Page 49 of Man Vs. Woman
Serena
“What the hell is this about?”I ask Colt, watching as the whole of the board leave the elevators and step onto the lobby, Seymour walking in front of them like some bonafide Napoleon.
“I have no fucking idea,” Colt replies, hands in his pocket as he watches the procession head straight toward us. Just like him, I received a summons from the board to meet them at the lobby this morning. No explanation, no nothing. Just a straight up “meet us at the lobby” note, signed by Seymour himself.
“Glad you could make it,” Seymour greets us, hands open toward us as he flashes us a grin.
“Well? Why are we here?”
“The board wants to visit your previous businesses,” he starts, something in his eyes telling me we’re about to get fucked. “We know you’ve faced a few problems, and we want to see the places you operated from before we continue with the proceedings.”
“And couldn’t you have said that before?” Colt asks him, probably realizing that we’re being roped into something shady. Why the hell does the board want to visit his gym and my spa? Our two businesses have been shut down, anyway. It’s not like our operations are up and running. So what the hell does any of this have to do with anything? And why was Seymour so secretive about it?
Still, there’s nothing we can do. Just like lambs heading into the slaughter, we have to follow the board outside, where a full motorcade is already waiting for us, black SUVs gleaming under the sunlight.
“This is fucking bullshit,” Colt growls as we step inside one of the SUVs.
“I know,” I say. “Doesn’t make any sense. Feels like we’re being ambushed.”
“And that’s because we are,” he mutters, reading something off his phone. “Taylor has just texted me. Says there are protestors camped outside my gym.”
“What?”
“Yeah, fuck this bullshit,” he growls.
We suffer through the rest of the trip in silence, and when the motorcade finally stops in front of Colt’s gym I immediately spot a few dozens of people with signs hanging in front of the building. They’re all just standing there, but they immediately start shouting the moment they see Colt stepping from outside the car.
“What the fuck?” He asks me, slack jawed as he realizes the protestors are all elderly people. A few of them are on wheelchairs, oxygen tanks strapped to it.
“Care to explain?” Seymour prods, joining us and waving one hand at the protestors surrounding us. Pushing our way through the crowd, we try to make our way inside the gym, but there are a few men chained to the doors, stopping anyone from entering the empty gym premises. They all look like they were alive when Jesus Christ roamed the Earth, and they look pissed as hell.
One of them has a cardboard hanging from his neck. “I didn’t fight the Nazis for this,” his sign reads.
“What the fuck is this about?” Colt asks no one in particular. A guy with a dirty beard hobbles toward us, supporting himself on a crutch.
“We’re all gathered here to protest you!” He screeches, placing an overgrown fingernail on Colt’s chest. “Your treatment of the elderly can’t go unchecked. It was sexual harassment, I tell you.”
“Sexual harassment? What the fuck are you on about?” Colt asks him, and I can tell he’s second away from grabbing the guy’s crutch and using it to kick everyone’s asses.
“Seems like you have a habit of...showing yourself to the elderly,” the man continues. “You have ejaculated over your own clients, and I’ve gathered here all of your other victims! This is the start of a people’s movement. Hashtag, Old People Too!”
“I don’t know any of these fucking people!” Colt protests, but by now the crowd is already shouting so loud that he can barely be heard. A few elderly ladies are waving their open umbrellas, a single word scribbled on them: “cumbrellas”. Jesus.
“Any truth to these allegations?” Seymour asks Colt, that smug grin never leaving his face. He’s clearly enjoying this. And Colt was right: this is an ambush.
“What the fuck do you think?”
“I think that the Clarendon can’t have a business whose owner will be tangled in what looks like a serious lawsuit. One instance of this was bad enough, but if there are more allegations...”
God, this thing is going sideways fast.
Did Hiram orchestrate this? And why does Seymour seem so happy about the whole thing? Somehow, I don’t buy this protest. It all seems too...artificial.
“Listen up,” I start, taking a few steps back so that I can address the whole crowd. “I’ll give two hundred dollars if you guys are forthcoming with us.”
“What?” The bearded guy asks me, walking away from Colt as if he no longer cared about him or the protest.
“That’s right—two hundred dollars if you tell me exactly who you’re working with.”
