He keeps smiling, looking sure of himself. He has a plan. They all do.Fuck.I need to figure out what’s going on.
So I keep pushing until he becomes too confident and lets something—anything—slip.
“I’ll sue you.”
He starts laughing, moving a pen around the table. “That’s funny.”
“Being sued is funny?” I play angry and stupid, just how they think me to be.
“Funny that you think it’ll scare me. I’ve got a city behind me.”
“And your brother’s money apparently,” I addnonchalantly, because there’s always a rivalry between siblings. Always. I just have to sniff out how much it affects him. “Because you don’t have much.” I start tsking. “Looks like your brother secured a richer wife for himself.” That hits the chord, because his lips purse even tighter together. I look around the office with disgust. “I can’t imagine you make tons of money working here. Being your brother’s little dog he sends to do his dirty work.”
His eye ticks. One time. But it’s enough for me to know I’ve hit the nerve once again. “All this money,” he leans forward, “will be mine too.”
“Yeah? I don’t see how you might get anything out of it while you’re still stuck in this city job. Unless you take bribes. Which you do, don’t you?” I smile. “But it still won’t get you as much as he has.”
His eye is now ticking nonstop. “I’ll get half of it when we’re done.”
“Really? I don’t see how you’ll get any of it when I’ve got the voting power now. AndIhave more than half now.”
He starts laughing. “You think you do, do you?” His laughter intensifies, and I feel like I’m getting close. “By the time you’re done suing me, your building and your company will eat all of your money, and you’ll be bankrupt. Then we will swoop in and buy it from you.” He leans toward me over the desk. “For nothing. We will have the company for nothing. And then we will put our name on top of the building. Lebovski Enterprise.”
He starts spitting, so I rear back to not get drenched. He thinks he has the upper hand and intensifies his truth-spitting.
“So you see? I don’t give a fuck about you suing me. Sue me for all I care. I know how to make it long, I work for the city after all. And all your voting shares will mean nothing because you won’t have your company. We all know howmany investors and buyers pulled away after they figured out that your company produces unsafe buildings. No one wants to be associated with that. And this is precisely what we wanted. To taint your precious reputation. Then we just have to sit and wait for it to do the rest of the work for us. How about that?” He leans back with a smug look on his face, thinking he’s won.
Fuck. Their plan actually makes sense. Almost three weeks of the building being vacant took a huge toll on us. I’m scared to even imagine how much it will cost me to drag this lawsuit over months, even years. And how many ongoing and future projects it might cost us. Because he sure as fuck can make it complicated enough.
I rise to my feet and without another word stride out of his office, letting him know he’s won. If he thinks this way, it might buy me some time. A little bit until I figure out what to do.
As I sit in the car, George asks, “Where to, sir?”
“My building.”
He takes off without asking anything else. A dark fucking cloud over my head is warning enough.
He drops me off in front of the main door. It usually buzzes with activity with people going to work, but now it’s quiet. They all are working remotely. It’s not ideal, but it is what it is.
A simple paper glued to the glass wall says that the building is unfit and not safe. Such a small thing is quickly ruining my life. Security guards are seen inside. Even though the building is ‘not safe,’ it doesn’t mean it can be abandoned. Especially with all the homeless people swirling around. The moment the guards leave, the windows will be broken, and people will be squatting inside. Which will bring another set of troubles.
I glance at the door on the right. The coffee shop. Theplace where everything started. The place which started the beginning of the end for my family. And the person who was there at the start of it all: Maeve.
Maeve Wrong. No, not Wrong. Maeve King. She is King now, whether she likes it or not.
I’m thinking about our conversation from yesterday and how fucking vulnerable I let myself be when the doors of the elevator open, and I step inside the empty floor. It’s quiet. No one is around. I’ve never seen it looking like this before.
Then something clicks. Something falls on the floor, and someone curses loudly. I can’t help but let a smile tug on my lips.
I walk toward my office to find Martin on the floor trying to collect dozens of fallen pieces of paper.
“Hello, Martin,” I greet him.
He pauses and looks at me with wide eyes. “Well, that’s a first.”
“What’s a first? Me saying hello?”
He snorts. “No. You saying hello first. You are usually all broody and mysterious and not talkative.” He waves his hand in the air and goes back to picking up the paper.
