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“Hmm?” I looked at Gelula this time.
She frowned. “Are you sure you are all right? You barely ate this morning.”
“I have bagels,” Mr. Balduin said, handing me the bag.
“I’m fine,” I replied. “It’s just been a long week.”
“Don’t give out now. Conserve your energy. The next couple of weeks till Christmas will be even harder. This is the long haul,” Mr. Balduin said, swinging the bag for me again. “Make it till Christmas, and then there is a small break for us all.
“Yes, sir,” I said, taking it.
I need to get myself together and fast, I thought just as my phone and his began to buzz. We both shared a look.
“Oh no, what’s happened?” Gelula asked us both.
Pulling out my phone, I had two notifications: the first of another photo of the king…and the second about the queen’s mother. Grabbing the bagel, I ate quickly because I was going to need all my strength.
“Wilhelmina!” she screamed at the top of her lungs as she nearly kicked in the door. Her voice was shaking, her eyes were red, her blond hair that she always kept in an ugly beehive was now down, and her suit was barely together.
It was clear that the moment she had heard the news, she came running. It must have felt like a train smashing into her living room out of nowhere.
“Hello, Yvonne, how are you?” I asked, leaning back into the chair, crossing one leg over the other. “Sorry, that is a dumb question. You must feel like shit. I get it, but we are in a very important meeting. You can’t just come in screaming like this.”
Her chest was rising and falling, trembling all over, as she looked over the conference table at all the other shareholders now looking away sheepishly after we’d all finished stabbing her in the back.
“Are you all stupid?” she asked them, trying to regain her composure, but it wasn’t working. “You are kicking me out? Stripping me of everything I spent years building for her! Her! The cow who didn’t finish school! That’s who you want to lead this company?”
“Yes, and I’m over the moon,” I stretched out the words. “Get it? Cow over the moon. Normally I wouldn’t accept being called that…but hey, I’m in a good mood.”
She moved to step forward, and I held my hand up. “Careful. This is my company now. You do anything disrespectful, and I will call security and drag you out.”
“You bitch!” she snapped.
“That’s Queen Bitch to you.” I shrugged and then tilted my head to think. “Or CEO Bitch, actually. Whichever way, it’s me at the top now. I promised you one day I’d get you back, right? Did you think I had forgotten?”
Her nostrils flared, and she just stared at me, trying her best not to cry. It reminded me of me…how I had felt all those years ago when she had humiliated me. When she used everything in her power to try to crush me, all the stories she had sold to the press about me.
“Yvonne, it’s nothing personal,” one person on the board said.
“Oh no, it’s all personal for me. Don’t get it twisted,” I said, taking the bottle of wine I had brought from my bag and uncorking it, bringing out a glass as well. “That’s why I’m celebrating so hard. You see, I learned this all from Yvonne. A company’s image is everything. Which is why she tried so hard to slander me, having the press label me an unfit mother, a drunk, a whore, uneducated, a gold digger. Which was why I was not even allowed to step in on the board. You all always kept me at a distance. All of you had me sitting in dark corners.”
“That’s in the past now—”
“It is, and you know why they betrayed you, Yvonne?” I asked, sipping my wine before pointing to everyone at the table. “It’s very simple. You have been labeled the evil stepmother and your daughter the evil stepsister trying to bring down a queen. An international icon. My daughter. Being a royal, she cannot have a stake in this company any more, which is why she gave it to me. But it doesn’t change the fact that she is the daughter of Marvin Wyntor, founder of Etheus. And what is a better story than his? A man who worked to build this empire and his first child rose to become actual royalty. The first black woman as Queen in Europe. It is the best image any company can dare ever dream of having…the only wrinkle in it was you and your daughter. That’s what they mean when they say it’s not personal…it’s business. You ruin the fairy tale. So you’re out on your ass.”
“You have some nerve.” Augusta busted in as well, dressed well…like she’d had a few too many drinks.
“Look, it’s the evil stepsister as well.”
“We are half-sisters!”
I shrugged. “Stop reminding me. I don’t care.”
She moved to step forward, but her mom grabbed her by the arm. “No, we will fight this in the courts! We have shares, too, and we were not notified.”
“But you don’t have enough now, do you?” I asked her. “When Marvin divorced me, I got a good number of those—even more than you. His shares were split between the girls, then over the years, I bought more, via a great many friends. Now when you add those with the board’s, we overwhelm you by a landslide. So you can go do what I have been doing: sit at home. Watch a movie. Stay out of it. As you no longer have a right to do anything.”
“I-I…” Yvonne stumbled over her words as I rose up out of my chair, grabbing the wine as I moved around the chair.
