The Almighty Dominance (by Sunshine) novel Chapter 701

Rael was mid-toast when the Reagent seal came through the doors.

The hall saw the gray livery before it saw the man. Four hundred people rose by inches — him, it's him, the chairman — and the orchestra scrambled for its fanfare.

Then the room registered, in one long deflating rustle, that what had entered was a lawyer.

Mr. Harrow walked to the foot of the stage without being invited. He opened his case on a table a waiter surrendered to him and spoke at the volume of a man who had learned that quiet reading forces a room to do its own listening.

"By instruction of the chairman of the Reagent Group, received this evening. Notice of termination." He lifted a single page. "The engagement for the launch campaign of the Reagent Group's forthcoming product line is hereby cancelled. Whole and entire. Effective upon this reading."

The silence was total. Even the enchanted constellations seemed to slow.

Marta reached the stage's edge in four steps. "Cancelled? On what grounds? We are partners. The announcement was this week. The whole city—"

"Grounds." Harrow consulted nothing. He had the sentence ready. "This engagement existed for one reason. Our chairman's regard for Miss Febyella Steinmeyer, its sole awardee, and his confidence in her direction of the work."

He let that sit for exactly one breath.

"The chairman asked her to run a two-hundred-million-dollar campaign like a professional. Her choice of the Rydell Advertising House as sole executor was, frankly, barely acceptable. There were older firms. Better ones. He tolerated it, because she chose it."

Harrow's eyes moved to the stage. "Then, this evening, before four hundred witnesses, your house removed Miss Steinmeyer and installed someone else.”

“Our chairman does not accept the arrangement. He considers it a slap across the Reagent Group's face. We gave Febyella Steinmeyer this award because we believed in her. Your family played games with her name instead. The contract is cancelled."

The hall's whisper was no longer weather. It was surf.

Rael had gone the color of the tablecloths. But Rael had spent hours with that contract, and somewhere behind the panic an abacus was still working. Feby watched from the side doors — in Alex's coat, unnoticed by nearly everyone — as her uncle found his rescue and lunged for it in front of the entire city.

"The penalty!" He came down the steps too fast, dignity abandoned. "The cancellation clause. I read it. Clause eleven. Any party cancelling the engagement pays twenty-five percent of the contract's full value."

He rounded on the hall, ruin turning to triumph in real time.

"Fifty million dollars. The Reagent Group cancels, the Reagent Group pays. To this house. Tonight of all nights, before all of you as witnesses—"

"Yes," said Mr. Harrow.

Rael stopped.

"The clause is exactly as you describe. Our chairman drafted it personally, and he has instructed me to say the Reagent Group honors its contracts to the letter. The full penalty of fifty million dollars will be paid without dispute or delay." Harrow drew out a second page, unhurried. "To the contracted party."

"The Rydell Advertising House—" Rael began.

"Is not, and has never been, party to this contract." Harrow held the page up. No one past the third table could possibly read it. The entire hall leaned in anyway.

"The award was made to Febyella Steinmeyer. In her own name and person. Sole awardee. Non-transferable. The designation of any firm was a courtesy of hers, revocable at her sole discretion. There is no house on this paper, sir. There is a person."

He turned and found Feby by the side doors as though he had known where she was all along, and inclined his head a precise degree.

"Miss Steinmeyer. You hold a hundred-million-dollar development fund from the Reagent Group. Return it in good faith, and the fifty-million-dollar penalty will be paid to you the same day."

Four hundred faces swung from the lawyer to the girl in the borrowed coat, and the mathematics of the evening finished itself in the open air, at speed, aloud.

The Rydells had deposed the girl in front of the whole city. The award had answered only to the girl.

The house they had just crowned Rael chairman of held nothing — no campaign, no penalty, no Reagent. A corpse re-inherited, twice in one week.

And fifty million dollars had just walked out of the family's grasp and into the pocket of the granddaughter they had spent the evening burying. Placed there deliberately. By a chairman nobody had ever seen, who had written her name into the paper as though he had known this exact night was coming.

"One further item." Harrow repacked his case with the serenity of a man whose evening had gone precisely to schedule. "The launch campaign will be re-awarded tomorrow to another licensed firm. Any house may submit a proposal."

Around the hall, quiet smiles broke out among people who had spent years working inside advertising houses. Tomorrow, the biggest campaign in the union was open season.

Harrow bowed to no one in particular and left the way he had come.

The hall detonated softly. Not into noise — into motion. Four hundred guests turning to each other at once, and above the murmur, audible because the family had forgotten the stage-tile was still live, Marta Rydell's voice, stripped of every register she owned:

"Rael. Get down from there."

***

They tried, of course. In front of everyone, because there was nowhere private left to try.

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