46. Salinger
46
SALINGER
C larke & Turner is the second-best law firm in the city.
When my legal team, the premier law firm in the city, and I walk into the Clarke & Turner offices, we breeze past the receptionist.
“Excuse me!” She rushes after us. “If you can wait in the lobby…”
I give her a smile. It’s only partly feral. “No thanks. We’ll wait in the conference room.”
She races back into the office, presumably to complain to the legal team representing Jaxon Pendleton.
The lead lawyer hurries into the conference room a few moments later. “The meeting is not for fifteen minutes, Tanya. Why did you let them in?”
The receptionist makes a helpless gesture .
The lead lawyer tries to wrestle the situation back in his favor. “We’re not meeting here,” he blusters.
Two of my lawyers smirk at each other.
Conventional wisdom says that meeting on your home turf gives you the upper hand. That advice is only for peons jockeying for power. If you’re the real alpha, you can walk onto someone else’s field, stake your claim, and act like it’s your home. Now, that makes people very off-balance and upset.
“I used to work here, Max,” Sarah, one of the top lawyers on my team, replies. “This is the biggest conference room in the building, and we have a lot of people attending this meeting. Since it sounds like we’re staying here, why don’t you fetch everyone some coffee?”
Max scowls then snaps an order at the receptionist.
Outside, there are hushed whispers as the rest of the Clarke & Turner legal team tries to get it together.
I take a seat at the head of the conference table, lean back in my chair, and stew. Outside, a storm rages, matching my mood.
Mandy thinks I’m violent and crazy, and yes, that is true, but I didn’t make my billions in investing by being hot-tempered.
I’m furious. If Mandy had just told me from the get-go, I could have solved this problem—quietly, discreetly, and mostly nonviolently.
Why didn’t she tell me?
Because she hates me, doesn’t trust me, never trusted me… and that’s my fault, isn’t it?
Over the weekend, as I put the pieces of my plan in motion, I brooded over it. As much as it pains me, I am smart enough to recognize the part I’ve played in the way she reacted to me, in the way she hid things from me.
And I thought we were going to get married. Joke’s on me.
It’s ironic, right? I finally find the person I want to spend the rest of my life with, but all my coping skills, everything that made me successful, everything that helped me overcome a terrible childhood, everything that makes me me , is what drives her away and ruins my one shot at happiness.
It is a bitter pill to swallow. Therefore, I am going to make sure Jaxon pays for all the misery he caused me, for all the hurt he caused Mandy.
It’s a hollow victory, sure, but it is a victory. Jaxon doesn’t know it, but he’s already lost.
The Clarke & Turner lawyers enter into the room and take the less-choice seats that haven’t been claimed by my legal team.
I don’t acknowledge them, just stare out into the rainy city.
It’s Monday morning. That means Mandy’s out of jail. She must be pissed. Should I contact her, go to her? Would she even want to hear from me?
I don’t get to my feet when the Pendleton family comes in. My lawyer goes around the room, handing out bound packets for everyone. Then, my legal team waits for me to begin.
And waits.
Finally, one of Jaxon’s cousins complains, “Can you, like, tell us why you’re wasting our time?”
“Me? I’m wasting your time?” I turn to her.
She recoils. She’s one of those typical spoiled trust-fund girls who believes shopping at high-end department stores is work and doesn’t uncork her own wine. “Yeah, I have my art class.”
“Your art class. She has an art class.” I lean back in my chair and steeple my hands. “I hope this art class is teaching you how to draw furry porn, because you’re going to need a skill set to fund your lifestyle once I cut the head off your trust fund.”
“What?” she screeches. “Dad, he can’t do this.”
Her relatives are murmuring in concern.
“Not a single person in this family has had a real job since Great-Grandpappy Pendleton lovingly and carefully set up a family trust that churns out a generous monthly check for you all,” I remind them.
Several of the Pendletons now flip through the packets placed before them.
“You probably can’t decipher most of the backup documentation, considering the majority of you cheated, lied, and bribed your way to college,” I tell them. “But I think you can understand the first page in your packets. It even has pictures and a chart.”
I open my own booklet and tap one of the charts. “See this? This is the trust fund that makes your lifestyle possible. You see these three pie slices? These are the companies the trust invests in that make up the majority of the fund, one of which is the company originally founded by your family.”
I turn to the next page and slowly display it around the room. “This here? This is the purchase confirmation of the stock that proclaims, as of nine o’clock this morning, I am the majority shareholder of all three of these companies.”
There’s apprehension on all the family members’ faces.
“Considering that my brother’s company, Svensson PharmaTech, and your grandpappy’s company are competitors, I have no problem tanking your share price, which will effectively cut your trust allotments to… oh, let’s say, a generous eighty dollars a month.”
All of them comprehend that number.
“Why are you doing this to us?” one asks.
“We’re ruined!” a woman in a designer dress wails.
A middle-aged man looks like he’s about to faint. “I have bills.”
“You can’t do this.”
“This is criminal.”
“But wait, there’s more!” I cut through the laments. “My other brother owns a reality-TV production company. It’s a joke, really, but he’s always looking for salacious stories, and what’s better than a once-great family fallen on hard times, unable to pay their outstanding hotel bills, forced to hawk their heirloom furniture on the side of the road to scrounge up enough money to pay their college tuition.”
“I’ll have to drop out of college,” a young woman cries. “You’re evil.”
“Now,” I announce over the din. “You’re all wondering why. Why am I doing this? Why you? Jaxon?” I gesture grandly to him. “Would you care to enlighten your family?”
Jaxon’s face is still bruised. He has a black eye and stitches on his temple. He stares mulishly straight ahead.
“I take it you haven’t given your family members the good news yet?”
“How dare you came after my son,” his mom cries.
“Your son is a malignant tumor on society,” I snarl at her. “Over the past several months, he has been stalking, harassing, and threatening my girlfriend, culminating in a physical attack on her on Friday night. As you can imagine, I’m out for my pound of flesh plus interest. Choices have collateral damage.”
Jaxon sits white-faced in his seat while his angry relatives turn on him.
“You can’t do this,” Jaxon rages at me as his cousin hits him with her booklet. “You’re going to hear from my lawyers.” He turns to his lawyers. “I order you to sue him. Stop this!”
“I hope he already paid his bill from your harassment of my girlfriend,” I tell Max. “I know your firm’s not cheap, and Jaxon’s about to experience a severe loss of income.”
The Clarke & Turner legal team is shifting in their seats.
“I don’t think that we can take your lawsuit,” Max finally says to Jaxon.
I smile at Jaxon’s panicking family members.
“Please,” his aunt begs, “have mercy. I can’t give up my house—I’m renovating. I have marble being shipped in from Italy. Punish Jaxon, not us.”
“No one has ever described me as merciful,” I remind her. “In fact, I’ve been described as violent, insane, and excessively brutal.”
“I’ll disown Jaxon,” his mother offers.
“Too little, too late.”
“What if we get rid of him? I just bought a yacht,” his uncle suggests. “International waters are twelve miles out. He gets drunk, has a tragic accident. Bada bing, bada boom!”
“You all handle matters how you see fit.” I sit back in my chair.
“We’re ruined!”
I savor their hysteria, their disarray .
His grandmother hobbles over to me, whacking Jaxon with her cane on the way over. “Mr. Svensson, I implore you to allow us to handle this matter internally.”
“Your grandson cost me my one chance at happiness and attacked the woman I love. She left me because of him,” I growl. “I can’t have a happily ever after, but I can make it rain blood and money.”
The elderly woman straightens up. “What if we transfer management of the Pendleton family trust to Rainier Equity?”
“Hm.” I pretend like I’m considering it, like I didn’t hope that this would be a happy addition to my plan.
“I understand you’re a businessman. I’m hoping we can discuss this like civilized adults,” the elderly woman continues.
“Yeah.” Her son comes over and shoos one of the younger adults out of a chair. “This is a multibillion-dollar trust. You’ll need the equity for the port contract.”
My scowl is back. “I don’t have that contract, thanks to your son.”
“Linda was my roommate in college,” his wife pipes up. “We’ll make sure she understands the situation.”
“And you.” His grandmother points a bony finger at Jaxon. “Your trust check will pay for you to be kept in a very remote cabin in the Alaskan wilderness.”
“See that he stays there. And don’t bother trying to transfer the trust elsewhere,” I add. “I’ll make sure any action on that front results in the shares of any companies you buy going sky-high right before you make a transfer. Then they’ll tank and decimate the trust.”
“You can’t do that,” Jaxon blusters.
His grandmother shoots him a glare .
“I can.” I smile. “You can try and go to the government and complain, but I’ll just press the little red button.”
Jaxon’s dad blanches.
“See, I’m like a cockroach—I was born in garbage, I have a hundred siblings, and I can survive in a nuclear wasteland on spite and shit. Can you?”
Jaxon’s mother clutches her designer handbag. His younger cousins glare at him.
“We will make sure that Jaxon never comes to this city again,” his grandmother assures me.
I shake the elderly woman’s hand.
Then she snaps her fingers at one of the Clarke & Turner lawyers. “Prepare the paperwork.”
The family sits back down.
“There’s one more matter, before we adjourn.” I lean forward.
They look at me apprehensively.
My lawyer slides a document in front of Jaxon, along with a pen.
“I’m going to need that dog back.”