“How do you know this?” Clive asked with a frown. “This is a terrible tale, but right now, it’s hearsay.”
“Because she told me all of this when I was in wolf form, locked up in a cage in a basement, right before she told her father she intended to kill me to further her goals.”
I knew then why Joey had insisted on the mic, because the room erupted in uproar, everyone speaking over the other in increasingly loud words—everyone but John and us. I nodded to Joey, and she clicked on something on her laptop, the familiar tones of Miranda and John coming through the speakers, crisp and clear.
Hearing Miranda’s monologue, I could hear the sheer fucking insanity in her voice. She was hard-working, beautiful, driven, probably over qualified for her job, but right then, she was done playing, done kowtowing to other people, done waiting for her turn that never seemed to come. She was going to act, to get rid of any obstacles in her way, and get what she saw was hers. I surprised myself by feeling a small pang of sympathy for her—a really, really small, tiny little one, but it was there. She was gone. I looked forward to her trial, to her being locked up and them throwing away the key, but…trying to be a successful woman was a bitch, and sometimes, it turned you into one.
But not me.
I gazed at the four of them, feeling like I soaked in every detail of my mate’s faces, their expressions, like they were stones of stability in all this chaos, something I could cling to until it blew over. I squeezed Tobias’ hand back, took Max’s, and then nodded to Beau and Lucien, focussing on them, not the board, until finally, the crazy died down.
“John is not being pursuedby the police for his involvement in this affair,” Tobias said finally. “But I think everyone here will understand when I request that he be removed from the board.”
“I’ll note that as a motion,” Clive said, scribbling something down. “Though I think the vote is a foregone conclusion.” He stared John down, and so did many others, the man growing pale in comparison.
“There’s one more I want you to consider,” Tobias said.
I glanced up at him in surprise. The only way I’d been able to walk in here was by talking through with all four of them everything that was going to happen, so as to avoid just this—a surprise. I got one tiny little sidelong look from him before he charged on.
“Sage is our mate, but not only that, she has proven herself to be an excellent project manager, getting the four of us to work together on the upcoming symposium, and to improve our workflows in general. As our mate, she is entitled to a sizeable quantity of our shares in the company, making her qualified to take a position on the board, but…”
He nodded to Joey, who clicked on something else, the screen behind Clive’s head lighting up. I glared at each and every one of my mates, but they just stared conspicuously at the screen.
“What I’m going to show you is not especially flattering from our perspective,” Tobias said. “But I’ve come to realise that admitting things helps you find a way to move past them that much faster. There have been some concerns about our leadership of Dacian.”
This was a statement, not a question, but many of the board members rumbled their agreement to that.
“The idea of having four CEOs was the first controversy, as it goes against the very idea of beta leadership, that the buck stops with one person. We argued long and hard that we needed to split the company leadership four ways, because that’s how it fits with our alpha worldview. Instead, we managed to confirm every beta prejudice about alpha leadership. We all went our separate ways, excelling in the areas that interested us and ignoring the rest. Frequently, that meant each other. We had our own individual strengths, but somehow, that meant they were liabilities when we were working together. Communication was poor. We ruled over our areas of the company like they were our own personal fiefdoms. Then Sage came to us.”
He smiled then, but it had none of Tobias’ usual iron control. His face lit up, and he looked happy, genuinely happy for once, and I found myself unable to look away from him as he did so.
“She and my brother, Max, showed us what we needed to be doing, and for this, I’ll pass things over to him.”
Max nodded, smoothing his hands down his jeans, then straightening his tie before stepping forward. His software flashed up on the screen, though not in PowerPoint slides now, but as a live document, and there, on the screen, was everything we’d worked so hard on for the past few weeks .
“This is huge, so if you feel lost in this, don’t worry,” Max said.
“What is this?” a man asked. “A project outline in Jira?”
“No, it’s our work on the symposium mapped out in a software I developed.”
Then it was Max’s time to shine. Many of them were aware of this kind of software before, peering at the screens and asking an increasing number of questions about its functionality as he took them on a tour. There weren’t many questions about the symposium. I wasn’t sure if it was because it was John’s baby, another roadblock to try and derail the Lockwoods, or just because it was there, all of the detail anyone could want to see demonstrated, in Gantt charts and reports. I listened to Max, but not his words. It was his voice I focussed on, hearing it grow stronger and stronger as he spoke, then fielded the array of questions.
I was a tick box kinda girl. I loved a good checklist, where all of my achievable tasks were crossed off, one by one, but inside me? There was another one, a much bigger one, with a much grander scope. The tasks were ones I didn’t dare write down, nor really even admit to myself. It was a bucket list of sorts, but this? The guys had been worried that talking about what had happened would traumatise me, but instead? I felt fucking elated.
The board listening to all of the Lockwoods?
Tick.
Everybody giving Max the time and consideration he deserved?
Tick and tick.
Confidence being built in my mates’ leadership, and John being kicked to the curb?
As soon as Clive held the vote, that was ticked off too, with the added bonus of watching him be escorted out.
There was one more, though, a secret one I’d never admit to, but when my mates all stopped to look at me, I got an inkling of what might be about to come. They didn’t ask for permission. They wouldn’t always, I’d come to realise, because sometimes, it was far easier to seek forgiveness afterwards.