24. Harrison
HARRISON
I can’t stop checking the door.
It’s not because I’m anxious—at least not in the obvious way.
It’s more like my body’s learned the habit.
Years of waiting for bad news to walk through that frame, for someone to enter a room and quietly decide I’m no longer useful.
That’s what happens when you grow up scraping for space in other people’s shadows—you learn to study exits, anticipate tone shifts, sense when the rug is about to be yanked out from under you.
Today, Gavin’s holding the rug.
The boardroom is full. All twelve seats.
A few junior partners are standing along the walls, eyes wide, probably wondering why they were asked to observe an unscheduled closed-door meeting with paper folders stacked neatly in front of each nameplate.
I’m seated two down from Gavin at the head of the table.
Jack’s beside me. Despite his public resignation, he’s here—collared shirt rolled at the sleeves.
When I asked him why he showed, he said, “Gavin shouldn’t have to say this shit twice.”
Fair enough.
The folders are heavy. Each one matte black, no labels.
I don’t need to open mine to know what’s inside.
I helped assemble them last night with one of our trusted assistants, triple-checked each one, sealed them by hand.
The weight isn’t just paper. It’s history.
Rot. Evidence of everything we’ve tolerated under the guise of legacy, efficiency, family.
Vivian.
Her fingerprints are everywhere in this company—on the board, on the culture, on the unspoken rules, on hirings and firings that got her where she is. But now her name is at the top of every file. And this time, there’s no PR spin. No rewriting the narrative. No redirection to protect the brand.
Gavin sits like stone. You wouldn’t know his whole world cracked open two days ago when he walked out of his dad’s house with a new version of his childhood buried under his ribs.
He just says, “You can open them now.”
The sound of cardboard sliding back, paper rustling, plastic sleeves being lifted—it fills the room in a slow, horrified wave.
I open mine with everyone else, even though I already know what I’ll see. The list is on top.
People Vivian targeted, directly or through Icon PR—some bribed into silence, others nudged into loyalty with favors, others torn down. The next page is a network map. Names connected by favor, by threat, by backroom deals, by pure blackmail.
Then come the photos—Vivian with Tom Pillsbury.
Some public. Some private. Some you’d expect to be framed in her office if she weren’t ashamed of them.
The last few are less flattering. Blurry intimacy, half-lit moments from hotel lobbies and charity functions with his hand a little too low, her mouth too close to his ear.
“I don’t have the full timeline. Not yet,” Gavin says. “But this has been going on for years. Vivian has worked in tandem with Tom Pillsbury and Icon PR to quietly shape this board, manipulate opposition, and protect herself at the expense of everyone else. Including this company.”
Including her own son.
“Some of you may have suspected. Others may be surprised. I’m not here to speculate on what anyone knew or when. What matters is that this ends now.”
He flips his own copy open and taps the page with his finger.
“I was one of the casualties. She sabotaged my career—my childhood—by using Icon’s pull and her own name to blacklist me.
I didn’t know it. I trusted her. And when that wasn’t enough to keep me in my place, she came after Parker Simon.
She orchestrated the leak. She wanted the fallout. Not to punish me. To control me.”
His voice hardens. “That ended the moment I found out about this.”
I look down at the folder again. My stomach turns—not because I’m surprised, but because I’m not. Deep down, I knew. You don’t spend your entire adult life working in the same building as someone like Vivian and miss what she’s capable of. I just never thought she’d take the knife to her own son.
But maybe that’s what she’s always done. A slow knife kills just as well as a fast one, and she killed their relationship over decades.
“I know this is a lot,” Gavin says. “But we’re moving forward. We’re done with secrets. With whispers. With the old way.”
Jack nods slightly beside me. I don’t even realize I’ve been holding my breath until he does.
Gavin stands tall. “And in case it’s not clear, I’m sleeping with Parker Simon.”
You could hear a pen drop.
Jack clears his throat. “Me too.”
All eyes swing to me.
“Fuck it,” I say under my breath, but loud enough for the room. “Let’s do this in the sunlight. I’m with her too.”
Gavin folds his hands in front of him. “If anyone has an issue with that—there’s the door.”
For a moment, no one speaks.
It’s not silence exactly. It’s the sound of a room recalibrating—dozens of micro-reactions pressing up against professionalism.
Eyebrows inch upward. Mouths part just enough to inhale, but not enough to speak.
The entire board holds its breath as Gavin stands at the head of the table, daring anyone to be the first to call it scandal.
Jack leans back in his chair, arms crossed, wearing a grin like it’s the best damn show he’s seen in years. And I can’t help it—I start smiling too. There’s something freeing about it.
Edison sputters. Actually sputters. He blinks twice, glancing around like he expects someone—anyone—to jump in and restore order.
When no one does, he pushes his chair back with a loud scrape and rises, his tie slightly askew and face blotching red.
“This—this is absolutely unacceptable,” he says, jabbing a finger toward Gavin.
“You don’t get to burn down the ethics of this firm because you’re mad at your mommy! ”
The heat in my chest flashes from amusement to something closer to rage, but I don’t move. Gavin doesn’t either. He just watches Edison unravel, cool and quiet.
Edison rounds on the room. “We are a PR firm! Our entire job is managing perception, not flaunting personal indulgences like this is some tech start-up frat house!”
“We’re a people-first business,” Gavin says, tone even. “That means starting with honesty. I’d like to point out that you know how to use a door, Edison.”
Edison throws his arms wide like he’s waiting for backup, but the room doesn’t move. One of the junior board members near the far end shifts in her seat but stays quiet. A partner from our London office stares at his folder, jaw set.
“Oh, for god’s sake,” Edison mutters. “Traditional values matter. They’re the reason this firm has survived?—”
“They’re the reason it’s rotting,” Jack interrupts.
Edison glares at him. “You don’t even work here anymore.”
Jack shrugs. “And yet I’m still more respected than you.”
That’s what finally snaps the last thread holding Edison’s composure together.
He grabs his copy of the dossier off the table and flings it—actually flings it—at Gavin.
It misses by a mile, mostly because Gavin doesn’t move an inch and Edison’s aim is shit.
The folder thuds against the edge of the table and slides to the floor, pages spilling across the hardwood in an unceremonious fan.
“This place will fall apart without me!” Edison shouts.
I lean forward slightly, all teeth. “You’ve had your position for a day, you self-important ass.”
Edison storms toward the door, his steps slow and uneven, like he’s playing to a camera crew that doesn’t exist. When he gets there, he stops, hand on the knob, shoulders tense. He waits. It’s obvious. He wants someone to call out. To stop him. To beg.
No one does.
“I’m leaving!” he announces to no one in particular. “None of you can stop me!”
I snort. “No one’s trying.”
Jack cracks up beside me. “Please let the door hit you on the ass on the way out.”
Edison tries to slam the door, but it’s got one of those soft-close hydraulic hinges—the kind that slowly pulls the door shut with a whisper and a sigh. The look on his face when it fails to match his dramatic exit is priceless.
The second the latch clicks, the whole boardroom erupts into laughter.
Gavin lets it roll for a second, then taps his earpiece. “Security, Edison Reynolds is no longer employed at VT Global. Please see him off the property.”
He ends the call and looks up at us. His expression is clear, unwavering. “We start clean. Right now.”
It’s a strange thing, watching a room recalibrate itself in real time. One moment, there’s a man shouting about order and values and how we’ll never survive without his guidance. The next, he’s gone, and what’s left is…clarity.
No one rushes to fill his seat. No one suggests a pause or proposes tabling the discussion. No one even acknowledges the paper still scattered on the floor. That’s what it looks like when a structure finally crumbles under its own weight—and no one wants to rebuild it.
I sit back in my chair and let the silence stretch just long enough to soak in the shift.
It’s not just about Edison. He was just a cog.
Vivian’s cog. This is about the air finally clearing.
About the smoke dissipating after years of political back-channeling and optics-first bullshit.
It’s about finally naming the rot and saying, “No more.”
Gavin doesn’t gloat. He doesn’t lean back with a smirk or raise his voice in triumph. He just adjusts his cuff link and looks at each person around the table like he’s seeing them for the first time—and daring them to see him right back.
“I know some of you are still processing,” he says calmly, “but let me be clear—this is the beginning of a new phase for VT Global. We’re not walking away from what makes us excellent—we’re walking away from what made us dishonest. That includes every tactic we’ve inherited from a culture built on image over substance.
Keep the dossiers. They’re reminders of a rotten past that we are moving beyond. ”
He lets that land.
“No more silent alliances. No more private punishments. We work for our clients. We protect them. But we don’t lie for them. We don’t destroy people to make a headline disappear.”
There’s a beat of quiet. Then someone—one of the international partners—nods. “And if the board has concerns?”
Gavin meets the man’s eyes. “Then the board is free to find another CEO.”
The room goes still again, but it’s not heavy anymore. There’s something else stirring in the quiet now. Respect. Maybe a little awe. No one challenges him.
Gavin takes a breath and nods toward the end of the table. “Unless there’s anything else…this meeting’s adjourned.”
Chairs scrape softly as people rise. Some move with purpose. Others hover, unsure of what happens next. A few approach Gavin quietly, shaking his hand or exchanging low-voiced assurances. A handful gather their folders like they’re holding relics. No one touches Edison’s seat.
Jack stands beside me, watching the room. He doesn’t speak, just tucks his hands into his pockets and waits like he’s thinking through a dozen moves at once. I rise too, slower, feeling the way the energy in the room has tilted.
Gavin comes around the table toward us, his expression calmer now but still sharp.
“Thanks for being here,” he says to Jack.
Jack just nods. “Didn’t want to make you say it twice.”
“I meant what I said. If you want back in?—”
Jack holds up a hand. “Not today. Let things settle. I’m still figuring it all out.”
Gavin nods once, then turns to me. “You okay?”
I should be. Everything we wanted to expose has been exposed. The power structure has shifted. Edison’s gone. Vivian’s shadow is smaller than it’s ever been. This should feel like a win.
But I’m still thinking about Parker.
I nod. “Yeah. Just got some loose ends to handle.”
Gavin gives me a look. “You sure you’re good?”
“I am.” I don’t know what the future holds for VT. But what I do know is I’m digging my heels in. About the company. About Parker.
The walk out of the boardroom is quiet, but for once it’s not awkward. Gavin moves ahead, shaking hands, accepting nods of solidarity. Jack lingers behind, always watching the exits, always reading the room. I walk between them.
For years we told ourselves we were making VT better from the inside.
But for a while now, that’s felt like a lie I told myself to survive.
Swallowing condescension, dealing with old grievances from tenured employees.
I’ve been carrying the weight of that bullshit for longer than I want to admit—afraid to rock the boat, afraid to lose what I’ve worked for.
Because this place? It made me. Or at least, Vivian did. She pulled me out of nothing, gave me a salary, a desk, a secondhand suit, and told me to earn it. I spent years telling myself I was lucky.
But I’m not lucky. I’m good at what I do. She didn’t make me good at my job. I did that. It’s easy to forget, but I never will again.
Gavin slows as we reach the elevators, glancing back over his shoulder.
Jack steps up beside me, rolling his neck like he’s shaking off the last trace of corporate tension.
When it’s just the three of us, Jack mentions, “You know that letting them keep those pictures of Vivian means someone will leak the photos to the press, right? The story of her divorce is about to be publicly rewritten.”
Gavin turns to him, panic in his eyes. “Oh, shit.”
“We can get them back?—”
Then Gavin smiles. “It’s almost like I planned for that to happen.”
Jack grins. “One more Vivian maneuver before we turn over a new leaf?”
He shrugs. “I learned from the worst.”
I chuckle as I reach into my pocket and pull out my phone. The screen lights up—still open to the draft of my resignation. The one I typed a few days ago, the one I’ve nearly sent a dozen times.
The delete button never looked so good. I pocket the phone and let out a slow breath. Now, for the other big deal.
Parker left because she thought we couldn’t hold both. Her and the company. Love and legacy. We can, but only if we’re willing to do it out loud. If we’re brave enough to stop hiding and start telling the truth.