Billionaire With a Twist 3(4)

This was how Chuck wanted the company represented to the world?

Hunter had to be tearing out his hair right now.

Hunter—

I grabbed for my cell phone and punched in his number. I had to hear his voice, had to know he was okay, had to let him know that this wasn’t me, I had never wanted this—

“This is Hunter Knox.”

“Hunter, I—” I began.

“Leave a message after the beep, and don’t forget your number if it’s blocked.”

Frustrated tears filled my eyes. Damn. Voicemail again, and I’d let it fool me. I’d heard it over and over these past few weeks until I had every cadence of every syllable memorized, and I still let it fool me because I was so desperate for his forgiveness.

“I—Hunter, I, I just saw the ad, and—” When I’d picked up the phone, I’d been so certain I’d know what to say, that the words would just come. But now that the moment was there, they were all so out of reach. Just like Hunter. “I’m so sorry.”

That was all I had left. That was all I could say.

“God, Hunter, I am so, so sorry.”





THREE


I looked away from my computer screen and rubbed my bloodshot eyes, massaged my forehead and tense, aching jaw. I sighed.

Damn, damn, and double damn.

Hunter still hadn’t called me back, but the burst of energy I’d gotten from my revulsion at the ad had still managed to propel me across my apartment to do some research. And that research was not encouraging.

The new campaign was bombing harder than a fighter plane over enemy territory. Sales of Knox bourbon were way down, share prices were plummeting even faster, and Twitter feeds were blowing up with hashtags denouncing every person involved in its production as sexist scum. I stalked the social media profiles of the Douchebros and pretty soon had to look away; they were still virulently defending the product, not even realizing that they were fanning the flames of the online outrage with their outdated misogynistic rhetoric. It had a desperate note to it, though; even they realized that something was wrong. Somewhere way back in those reptilian brains, they had to know that they had f*cked up, and f*cked up bad.

There was even talk of a boycott.

I clicked on one of the links in the tweets, which took me to an online Forbes article. The outlook was grim, according to that reporter: she claimed that with the share price tumbling, it might be the end of the line for the heritage company. Bigger drinks companies were circling like vultures over a dying rhinoceros, and no executives could be reached for comment.

I thought about the pride in Hunter’s face as he talked about family heritage, about the meaning in the careful, artistic production of each bottle of bourbon, about carrying on tradition.

What the hell was I doing here in this depressing apartment, this ode to inertia and giving up?

I had to snap out of it.

There was no way I was letting Knox Liquors go down like this. Hunter was probably going crazy right this minute trying to hold off a takeover, and he couldn’t accomplish it alone. He needed my help.

And I needed to make things right.

I shot off a quick e-mail to work cashing in every single vacation day I had, and grabbed my keys. I was going to save Hunter.

Whether he wanted me to or not.

#

My car screeched into the driveway of the manor house, and I got out. I shut the door softly, my heart hammering its way up to my throat. I was half-expecting Hunter to come storming out of the manor and demand that I explain my presence, and if that happened I had no idea what I would say. My self-confidence in the righteousness of my mission had started to erode after fifteen minutes of driving, though not enough to turn back around.

Not enough to abandon Hunter.

It could never have been enough to abandon Hunter.

The grounds were strangely quiet, the still air of the evening broken only by the occasional call of a bird from the woods. The far-away burble of the stream, a breeze rustling the grass. I’d expected to find Hunter in full war mode against the Douchebros, barking orders into a cell phone, dictating lists to Martha, striding back and forth across the grounds as the workers still loyal to him scurried to do his bidding.

But it was all so quiet it could have been abandoned centuries ago.

I rang the doorbell to the manor house three times, trepidation growing in my stomach. When no one answered, I put my hand on the doorknob, expecting to find it locked.

It turned under my touch.

“Hunter?” I called as I entered. “Martha? Anybody?”

My voice echoed back to me, the only thing in the house besides the spiders skittering across the cobwebs above.

“Okay, this is about three times more creepy than I expected,” I muttered, closing the door behind me.

It creaked like a ghost’s moan, because of course it did.

I wandered through the house, occasionally calling out but finding that my voice grew softer and softer as I did so, as if I were afraid of someone actually answering back. I knew I was being silly, but I couldn’t help myself: the Gothic architecture looked so much more imposing in the half-light—even flipping on the switches didn’t help, since at least half the bulbs seemed to have been burnt out and never replaced. There was a fine film of dust over everything. What had happened to all the servants? Had Hunter reassigned them all to help save the company?