Married to a Scandal

~CHAPTER VIII~

Luca's POV

The Kensington Group board met on the forty-second floor, in a room designed, as far as Luca could tell, to make everyone in it feel slightly outnumbered by the portraits of dead Kensingtons lining the walls. These days, Julian ran the meetings. It was a recent development, one his father had framed as "grooming the next generation", and Luca had understood immediately what it actually was: a slow, deliberate audition, staged in front of the one audience whose opinion mattered.

"—which concludes the quarterly restructuring proposal," Julian said, closing his folder with a crispness Luca suspected he had practised in a mirror. "Questions, comments, concerns."

Luca raised a hand, mild as a schoolboy.

Julian's expression changed into a flicker of irritation but quickly changed into one of tolerant amusement. "Luca. Something to add?"

"I'd like to take on a subsidiary. I want to manage one directly."

The silence that followed had texture to it. Several board members exchanged glances. Julian's mouth curved into something that wanted to be a smile and mostly succeeded at looking like one.

"That's ambitious," Julian said, "for a married man who made the front page this week for a one a.m. hotel exit." A ripple of careful, uncomfortable laughter moved through the room, the kind people offer when they're not sure whose side is safer to be on. "Did your wife know you're planning to take on more responsibility? I'd imagine she has high expectations, given the circumstances."

Luca didn't look at him. He had learned a long time ago that the fastest way to disarm Julian was to simply choose not to notice him.

"Father," he said instead, turning fully toward the head of the table, where Robert Kensington sat with the flat, unreadable patience of a man who'd already guessed where this was going. "We had an arrangement before the wedding. A real stake, in exchange for the marriage going smoothly. I believe your exact word was fine."

Robert's jaw tightened, almost imperceptibly. "This isn't the time and place for that discussion."

"On the contrary. I think it's the perfect one." Luca kept his voice easy, unhurried. "You said it yourself, that a real stake would help the board believe you trusted me with something. So, I want it."

Around the table, the temperature of the room shifted. Board members who had spent a decade watching Luca get quietly managed and deflected were now watching something they hadn't seen before: Robert Kensington, cornered by his own words, in front of the one audience he cared most about impressing.

Julian's smile had gone thin. "Father, surely this can wait until-"

"It can't," Luca said pleasantly, still not looking at him. "You made the deal, Father. I'm simply here to collect on it."

For a long moment, Robert said nothing, and Luca let the silence sit exactly where he'd built it to sit—expensive, public, impossible to walk back from without looking like a man who broke his own word in front of the people whose respect he'd spent thirty years cultivating.

"Fine," Robert said finally, flat. "Which subsidiary did you have in mind?"

"Meridian Textiles."

That landed with the precise thud Luca had been hoping for. Someone actually laughed; it was quickly stifled, but still audible.

"Meridian has been bleeding money for three years," Whitfield said, from further down the table. "It's the single worst-performing asset in the portfolio."

"I'm aware."

"It requires restructuring and is on the verge of closing down."

"Also aware." Luca offered the same easy shrug he had perfected at fourteen, the one that made adults stop asking follow-up questions. "Which is precisely why it's perfect for me. Low visibility. Low expectations. If I fail, no one's surprised. If I somehow manage not to, I look like I've grown up. Either outcome works in my favour. I don’t want stress."

Julian's expression had settled into something considerably less composed than it had started the meeting with.

"It's yours," Robert said, with the air of a man granting a child's request for a goldfish, mostly because the alternative was admitting, in front of the board, that his word meant nothing at all. "Try not to run it into the ground faster than it's already running itself."

"I'll do my best."

The meeting moved on. Nobody asked why a man who had never expressed interest in a single balance sheet in his adult life suddenly wanted the one subsidiary least likely to reward that interest. Nobody asked, because the answer they'd already supplied themselves was so much easier to believe than the truth.

As the room emptied, Julian lingered by the door, watching him with an expression that had finally stopped bothering to look tolerant.

"That was a nice trick," Julian said quietly.

"It wasn't a trick. It was a deal. You should try honouring one sometime, and you would be amazed how far it gets you." Luca gathered his folder, unhurried, already three steps ahead of this conversation the way he was three steps ahead of most conversations in this building. "Terrifying, isn't it? My first real responsibility."

He didn't wait for a response. He rarely did.

Pavel was waiting at the curb when Luca came down, engine already running, and didn't say anything until they were three blocks clear of the building.

"Well?" he asked.

"I got it."

"Meridian." Pavel's eyes flicked to him in the mirror, unreadable as ever.

"Public promises are the only kind that actually stick in that family." Luca loosened his tie, watching the city slide past the window, already several moves further into the conversation than the one they were currently having.

"And Julian?"

"He’s furious, but there’s nothing he or his mother can do." Luca allowed himself a small, satisfied smile. "He'll spend the next month trying to figure out why I wanted the worst-performing asset in the portfolio instead of something that would actually make me look competent."

"Will he figure it out?"

"Eventually. But not soon enough to matter; Julian is not smart enough to watch me." Luca finally looked away from the window, and something in his expression sharpened into the version of himself Pavel had spent a decade being the only person allowed to see. "Meridian's vendor contracts run through three shell layers before they touch anything real. It is a thin oversight and thinner paperwork. Exactly the kind of mess nobody in that boardroom wants to look at closely enough to notice what's actually underneath it."

"Which is?"

"The controlling stake my father doesn't know is worth protecting yet." Luca leaned back, unhurried, watching the numbers already assembling themselves behind his eyes. "Give it a few months. I'll have Meridian looking better than what everyone expects of it. And somewhere underneath that, we'll own enough of it that nobody notices until it's too late to matter."

Pavel didn't smile; he rarely did. "Then we start tomorrow," he said.

"We started weeks ago," Luca said. "Today was just the part where my father agreed to pay for it."