Page 3 of When the Last One Falls
I was the heir apparent, and I took that role seriously. My younger brother, Beau, was an executive for Kingston Industries, but that was just so that he’d have a paycheck to cash. Beau was your typical rich asshole that spent all his time blowing through his money, drinking bars dry, and fucking everything that looked his way. As long as he didn’t cause a scandal too big to hide, our parents didn’t care about what he did. Oh, but they cared very much what I did. After all, once my father retired, it was going to be up to me to keep the wealth rolling in.
There was only one other family that rivaled what we were in Portal Lands, and while I could respect their success objectively, absolute power was like a drug. I wasn’t sure when the rivalry had started, but it was real, and it burned brightly whenever our paths crossed.
TCC, The Cormac Corporation, was just as successful as Kingston Industries, their interests just as diverse as ours. Like me, Ares Cormac was the heir apparent to TCC, and the man was just as ruthless with keeping his kingdom as prosperous as I was. We often bumped dicks when we were after the same company or business opportunity, and I hated to admit that we were about even in our victories over one another. In fact, I hated to admit that our lives mirrored each other quite eerily.
Like me, Ares had a younger brother, Dalton, that wasn’t worth a shit, but he also had a younger sister, Didi. It was reputed that she was just as useless as Dalton, and her only goal in life was to find a suitable husband as if we were still living in the fifteenth century. While I had nothing against homemakers, there just seemed something limiting about that as a goal in life. Plus, it wasn’t like she was going to be cooking, cleaning, or doing any laundry. Like most spoiled, wealthy, narcissistic women, Didi Cormac just wanted the freedom to do what she pleased.
At any rate, Ares Cormac was the driving force behind The Cormac Corporation because he’d been lucky enough to have his father retire two years ago, leaving him to run the ship as he saw fit. My father was still pretending to have a say, and if nothing else, it got annoying as fuck from time to time. As far as Ares’ mother was concerned, it was rumored that she was into art or something like that, but my focus had always been on Ares, not his family. Even if a serpent had more than one head, there was still one larger than the rest, and that was Ares Cormac.
Now, was he a threat? No. I went without sleep to make sure that Kingston Industries would never crumble to the ground. I ran the company with the bottom line always the priority. Sleep was overrated, sex could be handled by a quick appointment, and holidays weren’t important. If you worked at the top-level of management at Kingston, then you’d better learn how to live without a good work/life balance. Hell, Kingston Industries had better become your life. I expected twenty-four-hour availability from my presidents and vice presidents, and it took only once for that to be remedied if they weren’t.
Luckily for me, my two best friends also worked for Kingston, so that was something. Though unethical, some late nights in the building were less than professional. Hell, some lunch hours had been, too. I wasn’t a choir boy, so I had no qualms about some sexy piece blowing me underneath my desk just to ease some of the stress that I often carried around with me. As long as I kept things discreet, I didn’t see the problem. The service that I paid knew what to send over and why.
As for the two guys that knew me best, knowing me since we were in college, Magnus Saint was Kingston’s Senior CFO, and Onyx Mercer was VP of Operations for Kingston, answering only to me and my father. We’d met in college, and both of them had been attending on scholarship. We had bonded being on the rugby team, and the way that they had both viciously attacked life had impressed the fuck out of me. I’d rather have a starving dog fighting next to my side than a pampered pooch, and Magnus and Onyx both had a killer instinct that never got distracted by their consciences. Hell, I was pretty sure that a devil sat on each of their shoulders, making no room for any angels to get in the way of their drive and success. They were both everything that Kingston Industries represented.
The phone on my desk rang, but that wasn’t surprising. Everyone knew that I worked long hours, so if I wasn’t answering my cellphone, then my desk phone was the next best way to get a hold of me.
“Kingston,” I answered.
“I’m just getting home,” came my brother’s voice. “I’ll need you to have someone else fill in for me this morning.”
I gritted my teeth.
Even though we did our best not to give Beau any real responsibility, every now and again, he had meetings to hold or attend. Though he was only an executive, he was still a high-ranking executive and a Kingston at that. With my father insistent on keeping up appearances, it was expected that Beau would be involved with some of the decision making, so he had his own little division that he headed.
The second that my father retired, I was going to fire the little prick.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I snapped, though it was a pointless question.
“Hey, don’t yell at me,” Beau whined like a child. “I lost track of time.”
“Lay off the drugs, booze, and pussy, and then maybe you won’t,” I lectured for the millionth time.
“Maybe if you snorted a few party favors, drank, and got laid, you wouldn’t be such a fucking asshole,” he shot back.
“Yeah? Because you think all your bullshit is cheap?” I snarled. “I should start snorting up the profits just to teach you a fucking lesson.”
“Please,” he sneered. “Don’t act like you don’t get off on being the king of the castle, Brant. You love lording it over everyone just how great you are.”
I could feel a vein starting to pulse near my right eye. “Get to the fucking meeting,” I ordered. “It’s not until nine anyway.”
“You expect me to go to work on only three hours of sleep?” he squawked.
“Why not? I do it all the fucking time,” I snapped.
“That’s because you’re more machine than you are man,” he retorted. “Not all of us are robots.”
“Onyx and Magnus do it, too,” I pointed out. “In fact, most of the senior management staff sacrifice sleep to make Kingston Industries as powerful as it is.”
“Yeah, well, you’re just going to have to get over it,” he huffed. “I’m not going to make it in today.”
The sad thing was that there was nothing to do for it. This wasn’t the first time that Beau had bailed on a meeting or project. It was the reason that his second-in-charge was so damn capable. Giving Beau any responsibility automatically came with a plan-B. What my brother didn’t know was that he didn’t have any stake in Kingston Industries, and without my father’s protection, there really wasn’t anything stopping me from firing him once my father was gone. If my parents wanted to support his hedonistic lifestyle for the rest of their lives, then that was on them. I planned on ousting him from Kingston the first chance that I got, and I wasn’t obligated to pay him anything for it. Beau owned no part of Kingston Industries, so there’d be no need for a buyout.
“Fine,” I bit out. “In fact, since it’s already Thursday, just take the rest of the week off. It’s not like you do fuck around here anyway.”
“You’re such a fucking asshole,” he shot back, and talk about the pot calling the kettle an asshole. I was nothing compared to this jackass.
“And you’re such a fucking child,” I flung back. “A word of advice, Beau; grow the fuck up. You’re thirty-two, and fifty-two is going to be staring you in the face before you know it. If you keep going the way that you’re going, you’re going to have nothing to show for your life when it’s all said and done.”
