The Billionaire Bargain #3(21)
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Portia said, “my case is plain.”
Behind her, the screen flickered to life, showing a picture of Grant’s grandfather. I could feel Grant’s pulse spike as his hold on my hand suddenly became a death grip.
“The founder of this company was a true original. With a firm grasp of economic theory, the marketplace, and the importance of hard work, he took raw materials and transformed them into something beautiful: Devlin Media Corp.”
The screen transitioned to the next slide, another grainy black and white picture, this time of the Devlin Media Corp headquarters when they had originally been constructed in the early 20th century—not as tall as they were today, but imposing and impressive with their engraved columns and Art Deco stained glass windows nonetheless.
“Perhaps it sounds strange to you that I should call a company beautiful,” Portia said. “After all, it is not a word one usually associates with strength. But consider the great white shark: a graceful, merciless, ruthless engine intent on seeking out its prize. It does precisely what it was engineered to do, with speed and efficiency, with no apology to those too slow or unworthy to avoid it or get out of its way. Is it not beautiful? Is there no poetry in it, no art?”
“What the hell kind of strategy is this?” I hissed in a strangled whisper to Grant. “Does she think this is a poetry open mic at a coffee shop?”
“She’s playing on their emotions,” he muttered back through gritted teeth. “Building them up to make them feel like apex predators, then serving them up a nice plump bit of prey they can rip apart until it bleeds to death.”
I cast my eyes over the audience, and I was disheartened to see that he was right. Many of them were sitting straighter as they took in her words, their eyes starting to shine. If she persuaded too many people, swayed too many of our supporters back over to her side…
“Yes, Devlin Media Corp was once a thing of great beauty,” Portia said. “But we failed in our responsibilities. We grew bloated and complacent.”
The picture behind her changed, showing the company headquarters, but through a dark filter that made the building look dirty, and shot at a bad angle, so that the towers were slightly obscured by the smoke from a fast food restaurant. I silently cursed the Photoshop gods.
“We began to think like a charity instead of a business,” she went on.
The picture changed to show an overweight family of six sitting on a couch, watching a television. I recognized the woman; she was one of the most friendly cafeteria workers we’d ever had. I’d missed her when she’d had to go on leave due to a broken leg, but thanks to her health insurance package, she’d been able to come back to work within a few months. How the hell had Portia gotten a picture of her family? That was slimy as hell.
“We began to throw money at spongers, wastrels, programs that were inessential to the core of our mission, of our purpose.”
Charts went up along the screen, blaring fire engine red lines showing steadily nose-diving profits. Until you looked at the scale, of course, and realized that Portia had manipulated the graph to give an inaccurate impression, but most of the audience was sitting too far away to see how she had labeled the x and y axes, and she rapidly clicked past it anyway, before even the people close to her could have given it much scrutiny.
Especially if their eyes were on her face, which she had now set in an expression of noble determination, her shoulders squared as if she were an Amazon warrior given one final mission for the good of all.
“But Devlin Media Corp can become a thing of beauty again,” Portia said, her voice ringing across the room like a call to battle. “We can once again honor the vision of our founder. We can once again compete in the global marketplace!”
“We never stopped,” I muttered.
“Portia doesn’t want competition,” Grant muttered back. “She just wants to crush everyone else and make a throne out of their skulls. I can’t believe I was so blind!”
I brought his hand to my lips and pressed a kiss to it. “You wanted to believe the best of her. That’s not a crime, or a weakness. That’s just you being a good man.”
“And thanks to my goodness, thousands of people may be about to lose their livelihoods,” Grant said tightly.
Onstage, Portia was in full stride now. “This isn’t a takeover from Pinker Inc. This is a chance to reclaim our company’s birthright! This is a chance to enter into this century, onto this world stage, as a power to be reckoned with!”
She raised her fist as if she were planning to smash all that stood in her way.
“Once we’ve shed the detritus accumulated over the years, our profit margins will soar. Our business will operate at peak efficiency, delivering results that no one can argue with. We will become faster, brighter, better. With the help of Pinker Inc., we will become a giant in this economy, and no one will be able to stop us!”
Thunderous applause greeted this pronouncement, and my stomach dropped down to my shoes. I tried to tune out Portia’s final words as she wrapped things up with more misleading statistics and an analysis that would have gotten thrown out of an Econ 101 course—but that I was still afraid the shareholders would listen to, motivated by her rhetoric and her promise of future profit.
Grant was looking nervous too, and I knew that I had to help him. I took his other hand and pulled him so that he was facing me, not the lying hell-beast onstage.