“Damn right you can’t,” Hunter snapped, his fury cold and hard. “What the hell are you thinking springing this, Chuck?”
A board member shuffled her feet nervously. “This does seem a bit sudden, Charles. Perhaps if we took some time to reconsider…”
Chuck sighed regretfully. “You know I can’t do that, Irma. Not when the whole future of the company could be at stake.”
Irma sighed and looked back down again, cowed.
“There are rules, Chuck,” Hunter said, his voice ice. “There has to be a majority vote, there has to be a good reason—”
“There’s the very best of reasons,” Hunter said. “Oh, you tried to bury it, but Allison’s colleagues very obligingly dug it up for me. Remember Slade, Inc.?”
Hunter went still.
What had the Douchebros done now?
“The board doesn’t have your sterling memory, of course,” Chuck went on. “So I refreshed it, in the emergency meeting we had just now. Showed them all the evidence, all the meeting notes and memorandums which that young Chad fellow so enterprisingly fished up, all detailing how you drove that company into the ground in your reckless need to prove you were worth something out of the shadow of your grandfather. And you did it the same way you’re doing it to Knox, refusing to listen to the concerns of your board while proceeding with a costly advertising strategy that will strangle Knox Liquors like a noose and utterly deplete the profit margins.”
“Now, see here,” another board member cut in gruffly. “No need to be melodramatic. We just had some concerns. You tried a risky new strategy there with no statistical backing, and Chuck tells me you’re going with another untested one here, and well, I have to give a vote of no confidence.”
Chuck stood, hands clasped behind his back, his face mournful. “You’re a great kid, Hunter, you really are. I wanted to give you a chance. I looked everywhere for evidence that you could be trusted in such a high position—” he turned, meeting my eyes with a sly smile only I could see, “but even your ad exec doesn’t have faith in you.”
I gaped, dumbfounded. “What…what do you…?”
“‘He wants to run everything himself,’” he quoted. “‘He thinks the family name is sacred, that he’s a missionary.’ Does that sound like someone concerned about their fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders? You did say that, didn’t you?”
I could feel Hunter’s gaze on me, feel his eyes demanding answers.
“Not like that—” I pleaded.
He raised his voice. “You did say that, didn’t you?”
“It wasn’t like that—”
“I believe you were most worried about him running the company into the ground before he’d admit the company needed an advertising strategy in the first place?” Chuck continued. “You kindly went on for some time in this vein, all about how he distrusted advertising methods and would prefer not to utilize anything other than word of mouth. How you were so worried that he was only going along with your particular scheme in order to placate your sister, who he is currently dating. I’ve passed your information on to the board; they saw my point of view much more clearly after that.”
I heard Hunter next to me, a sound as if he’d been stabbed.
“It doesn’t matter!” I protested. “Look around you; the rebrand is launching! And it’s a strong campaign. You can’t stop this!”
My voice cracked. I couldn’t look Hunter in the eye; I knew exactly the look that would be in them, the hurt, the betrayal…
Chuck sneered. “One little party, out in the middle of nowhere? Nothing’s been announced. All anyone will ever remember of this event and your little film school project is some sentimental slop about the old company. It’s time for a new chapter—and I know exactly which of your colleagues can help me write it.”
The Douchebros.
Oh God. Everything I had worked on so hard…
“You—you—” Hunter’s fist rose, and for a terrible second I thought he was about to hit Chuck. I grabbed at his arm and the look he shot me was so poisonous I stumbled back, shocked.
Hunter growled, and stormed from the room.
I wanted to stay, wanted to argue the board members back around—they could be reasonable, I knew I could make them see reason—but—
But Hunter needed me.
I raced after him, trying not to trip in my heels. “Hunter! Hunter, slow down! We can go back, we can fix this—”
He whirled unexpectedly, grabbing my arm. “Did you say those things?” he hissed.
“Yes, but—”
He let go and backed away, looking at me as if I were a snake.
“Hunter, you have to understand—”
“I don’t have to understand anything,” he growled. “And certainly not you.” Pain lit his eyes. “I believed in you, Ally. I believed in you and you stabbed me in the back and ruined—the, the one thing that mattered most to me.”
I opened my mouth, tried to think of something to say. Nothing came out.