Clean up

Joyce Knightly January 6th,20XX

I held my left hand to my mouth to prevent screaming with excitement. The blurry pictures of two figures in the air burned themselves into my retina as I tried to find the picture in clearer detail.

Before this, I had heard Aaron’s, voicemail and had finished the conversation as calmly as I possibly could. Unlike the first time he had called me, he didn’t sound scared at all as he detailed what had happened and I could hear the excitement in his voice, despite how hard he tried to suppress it.

I hadn’t heard him that excited for about three years now. Ever since the accident a few years ago that had taken his career from him, he’d been… subdued. He was still the same person that I loved and cherished but the boundless energy he’d had in the past was tempered down into a general enthusiasm.

Because he’d sounded so happy I couldn’t even reproach him for going sky diving alone for his first time and instead focused on damage control.

Although there were only a few blurry pictures by bystanders that had managed to get their phones out, it was only a matter of time before the story spread and people got curious about the ‘hero’.

A shiver ran down my spine as I referred to Aaron as a hero and my smile grew uglier with pleasure. He was a hero now, and I hadn’t even had to do anything.

I wasn’t surprised that he had acted to save the kid. It wouldn’t be the first time something like this had happened, case in point being the incident that had busted up his leg those years ago. An uncontrollable rage filled me as I remembered the family of the kid that had refused to even acknowledge that Aaron had saved him.

They had run away quickly enough once they had realized who I was but that kid…

I exhaled and hoped he was okay.

I’d tried to track him down before but his family had apparently sent him down south to a military school shortly after the incident. Even though I'd tried to use my contacts in the south to look into things, I hadn't been able to find anything.

The noise pollution around me had made it somewhat difficult to hear him speak but I couldn’t leave even for a phone call.

“Annora!”

My secretary was pulled over from a conversation with one of the construction workers and ran over to me quickly.

“Yes, Ms. Knightly!”

I forwarded the links to her and a list of names I’d managed to pull out of them.

“I need you to look at any news of this on Squire and any other competing sites. If it's on Squire then pull the posts down, if it's on any other sites then try your best to get them taken down as well. I want no coverage on this.”

Right now, it was only a few small-town articles and a few posts online but if it somehow got noticed by a big account, the spread would become too difficult to control. It was best to nip things like this in the bud.

I generally didn’t like curating user content like this, but I wouldn’t pretend to be above it. Information, money, and power all went hand in hand and since I had so much information in my hands, it would be ridiculous to not use it when necessary. It wasn’t like I sold any user information but things like promoting certain posts, getting rid of others were fair game.

Annora took a quick look at the list in front of me and then ran off to hand the task to someone else. She wasn’t a super person and had a lot of pre-existing tasks on her plate that she struggled to do well, but she was a goddess at delegation and had a knack for finding the perfect people to do things.

“Ms. Knightly!!”

I was called again, this time by a soft-looking young woman in a suit that looked a size too big on her.

Her small eyes were made even smaller by the giant bags under her eyes and she had a permanent frown etched onto her lips. If not for having worked with her before I would have gotten a poor impression.

“Mave! What is it?”

She waved a folder in the air and walked over to me enthusiastically, contrasting the near-dead pallor and expression.

“These were the contracts that you wanted. I put in anything I could think of to guarantee their silence and restrict their rights to sue but I’d advise asking them to bring a lawyer with them so this can be officially notarized.”

Although she sounded enthusiastic, she was lacking the freshness she usually exuded. Since she naturally tended to look ill, Mave had made it a habit to sound more energetic than she was.

“Thanks… but am I working you too hard? Why do you look so tired?”

She shook her hair out of the awkward style it had fallen into as she’d run over and her bright smile faltered even more.

“It’s fine. I passed on a case and it turned out bigger than I’d originally thought it would be… If only I’d read it a bit closer. Now that guy got it, and even managed to become an exclusive lawyer.”

She sent me a somewhat baleful look as she subtly complained about me refusing to permanently contract her to my company. It wasn’t like I disliked her but she had a tendency to share industry secrets as a way to offset her dull countenance. She never revealed anything illegally, but it was the casual information she offered up readily that were the most valuable for those that heard it, and the riskiest for others.

Until she managed to outgrow that habit, I was fine with working with her as a contract lawyer. Still, from how distressed she was, it must have been a huge case. I began to prod her a bit for information. Despite me criticizing her for her habit of gossiping, she was an invaluable source of information.

“Was the case that big to get you so down? And whose That guy?”

She measured my face as she spoke and tried to look carefree as she gave me information. Despite her loose lips she wasn’t an idiot and aside from the occasional dig at me, didn’t expect to become an exclusive lawyer. We had a deal where she would give me news like this, and I would give her whatever deals I didn’t want to burden my company or family lawyers with. It wasn’t quite a friendship, but it was a good partnership.

“You probably know about Volui, the entertainment company.”

I nodded to show I did and immediately relaxed. At least it wasn’t anything about my, or my father’s company. While I wasn’t especially close to him, I didn’t want anything bad to happen to him either. Any bad thing that happened to Kingdom would inevitably impact Squire as well.

“Well, as it turns out a bunch of the board directors plotted against the company owner’s kid for his mother’s shares. You remember how weird it was that Belpheobe Hall passed without an heir or a will?”

I was only seven years old at the time, so I didn’t know much of it, but I remembered my parents having a conversation when I was older and complaining about a deal that had fallen through because of it. It had struck me as cold that they were more upset about the loss of potential financial gain than they had been about the death of someone they both knew, but I hadn’t been old enough to put that feeling into words.

“Well, we accidentally found that she had left a will, but more importantly than that, she had a child! And more so she left ALL her possessions to him! That guy William Truman offered me the case as if it was a minor inheritance spat and didn’t mention that the properties at stake were freaking Volui! The kid is still in high school too from what I heard. No wonder he got a solid job so quickly, he’s probably the only support the kid has. Oh, the regret has kept me up ever since.”

She was a very expressive speaker so I could hear the regret in her voice as she related her struggles to me. I gave her my condolences and then sent her off as casually as I could while I digested the news.

So Volui had a new young prince to take over the company.

They weren’t that big of a company, but their fall would leave an uncomfortable hole in the industry. Mave hadn’t mentioned the heir’s age but considering she hadn’t mentioned anything about a legal guardian and that they were still in high school, they must have been around seventeen to nineteen. Cherry, my younger sister was currently eighteen and the thought of putting her into a company in a leading role was horrifying. She wasn’t stupid but she was reckless and hadn’t been educated like I had to take over anything.

I made a note on my phone to get into contact with Volui and try to support them as much as possible.

This wasn’t just be being a good Samaritan, although I did feel sympathy for the kid, I was more concerned about getting in the company’s goodwill. They were an entertainment company with relatively popular actors and celebrities, If I could get them to have those celebrities use Squire more often, then my site would benefit from it and in turn, so would my company.

Haaa.

I exhaled and got back to supervising the building I was currently constructing.

With my discovery of the heroes around me I had decided to cash in on the fund my grandfather had left me to revamp the ‘hero headquarters,’ he had created back then.

The foundation was solid and well kept, but the technology was old and the building itself was outdated.

I didn’t know all the powers of the people I wanted to scout but there were a few generic things I could install in the building. The rest would be handled by the scientists I was willing to lure-bring into the project.

There wasn’t a lot I directly thanked my parents for giving me but one of them was how to guarantee silence from people.

I clenched the papers Mave had given me and got to work calling the people I’d scouted before. The scientists I’d located were incredible in their respective fields but most importantly they were financially struggling and were willing to sign their rights away to pursue their passions.

Yes, it could be called opportunism or even fraud, but as long as everyone was happy it would be all good right?

I shook off the frail callings of what might have been called a conscious and got to work. The sooner I could finish this facility the faster I could help Aaron and the others I’d found.