Chapter 252 Did He Catch On?!

Chapter 252 Did He Catch On?!
Chapter Two Hundred And Forty-Nine

Nathan was still glaring at Lucian, who was at the main table with the composed authority that he had resumed, with the same completeness he had brought to everything since his recovery.

The pompous bastard.

His gaze shifted to Aria, who was beside Lucian in the specific quiet that was her default in rooms she was observing before she acted in them.

Aria felt eyes on her at that moment, and she looked up Nathan, frowning.

Nathan’s lips quivered in a snarl before he looked away.

He looked at the chairman, who was at the head of the table with the particular satisfaction of a man who had arrived at a decision he was at peace with.

“I know what you’re planning,” he thought, “But you will never succeed.” 

The thought of everything that he’d prepared for the end of the day was enough to place him in a much lighter mood now. He did not care if the Chairman gave the company to Lucian or Aria at the end of the meeting.

Whatever happened, Lucian and Aria will be gone after that day.

He sat with a smug smile, and waited for the meeting to proceed.

He thought about the route from Graves Tower to the residential district and about a modified vehicle and a specific point on the road and about the evening that was waiting on the other side of this meeting like a door.

He was very calm.

He was calmer than he had been in weeks.

Soon, the speaker went on the podium and the meeting proceeded.

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The meeting moved through the items on its agenda with the methodical efficiency of a well-run corporate assembly.

Financial review. Operational updates. Subsidiary performance summaries. The particular institutional rhythm of a large organisation accounting to itself in formal session.

Nathan sat through all of it with the patience of a man who was not thinking about any of it.

He was thinking about the evening.

He was thinking about the route and the timing and the point on the road where the margin narrowed, and he was thinking about Monica at home waiting for his call, and he was thinking about what the landscape would look like tomorrow morning when the news arrived.

He managed his face through all of this with the professional competence of years.

Then the chairman spoke.

He spoke with the measured gravity of a man who had prepared what he was going to say and was delivering it with the intention of it being remembered, which was how significant announcements were made by people who understood the weight of what they were transferring.

He spoke about Lucian.

He spoke about the recovery, about the return, about the months of watching his son reclaim everything he had built before the accident and exceed it in ways that confirmed what the chairman had always believed about the man his son had become.

He spoke about the future.

He spoke about the shareholder meeting as the appropriate moment for a transition that had been building and that was now ready to be formalized, and he announced, with the specific calm of a man who had made his peace with stepping back from something he had spent his life building because he was handing it to someone he trusted, that Lucian Graves would assume the chairmanship of the Graves Empire effective from the conclusion of today’s meeting.

The board members responded with the particular quality of people who had been expecting this and were receiving its formal confirmation with the mixture of ceremony and practicality that institutional people brought to significant moments. 

There were words and there were handshakes and there was the administrative procedure of the formal transfer being executed through the correct channels.

Aria turned to Lucian, and he enveloped her in a warm hug, so warm that the others in the room felt like intruders.

“Congratulations,” She uttered, staring at him with full pride in her eyes.

Lucian answered by kissing her hands, “I never could have done this without you.”

Nathan stood, at that moment.

He crossed the room, and extended his hand to Lucian.

“Congratulations,” he said.

He said it with as much warmth as he could produce and with the specific weight of a man who had worked alongside someone for years and was marking the significance of the moment with appropriate sincerity.

He was very good at this.

He had always been very good at this.

Lucian took his hand, and shook it but then he did not release it.

He held Nathan’s hand in his grip for a moment longer than the handshake required.

He stared straight at Nathan, his blue-green eyes darkening with an intensity that the latter found hard to hold on to for an extended period.

“Nathan,” Lucian said.

His voice was pleasant and even and entirely without the quality of warmth that the room around them was full of.

“Are you happy for me?” he said.

It was a simple question.

It was delivered simply, in the tone of genuine inquiry, as though it were the most natural question to ask a person who had just shaken your hand in congratulation.

Nathan looked at him.

He felt, for the first time in the meeting, apprehensive.

“Of course,” Nathan said, flashing a bright smile. 

He kept his voice easy and warm. He kept his face at the appropriate setting. “You’ve earned this. It’s where you belong.”

Lucian looked at him.

The look lasted a moment longer than was comfortable.

“I think so too,” Lucian said.

He released Nathan’s hand.

Nathan stepped back, returning to his seat with his heart beating in his ears.

He sat down and adjusted the line of his jacket, looking round at the room with his taut, professional face.

He told himself that the exchange had been nothing, that Lucian’s question had been the question of a man checking the temperature of his relationships at a significant moment, that it meant nothing.

He told himself this.

But somehow, he was less certain of it than he had been of anything in recent memory.

He looked at his watch.

The meeting was not yet concluded.

The chairman was speaking again, a closing address, the kind of summary remarks that formal meetings required before they were formally ended.

Nathan looked at Lucian once more.

But this time, Lucian was not looking at the chairman.

He was looking at Nathan.

Across the room, from the position at the head of the table that was now formally his, Lucian stared at Nathan with the kind of attention that Nathan recognised, belatedly, as that of a man who had already arrived somewhere and was waiting for the room to catch up.

Nathan swallowed hard and looked away.

What the hell was going on?

Had that bastard aught on to something?

“Lucian Graves, what are you trying to do?”