Chapter 7: Meet The Fishes

The immense pressure emitted from the towering man in front of him made Manager Strauss whimper, and he walked backwards, his back against the wall behind him. "Boss... I thought with Chairman Brunton wishing to see his granddaughter each year on her birthday, I might help him today since he misses her..." He tried to rationalise his behaviour. He just wanted to bring her back and thought of getting in the good graces of the Chairman. He didn’t want to be stuck in middle management for the rest of his life. His son is going to college. He never thought of offending the chairman because everyone knows how he rules with an iron fist. Everyone who’s in this company long enough will know how the Chairman dragged his daughter across the floor during an annual banquet in his home, in front of his employees, and locked her up in her room when she insisted on marrying Robert Whiteford and invited him without his permission. Surely the Chairman would appreciate this little initiative to bring back the Princess. Shouldn’t she be taught how she should behave? Surely he spent some and said some words to convince the hacker when he learnt from an anonymous source that the Princess is in N, Y working in a PR firm. But what Manager Strauss didn’t expect was his little plan failing, and he was now shocked how this plan he had secretly made had been leaked to the CEO. But seeing the deep gaze of the grey eyes of Jordan McAllister and his smirk as he ran his fingers through his platinum blond hair, he could guess what might have happened. He is not the King’s Cup-bearer for nothing. Nothing escapes the shady figure who is the right-hand man of the CEO. The McAllister family’s sole heir, who is Shad, suddenly joined Arthur Sinclair after the greatest recession in the history of Esteria that happened ten years back. In just a day, ay all the stocks of North Pole Enterprises fell to the floor, greatly affecting the economy of the nation itself. With the Lockhart family breaking their alliance with the Brunton family and with the already existing feud between the Sinclair and Brunton families intensifying, the stock took a big hit in just a day. Only the announcement of the wedding between Arthur Sinclair and Talia Brunton stopped the further sinking of the stocks. But it still didn’t get better since Talia disappeared immediately after the wedding announcement. That’s when the McAllister family, who had till then stayed away from the feud between the Boswell and the Brunton families, joined hands with the greatest measure taken by the government to get their country out of recession. Arthur Sinclair joined Northern Star Enterprises as a low-level worker while he was still in college, and Jordan McAllister followed him. Together they were unbeatable, with Arthur nicknamed "King" while Jordan was his "Knight". But Jordan preferred to be called "Cup-beare." With his prompt decision-making skills and with the aid of Jordan, who wasn’t scared to dirty his hands to achieve results, Arthur soon rose to the position of C-level executive when he was just twenty-five. And there sure was nepotism playing a role since he is the husband of the chairman’s granddaughter. But no one could blame him since he was really capable and no one could question him in any way. " I just wanted to bring back the Princess." Manager Strauss clenched his fists hard out of fear of the consequence, and his round eyes widened as he breathed hard. "Heh!" Arthur snorted, rubbing his eyebrow with the back of his hand, and holding the cigar. "Please don’t fire me... My son is going to college next year, and my daughter has...." He went on babbling, and Arthur’s deep eyes swept past him and into his assistant. "Jordan, the fishes... Are they here yet?" Arthur liked Jordan taking a whiff from his cigar, and he nodded. The skinny hacker guy who stood there saw the King looking calm and deadly, stumbled back to his seat, and started working on the computer. He knew what " fishes" the King was talking about. This company donated a couple of Tiger Sharks to the National Aquarium. Um, they were delivered just hours ago. He didn’t want to be shark food. "Mr. CEO," he said politely. " I’ve already sent the files I encrypted back to Purple Jinxinx as I took them. She asked for the key, but I already sent back the decrypted files. As of now, it is as if the hacking didn’t happen. With nervous, sweaty drenched his sweat, he started blabbering. "What does this Purple Jinx have on you?" Arthur asked. He kind of liked this young man. He could be an asset to the company. "He... He..." he stretched the back of his head nervously, but looking at the stern green eyes, he gulped, "That... Pictures of me with my girl, I posted in a forum of people like me... Let’s say... Umm... My mother won’t like her... She is a... Umm... You might call her a s*x doll... But I love her. Purple Jinx, the queen who beat me, blackmailed that she’d send those pictures to my mother if I mess up with her again, and she still has them..." Arthur’s eyebrow cd. He wondered what he should do with the guy as his entire mind froze. He was not lying and was genuinely scared of getting his pictures sent to his mother. ’Oh, Iris! You can be this ruthless!’ Arthur smiled in his heart. How the polite girl who cried for the death of a bug turned to! Arthur gave him his visiting car, and his calm voice uttered, " Meet me when I’m bbackand I have people watching over you, so don’t try to hide, Nathaniel Brooke." Nodding, the hacker ran away, sweating bullets. The king knows his name, and he is doomed. He messed up with the Queen, too. Who would grant him salvation from the two great evils? Arthur didn’t care for him and looked at Jordan. "Since Manager Strauss likes negotiating on behalf of the Chairman, let him have a chat with the fishes closely for half an hour and... Negotiate." Arthur looked at Strauss, who was trembling and begging for mercy, nd not to kill him. He couldn’t understand what "fishes" he was talking about. But it won’t be anything good. "Oh, don’t worry, Manager Straus." Arthur walked up to him, stubbing the cigar in the ashtray and patting his shoulder. The towering man who reached a little more than two meters made the manager tremble, a nd his hands on his shoulder felt like an anvil weighing on him. "You dared to mess with MY WIFE. You surely have more than enough guts to face a couple of tiger sharks for thirty minutes." he patted his shoulder with a smirk that would send anyone with a bad heart straight to hell and turned to leave, not listening to the pleas of the man pleading behind him. Who asked him to threaten his wife? "Is the Jet ready?" Arthur looked at Jordan, and he nodded. Arthur, keeping his hand in his pocket, sighed slightly. He has already prepared to leave for Country A to have a talk with Talia. But this stupid manager had to spoil his plans! And now she is mad. If it were up to him, he’d have met her face-to-face, spoken to her about her grandfather’s condition, and begged her to be back. She is someone who’d react badly to this, and now it is going to be hard to bring her back, especially when she thinks it was him who threatened her. But he had faith in the bottom of his heart that she’d change her heart if he met her. She might shout and scream, scratch and claw... but for him, she is always the little girl who cried for a bug. She is not as heartless as she wants others to believe, and he was convinced she’d be back. He went to the top floor to meet the chairman before his departure.