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March 11 (San Francisco)
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The never ending board meeting, now his personal Alcatraz, continued. Jaw set in an ominous lockdown, Kyle kept his eyes on those who had colluded in this bloodless coup. Sylvia, Roger, Robin, and John. The latter was trying to meet Kyle’s eyes, as if to communicate his apology, but Kyle turned his poker face away.
John was swayed, but he didn’t start it.
Roger. Robin. Sylvia. Chad. Cirrus. No... Just Sylvia.
Kyle was sure Chad had had a part to play. But he was her sidekick, not the mastermind. It was obvious Sylvia had been on his tail and now he knew she was the one behind the viral video when all along he had thought it was Denise. Sylvia sat across from Kyle, smirking, the smugness on her face as sharp as the blond edges of her short hair.
He recalled the last thing she had said to Evan and Kyle when she had left: Treating your loyal partners like traitors. You’ll regret this. They had dismissed it as an idle threat, but it was a threat now realized.
In a moment of clarity, Kyle knew why Sylvia was his avenging Amazonian. True, he had ousted her from his company for stealing proprietary information for Chad and Cirrus. But...he knew deep down inside that this catastrophe had nothing to do with BirdsEye; no...it went back...years back...and it was an intensely personal matter.
Fuck. She’s been planning this for six years.
How did I not see?
In a way, she was justified...for he may have done the exact same thing if he had been in her position and someone had wronged him the way he had her. Destroyed their personal and professional life.
Kyle was silent as Sylvia’s hell hounds on the board, the fucking traitors, read her list of complaints. There had been a covert, independent investigation of her “unlawful” termination and it had concluded that Kyle had committed acts of intimidation and threat, and that he had verbally bullied Sylvia out of a job.
And so, it was the board’s conclusion that she come back. This, they said, had nothing to do with the video—that was just a poor coincidence. For Kyle’s two strikes—the unlawful firing of Sylvia, and the video—he was to take a well-publicized leave of absence from BirdsEye and be replaced with a new CEO.
A temporary situation, John kept saying.
Staring out the window, Kyle showed no sign he was listening to Roger’s grating voice, going on and on. “To ensure the media cannot attach any negative connotations to any BirdsEye brands, our new CEO needs to have a squeaky-clean public image. This interim will give Kyle the time to build his people skills.” Roger looked warmly at Sylvia and frowned at Kyle. “Are you with us?”
Kyle wasn’t. He was imagining a bocce ball bouncing on the gray birch wood conference room floor and into his hand. He would lift, aim, and strike the ball at the glass walls, spinning it on a trajectory that would smash the entire room as they ducked for cover in a rain of spiked glass...
Think quick. Think quick.
It was hard to think through the blind rage that prevented him from articulating his objections. Second by second, he pushed through the rage, to examine the data, the pattern forming here. At last, Kyle shot up in his chair. The glass walls of his company, his conference room readjusted, and the board members heard his authority crack like an invisible whiplash across the room.
“No,” he said deliberately, accusing eyes resting on Roger and Robin. “We need a CEO we can trust—”
“Kyle,” Sylvia interrupted. “I get you are a lone wolf entrepreneur, but it would help if you began trusting the closest people in your camp. I am—”
“Let me finish,” he said. “I will not stand for the efforts of some defectors to take control of BirdsEye to the detriment of the company I started.”
“Yes,” Evan added. “We lost proprietary information thanks to Sylvia’s alliance with Chad and Cirrus. Kyle’s only fault is that he hates workplaces politics. We know people bring their emotions, desires, ambitions, and insecurities into their professional lives. But we take action when politics turn into deliberate sabotage.” Pausing for dramatic effect, he gave Sylvia a death stare. “Every choice Kyle makes as CEO is a tortured deliberation, as each affects every employee at BirdsEye. He is always upfront, not underhanded.”
“I understand, Evan,” John said, wheezing as he talked, looking tired of this long meeting. “But no one can live in a vacuum, no matter how charismatic a company founder. The decision to get a temporary CEO may not sound fair now, but it will when this has all blown over. The media has a short attention span and a new Silicon Valley scandal will take this video’s place.”
“I agree,” Kyle said and felt the ripple of shock go through his allies and of course, Evan kicked him under the table. “I will go. I will stay in England for three months and work on our international projects. But I will not allow someone who hung BirdsEye out to dry to become CEO. For that position, I recommend a man—”
“Chauvinist,” interrupted Robin, “of course it’s a man.”
“A man,” Kyle continued, not missing a beat, “who has been with BirdsEye when we were a dream and a few circuits in my garage. A man who has run BirdsEye from the minuscule prototype details to the biggest manufacturers disaster from day one.”
“And who is this Superman?” Robin asked.
“Evan.”
Shocked, Evan kicked him under the table so hard, Kyle worried his talus bone had cracked.
“That’s absurd,” Sylvia cried out. “How can your executive assistant be the CEO?”
You overplayed your hand.
“Only if he’s our new CEO, will I step down. Should you select a person who has been a defector to BirdsEye, then our next meeting will take place at the San Francisco Superior Courthouse, ladies and gentlemen.”
There was pin drop silence after that. A snort of laughter from John made all eyes swing to him. “A worthy compromise. Fine by me. I doubt anyone will vote against the motion of Evan becoming the CEO. I say yes!”
Robin, Roger and Sylvia looked like they had swallowed rotten eggs. Evan was skeptical and appeared ready to revolt against this idea. He opened his mouth to speak but it was Kyle’s turn to kick him on the shin.
The motion to make Evan CEO passed swiftly: 3 to 10. The knots in his shoulders untied as Kyle slumped in his chair. They all knew he always held 51% shares of BirdsEye, but ever since Chicago, John had taken 10% of the shares. Now at 41%, Kyle was no longer the majority shareholder. If all of them united, they could vote him out. But his trump card was Evan, who owned 10% of the shares and when joined with Kyle, the brothers would always be ahead at 51%.
The board concluded that they’d put out an official media release saying Kyle Paxton had suffered a breakdown after working too much on BirdsEye and was taking a hiatus to heal. Kyle and Evan had won one hand, but Robin and Roger came back with a proposal that Kyle also take work-mandated therapy to counter the anger he displayed in the viral video.
It was a clusterfuck of lies and they all knew it.
WTF? I need therapy twice a week?
It took every ounce of his mental strength not to go WWE on the dogs and smash every inch of the glass in the conference fish bowl. And then he began to plan. How he liked to plan. His revenge would be a dish served frozen. And it wouldn’t be retaliation, it would be utter destruction. It would be an atomic bomb that even the cockroaches in this room would not survive...
Then...he recalled how he had wronged Sylvia in the first place and shredded the plan into bits.
