Cosmic by celeste, p.20
Cosmic by Celeste, page 20
She laughs into his skin. “We’ll make it worse for them.”
He grins, runs his hand down her spine, over her ass, cupping it. “You know, you could probably run this place better than I ever could.”
She turns and kisses his collarbone. “Maybe. But I want to see what you do with it first.”
They don’t fall asleep. Instead, they whisper ideas back and forth, plans to sabotage Richard’s sabotage, to turn the board against itself, to use the Cosmic launch as leverage. They plot and scheme, but mostly, they hold each other, the intimacy of skin and sweat and shared breath enough to keep the rest of the world at bay.
When the light through the windows finally shifts from black to gray, Celeste props herself on one elbow and looks at Thad. He’s watching her, eyes still hungry, a smile playing at his mouth.
She kisses him, softly this time.
“Ready?” she asks.
He nods. “Let’s go break something.”
They dress in yesterday’s clothes, steal coffee from the kitchen, and face the new day together.
Whatever happens next, it will be on their terms, and the city had better be ready.
“Try telling Richard that.”
She lets the silence hang, then reaches for the bottle and pours herself a finger of whiskey. It’s the same peaty stuff Jocelyn used to pour after long board meetings. She sips, lets it burn, then speaks.
“You know what I love about you?” she says.
He rolls his eyes. “My tragic sense of humor?”
“Your honesty,” she says. “Even when you’re full of shit, you’re honest about it. You don’t pretend to know what you’re doing, but you keep showing up.”
He laughs, but it comes out as a cough.
She sets her glass down. “Look at me.”
He does.
“Your mother built this company by doing things no one else had the guts to do. She never waited for permission, not even from herself. That’s what they hated most.”
Thad shifts, the compliment making him uncomfortable. “You think I can improvise my way out of this?”
“I think if you’re going to lose, you might as well lose on your own terms.”
He closes his eyes. “What if I’m not her?”
“You’re not,” she says. “But you’re something else. And if you don’t figure out what, Richard’s going to eat your heart and wear your skin to the annual meeting.”
That gets a real laugh.
She leans in and lowers her voice. “We have one chance. If we can prove real, intentional sabotage at the board level, we can force them into a corner. They’ll settle, even if it’s to save face.”
“And if we can’t?”
“Then we burn it all down and start over. You’ve done it before.”
He gives her a look. “Not at this scale.”
She softens. “You don’t have to do it alone.”
He nods, his hands shaking as he rubs his temples.
She pulls the document toward her, scans the legal language, and points to a paragraph halfway down. “This is their weak spot. They’re terrified of liability. If you make it about risk management, you can stall. Maybe even negotiate.”
He stares at the text, then at her. “You think it’ll work?”
She shrugs. “I think it’s better than drinking yourself to sleep and hoping for a miracle.”
He sets the glass down and runs a hand through his hair. “Why are you still here?”
She considers the question. “Because I want to see what you do next.”
He leans back, eyes finally clear. “You know, you’re the first person who’s ever believed in me.”
She looks at him, the rawness in his voice making something twist in her chest. “You make it easy.”
He laughs. “That’s a lie.”
She smiles. “Only a little.”
They sit in the hush, the ghosts of the house momentarily at bay.
Thad is the one who breaks the stillness. “What would you do if you were me?”
She thinks about it and traces the rim of her glass with her finger. “I’d fight. I’d show up to the boardroom in the morning with hard proof, a better suit, and the meanest lawyer I could find. I’d make them say no to my face.”
He nods, soaking it in.
She says, “And then I’d run away with the only person who made it all bearable.”
He looks at her, startled, then smiles for real. “Deal.”
Their knees brush, and she doesn’t move away.
For a while, they talk through every contingency, every possible outcome, every legal trick. They build a plan, brick by brick, until the chaos feels like something they can survive.
Outside, the sky is beginning to pale. The city is waiting, but for now, it is the two of them, side by side, facing whatever comes.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
The elevator doors opened directly onto the executive floor, that familiar chill already seeping into Thad’s bones as he and Celeste stepped out side by side. The air was charged, this side of a thunderstorm, the kind of pressure that made even the light fixtures seem nervous. The glass wall of the boardroom reflected them as they approached: Thad in an ill-fitting suit that still bore a faint bruise from last night’s whiskey, Celeste in the same blouse she’d half-shredded before sunrise, her hair twisted up with surgical precision. Together, they looked less like corporate conquerors than two people who’d survived a disaster and found something worth saving in the rubble.
The boardroom itself was staged like a scene for a crime that hadn’t happened yet. The table gleamed, twelve feet of mahogany flanked by high-backed leather chairs arranged for optimal intimidation. Every director was already seated, faces taut with the effort of pretending they hadn’t arrived two hours early. The board chair, a retired ambassador with the voice of a warship and the haircut of a televangelist, sat at the head, perfectly centered. Natalie was there, too, shuffling notes and eyeing the room with the cold patience of a professional sniper. At the far end, Richard presided in a three-piece suit so aggressive it was practically armed, every inch of him engineered for plausible deniability.
Thad caught Richard’s eye as he entered and registered the calculated contempt, the slow exhale of a man who had never truly expected to lose. He had to respect the performance.
“Morning,” Thad said, and it landed with all the warmth of a hailstone. Celeste nodded, letting her gaze brush across the assembled directors with the analytical neutrality of someone about to dose a test subject.
“Let’s begin,” the board chair said, voice engineered to cut through marble. “Mr. Hastings, you called this session. The floor is yours.”
Thad sat, arranging his notes with hands that barely trembled. He felt Celeste’s presence beside him, steady, subtle, a counterweight to the sense that the room might tilt and swallow him whole. He began not with a speech but with an artifact: a battered, spiral-bound notebook, its corners worn and its pages dense with the kind of shorthand that only true believers and the truly desperate ever master.
“My mother kept meticulous records,” he said. “Not on the business, but on every person who ever tried to destroy it. I’d like to enter this into the record.”
He slid the notebook down the table, where it stopped in front of the chair. The ambassador opened it, squinting at the cursive, then passing it to her left. Within seconds, the first director started flipping pages, eyebrows rising with each turn.
Thad continued, “You’ll see, starting on page sixty-seven, a series of entries regarding financial misconduct, threats of forced sale, and, most relevant, targeted sabotage of company assets.”
Richard shifted enough to signal annoyance. “With all due respect, we can’t verify the authenticity of these notes. They’re hearsay.”
Thad didn’t flinch. “There’s a list of dates and times, as well as recipient names for every threat. Some of those recipients are in this room.”
A beat. Natalie met Thad’s gaze for a fraction of a second before looking away, satisfied.
“Perhaps we should hear from Dr. Bellamy,” the board chair said. “She was, after all, the subject of the recent allegations.”
Celeste sat forward, the room’s attention coalescing around her like a lens. She spoke in that metallic French accent that made everything sound more final.
“All evidence suggests the so-called ‘contamination’ was staged,” she said. “We traced the origin of the flagged sample to a night when the lab was under restricted access. Security logs and footage confirm only two people entered that window, me and the acting COO.”
She pressed a button on her phone, and the wall screen flickered to life. The black-and-white video showed a hunched figure in a suit entering the lab at 2:14 a.m., swiping a card, then emerging seven minutes later carrying a duffel bag. Even with the low resolution, the identity was obvious.
Richard went pale, then red, then pale again, cycling through the visible spectrum of defeat.
The board chair’s eyes narrowed. “Mr. Fellows, is there an explanation for this?”
Richard started to speak, stopped, and then tried again. “I was checking inventory. Routine. Sometimes the only way to keep up with the pace of production…”
“Is it to violate protocol and sneak in after hours?” Celeste finished her voice like a scalpel.
A junior director at the end of the table piped up, “There’s also the small matter of the Belgian lab. The test results were fabricated, weren’t they? The contact doesn’t exist.”
Richard’s fingers twitched, rapping a silent SOS on the table. “I was acting in the best interest of the company. The new product line represented a massive risk, and with the founder gone, someone needed to be the adult in the room.”
Thad smiled coldly. “Jocelyn always said adults were kids with mortgages. I’d like to return to the matter at hand.”
He took a breath, slow and deliberate, then let it out. “I move that Richard Fellows be removed as acting CEO, effective immediately. I further move that the board reinstate its prior succession plan, with me as interim CEO and Dr. Bellamy as head of R&D.”
The board chair looked around. “Is there a second?”
Natalie raised a hand, voice clipped. “Seconded.”
“All in favor?”
A quick show of hands: seven, then eight, then a hesitant ninth. Richard stared down the table, daring anyone to meet his gaze, but the only person looking back was Celeste, her expression unreadable.
The chair nodded. “Motion carries. Mr. Hastings, you are officially CEO of Chic Alchemy, pending full audit and review.”
Richard didn’t explode, not immediately. He sat, eyes hollow, as if a string had been cut somewhere deep in his chest. When he finally spoke, it was a whisper, desperate, childish, almost tender. “You don’t know what you’re doing, Thaddeus. You never have.”
Thad let it hang, then answered. “Maybe. But at least I’m not doing it in the dark.”
The meeting adjourned in a flurry of scraping chairs and shuffling papers. Richard packed up quickly and ungracefully, gathering his things in a single, angry sweep. He didn’t look at Thad as he left, but his last words were for Celeste.
“You could have had anything, you know,” he said, voice shaking. “Anything.”
She didn’t answer, and after a moment, he turned and disappeared into the hallway, the door hissing shut behind him.
The room emptied as directors, eager to be anywhere but here, left. Natalie lingered, one hand on Thad’s shoulder, her touch equal parts congratulations and caution.
“Nice work,” she murmured. “Don’t get cocky.”
When they were alone, Thad slumped, the adrenaline gone as quick as it had come. Celeste reached under the table, found his hand, and squeezed it once.
For a long moment, neither of them spoke.
Then Celeste said quietly, “You did it.”
He looked at her, exhaustion and awe warring in his face.
“No,” he said. “We did.”
They sat in the hollow aftermath, hands clasped, as the city beyond the glass wall started to remember itself.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
They made it three minutes into the postmortem before Natalie appeared, trailing a vapor of cologne and urgency, her phone held to her face like a defibrillator.
“Thad. We have a problem.”
He looked up from the legal pad, pencil still poised over a half-finished list of action items. “I thought we were celebrating.”
Natalie ignored the joke, her mouth in a straight line. “Richard’s dumping shares. Full nuclear. The ticker froze twice in the last ten minutes. It’s not a rumor. He’s selling everything he ever touched. And he’s doing it in the open.”
She turned the phone toward them: a heat map of red and green, overwhelmingly crimson, the Chic Alchemy stock tumbling down the page in sickening ticks.
Celeste leaned forward, scanning the numbers. “Is he trying to trigger a panic?”
Natalie’s thumb flicked through news feeds, her eyes tracking three screens at once. “If he can devalue the company before you stabilize, he can force a hostile buyout. Or a fire sale. Either way, we’re fucked.”
The words hung, raw, and satisfying. Thad felt it bloom behind his sternum, a wild terror he’d hoped to have outgrown.
He glanced at Celeste, who was already doing mental math. “If he keeps this up for even an hour…”
“The board will flip,” Natalie finished. “You’ll be CEO of a corpse.”
There was a hollow pop from the direction of the glass doors as a junior comms staffer burst in, tablet clutched like a flotation device. “Sir, there’s a camera crew in the lobby. And the hashtag #ChicCollapse is trending at number three.”
Thad closed his eyes for half a beat and snapped into motion. “Okay. Get the senior team in the war room. Bring the product, the numbers, the people. I want every channel to be live. Natalie, you’re running media. Celeste, you’re with me.”
They moved as a unit, the air around them thickening into a kind of gravitational wave that pulled the staff into orbit.
The war room was the old marketing bullpen, a pit of mismatched desks and whiteboards still haunted by last quarter’s campaign slogans. Someone had already wheeled in a flat-screen tuned to CNBC, where a row of talking heads was dissecting the sell-off like a shark autopsy.
Thad swept a stack of event folders to the floor, seized a dry-erase marker, and started writing on the glass wall. “Number one: We control the story. If we look scared, we’re dead. Number two: we show the board, the shareholders, the public, and even the janitors that there is a plan and a future. Number three: if we’re going to go down, we go down swinging.”
Natalie was already in the corner, phone pressed to her ear. “No comment at this time, but you’ll have a statement by noon. Off the record? It’s not a crisis. It’s a realignment. Yes. Call you back.”
She covered the mouthpiece. “We have forty minutes. Maybe less.”
Celeste perched on the edge of the table, her face composed but her hands restless. “What if we go on the offensive? Announce a new product, tie it to a charity, flip the narrative from drama to innovation.”
A junior staffer with a tragic buzzcut nodded, frantic. “We could leak the new Cosmic campaign. Maybe a demo. Or a celebrity endorsement, something viral.”
Thad felt the adrenaline kick in, sharp and liquid. “No. That’s what they expect. We’re not a tech company. We’re not going to ‘pivot’ in a panic. We need something real, something,” He broke off, the word dissolving into static.
He looked around the table, the faces staring back: some desperate, some eager, all terrified to be the first to admit defeat. He wanted to say something inspiring, but the best he could muster was, “Let’s buy some time.”
He pointed at the comms intern. “You, what’s your name?”
“Jamison.”
“Jamison, tell the lobby that we’ll do a press conference in one hour. Natalie, draft a statement. Make it sound like the transfer of power was always the plan. Celeste, prep the lab for a product walk-through. If we’re going to be transparent, let’s show them everything. I want the cameras inside the building, not out.”
He watched them scatter, the hum of activity almost loud enough to drown out the financial news ticker still hemorrhaging red.
He turned to Celeste and dropped his voice. “What if it’s not enough?”
She looked at him, unblinking. “We make it enough.”
He nodded, jaw tight, and turned to face the wall of screens. The stock had slowed its descent, but it was still ugly, a smear of doubt that threatened to bleed through everything they’d built.
He gripped the edge of the table, willing himself to stay upright. “You know, in music, when a show’s going off the rails, you don’t try to hide it. You lean in. Make it part of the act.”
Celeste raised an eyebrow. “Are you suggesting performance art?”
“Maybe.” He exhaled. “I don’t have my mother’s instincts, but I know how to put on a show.”
He walked to his old office, ignoring the whirring of interns and the buzz of incoming emails. On the wall, above the relics of his failed “rock star” career, hung a battered electric guitar. He unhooked it, ran a thumb across the strings, and grinned at the absurdity of the moment.
He returned to the war room, guitar in hand, and set it on the table. The room stilled, every eye locked on him.
“I have an idea,” he said. “But you’re all going to think I’m crazy.”
Natalie looked up from her laptop, half-amused, half-exasperated. “Try us.”
“We go live. Not a walk-through. A real performance. We launch Cosmic right here today, and we do it with music, with art, with every scrap of rawness we’ve got. Make it so noisy, so authentic, that the story changes from collapse to revolution.”
The silence was total. Even the TV anchors seemed to pause.
Celeste tilted her head, a smile flickering at the corner of her mouth. “You want to make the company a band?”
