Go on and try to tear me down
I will be rising from the ground
Like a skyscraper
EYOND THE GLOW OF TECHNICOLOR NEON the Atlantic Ocean is a neverending black expanse and as I stare out into the void from my high rise Miami office, I feel the darkness within me stir from its unsettled slumber. Two months have passed since Ari Katz met his ultimate demise by my hand. Two months since the monster in me was unleashed. Yes, we’ve played our little game in the wrestling ring but that’s akin to feeding steaks to tigers and expecting them to be sated.
Tigers want to hunt. They want to stalk, claw and maul but if they get caught eating a zoo keeper it’s lights out, Tigger. One minute you’re bouncing around the Hundred Acre Wood, next your head is stuffed and mounted on the wall.
I must show restraint. There are too many eyes on me. It took a lot of money and lawyering to keep my name out of the press, even after the police concluded (incorrectly) that Katz was full of shit. The last thing I need is another body dropping dead that can be even tenuously linked to me.
For now I must place nice.
Turning from the window, I send a text to Mari letting her know I’m leaving soon. My office is brightly lit and minimalist, with a design that mimics the simple less-is-more ideology of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The seating is simple. The tables are utilitarian. The space between is expansive, allowing me to quickly move from one place to another without having to chart a course around unnecessary furniture. Even the color temperature of the recessed lighting is perfectly calibrated to compliment the ivory and polished steel color palette.
The phone dings in my hand. I look at the screen while walking behind the desk.
Mari
A wicked little half-smile tugs at my lips as my thumbs quickly move across the on-screen keyboard.
Mari
My phone goes into my slouchy banana bag by The Row with my keys and wallet. After looping the strap across my body, my hand reaches to close the laptop but is stopped when a Teams call pops up on the screen. A deep groan bursts out of me when I see the old bat’s profile picture with her scrunched, wrinkled face, flabby neck, big glasses and swoop hairdo that screams closet lesbian trapped in a straight marriage.
I begrudgingly accept the call.
“Hi, Eveyln,” I say in the most fake-fake friendly way possible.
The low resolution video expands to fill the screen. She’s in her kitchen with her nicknacks neatly arranged on a curio behind her, flanked by religious paintings hung on flowery wallpaper.
This is Evelyn Hilton-Price. She’s a member of the Niels Gram Foundation’s board and a constant thorn in my side. She’s the one who leaked corporate information to Ari Katz that led him to my body farm where Mari’s grandfather spent his final days in beautiful misery. I decided to not expose Evelyn to the rest of the board because it would require me to disclose my connection to Katz.
“Hi, Yelena,” she says with the disposition of a turtle. “Is this a good time?”
“You know me,” I say with a smile. “Always working. What’s up?”
She adjusts her thick glasses then says, “Well, I have some bad news.”
“My favorite kind,” I joke. “What’s the problem?”
A smirk teases her lips, as if she’s trying to hold back a full-blown smile, like a kid who’s dying to proudly tell his parents that he scribbled permanent marker all over the walls while they were having a quickie in the basement.
“A few minutes ago the board concluded a meeting.”
The muscle around my right eye twitches. “I’m the CEO and Chair, Evelyn. Why is the board meeting without me?”
“You will be receiving the minutes. It was determined your presence was not required given the purpose of the vote.”
“What vote?”
“The vote to remove you from the foundation.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Did you not think we wouldn’t find out about the investigation?” she asks with a scowl. “A man died and you were dragged into a police station to answer questions about it, and now just about him, but other deaths as well. You should have disclosed this information to the board but instead you attempted to shield yourself through omission.”
She heard all that from Katz, likely when he was trying to win over her help in burying me. Once she found out he was dead, it probably didn’t take her much time to find someone in the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Department to fill in some blanks. My money is on Wydell, the deputy who was riding my ass the entire interview.
“I was cleared by multiple police departments, Evelyn, including Sheriff Corpus who was in charge—”
“Corpus?” She laughs loudly. “You mean the disgraced sheriff who’s about to get shit-kicked out of office for corruption? Her opinion on you is tainted, Yelena. You’re out. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you.”
She’s not sorry. She’s eating this up.
I sit down in my chair defeated. I have no legal recourse. NGF is a non-profit. No one owns it. It operates under strict federal and state laws, and the board is bound by a fiduciary duty to operate in what it considers the best interest of the foundation. As such, any attempt by me to undo their decision would only cause the accusations against me to become public.
“Don’t look so pissed, Yelena,” she says, mocking the pain of my defeat. “You’re fortunate that we concluded it would be in the best interest of the foundation to limit the discussion to your antics on television and not state criminal accusations on the public record.”
“Thank you,” I say brightly while imagining vultures picking at her bones. “That means a lot.”
She doesn’t buy it, quickly asking, “Why do you even care? You’re a big time professional wrestler. You’re out there acting like a crazy woman in front of the whole world, seemingly indifferent to the injury it causes the foundation’s reputation in the process. You should be happy. Now you won’t have to pretend like you care one bit about any of the millions of people we help.”
“This is my father’s foundation,” I shout at the screen with righteous indignation but deep down I know she’s right. I don’t care, not even the slightest. The only reason I cut all those ribbons and took all those photos with starving African children is because it made me look like I cared.
“Oh, sweetie,” Evelyn says with a tsk-tsk. “This was your father’s foundation for about one second when he created it. After that it ceased to be his property. If I had my way back then, our first act would have been to change the name. He didn’t give a hoot about anyone but himself and quite frankly, you are exactly like him, which I’m sure you’ll take as a compliment even though it is not intended to be. As for Bifrost…”
I sit forward and through my seething teeth ask, “What about Bifrost?”
Bifrost Capital, LLC is a for-profit subsidiary of NGF, functioning as a venture capitalist firm that is able to get around the legal handcuffs of a non-profit. As of this quarter, it has over $2 billion in assets under management. Unlike NGF, my father retained 51% ownership of Bifrost, with the remaining 49% going to the foundation. When father died, it passed to Nate and when Nate died, it came home to mama.
“Obviously we cannot force you to fire yourself,” she says smugly. “However, we can divest. You’ll be happy to know that there are already two generous offers to purchase NGF’s minority stake in Bifrost. The first is from Huli, which you have partnered with previously.”
Huli, short for Hùlián Zhōngguó, or Interlink China Co., is owned by Johnny Wu. Some call him the Chinese Elon Musk but I’ve never seen him do nazi salutes, leapfrog across stages, or attempt to destabilize the entire world because he thinks he’s a Robert Downey, Jr. Then again we aren’t close and you never know these days who might be a closet fascist.
Huli manufactures VilaroFIT’s MOTiV smart band. In reality it’s a simple rebrand of their own fitness tracker. The company also built and maintains the VilaroFIT app.
“He’s offering $3.5 billion for our minority interest in Bifrost. It’s a fair offer and it would do a lot of people a lot of good, Yelena. If there’s something in you that actually cares about other people, then be glad that the money will be used to help those less fortunate than me or you.”
Bleeding hearts unite. Get me a fucking tissue.
For the record, I’m not completely against the idea. At this point I’d rather not have anything to do with Evelyn or anyone else on the board. If she was telling me this in person I’d rip her fucking face off so, for the sake of my freedom, I’ll approve a sale if I am satisfied with buyer.
“Who’s the other?”
“A Japanese company. Hanami Partners. A hedge fund out of Osaka. They don’t have a large presence in America. This is their chance to break out.”
“Never heard of it.”
She laughs. “You haven’t heard their offer.”
“By all means.”
“They will buy us out for two billion but…” She makes a big face, like she’s having to force out the words through a constipated throat. “If you were willing to sell, also, they would pay fifteen.”
A single, staccato HA! bursts out of my mouth.
Her face droops in shock when I don’t hip hop hooray out of my chair. She adjusts her glasses and says, “Billion, Yelena. Fifteen billion. Fifty one percent of that goes to you. What’s that come out to…”
“$7.65 billion. With a B.”
“Exactly.”
I lean back into my chair with my arm on the elbow rest and tap at my bottom lip, as if deep in thought. Gently my leg turns the chair this way and that on its swivel while I pretend to consider her outrageous suggestion. Finally, after bleeding her time for the better part of a minute, I lean forward and say, “I don’t think so.”
“What?” She’s incredulous. “Why not?”
I shoot forward, inches away from the little camera lens above the screen, completely filling the small preview window in the lower right corner, so that all she can see is me-me-me on her screen.
“Three reasons,” I say with an off-set grin. “One, this is my father’s company, you uppity cunt. Two, it’s not only about the money. It’s about power and influence. Three, I stopping giving a fat fuck about the foundation the moment your saggy face called to tell me I was sacked. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Madam, I’m going to go home, drink some wine, and watch my friend fuck my girlfriend. Possibly in the ass. I haven’t decided yet. La revedere!”
The laptop lid is slammed shut, then I throw it across the room at the window where I was standing only moments ago. The impact doesn’t damage the four-inch thick glass but it does cause the computer to burst apart at the seams, sending bits and pieces of board and chips to scatter across the granite floor after the case crashes down.
“Feel better?” I hear the Other Me ask. When my eyes lift from my clenched hands, the lights flicker out, leaving the room doused in interlocking blocks of shadow of varying degrees of darkness. There she is, little more than an inky silhouette against pitch-black.
“Not really,” I say without releasing my gritted teeth.
She coos like a demented mother easing a temperamental child. “Poor Yelena. We’ve been treated most unfairly, haven’t we? Don’t worry your sweet little head, precious. Evelyn will get what’s coming to her. In the meantime, what do we need to soothe this burn?”
My body shoots out of the chair without thought. My hands slam on the desk and I lean over it with my tongue slipping over the sharp edges of my teeth and I say:
“We need to fuck something. Let’s go home.”