Page 14 of Baby for My Ex’s Dad

“Our operating margin has decreased by eleven points.” There’s no heat in the statement because he desires tension. That would turn this into a father-son confrontation and that’s not what it currently is.

I continue, “Three divisions have receivables aging beyond ninety days. We’ve lost two port contracts due to renegotiations and are losing a third. Willem Aertsen traveled from Rotterdam to your gala last night and spent most of an hour alone at a dessert table. Should I keep going, or do we agree that the brand is modern, but the business is in trouble?”

Silence from eleven people who’ve known all this for two years, but were powerless to change it. Klaus’s jaw works. He looks down the table for an ally and finds eleven people studying folders.

“This is because of last night,” he says. “You were there. That’s—okay, fine, you saw a party, Dad. A successful party. I’m sorry the vibes offended you⁠—”

“The party was excellent. I intend to learn who ran it, because that person can manage logistics and no one else in this building can.” I open the folder in front of me. “Which brings us to you. There’s a second document this morning.”

“The board is creating a special projects office, director-level, reporting to me. Corporate development, long-range initiatives. The announcement will label it a planned transition. The press release is already drafted, and it’s generous. You will lead that office.”

He stares at me. Nobody at the table moves. Lev stands by the door, arms folded, watching my son the way he watches everything, without appetite.

“Special projects,” Klaus repeats. “That’s a shelf. You’re putting me on a shelf.”

“I’m putting you on salary, with a title and a floor and a future that stays in your own hands, more than the audit would suggest. So, here’s the entirety of your decision this morning, Niklaus. You may lead the special projects office, or you may quit. There’s no third door. There’s no negotiation. There’s no version of this meeting where you leave with the chair.”

“Or I could fight you,” he says. “I have allies on this board.”

“Try me.” I open a hand toward the table. “Take your time.”

He counts his allies seat by seat, and I watch each director decline to meet his eyes, Elena Roth last. She, at least, has the decency to look sorry. The counting takes maybe fifteen seconds.

It ages him more than the four years did, and I make myself keep watching. This is the price of the rope I gave him, and we’re both paying it this morning in front of witnesses, and only one of us gets to show it.

“Special projects,” he says, at last, to the table.

“Congratulations, Director. Sign where Danilov indicates.”

The rest is mechanics. Signatures, minutes, a resolution read in Danilov’s funeral baritone, and unanimous votes—the only way this room operates.

Klaus signs last, quick, in his oversized scrawl. He leaves without handshakes. Only the hydraulic door keeps it from slamming. Directors file out, their warmth recalibrated, several aiming it elsewhere. Four minutes later, only Lev, I, and cold coffee remain at the walnut table.

Lev takes the chair to my right, which has been his chair in every room we’ve shared for thirty years, and turns his phone face-down on the walnut. The next part of the conversation never happened.

“It’s done, then,” he says. “The soft part.”

“The soft part.”

“Sokolov will hear about the change by lunch. His people watch our filings.” He rubs a thumb along an old scar on the back of his hand, a habit he has had since before I knew him. “You understand how he’ll read it. New leadership, family quarrel, the son demoted in public.”

“I don’t much care what he thinks.”

“To Alexei, that isn’t a company stabilizing. That’s a house divided. He’ll read it as weakness, Maxim, and he’s been circling this operation for two years.”

He isn’t wrong. Lev is my sovetnik, the man whose job is to be right out loud at inconvenient moments. Sokolov will read the filing over lunch at the restaurant he’s colonized on Mulberry Street. He’ll make a joke to whoever’s sitting with him. Then he’ll begin to lean.

Probes at the piers. Another visit to a crane operator. He’ll try. And he’ll fail.

“Let him read it however he likes. Alexei has no patience for what’s to come.”

“That lesson has a price.”

“Every lesson I’ve ever given had a price. I’ve never once failed to collect.” I close the folders and square them on the table. “I didn’t fly home to be liked, Lev. Not by Sokolov, not by that board, and not, God help us, by my own son. Alexei’s opinion means less than that.”

He sighs, because he thinks I don’t hear him. But he’s wrong.

“I flew home because I built something, and I don’t intend to stand at a dessert table watching it rot. Let Alexei poke and prod us. He’ll find us more than capable of poking back.”