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He breathes my name as I stand, but Dan sounds defeated, and through the din of appeases from all the shareholders and stakeholders, I climb the stairs to the stage beside my father. I’m shaking, but I put on my best daughter-of-a-noble face, tilting my chin up stubbornly, and beginning to speak.
“Good evening, everyone. As my father said…”
11
Amsterdam, May 3, 2022
Dan
I wakeup the next day still under the same wave of shock from the shareholders’ meeting. Elise really went through with her speech, and I just sat there and watched, dumbfounded, even as the crowd around me began to whisper amongst themselves. It was a roaring success for Van den Bosch Industries, and Karl Townsend spent the rest of the night shaking hands and drinking glasses of champagne as he celebrated his newly won innocent reputation.
I’ve never wanted to knock someone out more in my life.
Elise looked green around the gills when she sat back down with me, and I could barely look at her. Something tells me when she got home that night, she was going to have trouble looking at herself, too.
I considered getting her drunk, but for the first time in my life, I was actually furious with the girl. Even if she made me feel lightheaded, even if she has the most perfect body I’ve ever seen, what she had just done to her brother was too much for me. Itwas beyond cruel and Machiavellian. I kept picturing Andries as the nervous, broody kid I had become best friends with, and what I let his sister do will never sit right with me.
Since I didn’t sleep, I’m up at dawn and watching the news. Seeing how drawn and exhausted I look, Tina once again refuses to bring me blooming tea and instead delivers a tray with a green smoothie, espresso, and a tall glass of kombucha with a metal straw.
“Tina, I’m going to pee myself if I drink all this,” I whine.
“Better that than dying where you sit, Mr. O’Brian. You look,” she coughs into her hand, and I know she wants to say like shit, but instead she says, “unwell.”
I throw a blanket over my shoulders and start working on my apparent liquid diet, scrolling through my phone absentmindedly. That is until a reel of Elise’s speech starts playing on social media.
“Oh, fuck,” I say out loud.
I can’t watch it, so I gulp the espresso down my throat and head to the shower, hoping the heat will help ease my aching head. As usual, though, I’m shampooing my hair when I hear my phone ring.
I answer it on speaker, already knowing who it is without even having to glance at the screen.
“Andries—”
“Have you seen the fucking news, Dan? Let me read you the tagline on the screen right now.” He clears his throat dramatically before saying, “”Breaking news! Andries Van den Bosch pays victim to go against Karl Townsend’. Sounds great for me, doesn’t it? Do you want to take a guess who talked to the press, Dan?”
“I don’t need to guess,” I groan.
“Get to Roxanne’s penthouse as soon as you can if you want to salvage our friendship at all, something tells me you know a lot more than you’re letting on.”
He hangs up and I step out of the shower, feeling worse than ever. He’s right, I know everything and decided to stand behind his sister rather than helping my best friend. I kept Elise’s plan to myself instead of telling him and all of that for a fucking gala dinner with her. Fuck. I screwed up. Big time. I dress quickly, yelling down the stairs, “Tina! Can you put that smoothie in a cup for me to take?”
The maid doesn’t sound thrilled about the idea of me going out, but with a resigned note to her voice, she says, “Of course, Mr. O’Brian.”
Andries is waiting for me when I get to the penthouse, looking like he’s aged ten years overnight. Without a word, we go to the couch, and Andries flips on the recording he had made of the news segment. To my shock, it’s Elise again, except this time she’s sitting primly in a chair across from the news anchor, giving an interview about her speech the night before. She looks lovely in a shade of light taupe, but it really doesn’t matter how she looks. Not with the words that are coming out of her mouth, anyway. She’s wearing that face that she always has when she’s talking to other professionals; an expression that reads calm, cool, and collected. She must be falling apart on the inside, though, if I know Elise at all.
Andries, on the other hand, is shattering in real time here in front of me, jumping up from his seat and pacing the floor, his hands clenched in fists. He looks pale, and the only positive I can find is that Roxanne isn’t home to see him like this.
“Do you have any idea what this feels like? Dad will go to any lengths to protect Karl, even if it means ruining my life and my engagement. And for Elise to play right into his hand like that,” he scoffs, head shaking in disappointment. “She knew exactly what she was doing, choosing Dad and her job over me. Tell her that I never want to see that bitch again.”
I wince, but there’s no arguing with him right now, not with how distressed he clearly is. I promised Elise I’d try and fix things, but from everything I’m seeing, that’s an impossible endeavor.
I feel like a pit is opening up beneath my feet as I watch Andries rant and rave, and I just want to fall into it and disappear. The girl I’ve been obsessing over, who has occupied my every thought, has done a terrible thing that she can’t take back now that the world knows. I let her get away with so much because of how much she means to me, and how much I want to please her. The guilt is almost overwhelming in its intensity, because maybe if I had tried just a little harder, I could have prevented all of this. But all I had been thinking of was getting Elise to the gala and having her on my arm all night, as if we were a real couple. I got to play pretend for a few hours, and now my best friend is suffering for it.
“You knew about it, didn’t you?” The question causes my heart to skip a beat and I even stutter as I face his inquisitive gaze. “Tell me the truth, Dan, did you know about it or not?”
Fuck, fuck, and fuck! “Vaguely,” I tell him, trying my best not to put myself into more trouble than I’m already in. “I knew she was giving a speech at the shareholders meeting, but I never thought it’d involve throwing you under the bus.”
We keep looking into each other’s eyes, Andries trying to decipher whether I’m lying or not until he just cuts eye contact and continues roaming around the living room. I let out a long sigh in relief, and give him some time to process everything.
