Cosmic by celeste, p.12
Cosmic by Celeste, page 12
Celeste started to excuse herself, but Thad caught her wrist. “Stay,” he said, his grip gentle but absolute.
Richard raised an eyebrow. “Is she your emotional support animal now?”
“I prefer ‘personal consultant,’” said Celeste, seating herself beside Thad and crossing her legs with deliberate slowness.
The lawyer, who had the air of someone who’d read too many legal thrillers, placed the folders in front of him and began. “This is the official last will of Jocelyn L. Hastings, signed and notarized three months ago. It is the only will currently known and recognized under state law. Any objections?”
Richard opened his mouth, but Cassandra’s hand found his knee, and he subsided.
“Very well,” said the lawyer, and began to read.
The first pages were bequests to various family members: trust funds for the nieces and nephews, a painting to a distant cousin in Paris, the usual scattershot of legacy items meant to keep the peace or at least the lawsuits at bay. Then came the charitable gifts: a hefty endowment to the foundation, a donation to the Met, and a sum to establish a new women’s shelter in the Bronx. Each line was a bullet point in the biography Jocelyn wanted to write after her death.
Finally, the lawyer paused, flipped a page, and looked up at Thad.
“To my son, Thaddeus Hastings, I leave the entirety of my personal estate, including but not limited to the Fifth Avenue residence, all vehicles, contents, and remaining cash assets. I further leave him all controlling interest in Chic Alchemy, as well as any associated patents, trademarks, and proprietary formulations.”
He looked at Thad, then at Richard. “It goes on, but that’s the relevant part.”
The room fell silent, except for the crackling of the fire. Cassandra made a slight, strangled sound. Richard’s face drained, then flushed, then settled into a color somewhere between raw meat and volcanic ash.
The lawyer cleared his throat. “To my brother, Richard Fellows, I leave my shares in Amaranth Holdings and the summer residence in Sagaponack on the condition that he does not contest this will. Should he do so, all bequests are null and void and revert to the primary beneficiary.”
For a second, no one breathed.
Then Richard exploded. “This is bullshit. She would never…”
“It’s signed, witnessed, and airtight,” the lawyer said, already bracing for the blowback. “I have additional copies if you’d like to review.”
“You’re lying,” said Cassandra, voice high and shaking. “You’re all lying. There’s no way she’d give it to…” She stopped, gestured at Thad as if he were a particularly unfortunate stain on the tablecloth, “to him.”
Thad’s hands were white-knuckled on the arms of his chair. “Looks like she did.”
Richard surged to his feet, knocking over his glass. “We’ll contest. You know we will.”
The lawyer nodded, entirely unruffled. “You can. But per the terms, you forfeit everything else if you do.”
Richard stood over Thad, looming, but Celeste was between them before he could say anything more. She didn’t touch him; she looked up, calm and unblinking.
“Perhaps it’s best if you step outside,” she said.
For a long moment, it looked like Richard would lash out at her, at Thad, at the universe, but then he turned and stalked out of the room, Cassandra trailing after, hissing like a teapot about betrayal and legacy and “That fucking bitch.”
The lawyer waited until the door was closed, then gathered the papers, stood, and bowed to Thad. “Congratulations,” he said, with the faintest twist of irony. “You’ve inherited a small country.”
Thad nodded but didn’t speak. The lawyer and notary left quietly, their footsteps echoing down the hall.
Celeste and Thad were alone again, the fire down to embers. She poured him another whiskey, then one for herself.
“Are you okay?” she asked after a minute.
He stared into the glass. “Not even close.”
She reached over, took his hand, and squeezed it until he let go of the glass and held hers instead.
The silence was a new one: not absence, but space for something to grow.
They sat there for a long time, the ghosts of the house finally quiet.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
After the notary’s pen faded from memory and the echo of Richard’s slammed door was a bruise on the air, Thad and Celeste drifted through the house in silence, ghosts among the trophies. The rooms were huge now, every footstep a dare. The staff had vanished, or perhaps they had gone somewhere safe to gossip and call their mothers. There was a bottle of whiskey on the hall table, half full; Thad pocketed it on impulse and jerked his head toward the garden.
“Need some air,” he said, voice cracking on the last word.
Celeste followed without question, sliding into her coat as they passed the mudroom and out into the deep freeze of January. The gardens were skeletal, all bone and geometry, the hedges shorn to their winter profiles, and the flowerbeds packed down like grave plots. Pathway lights, cool, white, and low, drew straight lines between the dormant rosebushes and the empty fountain, where a single stone cherub leaned on its elbows and sulked at the frozen pond.
They walked for a while, not touching, their breaths twining like ribbons. Thad swung the whiskey bottle back and forth by its neck, never drinking. Finally, as they turned past the yew topiaries, he stopped, stuck his hands in his pockets, and stared at the ground.
“Do you ever get the feeling,” he said, “that everyone’s waiting for you to screw up, but at the same time, they’d be relieved if you disappeared?”
Celeste considered. “That’s called impostor syndrome. Or Monday.”
He snorted. “For me, it’s all days ending in y.”
She looked at him at the way the night undid the hard lines of his face and made him younger, more breakable. “You did fine in there.”
“I did nothing,” he said. “Richard did the screaming, the lawyer did the talking, and I sat and tried not to puke.” He looked up, eyes glinting in the pathlight. “I’ve never run anything. I’ve never wanted to. Every time someone hands me a microphone, I think, Is this the time I forget the words?”
She thought of her first presentation to the board, the way her knees vibrated so hard she had to hide them behind a podium. “Jocelyn thought you could do it. She wouldn’t have set you up to fail.”
He shook his head, a half-laugh. “Jocelyn thought I was the world’s most expensive boomerang. Throw me out, I come back, but only after wrecking a few hotel rooms.”
She smiled, warm despite the chill. “You’re her son, Thad. In all the best and worst ways.”
He traced a pattern in the frost with his shoe. “What about you? Why are you still here? You could have gone to Paris. Or start your own house. Half the industry would pay you double to keep you quiet.”
Celeste shrugged. “I liked the work. I liked what she was building. It felt… honest. Even if everything else wasn’t.”
He hesitated, then: “Do you want to stay?”
She was quiet for a long time. “Ask me when the sun’s up,” she said. “I’m better with clarity.”
They kept walking. At the far end of the garden, the ground sloped toward a low pond, the ice rimmed with reeds and framed by a stone balustrade. They stopped at the edge. The moon was out, cold and precise, cutting a perfect coin out of the dark.
Thad fumbled with the whiskey, finally uncapped it, and took a long, shuddering pull. Then he offered it to Celeste, who declined with a wave of her hand.
“I had a mentor once,” she said, watching the moon. “He told me, if you ever think you’re in control, you’re not paying attention.”
Thad grinned. “Sounds like a healthy approach to life.”
She angled her head. “It’s why I survive.”
He looked at her, eyes more earnest now. “Will you help me?” he asked, the words clumsy but honest. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t want to jeopardize the company or its people. I don’t want to be Richard.”
Celeste took the bottle, set it on the stone railing, and turned to face him. “First lesson: hire people smarter than you, and listen to them.”
“Is that your way of saying yes?”
She smiled a real one, all teeth. “It’s my way of saying you’d be a fool not to.”
He laughed, and the sound bounced across the frozen water, startling a cluster of birds from the reeds.
They stood there, shoulder to shoulder, letting the cold do its work until Thad’s hand found hers, fingers numb but intent. She didn’t let go.
Eventually, they retraced their steps up the garden path, through the hallways, past the still-angry faces of the ancestors. At the foot of the stairs, Thad stopped, pulled Celeste close, and pressed his forehead to hers.
“Thank you,” he said, voice low.
She touched his cheek, feather-light. “Get some sleep. Tomorrow is the real war.”
He nodded, let go, and watched her vanish up the staircase, her steps silent as secrets.
Alone in the vast, echoing house, Thad thought of his mother, of the company, of the future already threatening to swallow him. But for the first time, the fear was shot through with something else: the memory of warmth and the promise that, if he asked, someone might walk beside him into the dark.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The CEO's office at Chic Alchemy is a mausoleum of confidence, built for ghosts' comfort. Thad sits at the desk, his desk, technically, staring through the anti-glare glass at Midtown’s vertical aggression. The windows are polarized against UV, heat, and anything that might disrupt the equilibrium of five-million-dollar square footage. Inside, the décor is identical to that of every boardroom and luxury hotel lobby on the avenue: a color scheme of unresolved grief, so expensive that any emotion becomes irrelevant.
A knock, too crisp for staff but too deferential for a partner, cuts through the silence. Natalie enters, arms full of binders and folders, every step broadcasting a new level of business triage. She’s swapped the mourning blacks for a navy pantsuit with knife-crease slacks, but the only real color on her is the gel pen she’s already uncapping as she walks.
“Good morning,” she says, all syllables weaponized. “I hope you slept.”
He did, in a technical sense. Three hours, maybe four, in the guest room above the study, curled around the unanswered questions of his own succession. He says, “Define morning,” and gestures at the stack of envelopes on the desk. The topmost one is labeled “URGENT, ACTION REQUIRED” in a font that seems intent on controlling the world.
Natalie drops the binders onto the table with a soft, satisfying thump. “We’re on the agenda for ten a.m. They’ve moved the CEO vote up to today. Richard’s calling the meeting. I’ve already had to fend off two journalists and a camera crew. Security says they were with the Journal, but I saw the microphones. They were from Page Six.”
Thad glances at the clock and watches the second hand tremble with indecision. “Do I have time to read these?”
She gives him a look as if the answer is self-evident. “Read the summary sheets and sign where I’ve flagged. I’ll walk you through the rest.”
He flips the first folder open. It’s a board packet, annotated and tabbed, with Natalie’s comments in acid green: “Red flag, see page 11,” “Richard will use this as ammunition,” “Don’t mention the internship.” Each page is a new species of threat.
He leans back in the chair and lets the artificial leather press its judgment into his spine. “You know, when I was a kid, I thought being in charge meant you got to say ‘fuck it’ and do whatever you wanted.”
She doesn’t smile, but her voice softens her hair. “You are in charge. Technically. However, Richard has already sent out a press statement declaring himself acting CEO, pending the board’s formal confirmation.’ He’ll go for a vote of no confidence. He’ll claim you’re unprepared and that the company needs stability.”
Thad laughs a dry, sour note. “Stability meaning, ‘Do what Richard says’?”
She nods and slides a one-page memo across the desk. It’s printed on the heavy stock reserved for lawsuits and funeral programs. “He’s asking for a permanent appointment. If the board splits, you’ll be outvoted. You’ll keep the shares, but he’ll run the place.”
Thad scans the memo. The language is pure velvet-and-cyanide: “in the interest of continuity,” “per best practices,” “while honoring Jocelyn’s legacy.” He feels his knuckles tighten.
“I didn’t even want this job,” he mutters.
“Which is why you have to keep it,” Natalie says. “Richard is a scorched-earth manager. The first thing he’ll do is strip-mine the brand, sell off anything unique, and turn the whole operation into a holding company. That’s not what your mother wanted.”
He sets the memo down. “What did my mother want?”
Natalie is quiet, the hum of the HVAC filling the space between them for a moment. “She wanted to change things, not run them. She wanted the company to mean something.” She fixes him with her prosecutor’s gaze. “I’m not sure you’re ready, but I know he isn’t. And if you don’t fight, nobody else will.”
Thad picks up the pen, clicks it open, and signs the first flagged sheet. The act feels both trivial and irrevocable.
Natalie moves around the desk and aligns the next set of documents. “These are the financials. They look fine, but only because Richard is hiding the numbers that matter. He’s already started consolidating the tech side. The perfumery division is about to be gutted unless you intervene.”
He skims the summary, trying to make sense of the jargon: “Q1 Projected EBITDA,” “Redundancy Optimization,” and “Brand Asset Repositioning.” It all blurs, the language both familiar and hostile. “Can you put it in English?” he asks.
Natalie nods. “If he wins the vote, he’ll spin off the legacy brands and kill the new product pipeline. He’s already told the R&D team to ‘streamline or perish.’ The only reason the perfumery isn’t already gone is because of the Cosmic project.”
Thad tries to remember the last time he saw a perfume ad that didn’t look like a fever dream. “Cosmic. That’s the new one?”
She slides a glossy press release toward him. It’s all black and purple, with a tagline so vague it could be for a VPN service or an energy drink: “The Afterglow of Infinity.” The bottle features a parabolic glass shape with a violet base that fades to clear. There’s a footnote: “Developed by Celeste Bellamy, Fragrance Director.” Her name is underlined twice.
He rubs his eyes. “I don’t know anything about this stuff.”
“That’s what the staff is for,” Natalie says. “But if you let Richard kill Cosmic, it’s over. The team will scatter. The board will see you as a figurehead. Within a year, he’ll have the company delisted and sold for parts.”
He tries to imagine his mother’s reaction. He comes up empty, so he thinks of Celeste instead, the way she squared up to Richard in the lab, the way she said, “You’re not like them.” He wonders if she meant it or if it was what people said to the doomed.
He glances at the floor-to-ceiling shelves, the first editions and the glass awards, the little bust of Marie Curie that’s been turned to face the window as if it’s refusing to witness the debasement of science.
He says, “What would you do if you were me?”
Natalie doesn’t hesitate. “I’d visit the lab, talk to the team, and find out what makes Cosmic so dangerous to Richard. I’d let them see that you care about their work. Then, I’d call an emergency meeting and force the board to listen to you. If you want to win, you have to look like you want it.”
He closes the folder, stands up, and straightens his tie. It’s the same one from the funeral, the only one he owns that isn’t a joke. He looks at the city and then at his own reflection, which is somehow both older and younger than the man he remembers.
He says, “I’ll go to the lab.”
Natalie’s smile is small, but it’s there. “I’ll walk you down. However, you should know that Celeste is the best ally you could have. If you lose her, you lose the company.”
He thinks about the night in the garden, the way her hand felt in his, the way the moon lit the ice so it looked like a possible future.
He nods, grabs his phone, and follows Natalie to the elevator. As the doors close, he glances back at the desk, at the memo, at the certainty that nothing he does will ever be enough.
But it’s a start.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Night in the lab is its own species of loneliness. The windows eat all the city’s color, and the fluorescence overhead turns every surface to the hue of surgical tape. Celeste is alone at her station, lining up vials for the next round of stability testing. Cosmic, batch 18C, is decanting into a glass tray of pipettes, each labeled in her looping handwriting. She works quietly, muscle memory guiding her through the last motions of the day.
She hears the elevator before she sees him, the warble of the security lock, the soft pneumatic sigh of the doors. Thad walks in with the unsteady grace of someone who’s spent four hours pretending to be a grown-up. He’s changed out of the suit but not out of the world: sleeves rolled, hair mussed from habit or nerves, eyes at half-mast.
He stands inside the threshold as if unsure what part of the room is safe to step into. “I hope I’m not interrupting,” he says.
Celeste doesn’t look up. “The interruption was scheduled for six p.m. You’re late.”
He laughs, surprised. “Story of my life.”
She transfers a pipette to the tray, carefully avoiding spills. “You here for the tour, or did you want to shut us down in person?”
He flinches at it, which most people would miss. But she’s good at watching. “I was hoping you could… walk me through it. Cosmic, I mean. I read the brief, but it didn’t make much sense.”
