“Mr. Cordova, the board is ready for you in conference room 1.”
I nodded as I handed Joseph a folder of private paperwork and grabbed my phone. “Did my father decide to intrude on today’s meeting as I expected?”
“Yes, he just messaged me an hour ago and told me to bring him a dark roast coffee with 1 creamer and 2 sugars.”
Of course, he did.
“That’s fine. Just tell the baristas downstairs to bring one up for him and to leave it outside if we are in the middle of the meeting.” I closed my laptop and handed it to Joseph. “Join me in the meeting room after you finish making a copy of those papers and leaving the original copy in my office.”
He raised an eyebrow in confusion but nodded in agreement anyway.
After he left my office, I started to make my way to conference room 1 on the other side of the floor from my office.
I planned to reorganize the hierarchy of the outer families at today’s board meeting as I had announced at the gala, and it seems that my father had found out about my plan as expected. I knew that it would be seen as a major decision that many members of families would not look forward to, including my father, who tended to be more traditional, but I had no reason to support a bunch of old geezers who couldn’t teach their successors well enough to know not to insult their head’s fiancee.
As I neared the conference room, several voices floated out of the ajar door.
“Gabriel, is your son actually going to cut off our families today? I thought he might’ve said it out of anger last Friday, but then he suddenly called for a board meeting and so soon after what happened.”
“Is he even allowed to overturn a centuries-old alliance unilaterally?”
“You can talk to him for us, right, Gabriel? We’ve been friends for ages.”
My father let out a heavy sigh. It was obvious that he didn’t know how to handle the situation. “I… I guess I could try to talk to him… but you know how my son-”
I opened the door before my father could finish his sentence. Arching an eyebrow, I asked, “How I am what?”
The entire room of old geezers immediately fell silent at my entrance, not wanting to get in between a father and his son.
I closed the door before me with an echoing click and stalked toward the head of the table. Without giving much of a glance to my father, I continued, “I don’t see why you insisted on attending today’s meeting, but your interference isn’t going to change anything.”
He sighed, “Rafael, please think about it again. You’re talking about ending a friendship that’s lasted for more than a century.”
“I have no need for ‘friends’ that will soon rot away anyway.” I motioned for Joseph to enter and took the stack of copies of paperwork from him. I continued, “Most of you sitting here today at already in your 50s and 60s. If you were lucky like my father, you would’ve been able to step down 10 years ago, but I’ve seen your successors, and I can see why you can’t.”
The line of old geezers sitting along the sides of their tables clenched their jaws and looked away in shame, well aware that my words were right on the dot even if they didn’t want to agree with it.
“After all the unnecessary commotions that your offsprings caused at my event, I’ve come to the decision that maintaining relationships with the families will only cause more harm than good in the future. As such, I plan to cease all friendly relations with all families to purely business relations. I will also cut off the investments in the Borham and Walstain families as I want nothing to do with these two families from now on.”
The head of the Borhams, who was also the father of the idiot I beat up at the gala, immediately popped out of his seat in panic. “Don’t you think it’s all a bit too rushed? The Borham family has been helping your family with manufacturing for decades. We can still be of use to you.”
The head of the Walstains bolted up to support him and offered, “I agree. Wouldn’t it only bring you more losses if you let go of all of us so suddenly?”
The heads of the other four outer families remained silent in fear of my clearly displayed annoyance, but they also looked up at me pleadingly, hoping I’d change my mind.
I rolled my eyes at their pathetic nature. Though we had an unspoken alliance between our ten families, it was unsightly to see supposed leaders of their business relying so heavily on someone else like me. If they were truly strong, their survival wouldn’t have relied so heavily on my support.
“I have done my calculations. Though there may be a few minor initial losses, it is worth it in the long run. The money that I sent to the Borham could be better spread across multiple manufacturers who will compete for my favor to be my sole manufacturer and result in much higher efficiency than what you are giving me now. And I would also have no problem striking up a new deal with a different real estate company for better benefits than what you are offering, Walstain.” I pulled out two folders and smacked them down in front of them. “I already know that your businesses’ rate of growth has been declining since you appointed your successors, and I can tell that they are no good. If anything, you need me more than I need you. As such, I have no reason to stay connected to those who disrespect the Cordova name.”
I took the coffee in Joseph’s hand, the one that was originally for my father, and sipped it quietly as they looked over the documents that I laid out. I found it tedious to speak to these old geezers, but it was a formality that I needed to go through to prevent lash back from suddenly cutting off all these major families from my support.
Their faces paled as they flipped through the documents containing the true values of their businesses’ worth, values that were different from the ones they reported to me.
Even my father was surprised as he looked through the papers, probably never expecting that his friend’s businesses were doing so poorly.
Borham stuttered, “P-Please don’t kick us out like this… You know that it could ruin my company if you do this… I-I can lower the price, and up the output and a-anything else you may want.”
I remained silent in my chair, not wanting to deal with his empty promises.
As the more aggressive of the two, Walstain’s nostrils flared as he crumpled up a piece of paper which was most likely evidence of his daughter’s infidelity to her fiance, Borham’s eldest son. He shouted at me from across the table, “You’re being completely unfair right now. How dare you treat your elders like this?! If anything, you ought to be apologizing to the Borham family for maiming their son for no reason!”
“But I’m not being unfair. I’ve shown clear evidence that I don’t find a business partnership with your families to be equally profitable anymore and believe that it would be better to go separate ways. As for the Borham’s son, you have no evidence of accusing me of such a thing.”
After all, I made sure to beat him up in a room without security cameras, and any witness they may call up from the other families’ sons could be easily intimidated into stepping down.
“What do you mean there’s no evidence?! My daughter is his fiancee and currently sitting with his mangled body in the hospital!”
I cocked an eyebrow and immediately shot back, “I don’t think you ought to be bringing up that daughter of yours to me. I have a restraining order placed on her. Yet she still had the audacity to show up in front of me and even dared to harm my partner. You should simply be glad that I have not pressed charges against her yet. You know fully well that I could ruin her reputation for the rest of her life with a single case.”
Walstain faltered at my words and muttered lowly in confusion, “A restraining order? ”
I chuckled. “Did your little girl not tell you about all the trouble she’s been causing behind your back? She broke into my office a few months back and laid across my desk completely naked like some cheap hooker, all the while ruining several stacks of my contracts. I still have a record of the security tape if you would like to see it.”
He choked at my confession as his face soon paled to the same pasty white color as the man standing next to him. Maybe it finally hit him that his precious little daughter wasn’t as innocent as he thought.
Not wanting to stay a moment longer with all the senile old men, I stood up from my seat with the intention of leaving.
But my father decided to be a nuisance and interrupted, “Wait, Rafael. Let’s just all calm down a bit and make a compromise instead.”
“I’m not interested in compromises. From a purely monetary, profit-based standpoint, a compromise is worth less than completely disbanding this so-called alliance of families.”
My father tiredly rubbed his face, muttering to himself, “This is what I was trying to tell them earlier. My son is more stubborn than most would expect.”
With a heavy sigh, he explained to me, “You mainly have a problem with the next line of successors, not the actual company themselves, right?”
I deadpanned, “What’s your point?”
“What if we replaced the next line of successors? As long as the next set of heads knows how to maintain a rational business mind and control themselves, you wouldn’t have a problem with working with the families, right? In the end, they are still all among the top 10 most powerful families in the northeast, so it would still be better to be on friendly terms rather than hostile no matter the situation.”
Hm… It wasn’t a bad idea, even though I didn’t particularly like my father’s meddling.
From what I heard, the second son of the Borham family was actually doing quite well for himself as an upper-level director of a company independent of his father’s. In fact, most of the younger siblings of the other families were also in a similar situation since the eldest of each family insisted on being the heir despite having much less aptitude than their younger siblings and probably arrogantly bullied their way to the top.
“I’ll consider it. Each of the families will bring in an alternate heir next week to meet me. If I like what I see, then I’ll compromise. However…” My voice trailed off as I got distracted by a notification on my phone with a message from Jane.
It was already well past 6 PM, the time at which I promised to pick Jane up from her office at Benedict’s company today. The message was probably her asking where I was.
With the goal of wrapping up this quickly, not wanting to spend a minute longer with these old geezers when I could be with my little angel, I added with finality, “However, I expect the current successor of each family to be removed from the family registry afterward. Call it punishment for those who like to abuse the status of their family name, but I will not negotiate on this.”
Without waiting for their responses, I quickly gathered up all my items and took my bag from Joseph. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be leaving. I have something much more important to do.”
I swiftly walked out of the room without sparing a second glance, even though I basically told all of them to disown one of their children. It wasn’t something that affected me, but it was what those spoiled children deserved.
And luckily, my two adorable little treasures at home were nothing like that. If anything, the two have been stubbornly refusing to use my name even when I encouraged them to do so.
After Jane avoided me all weekend out of embarrassment from her late-night confessions, she insisted on returning back to Benedict’s company on Monday to continue her job at his place. I told her that I could help her set up her own business to manage instead, but she ended up scolding me instead, something about already spending too much on her ring and “irresponsibly” gifting her a castle and how she didn’t want to take advantage of me.
I tried to explain to her that she couldn’t be a quote-on-quote golddigger if she genuinely responded to my feelings, but I ended up losing the argument, and she returned to working for Benedict this morning now that my new headquarters has been completed.
I missed her all day and had been eagerly waiting to pick her up from her work at 6 PM, but the older geezers just had to run the meeting over time, making me almost an hour late already. I frowned at the thought and hurriedly made my way down to the lobby, where I had asked my driver to pull my car out front.
Right as I stepped out of the elevator, I was unexpectedly engulfed in a pair of little arms, catching me so off guard that I nearly dropped my phone.
“J-Jane? What are you doing here?”
She giggled in reply as she tilted her chin up and off my chest. “You weren’t waiting in the lobby of Mr. Serman’s building, so I figured that your meeting must’ve run late and decided to come to pick you up instead!”
All of the previous tension in my body instantly melted away at the sight of a bright grin, a smile that shone so brightly that it could melt any heart.
I gently pushed one of her flailing strands of hair out of her face, taking in her radiant smile. Unable to help myself, I leaned down and softly pressed my lips against her light pink lips, tasting the honey-like flavor of her chapstick as I ran my tongue along the edge of her lips.
Jane tensed up at first, probably from being taken off guard, but she quickly melted into my kiss and leaned on her tiptoes, wrapping her arms around my neck to deepen the kiss.
By the time we pulled apart, Jane was a blushing red mess with her chapstick smeared to the side of her face. “W-we shouldn’t b-be d-doing things like that o-out here. I-It would leave a b-bad impression on y-your employees.”
Ignoring her words, I leaned down to steal another chaste kiss from her lips and retorted, “Why can’t I? I pay their salaries, so they have no say in what I can and can’t be doing in my own building.”
She pouted at my lack of obedience and tried to push me away in futility. When I refused to let go of her waist, she whined softly, “Achilles… It’s poor social conduct.”
“Cut me some slack, darling.” Cupping her cheek in my palm, I ran my thumb over her skin, wiping off the smeared chapstick before letting my finger drift over her lower lip. “It’s my first day not having you around me all day, so I couldn’t help myself the moment I saw you again. It’s only because I missed you so much.”
She sighed before reluctantly melting back into my arms. With a small pout, she grumbled, “Fine, but you have to wait until we get home before you take any more k-kisses, okay?”
I nodded in agreement, knowing fully well that I would not adhere to her rule anyway.
She nervously glanced around the lobby when I still made no moves to let her go. Noting my employees that had slowed down as they passed us, she embarrassedly buried herself inside my suit jacket and mumbled, “Can we go home now? Liam’s been asking where we are.”
My chest bloomed at the adorable sight as her little body fitted perfectly against mine. She was so much smaller than me that she could hide almost her entire body inside one flap of my jacket.
“Of course, my love”
All of my worries and stress could be easily washed away by only her presence. I loved her so much that she would consume my mind every time I saw her until there was no room to think about anything else except for her.
She made me so happy that I would want nothing more than to be by her side.
A happiness so bright and colorful that it made my life before her seem bleak and desolate. And I thanked my lucky stars every day that I had the fortune to meet her, and I would do anything in my power to make sure she stays by my side.