This chapter is a lot of character background; I hope it is worth it for the rest of the story.
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My parents were very young when they had me and my father died when I was in my teens from cancer. My mother, Rachel, still lived in my old hometown, which was really a suburb of the city I went to college and now lived and worked in. She raised my sister, Callie, who graduated high school this year and was going to the university Susan and I attended. No one besides my mother knew it, but I had taken the insurance money from my Dad's death and made it into a small fortune. My mother didn't have to work and my sister's school would be paid for. I had long since paid off the house and set up investments for both of them. They each had a little over a million dollars in these investment funds. I paid all the bills and it was my plan to give them the accounts when Callie graduated from college.
Callie was very smart and she graduated as valedictorian of her class and the spitting image of my mother. Mom was about 5'8" and blonde. She was slim and athletic and like my wife was an avid runner. She had medium breasts and beautiful blue eyes. She was only 44 as my Mom and Dad were just sixteen when they had me. She looked like she was in her early 30s and no one ever thought she could possibly be a mother of two adult children.
Callie could be her younger, twin, though she was really 22. She was bright and energetic and like my mother, could light up a room with her smiles. Callie was a swimmer and her body was sculpted like a Greek goddess. We were very close and when my father died, I was 15 and Callie was 9. She clung to me even more. She frequently came to me in the middle of the night and would sleep with me. She would cry and I would comfort her. Sometime in the night she would go back to her room. Abruptly, after a couple years, she quit coming to my room and blossomed into the sunny girl she is now.
I started a summer internship with Susan's father's company shortly after Susan and I started dating. After I received my Master's Degree; her father hired me in their accounting office. There is no doubt my connection with Susan got me the internship at the company, but I started as an entry level accountant. When her father, John, welcomed me to the company he told me the company has always hired family, but all family members must prove their worth to rise up in the company. He explained they went to great effort to be family run operation but that no one got ahead just because they were family. He pointed out several senior members of the company who had passed by family members due to their abilities.
John was 65 and he was looking to retire and spend the rest of his life sailing and living the good life. He was a good man and he deserved his retirement, I was rooting for him. His first wife, my wife's mother, passed away when Susan was very young from cancer. John had married Stephanie, 41, who was more than twenty years his junior but they had what I observed as a stable and loving relationship and she was every bit the family matriarch. Stephanie was short, but busty, and her dark hair went all the way to her curvy ass. Previous to marrying John, Stephanie had managed the family's stables, it had been John's wife who hired her, and they had been as close as sisters. Shortly before her death, she told Stephanie she was the one she wanted to take care of John after she was gone.
John and Stephanie had two daughters of their own, Melissa, 23, and Karen, 21, and they had both chosen fields outside of the company.
Melissa was like her mother, busty and beautiful and had long dark hair. She had been trained as an artist and she found a wonderful career as production designer for local films and television and just recently formed her own company. At John's discrete request, I had helped her set up some of the corporation paperwork for Susan's company. I also gave her the seed money to get her started from my personal investment portfolio. In exchange, I was the only officer on her board of directors. She was between film projects when we set up the corporation and John recently hired her to remodel the corporate offices and surrounding grounds. It was a lucrative contract she had just begun the work. The project would take a year and she was starting with the public access areas. Eventually she would do the executive offices. It was her wedding to Brent that we were all looking forward to. Brent was also an artist but he specialized in painting and had sold some of his work for big money in his own right. Brent was the type of person who sincerely didn't care about the company or the money that came with it. He loved painting and he was perfectly content with his life around their group of friends and the art world. He had been in favor of a small wedding with no fuss but John and Melissa convinced Brent to go along with more public wedding in the interest of the family. I don't know, but I suspect Brent's art sales were going to go up in both volume and value the more he had access to John's influential circle of friends.
Karen was a bit of the black sheep of the family. She had forged her own path by eschewing her father's wealth and influence. There was a bit of a scandal I never got the gist of when she was very young that led to her moving out at eighteen. She literally joined a circus and used her gymnastics background and eventually became the trapeze artist, obtaining some fame. About a year ago, she became an actress and was currently appearing in TV shows and smaller parts in movies. He red hair and incredible body from her trapeze days made her a compelling character and her career was on the rise. She was petite but so confident in her body and her physical attributes; she carried an intensity that always seemed to drive her. She could play light and giggly or strong and intense so she was very versatile.
John's brother, Mark, 55, was still a mid-level executive because he liked to party and sail more than he liked to work. He was a capable, but not very ambitious man so he rose only to the level of his competence. There had been rumors Mark's second, younger wife, Theresa, was close to leaving him due to his lack of ambition. I never saw that side of her as she seemed perfectly pleasant and I never saw her treat Mark rudely of even be anything more than a loving wife. She also seemed to be perfectly content to shop and spend Mark's money. Theresa had actually been a Rockette when she met Mark. Theresa was thin and athletic, and had incredibly long, sexy legs, befitting her status as a dancer. She had store bought breasts that fit her well and weren't too large. She was only 30 and she taught dancing at a local studio.
Mark's first wife Kara actually worked for the company and was a lawyer in charge of company compliance. I had worked with her off and on in my role as an accountant in regard to investments and found her incredibly competent and professional. She was 51 but could pass for a much younger woman. She had a little gray in her short brown hair as the only thing that gave away her age. She was tall and lithe. I didn't know much about her personal activities other than she liked the outdoors, camping and hiking.
Mark had two daughters, 20 year old Brittany and 18 year old Chanel, from his first wife, Kara, who had got tired of Mark's alleged wandering eye. They looked a lot like their mother and could have passed as twins. Both girls were a little spoiled but were growing up. Brittany was in her sophomore year at Yale and Chanel had just graduated from a prestigious girl's academy. They were sweet, beautiful girls but I didn't know them all that well, limited to family gatherings.
Several of the extended family members were in similar situations but there seemed to be no resentment if a younger family member surpassed an older one if the reason was competency. I am proud to say in a short period of time, I rose quickly.
It is probably important to say the family business is more than just a mom and pop operation. It started as a small manufacturing interest shortly after the founding of America and had grown to a multi-national company with interests in manufacturing, personal services and financial consulting. In the entire time it was a family-owned and operated business. They had resisted all efforts to take the company public and their family had filled the CEO position since its founding.
The problem John faced with the company was there was currently no qualified male family member willing or able to step up and succeed him. Mark was really too old and had proven to be a limited man when it came to ambition and ability.
The other obvious candidate was my brother-in-law, but he was literally a brain surgeon. Zack was more than smart enough and I was certain he could have made a great leader, he was charismatic and people were drawn to him. His wife, Janice, in addition to being beautiful, was also a doctor in the same surgical practice so I thought there was a possible scenario in which she would continue the practice while Zack stepped in as CEO. I figured the family tradition would then continue. My wife Susan was smart enough but laughed out loud when I asked her several weeks ago if she was interested in assuming her father's mantel. Both Melissa and Karen were certainly smart enough, but they had spent no time in the company so couldn't rise on their own merits. Mark hadn't worked at the company either, but at least he had run his own practice, which was a very lucrative business model in its own right, so it seemed too many, including me, he was the next logical successor.
There were actually two strong rumors going around about it. The first rumor was that the upcoming wedding of my wife's sister was a natural place to make any announcement and Zack would be named CEO, as I predicted. All previous announcements of this magnitude were always wrapped around big family events. This seemed like the most likely time. I know Zach and John had engaged in several dinners and meeting together recently, which also fed my theory.
The second rumor was that John was finally going to take the business public. The family would be wealthy for generations and since the old man was still all about "making it on their own" in the world, this would allow the family to spread their wings. The reason to believe this option was John had asked me to look into how the financials would work out. I had worked for nearly a month on this project as he had asked me to handle it personally and not share any of the data with anyone but him. The option to go public would have made the family rich for generations but when I briefed John with my research he seemed distant, practically disinterested. This is why I was convinced it would be Zack; I felt he had me do the research just for due diligence and nothing more. I felt he never intended to follow this research. I guess I should have been concerned about this option because it would likely mean I would be looking for a new position as whatever mega-corporation would likely want people of their own in key spots.
The reason I wasn't worried was I had risen to Director of Finances through hard work and reforming the company's finances in ways that had never been done before. I had innovated investments and we had diversified the company's cash and profits into other investments outside the Company. I felt these accomplishments and my credentials would lead me to many opportunities.
