Gerald Mulroney and Robert Van Lowden are partners of one of the biggest e-commerce companies in the States. Their sudden death in a helicopter accident leaves their empire in disorder. When the opening of the will happens, all their children find o...
(For those of you who read it before, I change it...a little. I like more this angle of the story :). Hope you like it)
New York, Billionaire's Row, 16th of January 2025
I sighed looking at the Annual Financial Report of Dot Com for the hundredth time this evening. Three years. Three years had passed since my dad and Gerald died. Three years with a stale investigation on their deaths, and three years of having Rupert McCarthy as Chairman of the Board and Eric Fowler as CEO. What had they accomplished these last three years? Nothing. The company's growth is stale, combining the last three years together, Dot Com grew only 0.5%. Up until my dad's and Gerald's deaths it was growing 5 percentage points...each year. McCarthy was a great investor but hell he didn't know how to run a company. He was slowly killing Dot Com with idiotic stale strategies and what annoys me the most is that I can't do anything about it. I couldn't cast my vote for two more years. With luck, by the time I can vote the company isn't in complete ashes.
Taking a deep breath, I briefly take my eyes off my computer and hundreds of papers that are laid on my desk and look out the window of the office I have adjacent to my bedroom. It's snowing. It hadn't snowed during Christmas and New Year's. Tomorrow half of the city will complain that it was too cold outside and the streets were slippery and the other half will enjoy the snow. Winter. It's my favorite season and so was my dad's. A part of me grew up in Switzerland, enjoying the Alps and going skiing after classes. I hadn't skied since he died and I couldn't enjoy the snow as much as I did. Furthermore, I didn't want those memories creeping back into my brain.
Better get back to that Report. Tomorrow, as it always has been, is the first Annual Board Members meeting at Dot Com. At every first meeting of the year, we usually discuss the earnings and strategy for the year ahead. This year is no different. Though, now, and with it being the third year I have concrete proof of what I've been saying since McCarthy was elected Chairman of the Board. The numbers showed slow sales and growth and that if we keep it for much longer our competitors are going to eat our market share.
As I'm scribbling some numbers and doing some calculations in my head, someone knocks on my door. It's almost midnight. Pam is already asleep in her bedroom adjacent to the kitchen and for the last three years, unfortunately, I hadn't been living alone which meant that behind that door was the one and only, Eleanor Van Lowden, my wife. Good, gracious. Three years later, I'm still not used to it.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
It had indeed been three years with her here, living in my apartment, three years of seeing her at work and at home....three years of seeing Elle everywhere I look. Three years married to the most annoying woman on the planet. It didn't feel real even after all this time. It didn't even feel real that my dad and Gerald had decided when we were idiotic teenagers attending Harvard, that if anything were to happen to them that in order for us to get our inheritance we needed to get married and stay married for five years. What were they thinking? Back then even Harvard sent letters to both of them to try and calm the fights. I knew they wished well and above everything, they wanted our happiness...but what they had in mind was this? Forcing a marriage we did not ask? Ugh, better not divulge into it because my brain will come out empty as it always has whenever I think of it.
