Karen & Alexa Ch. 02

"When did this happen, Lauren?" Karen asked, just as Alexa came walking back into the room, fixing an earring into her right ear.

The woman thought for a moment: "Monday, earlier in the day. Force you out, buy you out, whatever it took. He wants to be in charge."

"Not exactly his decision, now, is it?" Karen said, regarding her guest evenly. "What does your husband have to say about this?"

"I told Kenneth what I'd heard, and he said to tell you immediately," Lauren replied. "I came to find you, the first chance I got."

"Did you hear any details of what he had planned?"

"No, I'm sorry," Lauren said apologetically. "I didn't want to get caught eavesdropping."

"Understandable," Karen reasoned. "Thank you for telling me; now I had better get ready for battle."

She gave her cousin's wife a hug, and then showed her out. Once she had shut the door, she walked back to the chesterfield, sighing and sitting down next to her sister.

"She's a terrible actress," Alexa said plainly. "I kinda wanted to throw rotting fruits and vegetables at her."

"My thoughts exactly," Karen agreed, leaning back on the plush furniture and looking at the ceiling. "I am not surprised that she let her husband goad her into trying that; she's always been a pushover. But everyone knows I've always had a soft spot for her."

"So who's the bad guy here?" Alexa asked. "Our dear cousin Ken, her husband?"

"Obviously he's one of them," mused the older sister. "Just because he's telling the truth doesn't mean I can trust him. If Ken told me the sky was blue, I'd believe him, but I'd put my hand over my wallet in my back pocket when I looked up."

"So if he's telling us the truth for all the wrong reasons, what should we be looking out for?"

"If we're fussing about Greg, then we wouldn't notice what he's up to, I guess," Karen concluded. "Rather transparent, especially since Lauren is such a lousy plant. I'm somewhat disappointed in him."

Alexa went silent, looking at the floor. "What if ... what if he knew we'd see though her, so that's why he sent a lousy plant? So we'd be thrown off from being thrown off by what Greg was doing?"

She pointed her fingers across herself in opposite directions, crossing her eyes and smirking. "Then, what we thought he was up to, he wasn't, because it was Greg, but what we thought Greg was up to was Jeff, except where it was Lauren, and ..."

"Now you're the one acting like a lunatic," Karen laughed, shoving her sister by the shoulder. "It doesn't matter; both Greg and Ken are going to be presented with fiscal crises and opportunities today, which should keep them distracted from the prize. And for their opportunities to work out, they'll need to support my stewardship of the whole shebang."

"That'll drive them nuts," Alexa snickered. "Ignoring your target in the name of profiteering."

"A ten percent increase in assets is nothing to ignore, and it'll definitely put them at war with one another," Karen said, standing and straightening out her pants. "Well, no sense in delaying, let's get to it."

"How did you get so good at devious business practices and economics?" Alexa asked as Karen helped her off the chesterfield with a hand. "You never even manage to buy the right cereal, and keep forgetting to cut out your coupons."

"Crash courses from our esteemed father my whole life," Karen said simply as she picked up her attaché case and walked toward the door, followed by her sister. "Little to no theory, all practice and straight observation. He probably did it in case the family needed to be reined in."

"No wonder you like having Mike here ..." Alexa muttered as she walked out the door.

***

Predictably, the meeting was a nerve-wracking one for the sisters, but they stuck to their plan, tracking events carefully as the event wore on. Karen had been subtly manipulating events that would affect various family members' stocks and holding for weeks now, in anticipation of this gathering, timing things as precisely as she could to influence the here and now. She wanted her kin's thoughts to be elsewhere, not always focused on her, as they should have been. Predictably, Ripley was nowhere to be seen.

A heated argument broke out between Greg and Ken, when it turned out that they were competing for the same stock in another company, one Karen had subtly managed to open for sale. Both men stood to make a lot of money if they won, and the other would lose. Karen didn't care which, since she would simply bolster the loser from her majority share funds in the company if necessary. She didn't want anyone going under, after all.

Ken had stormed out of the meeting, needing to take a call to stay in the bidding. One potential threat was out of the way for now, but how many more to go?

Alexa continued her imperious act, although Karen could tell it was wearing on her younger sister, and it pained her greatly. No matter how she tried to prepare Alexa for any of this, she couldn't be truly ready. She would have to simply rely on her improvisational skills and hope for the best. She would comfort her later.

Even over the rather loud discourse in the room, Ken could be heard yelling in the hall, clearly furious.

Karen skillfully deflected and answered questions about her stewardship of the majority shares, reminding her relatives this was not a publicly traded company, and that the shares had always been used more or less as a capital reserve, to shore up losses or buy new assets for the satellite companies, with approval of the CEO and the board. That had been the way things were as long as the Blackwell mercantile endeavour was extant, and it had worked perfectly well.

"What, then, aside from individual ambition, or outside greed, could possibly be the motivation for wanting to change that arrangement?" she asked coolly, giving certain people longer looks than others. No one could hold her gaze long, since those unreal tawny-amber eyes intimidated everyone. "And since I have only minor personal holdings in the company that I use as a nest egg, I have significantly less to gain than other family members who are wholly invested in the enterprises."

"Maybe that is a problem for some of us, Karen," Greg said rather icily from farther down the table. "Maybe some of us are convinced that we personally could be a lot wealthier if someone weren't sitting idly on the majority shares, doing nothing with them."

"Don't be a fool, Greg," Uncle Alistair said in annoyance. "The central funds make their own returns, and they are, as Karen mentioned, used to support areas where the family businesses are in need of help. They aren't one man's personal piggy bank, at the expense of everyone else. You're personally worth tens of millions, does your life only have meaning if it's hundreds?"

Greg glared at the old man. "Maybe the older generation just doesn't understand business any more and needs to move aside."

"You're older than I am, Greg, so it sounds like that's been done already," Karen interjected, chiming in before her uncle got truly angry. When he was pushed past his limit, Alistair was not a gracious man. "And I learned at the feet of my father, who none of you would have been stupid enough to contest, because if you had, he would have punished you by buying you out for tarnishing the family name."

Greg bristled, but said nothing. At that moment, Rodney went on the attack, as he had earlier in the meeting. It frustrated Karen that he was always the principal antagonist.

"Some of us are convinced that you are not the business magnate that Uncle Jonathon was, Karen," he said, his voice carrying that Blackwell arrogance she had always hated. "Hasn't anyone else noticed that our overall gains are down since he passed and she took over?"

"Companies the world over are posting losses, due to the market and international political turmoil, but we are still making gains," Karen pointed out. "If you'd had the funds to make your little play in StelCar earlier this year, you would have profited, surely, but it would have cost Greg significantly, and he wouldn't have known why."

Greg shot Rodney a look, which he ignored. Everyone else was staring at him, but he pressed on. "You make progress with your strengths, Karen. My businesses are strong. My line of tech and programming is the future! If other parts of our body are sick and failing, maybe it's time to cut them off ..."

There was dead silence around the table, and Karen let it hang. Rodney had suddenly presented himself as a callous adversary to everyone in the room, since he was willing to let them all go under, obviously, so long as he got ahead.

At that moment, Ken came storming back into the room, his face a twisted mask of fury. Alexa found herself somewhat taken aback by the sight of it. She understood frustration, perhaps, but the absolute rage Ken exuded was alien to her. Karen had explained his relative status in the family to her; he was not suddenly a pauper, just because Greg had beaten him to the punch.

Games, always the games. It left a bad taste in her mouth.

"What was your percentage loss just now, Ken?" Karen asked, looking at her cousin, not unsympathetically.

"Twenty-eight percent ..." he said tightly, trying to not look at Greg, who said just down the table, smirking. At least whatever alliance they had was fractured. Karen had made sure that this competition for prime stocks had come to a head during this set of meetings, rather than after. If they'd managed to force her out first, it wouldn't matter if they tore one another apart after, because the damage would be done.

Karen nodded. "Talk with central, we'll see what we can do to mitigate the effects of the loss. You have my support."

"Thanks, Karen," Ken mumbled, now looking at the table.

"Shoring up losses doesn't sound like good management strategies, Karen," Greg said smugly, pleased that he'd screwed over Ken and was now pointing out that her soft spot for underdogs was not good for the bottom line. Everyone there understood how important the bottom line was.

"Sometimes, Greg, 'life in the big city' isn't the most important equation," Karen replied levelly. "There's such a thing as looking after family, I might point out. Our first recorded endeavours go as far back as the Elizabethan era, and in that time, we've done everything we could to prevent family members from going under. Nobody blinked when we shored up your assets almost a decade ago, you may recall, because you invested in the American banks like a damn fool right before they crashed."

There were chuckles around the table and now it was Greg scowling and refusing to look up. He'd nearly lost everything. If it hadn't been for Jonathan's intervention (and several very stern private lectures), he would have nothing.

"Do I need to remind you that the entire purpose of keeping our stocks private, was so that the family was always taken care of, above any other considerations?" Karen continued. "Yes, profits are great, but we've always treated employees well, paid them above average for their jobs, and as a result, we haven't had a single, fully Blackwell-owned company go under since the sixties. Is it such a big crisis if none of us are billionaires, and some of us are only worth hundreds of millions?"

"That doesn't mean that you're still the right candidate for the stewardship, cousin," Rodney said, trying to get everyone back on track about attacking Karen. He didn't care if they removed her, or if she just quit in frustration; he just wanted her gone, so that he could prove he was worthy to take over. His companies were doing very well, and didn't need help from the family's vast reserves. "The purpose of this meeting was to meet our long-lost family member, and to discuss your suitability to the position."

"Let's hope that latter part goes better for you than your son's debut at the table," Karen replied, her tone decidedly factual. Aunt Florence snorted and then laughed behind her hand at the other end of the room.

"You were only confirmed by straw poll at the time Uncle Jonathon was going into his incapacity," Rodney pressed, his face reddening at the mention of his son's humiliation at Alexa's hand. "We have not had the formal vote required, and you know it!"

"I never said there wouldn't be one," Karen answered, shrugging her shoulders. "But certainly all the facts should be on the table before a vote is called. I'd hate for narrative to be the driving force behind a crucial matter like this."

Her words hung in the air again, and no one said anything for several seconds. Her challenge had been made.

***

"Just call me angel, of the morning, angel!

Just touch my cheek before you leave me, baby!

Just call me angel, of the morning, angel!

Then slowly turn away, from me ..."

The soulful, gutsy voice of Judy Lynn linted through the air of the small spa room, played on a radio somewhere nearby. A song of loss, or of never truly having what one yearned for, it was an interesting choice to have playing in a room dedicated to luxuriant serenity.

Karen and Alexa lay naked on the two padded tables, allowing the masseuses to work their tensions out, slowly and thoroughly. It was certainly helping, although the turmoil in their minds was harder to banish.

"God, those people are such pains in the ass," Alexa mumbled, with a hint of exasperation in her voice. "Have we always been this obstreperous?"

"Dad certainly would've said we were," Karen replied, sighing as the woman massaging her used her elbow to remove a muscle knot just under her right shoulder blade. "It nothing new, of course. Family members have been fighting over assets since we invested in Rupert's Land in the seventeenth century, according to the diaries at dad's house."

"Do they know we're planning to move in there, yet?" the blonde girl asked, trying not to sigh loudly as her woman pressed her thumbs into her calves, releasing a welcome flood of endorphins into her system.

"Nope, saving that little detail," Karen murmured, keenly missing her husband's powerful touch at this moment. True, these women were very skilled, but she craved his hands at moments like this, after meetings like the one they'd just gone through. Michael had always been there to relax her and look after her. "They no doubt think I want to turn it into some sort of shrine to the family, since that's what I'm always going on about."

Alexa smiled lazily: "You mean you aren't?"

"I grew up there, and most of my memories of that place are cold," answered the older sister. "It felt like a museum or a mausoleum to me a lot of the time when I was growing up. When we move in, it'll be getting a significant makeover, certainly. It'll still be the seat of power, but warmer."

"What ... what if we don't succeed and you get voted out as CEO and chairman?" the blonde asked.

"I'm due a significant severance package, and I'll still maintain my own shares," Karen said. "I'm surprised that they're kicking up this much of a fuss; they seem to have forgotten how large the severance package is. It's meant to be an assurance that the right person is in place for the job, and it isn't just about power plays."

"How much is it?" Alexa queried, curious.

"Twenty-five percent of the central funds, if I can prove I was removed without just cause."

Alexa said nothing for several seconds, letting that sink in. "That's ... Kar, that's crazy. You'd be the wealthiest Blackwell by far, and you'd get to just walk away."

"Family first, darling," Karen said lazily. "Everything Michael and I have now has nothing to do with the Blackwell funds. We've done it ourselves, and we're more than comfortable, wouldn't you say?"

"You're a lot more dedicated to family than I am," Alexa sighed, shaking her head slightly as she lay there. "I'd've punched them all by now, taken my severance money and gone home. Which, no doubt, means there's a life lesson here for me about being a better person, since my big sissy is doing the exact opposite of what I would have."

Karen smiled. "You've met the wolves, Alli, and you'll meet the rest at some point in the near future. Some of them even like us."

"Even Mike?"

"Mm-hmmm."

"Well, I guess that's good," Alexa mused, closing her eyes. "I'd hate for them to all to lose their minds when they find out about Alex and I ..."

***

2011, Paris ...

Miranda Gordon-Blackwell had just entered the apartment of the atelier she lived in, carrying her groceries, when she stopped dead in the small foyer and simply stared. Looking back at her from the living room, beaming one of her enchanting smiles, was her lovely daughter, Alexandra.

And ninety percent of her hair seemed to be missing.

Miranda didn't quite know what to say. The bobbed haircut on her daughter was certainly a stylish and fashionable one, but Alexandra had always had voluminous, long golden locks, ever since her hair had started growing out. Her new hairdo barely cleared her cheeks, framing her face so differently that she looked almost like an entirely different girl. If it hadn't been for the joyous sapphire eyes or infectious smile ...

"What ... have you done, girl?" the mother asked, faltering.

"D'you like it?" the young blonde asked, twirling prettily in her sundress, her hair rippling around her face.

"Give me just a moment to put down my parcels, and then we'll talk, oui?" Miranda suggested. Her daughter nodded and waited patiently while the older woman went to the kitchen, focusing past the pounding in her chest and the sting at the corners of her eyes.

For her part, Alexandra stood quietly, watching from the living room as her mother bustled into the kitchen and began putting down her bags full of groceries. She was being uncharacteristically quiet -- usually, she was asking her daughter about her day, subjects at school, her friends, and so forth. But there was no such discourse this time around.

Granted, she expected a little surprise, since this haircut was quite different, and she'd done it without telling anyone, but this was still unusual. She waited with her hands behind her back, swaying slightly back and forth and side-to-side. Tall for her age, athletic and decidedly busty, she looked older than her tender thirteen years, and her mother always reminded her to be careful when dealing with people.

Alexa thought this haircut made her look older still, and more importantly, more sophisticated and classy. That was what she wanted to be at this time, and the example set for her had been very clear. Sure, other girls might pull off sexy, but she was already doing that in spades and she knew it. Men and boys of all ages stared when she swished by them.

But elegant, regal, and classy ...

She watched as her mother was facing away from her in the tiny kitchen and leaned against the sink for a moment. Something in her posture bothered Alexa. Then she heard a tiny sniffle and something like her mother catching her breath. A hint of a shiver in her body.

Was mom crying? Trying not to?

Had Alexa screwed up?

Damn ...

Alexa watched as her mother stood tall and took a deep breath before turning around and smiling at her. It didn't look like she'd been crying, but her eyes were somewhat glassy as she came into the living room. She held out her hand for Alexa to take and walked her over to the settee. They settled down onto it, facing one another, and Miranda clasped her daughter's hands between hers.

"I can't believe how big you're getting," she said, smiling. "You're only thirteen, and you look like you're eighteen easily."