Page 94 of Love to Hate You

It was a power-play number and every eyeball in the room knew it, since they all looked up at his six-foot-three-inch frame and turned toward him with fear in the whites of their eyes. His desired response to what was about to transpire.

Oh, how hell was about to rain down and scorch the earth. He didn’t like cowards, and the board had made a cowardly play. Not just last week, but today as well.

“What are you doing here?” Mr. Harper, the president of the board, said.

“I heard there was a secret meeting today to decide if I should still be CEO.”

“This isn’t a secret meeting,” another board member said, a quiver in his voice.

“Then why weren’t Randy and I included in the email? What? No one has anything to say? Not a word? Well, and sinceIamthe agenda, I figured my brother and I should be here. And we have a few words to say.”

On cue, Randy walked in looking like a grown-up businessman with an ace up his sleeve. There was no ace, and his sleeves were a bit too long, but he finally looked more like a VP than a Swiftie—a direct result of Wes dressing him today and lending him a simple black suit for the meeting.

Wes walked to the head of the boardroom table, followed by his brother, looking each and every traitor who’d tried to undermine them in the eyes. It wasn’t hard to tell who’d voted against them; their faces were white as paper the agenda was printed on. After carefully reading the secretary’s notes from the last meeting, Wes also learned that the board was to vote this morning on strengthening their power and firing Wes, citing that he wasn’t performing up to task.

If it hadn’t been for a few loyal members who’d believed in upholding his father’s will, he would never have known that this meeting was happening.

“According to the will, you and your brother have to make this opening a success. Nowhere does it state you have to be CEO,” Harper pointed out, his chest puffed, accentuating his spare tire, which was waging war with the bottom button of his vest.

“How is he supposed to make the impactful and strategic decisions from the mailroom?” Randy asked, resting a hand on Wes’s shoulder. The sign of brotherly support touched Wes.

Harper crossed his arms over his chest. “That isn’t our problem.”

“Well, it will be the second I file a lawsuit against you for using the emergency clause as a way to skate around the rules of having all voting board members present. Especially two of the shareholders who own a collective forty-one percent of the company.”

“You were out of town.”

“But I was reachable, so the proper procedure would have been to have notified myself and my brother. Oh, and if you go ahead and relinquish me from my current position, my attorneys assured me that we’ll be caught up in litigation for years.”

“You can’t do that,” Mr. Harper said. He was so outraged spittle had collected in the corner of his mouth. He was the one who was gunning for the CEO position. “You’d destroy the company.”

Wes looked at Randy for confirmation. Randy nodded. “My brother and I are ready to burn this company to the ground rather than go against my father’s wishes,” said Wes.

“Your father didn’t even have faith in his own son,” Harper said, and it was as if all the oxygen had been sucked out of the room. “Which is why he called you in to babysit Randy. For god’s sake, the kid took off on a world tour to follow some teenager around for a few months after his father passed. What kind of VP does that?”

“She’s a grown woman, and what the hell do you mean ‘babysit’ me?” The second question was addressed to Wes, but Harper kept harping on.

“Didn’t your big brother tell you that your dad wanted you nowhere near running the business, so he called his bastard to run the show? Do you really think he’ll give you the reins when his year is up? Because he doesn’t have to, he can go on forever keeping you from your birthright.”

Randy looked at Wes as if pleading with him to discredit Harper. To tell him it was all a lie. But Wes was done lying. Summer was right, he was a different man than he’d been a couple of weeks ago, and he was about to prove the trust and pride she felt for him.

“I wanted to tell you but there was an NDA preventing me.”

An NDA Harper had just broken, making replacing him even easier.

“We’re brothers,” Randy said quietly. “That trumps any NDA. It trumps everything. Is that why you went with me to Mystic? To keep me away from the business?”

“I went with you because you said you needed a wingman and I wanted to get to know you better. As a brother should. Dad kept us apart for years and I didn’t want him to win with us being estranged.”

Wes knew the minute he said the word “win,” a word the old Wes would have used and the real reason he had gone to Mystic if he were being honest, that he’d lost his brother’s respect.

“Well, I guess Dad won, because no real brother of mine would view our relationship as a game to be won. If you knew me at all, you’d know that I hate liars. I spent a lifetime with liars as parents, girlfriends, friends, coworkers, all underestimating me and using me for whatever they could get from me. I thought you were different. Guess I was wrong.”

And with that Randy left the room. Wes wanted to follow but there was a vote to be held.

“You’re a bloody wanker, you know that, Harper? And you’re excused from your duties. I am using the ethics and morality clause, not to mention breaking the NDA, to buy your shares back.”

“You can’t do that. I’ve been with this firm since before you were born!”

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