but without him and his mother, he's having trouble returning to the world he believes is vapid and corrupt."
I almost rolled my eyes. Cameron had gone on about that stuff like a broken record when we had had lunch. How out of touch was he? Did he realize it was the fact that he was part of that vapid and corrupt world that he could even afford figuratively and literally to sell his multiple homes and move into the mountains on a whim?
The amount of money and assets that had fallen into his lap after his parents had passed was enough for him to never have to work again if he didn't want to. He thought money and power were wrong, but he wouldn't be Cameron Porter without them. If he hated it so much, why didn't he have more of a problem benefitting from all that access and money? I didn't know whether I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt anymore. I was getting very tired of the headache Cameron Porter was giving everyone around him.
"This can't go on forever."
"You're right. That's why I wanted to talk to you." Goddammit, not again.
"Mr. Hamm, I don't—"
"Please hear me out on this, Natalie. We're the only two people who have any hope of getting through to him." Yeah? Well, I wanted off the Cameron Porter babysitting team. What had I gotten him to agree to besides lunch that one time? And even then, I hadn't been able to get him to stay; he had gone and announced that he was going off the grid to find himself.
"It hasn't worked so far. He doesn't listen to me. He doesn't care."
"He's had time now. He wanted to go out into the mountains and be alone for a while, and he's gotten it. That means he's had time to think."
I jumped to the conclusion he was trying to lead me to and shook my head. "Mr. Hamm, you can't. I can't."
"I know where he's staying. The address of his cabin. I need you to go to him, Natalie."
"Why?" I asked, exasperated. "I'm sorry, Brett, but usually when you give someone a chance, and they don't take it, you give it to someone who will," I said, dropping all formality. What he was asking and had asked me since this whole saga had begun had been miles removed from what I was here at Porter Holdings to even do. I had gotten roped into this as a favor I had promised to Mr. Porter, and now I was suddenly one of the only two people who could possibly get through to Cameron. We weren’t even friends. I didn’t like him, and I knew he felt nothing for me. Even professionally I didn’t think I had a dog in this fight.
Brett remained calm, looking at me from across the desk. "Whatever he's going to do, we need an answer. It may not be the one we want, but we still need to get one."
"I don't know what else I can even say to him, Mr. Hamm."
"Do your best to convince him. We need an answer, yes or no; we can't just hover in between them. The stockholders are going to make sure that we can’t."
"What can they do?" I asked. I knew, but almost nothing was impossible if you had enough money. Cameron was the majority stockholder, as much as he was stressing all of them out. That meant he was at the top of the food chain, and it would be considerably hard to knock him off his throne. Hard, but not impossible.
"Force a buyout," he said grimly. "Take him out of the equation completely."
"That's what he wants."
"If it is, then he has to come here and tell us that himself." I couldn't say anything to that. Here I was again somehow, commissioned to do the impossible. "Our time is going to be limited. I don't expect them to give us longer than a month." It sounded like a long time in theory, but it would go by fast. I had never hated my job before, but after the past couple weeks, I could say that I did. Not the work itself but all the sudden Cameron-centric extracurriculars I had to do. Hate might have been a strong word, but I was tired. Nobody could tell me why we were treating a grown man with kid gloves, and now I had to go to the fucking mountains to coddle him in person.
"When did he head out to the mountains?"
"Friday."
"It's only been a few days then. I don't think that's long enough if I'm supposed to be able to get him to listen to me." Maybe if I bought enough time, he would surprise us and show up again on his own. Hypothermia was no joke. Maybe all he’d need was a few days of frozen mountain air to make him come to his senses. He had done nothing so far to make relating to him easy or even enjoyable. If he did this, I’d be grateful forever. Brett pressed his lips into a line, thinking.
"Too long and he'll start to enjoy it." Would he? I had never lived at an elevation that high before but neither had Cameron. The snowfall here had been light so far, but up there, it wouldn’t be. I still knew next to nothing about the guy, but I did know that he was no survivalist. Nobody enjoyed frozen pipes and sub-zero temperatures. If we gave him enough time to suffer up there, I was betting he’d come back down by himself.
"If it doesn't drive him crazy first," I pointed out. "Friday. A week. Enough time so he feels like he's been left alone but not enough to get too comfortable."
Brett shrugged. "Since you're the one making the trip I don't suppose I can make you go earlier than that." No, he couldn't. His boy Cameron wasn't the only one who didn't like being part of this plan. If I had to come up with something to make him come back, I needed time too.