Archive of Our Own

Stewy slept a deep, dreamless sleep in Kendall’s bed for what felt like a hundred hours before he burst back into consciousness like someone had thrown water on him.

Sunlight was pouring in through the cracks of window uncovered by curtains, and he could hear someone vacuuming down the hall. Stewy brought his watch to his face and found his vision was too blurry to read it. He picked up his phone from the bedside table: it was 8:50 A.M, and he had two missed calls from Josh.

“Fuck!” Stewy said, leaping out of bed and scrambling around to pick his clothes up off the floor. “Fuck, this is the same shit I got photographed in last night. Ken. Ken!”

Kendall stirred in his bed. “What,” he mumbled.

“I’m stealing some of your clothes, and then I have to get out of here,” Stewy called over his shoulder as he headed for the closet.

“Okay,” Kendall said, sounding like he was still half-asleep.

Stewy called Josh back as he ransacked Kendall’s closet, looking for something that would fit him. He was thicker in the chest and broader in the shoulders than Kendall, which was problematic. He was yanking open drawers, looking for where Kendall kept his t-shirts, when Josh picked up.

“Hey there,” Stewy said. “My bad, man, I overslept a little. Where do you want to meet? I can be anywhere in about twenty minutes.”

“No worries,” said Josh, sounding unbothered. “I was actually going to ask you if you wanted to meet around open, anyway. I’m running late myself — getting back into the city always takes longer than I think it will.”

Stewy exhaled in relief. “Yeah, great. Where are you headed right now?”

“My SoHo place.”

“Want to just meet there?”

“Sure, that works,” Josh said.

“Fantastic,” Stewy said. He found a scoop-necked black t-shirt and yanked it out of its drawer in triumph. “See you soon.”

He pulled on his boxers, last night’s pants and the t-shirt in a frenzy, then grabbed a random coat of Kendall’s and put it on. On his way out of the bedroom, he said to Kendall, “Why didn’t you set a fucking alarm, dude?”

“What?” Kendall demanded, squinting up at him. “Why didn’t you?”

“Because I didn’t mean to fall asleep, but you fucked me stupid.”

“That sounds like a you problem,” Kendall said, and rolled over.

Stewy glanced down and saw that his fly was open. As he did it up, he said, “I’ll be back whenever. I don’t even know what I’m going to say to Josh.” Kendall didn’t react to this, so Stewy added, “I might have to just suck his dick.”

As expected, this brought Kendall up out of his nest of sheets and into a sitting position like he was Frankenstein’s monster rising from the operating table. He rubbed his temples and said, “Just point out, uh… it’s not an all-cash deal, it’s mostly stock-for-stock. If Mattson buys us and then tanks us, he’s fucked.”

“Yeah, that’s what I had in mind,” Stewy said, slipping his bare feet into his loafers. “Josh didn’t buy into GoJo, he bought into Waystar. And Mattson isn’t going to let him unload his entire position a week after the deal goes through, whereas with us, he can talk exit strategy.”

“Right. Yeah.” Kendall lifted his head and looked over at him blearily. “Good luck.”

“Go back to sleep,” Stewy said. On his way out, he made a mental note to tighten up and not let prolonged exposure to the Roys melt his brain.

/

Josh’s sprawling SoHo loft was relatively empty; it looked like he used it mainly for storage. There were boxes scattered around, and a massive desk off to the right with a five-monitor computer setup on it. The most furniture was in the kitchen, which is where Josh led Stewy when he arrived. Stewy took a seat at the bar and watched Josh go about making some espresso.

“I assume you want coffee,” Josh said, “since you woke up about twenty minutes ago?”

Stewy laughed and masterfully avoided wincing at his own stupidity. “Yes, please.”

Josh nodded and snagged two little espresso cups from a rack on the kitchen counter. Stewy glanced out the window at Canal Street, which was already flooded with foot traffic. Morning light was pouring into the loft; Josh didn’t have a single curtain on any of the windows. It felt like being on the deck of a yacht at dawn, except instead of the ocean, they were surrounded by a loud and lively Manhattan street.

“You either want to be in the middle of the action or away from it entirely, huh?” Stewy said.

“This is really just a place to sleep and have meetings,” Josh said, pulling his espresso and handing it to him.

Stewy thanked him, then checked his watch. It was 9:28. “So… no need to avoid the subject. You want to get down to it?”

Josh had seen him look at his watch, and he looked down at his own. “Two minutes ‘til open,” he said, leaning his elbows on the counter and hooking his soulful gaze on Stewy’s face. He had a hound-dog affect that was similar to Kendall’s — but Kendall looked like he was for fetching slippers, and Josh looked like he was for hunting. “Are you rushing to get your pitch in the can before I can see what you’ve done to the stock?”

“You want to give it fifteen more minutes?” Stewy challenged. “We can talk about the weather while we wait. I just thought your time was a little more valuable than that.”

Josh smiled. “Fine, go ahead.”

Stewy drank the rest of his coffee and set the mug down. “No pitch,” he said. “I’m going to tell you what’s going on, and then you can tell me what you think.”

“Fantastic.”

“Alright. Basically, the GoJo acquisition went sideways,” Stewy said. “It went from acquisition, to merger, to Waystar gets eaten for lunch. Logan is tired, he’s old, he wants out, so he’s pissing the company away to the first person willing to take it off his hands. And the Roy kids and Sandy are of the mind that they’re not comfortable with Matsson at the helm. So they’re intending —“ He broke off. “I mean, I can’t divulge everything —“

“Is this a takeover attempt?” Josh interrupted. “Or just a no vote on the deal?”

Stewy held his breath for a moment. He was not at all in the mood for this. He was sex-sore and groggy, and this thighs were cramping as he sat on this stupid little stool. “You know, there are a lot of moving parts.”

“No, not good enough. I need a yes or no on whether or not this is a takeover.”

“I’m not prepared to divulge that.”

“Enough,” Josh said, his eyes lighting up with displeasure. “Cut the shit. I didn’t invite you down here to play around with me. Alright, fine, you don’t want to be implicated. I’m going to ask you one more time, and if you say nothing, I’ll take that as a yes, okay? Does that work?”

Stewy stared up at him, then nodded.

“Is this a takeover attempt?”

Stewy said nothing.

Josh sighed. “Great,” he said. “Look, I’m not going to leak, don’t worry. That’s the last thing I want to do. I’m into this company for billions, why would I want to gut it? Is this a certainty, do you have the numbers? You have to, with seven board seats between you.”

“I’m not here to get into the weeds on this,” Stewy said, keeping his voice soft as a disarming tactic. “I’m really here as a personal favor to you. This is a management issue, not a stake issue.”

“The sale of the company isn’t a shareholder issue?”

“Not when you don’t have a controlling interest, man.”

Josh sucked his teeth.

“The company hasn’t been sold, either,” Stewy said. “It’s all hypotheticals. Nothing has happened yet, which is why I’m here.”

“Yeah, I know why you’re here,” Josh said. “You think if you get me on board with whatever is going on, I can help calm the market. What I don’t understand is why you’re on board with whatever is going on.” He glanced down at his phone, then picked it up and shoved it in Stewy’s face.

On the screen was Waystar’s stock ticker. $WAYA was down 5% since yesterday’s close. Stewy’s stomach clenched like a fist, but he remained calm.

“It’s been on a nosedive,” he said. “You can’t even necessarily attribute that to last night’s meeting.”

“It’s down five percent in two minutes.”

“Because so many people are being advised to short us — which is a stupid position, frankly. This is basically a reverse pump and dump.”

“It’s a stupid position that’s probably paid off by several million in the last two minutes,” Josh said.

“You can’t say that for sure, man,” Stewy said. “See where it is in an hour and get back to me. There’s no reason to say this dip doesn’t stabilize before EOD.”

Josh set his phone back down and leaned forward. “I am looking you in the eye,” he said, “and I can tell you don’t believe what you’re saying.”

Stewy didn’t break eye contact, though he could feel his face warming up. That was fine — he had never visibly blushed once in his life. He didn’t think he was even capable. “Look,” he said, “this is a done deal. The Roy kids and the Furness voting bloc are going to vote to remove Logan, and they’re going to halt the GoJo deal. This is going to happen Tuesday next week. Today is Friday. What else do you really need to know?”

Josh scoffed in disbelief. “You’re seriously backing the Roys blowing up a deal that would improve your position? My position? Their position?”

“The GoJo deal is stock for stock,” Stewy said. “Matsson isn’t just going to hand us forty billion dollars and then take the farm off our hands. So, let’s say Matsson gets in, and he can’t successfully make the pivot to heading up such a diversified firm, and he loses control of the whole thing.” He leaned forward. “Hey, I remember what you told me when I came to see you, okay? You said you favored continuity. You were worried that me and Sandy were in it for the wrong reasons, and the market would sense that. You wanted Logan at the helm. Guess what? Logan’s out one way or the other.”

Josh tipped his head back, studying Stewy’s face. Stewy went in for the kill.

“If we take Waystar, it’s still in Roy hands,” he said. “But they’re young, they have a bold vision for the company, and once the dust has settled, they’ll still have several hundred years of institutional knowledge on their side. The old Waystar dinosaurs are not just going to vanish once Logan is gone. They’ll stick around, they’ll keep the kids in check. And I’ll be there, plus Sandy.”

“I hear Sandy is very unwell,” Josh said.

“Yeah, he’s got some old-man shit going on, I won’t lie to you,” Stewy said. “But he’s mentally sound, and his daughter is acting on his behalf.”

“And she backs this?”

“She backs this. And we’re almost half their board, Josh. The kids won’t push anything crazy through without our say-so. In fact…”

Stewy was struck by a beautiful jolt of inspiration — he could offer something far more compelling than ‘exit strategy’. He hesitated, then smiled at Josh, intentionally drawing out the tension.

“What?” Josh said. He still hadn’t made himself coffee yet. His empty cup sat on the counter, forgotten.

Stewy licked his lips, leaned in and said, “How would you like a board seat?”

Josh’s brow creased. “Excuse me?”

“Listen, Ken’s going to be chairman, and he likes you. And he has some trash to take out… guys who were on the board solely because they were loyal to his dad. You could slot right in.”

Josh hesitated. “It’s extra work for me.”

“Not really, you choose when to call in. I only vote when it’s important.”

“It’s just not really my area.”

“You think this is my area?” Stewy said. “I’m PE. This is a new world order. I’m offering you a hand up into the boat — you’d get an actual say about what happens with your money. How does that sound?”

“It’s tempting,” Josh admitted.

“Between your seat and me and Sandy’s bloc, we’d have a voting contingent of five seats,” Stewy said. That was the real reason he’d made this offer to Josh, though he was doing his best to hide the fact. “We could really swing our weight around.”

“And this is something you’re authorized to offer me?”

“Yes,” Stewy lied. It was fine. Kendall would ultimately be okay with this, even if it took some convincing.

He was doing something kind of evil to Josh, he knew — he was yoking him to Waystar in the same way he had been yoked to Waystar. It would have been ultimately better for Stewy if the takeover had gone to a vote, and he and Sandy had lost, then walked. The money part would have stung, but he would have been free and clear. But power was intoxicating, and it trumped even the promise of freedom. Now Stewy was balls deep in a dying firm, and he had no choice but to rope in guys like Josh in the hopes of using them like human life rafts.

“Okay,” Josh said. “That — I could see that potentially being a situation.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Can I think about that and get back to you?”

“Sure, dude, everything is hypothetical right now… like I said earlier.”

Josh extended his hand to Stewy, and Stewy shook it.

/

While Stewy was gone, Kendall dozed fitfully, having weird dreams that involved him being back at school and attending classes inside the core of the earth. At one point, his housekeeper Lena walked in and said, “Mr. Roy, can I open these curtains?” to which he grunted a yes. So then he was lying there in bed while bathed in sunlight, which always felt disgusting.

He heard Stewy before he saw him. The private elevator let out a chime as it reached the penthouse, and then he heard Stewy’s voice as he made fake-cheerful small talk with the staff. Stewy’s voice always went up half an octave when he talked to NRPI.

Stewy came into the bedroom a moment later. He took his shoes off and then came over and sat on the bed, tossing a paper takeout bag at Kendall.

“What is this?” Kendall said.

“Bagel,” Stewy said. He set a coffee down on the bedside table and pointed to it. “Coffee.”

“Thanks.”

“Uh-huh.”

“How did it go with Josh?”

Stewy flopped backwards onto the bed. “Great, actually. He’s with us. I think he can help us calm the price.”

“That’s great,” Kendall muttered, pulling the bagel out of the bag and then wrapping it in the napkins it came with. He didn’t really like to eat in bed — the crumb situation was off-putting — but he didn’t feel like getting up right now. “That’s, uh, surprising.”

“Yeah. One thing, though…”

Kendall’s stomach plummeted. “What did you do?”

“Ken,” Stewy said, putting a hand up. “Relax.”

“No, I don’t want to relax. And take my shirt off, you’re stretching it.”

Stewy laughed. “What are we, sisters?”

“Take it off.”

Stewy took the shirt off and sat up to fling it across his bedroom floor, then lay back down. Kendall set the bagel on a table and crawled across the bed to him, pinching his pierced nipple between his fingers. “What did you do?”

“Fuck you and your bipolar bullshit,” Stewy said, but he didn’t even sound mad. He was gazing up at Kendall with a very mild look on his face. “I did something I honestly think you’ll be totally cool with, once you’ve thought about it.”

“What?”

“I offered him a board seat.”

“What?”

“Not an extra one,” Stewy rushed to add, as Kendall stared at him in horror. “Look, are you going to keep Paul, Datu and Dewi around after you kill Logan? No, right? So give one of their seats to Josh.”

“Stew, we didn’t even talk about that. You and I did not fucking talk about that. The fuck?”

Stewy grabbed Kendall by the wrist and removed his fingers from his nipple, like Kendall was a grabby toddler. “I had to give him something.”

“No, you didn’t! You didn’t have to give him anything! He’s not management!”

“You wanted to run the risk of permanently alienating a major shareholder right before you take over? One who, like I said, can help us calm the market?”

Kendall bent over Stewy, burying his face in his chest, feeling helpless. “You fucker,” he moaned. Then he had a sickening realization. He turned his face to the side, staring down the length of Stewy’s body. “Are you trying to fucking take over my board? Are you trying to nerf my majority?”

“No, dude.”

“Are you absolutely sure?”

“Josh is a free agent,” Stewy said. “He’s neither in my pocket, nor yours. In that sense, he’s perfect.”

“But he’s not loyal to the family,” Kendall said.

“Ken, honestly, who gives a fuck? I mean, I’m sorry, but this ‘family business’ thing — how long is that realistically going to last? Your siblings haven’t even had kids of their own yet. You’re going to groom yours to take over?”

“No, God no.”

“Then… what?”

Kendall sat up and stared down at Stewy. Stewy stroked his forearm, smiling at him.

“Big chess moves involve sacrifices,” he said. “You’re gunning for the king, don’t forget.”

Kendall scoffed. “You are a greedy fucking weasel.”

“I’ve never claimed otherwise.”

Kendall had nothing to say in response to that. He looked down at Stewy’s nipples, his vision blurring. He had liked Stewy’s nipples ever since they were teenagers, when Stewy taking his shirt off was usually a signal that he was down for fooling around to commence. Kendall had also always liked to play with them. He sometimes wondered if the piercing was some weird silent monument to this, but he had never asked.

“Eat your bagel,” Stewy suggested.

“You’re an asshole,” Kendall said. “I can’t believe I swallowed your come yesterday.”

“You’ve blown multiple loads in me within the last twenty-four hours, so you can cope.”

“I didn’t do that and then go take over your fucking board.”

“I didn’t take over your board, drama queen.”

Kendall stewed in silence for a moment before he grabbed Stewy and started wrestling him. Stewy, who was a lover and not a fighter, only fought back a little and couldn’t stop giggling.

“Ken,” he said, slapping Kendall’s hands away as Kendall tried to bully him down into the covers. “Stop. What is your problem?”

“You are,” Kendall said, slapping him lightly in the balls.

Stewy slapped him in the balls back, and then they wordlessly agreed to a ceasefire. Kendall fell back onto the bed, breathing heavily, and Stewy rolled over into the crook of his arm.

“Don’t be cute with me,” Kendall muttered.

Stewy kissed him on his bicep.

Kendall reached up and petted his hair. “How’s the stock price?” he said, dreading the answer.

“Not great.”

“Would you say we’re taking a pounding?”

“I would say you’re on your way there.”

“On our way to Poundtown? Fantastic.”

Stewy sniffed, then kissed him again. “We’ll fix it. The street just wants clarity. Once we announce, we’re good. We just have to get through today and Monday. And a little piece of Tuesday.”

“Right,” Kendall said. The weekend in between, however, felt insurmountable. He knew as well as anyone how much could happen in two days. “And then maybe we can do some Enron shit to juice the price, and go to prison.”

“Yeah, because if there’s anywhere we’d thrive, it’s prison.”

Kendall’s heart clenched hard, and his breath left him.

Stewy must have noticed this, because he cuddled a little closer and said in Kendall’s ear, “Your dad isn’t going to send you to prison.”

“He could,” Kendall said. He was having trouble drawing a deep enough breath; his chest felt constricted like someone was sitting on it. “He’s not well. He’s gotten worse lately. He’s crazy, he’s more punitive.”

“Kendall,” Stewy said in a soft voice, “your dad has treated you like shit for as long as I’ve known you. He’s not worse these days, he’s just more honest.”

“Honesty could mean turning us in.”

“He wouldn’t do it. I don’t see it. It hurts him too much, it doesn’t serve his interests. I mean, Logan? In prison?“

“Are you kidding?” Kendall said. “He would thrive. He would run that fucking prison. He probably wouldn’t have to go, anyway — he’d make some kind of deal where he turned me in and got clemency.”

“I don’t think he would.”

“He was going to do that to me,” Kendall said. “Before my press conference, I agreed to fall on the sword. He would have let me.”

“Let you. Not forced you.”

“Yeah, but it’s worse now, the — the situation is worse. My dad is actively gunning for me. He can’t control me anymore, and he wants me out of the picture.”

Stewy nuzzled into Kendall’s neck and stroked his cheek.

“I don’t see a way out,” Kendall said, staring at the ceiling, watching shadows shift and flicker.

“Let’s talk this out,” Stewy said. “What does he have? Your keycard? No other physical evidence?”

“I guess. Yeah.”

“So — like I said, me and Roman and Shiv will cover for you. If he tries anything, we’ll give you an alibi. We’ll say he’s a crazy old man trying to frame you.”

“I can’t ask you guys to do that. I can’t let you commit more crimes for me.”

“Ken, no one is letting you go to prison, okay? No offense, but no way do you survive prison.”

Kendall’s stomach felt like a fist buried in gravel. There was something comforting, however, about the idea of going to prison and just dying there. Complete annihilation.

“Your dad isn’t a reliable source,” Stewy continued. “It’s well-known that he’s trying to destroy you. Would the police really take him at his word?”

“Yes. Don’t be naive. My father owns the police.”

“He does not own the police. That’s from Back to the Future.”

Kendall coughed out a dry laugh. He sat up, feeling suddenly suffocated. “Why are you clinging on me like this?” he said. “You’re acting like you want me to shoot a third load in you.”

Stewy sat up, too, and rolled off the bed. “Fine, get bitchy,” he said, looking unbothered. “I’m still not letting you go to prison. I’m going to go make some calls, okay? Why don’t you get out of bed and get dressed? You’ll feel better.”

“Fuck you,” Kendall said listlessly. “Facedown this time, so you can’t run your mouth.”

“Uh-huh,” Stewy said, checking his watch as he left the room.

Kendall watched him go, because Stewy was still shirtless, and he was only human.

/

While Kendall laid in bed like he was consumptive, Stewy went about his business as usual. He showered, had his assistant bring over a change of clothes, made his daily round of morning calls, and then got on his laptop. He had, in less chaotic times, scheduled a few meetings for today — he canceled all of them. Then he texted every short-seller he knew and said something to the effect of, “Don’t short Waystar, pretty please!” (He received only responses that amounted to, “Oh, Stewy, you scamp! I’ll do whatever I want!”) Despite this, the stock stabilized after the morning self-off, which Stewy had anticipated. Their market cap was holding steady at 32B. Could be better, could be far worse.

Stewy had just wrapped up a call with one of his lawyers and was pacing around Kendall’s living room when the elevator chimed. He looked up across the apartment. The doors slid open, and Shiv walked out.

“Uh, hey,” Shiv said, looking confused to see him but not exactly surprised.

“Hi,” Stewy said. He had been playing with a tennis ball that he found inexplicably tucked away in a kitchen drawer, and out of a desire to do something with his hands, he bounced it on the ground. “What’s up? Kendall’s still asleep.”

Shiv checked her watch. Stewy checked his as well, out of curiosity. It was 11:18 A.M.

“Okay,” Shiv said, then shouted down the hall: “Kendall!”

Stewy bounced the tennis ball some more as they waited. They heard a door distantly open, and then Kendall shuffled down the hall and stood at the end of it in a t-shirt and boxers.

“What’s up?” he said to them.

“I’ve been with journalists all morning, and I’d like to brief you,” Shiv said. “Both of you, I guess.”

Kendall blinked. “Where’s Roman?”

“He went back to his place to, like, unwind. He’s not exactly being cooperative this morning, I wouldn’t worry about it. We can loop him in later.”

“Okay,” Kendall said, then continued to stand there like a corpse that had been fished from the Hudson. Kendall was the only alive person who had ever displayed advanced rigor mortis.

“Can you go get dressed?” Shiv said. “I feel like you’re not even actually awake right now. You’re looking at me like I’m a hallucination.”

“Are you?” Kendall said, and laughed.

“Seriously, Ken, we need to talk, please,” Shiv said.

“Shiv… just talk to Stewy. I’m not even here.”

“Right, but you are, in fact, here,” Shiv said. “Go splash some water on your face or something, you’ll feel better.”

Kendall turned and disappeared back down the hall. Shiv looked to Stewy.

“Uh, hey,” Stewy said again. He could count on one hand the number of times that he and Kendall’s kid sister had hung out unaccompanied.

“How was your meeting with Josh?” Shiv said, coming over and sitting on the couch across from him.

Shiv had a way of commanding the room with her body language that made you feel compelled to mirror it. Stewy, who often manipulated people by mirroring them, had no problem playing along. He took a step back and settled onto the couch behind him, crossing his leg the same way she had.

“Good,” Stewy said. “I got him behind us. One caveat, though...”

“What’s that?”

“I did offer him a board seat. Not a new one, but I think he’d be a good replacement for Paul, or someone.”

Shiv squinted at him as she appeared to think about this. “Mmm,” she said. “Did you and Kendall come up with that last night, or something?

“It was a spur-of-the-moment decision,” Stewy said.

“So how do you benefit from it?”

“Me?”

“Yeah. You don’t really do anything unless you benefit.”

Stewy was more amused by this than wounded. “Who was it who picked you up from that warehouse party in Bushwick when you were freaking out on acid?”

Shiv laughed. “I didn’t call you, I called Kendall.”

“Yeah, and Kendall was blackout, so who stepped up for you?” He and Kendall were freshly post-MBA and interning for Goldman at the time, so Shiv couldn’t have been older than eighteen. “What teenager was partying out in Bushwick in 2005, anyway?”

“Me,” Shiv said. “I stay ahead of the curve.”

Stewy didn’t want to openly contradict this, but he did smirk a little in response. She either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

“What I meant was that business-wise, you don’t do anything unless you benefit,” Shiv said.

“Yeah, correct,” Stewy said. “Should I be walking around making deals that don’t benefit me, or…?”

“Sure, sure,” Shiv said. “I just mean you’re really about the money.”

“Of course I’m about the money. Waystar is a corporation. How is any of this not about money?”

“It’s not only about money. We aren’t an investment bank, we have products.”

“Oh, and what are your products?” Stewy said. “Racism?”

Shiv laughed. “Fuck off. We have, like, eighteen divisions.”

“Yeah, and a rollercoaster ride is not a product. A cruise is not a product — you don’t make the cruise ships. A product is, like, a lightbulb.”

“Okay, I think we have some philosophical differences here,” Shiv said. “But I haven’t forgotten the ‘no Roy child as CEO’ thing.”

“That wasn’t from me,” Stewy said, annoyed. “That was from Sandy.”

“Oh, so you’re just Sandy’s puppet, then? And he, in turn, is Sandi Jr.’s puppet? You’re a human centipede?”

“Don’t bother trying that shit on me, I’m not Roman. You’re going to need to get a shorter memory, Shiv. This is business, not politics. Do yourself a favor and develop some recency bias.”

“You don’t need to advise me, I’m fine,” Shiv said. “So what’s your angle with Josh?”

“I like Josh,” Stewy said. “So does Kendall. He’s smart, and he’s into you for four percent. I just think he’d be good to have on the board.”

“Okay,” Shiv said, and shrugged. “I guess.”

“You don’t have a problem with that?”

“Well, I know you’re not being totally forthright with me, but other than that, no, I don’t care.”

“Great,” Stewy said, leaning back against the couch and smiling at her. “You know, I’m glad it’s you. Seriously.”

Shiv glanced up from her phone and pointed to herself. “You’re glad I’ll be CEO?”

“Yeah.”

“Really? Why’s that?”

“Because it can’t be Roman, obviously, and now it can’t be Kendall either,” Stewy said, with a vague gesture that was meant to communicate manslaughter. “So if it had to be one of you, I’m glad it’s you. Mostly since it has to be you for this to have a prayer of working.”

“Thanks,” Shiv said with sarcasm. “I love to be everyone’s last resort.”

“Yeah, well, don’t say I never said anything nice to you.”

“No, it actually is nice to hear you say that. It’s nice to hear someone say that.”

“I live to please,” Stewy said, stretching his legs out.

They heard Kendall coming down the hall, and they both glanced up. Kendall walked into the living room looking as if every step took something out of him, like he kept trodding on hot needles.

“Hey,” he said, and sat down on a chair equidistant between the couch Shiv was sitting on and the one Stewy was sitting on. The three of them were scattered across the spacious living room like strewn toys.

Outside, it was still a gorgeous day. There wasn’t a single cloud over the Manhattan skyline, just endless blue like an ocean. Stewy randomly remembered that 9/11 had happened on a similarly perfect morning.

“So,” Shiv said. “I made good headway with some journalists today. Nobody’s working on anything concrete yet, but I’m backgrounding a sympathetic narrative about us coming together after, you know, shitty cruel dad dividing and conquering us — turning us on each other.”

“Dad didn’t make you write that letter,” Kendall muttered, picking lint off his sweater.

Shiv tipped her gaze in his direction. “Okay, Ken, you know what? The letter was vicious, but what was in it was true. And everything in it — those are all things you’re going to need to confront and be open about in the future.”

“Things I need to be open about?” Kendall repeated. “What, like, how I’m allegedly a deadbeat dad? I think that’s, uh — relatively subjective?”

“Really? You don’t think Dad’s going to leak your custody issues with Rava? The details of your acrimonious divorce? You don’t want to get out ahead of any of that?”

“It wasn’t acrimonious,” Kendall said. “We’re still friends.”

“Right,” Shiv said, drawing the word out.

“Guys?” Stewy interrupted. “This doesn’t feel productive. Or like anything I need to be in the room for, anyway.”

Shiv turned to him and ran her hand through her hair. Her rings caught the light and sparkled. “Okay, yeah, speaking of that — there is actually something I wanted to talk to both of you about.”

Stewy looked over at Kendall, who didn’t seem to have any idea what this something was. He had his hands resting awkwardly on the armrests of the chair, palms-down.

“Should we go outside?” Shiv said. “I kind of want a cigarette.”

“Fuck yes,” Kendall said, leaping to his feet. This was the most energetic he had seemed all morning.

Out on the terrace, Stewy sat on a lounge chair that was nominally shaded by the glass overhang, and Shiv and Kendall took chairs to his right and his left. Kendall lit a cigarette, and they passed it back and forth. Stewy went to kick his feet up on the ottoman, but leaning back to do so put pressure on him where he was achiest, so he winced disguisedly and sat forward. Normally he liked being sore after sex with Kendall, but today he felt like a wounded antelope.

A helicopter went by, filling the air with the sound of chopping blades. Stewy waited for it to pass before he said, “Is this about the forehead tattoo? Because I wasn’t even actually part of that. I was there, but I wasn’t involved in the decision-making.”

“Don’t break a leg sprinting to cover your ass,” Kendall said.

“Relax, it’s not about that,” Shiv said.

“Did Roman fill you in on the details?” Kendall said.

“Yeah, last night,” Shiv said. “Really impeccably stupid move, by the way. Total sociopathic bonehead shit. Nice job.”

Kendall snorted. Looking for something to do, Stewy rolled up the sleeves of his dress shirt. He rarely did that, but it was warm on the terrace with the sun beating down on them. Kendall watched his hands as he went about this.

When it came to the tattoo, Stewy mainly remembered that he could have stopped it from happening, and didn’t. His sole defense was that he had been blackout drunk that night.

Stewy was drunk for most of Kendall’s wedding proceedings. He was having a viciously hard time and, at twenty-five, didn’t know how else to cope. The night of their actual wedding, Stewy had partied until dawn with the rest of the wedding party — doing keg stands and fingerbanging one of Rava’s bridesmaids in a coat closet at the venue — then went to bed alone and cried hysterically. He had never cried like that before: so hard that he was afraid he would throw up.

Once Stewy got done crying, he fell into a deep sleep, and then he was fine the next morning. He had finished with the hard time and put it away for good. Kendall was married, and happy, and Stewy liked Rava — even if Rava did not like him very much in return, mostly for reasons of ‘enabling my addict husband’s drug problem all the time.’

Shiv took the cigarette from Kendall and smoked it for a while. Stewy watched her face for cues, expecting something in the general vein of tattoo guy: “Remember in 1997, when you guys went on a joyride upstate and drove around smashing mailboxes?” The sun turned Shiv’s orange hair so golden that it hurt to look at.

“To start with,” she began, “I just want to preface that I don’t care either way. Like, we all experiment in high school and college, obviously. And sometimes, I don’t know, you’re drunk, and you’re out partying, and things happen with a friend — whatever.”

Stewy’s lips started tingling. He stared at Shiv in disbelief, refusing to accept that she was broaching the subject she was broaching.

“What are you talking about?” Kendall interrupted her.

If Stewy could have reasonably gotten up and walked away then, he would have. Every muscle in his body was screaming for him to retreat. There was no winning move here: all he could do was sit and be annihilated.

Shiv ran her hand through her hair again and handed Kendall the cigarette, which he held mindlessly like it was a torch, just letting it burn between his fingers.

“I caught you guys fooling around when I was twelve,” Shiv said.

She tossed this out like it was nothing, but it obviously embarrassed her to say. Stewy’s lips tingled harder and went numb. Twelve? Shiv had been hanging onto this information for twenty-two years?

“What are you talking about?” Kendall repeated in a bloodless tone. “I don’t understand.”

Stewy didn’t dare look at him, but he found he couldn’t bring himself to look at Shiv, either. He stared at the ottoman until his eyes unfocused.

“I promise I don’t care,” Shiv said. “This doesn’t have to be a big deal. I just need to know if anyone else knows.”

“Knows what?” Kendall demanded. He dropped the cigarette and ground it out on the tile. “What are you talking about?”

Stewy, insanely, looked at his watch. He found he couldn’t read it. His vision was so blurry, the hands were melting together like a Dali painting.

His sole solace was that if this had happened twenty-two years ago, there was no way Shiv had seen anything too obscene. Until college, they were too nervous to touch each other’s dicks, so they had dry humped or masturbated themselves while kissing. Once, Kendall came just from them making out. He had looked like this was the most mortifying thing that had ever happened to him. For Stewy, it was a joyous occasion, like discovering a superpower.

“Kendall, stop,” Shiv said. “Relax.”

“No, what are you accusing us of? I don’t get it.”

“When I was twelve,” she said, in a lower, calmer voice, “I went into the poolhouse to get changed, and I saw you guys lying on top of each other on a lounge, French kissing.”

Stewy almost burst out laughing at her use of the phrase ‘French kissing,’ which was so seventh grade. This had clearly lodged in the recesses of her brain and fossilized there. It really felt like twelve-year-old Shiv was confronting eighteen-year-old them.

“I don’t think you saw that,” Kendall said.

“Except I vividly remember seeing that,” Shiv said.

Stewy glanced at Kendall, who had his mouth open and was stuttering while he gestured like a flightless bird. “I don’t — I don’t — you know, that was around when Mom and Dad were splitting up, and you were, like, this troubled, motherless little girl, Shiv. You were histrionic, you acted out a lot. Sometimes kids get convinced that they saw stuff they didn’t actually see.”

Shiv rolled her eyes in a way that didn’t hide her hurt. Stewy had little in the way of morals, but he didn’t think it was cool to meanly gaslight one’s sister like this. “Ken,” he said.

Without looking at him, Kendall responded, “What?”

“Give it up, dude. Come on.”

“So you remember?” Shiv said to Stewy.

Stewy felt like he was baking to death on this inhumanely sunny terrace. He was sweating, which he had made an oath to himself to never do outside of a gym. “I know what you’re talking about, yes,” he said, because that was the truth. Then he shut his mouth and offered no further truths.

Shiv looked to Kendall, who gaped like a fish pulled from water.

Finally, he acquiesced: “Maybe — maybe we fooled around once as teenagers, I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

Shiv let out an incredulous laugh. “You don’t remember if you’ve fooled around with Stewy or not?”

“Yeah, no. No idea. Don’t recall.”

This was a disaster. Kendall was such a lousy fucking liar. Now they looked like they had something to hide, which was a way bigger deal than one teenage makeout twenty-odd years ago would have been.

“Don’t recall?” Shiv repeated. “Kendall, this isn’t sworn testimony. I just want to know if anyone else knows that stuff happened, because in this situation, that’s the kind of thing that gets out.”

“Apparently, Kendall doesn’t even know that stuff happened, so I think we’re good,” Stewy said. His heart was beating quicker now. Being caught was agony, but being denied was somehow worse, even though he and Kendall had spent a lifetime publicly denying each other.

Maybe it was because this wasn’t public, it was Shiv. What, Shiv could know that Kendall had committed manslaughter, but she couldn’t know he fucked Stewy? Was fucking Stewy somehow a worse crime — equivalent, perhaps, to murder in the first degree? Bullshit. His cheeks were hot again like they had been at Josh’s place. It was not remotely fair or cool or normal of him to feel this betrayed, but he felt it anyway.

Kendall’s jaw was grinding like he was a camel eating a palmful of glass. He bowed his head, bent over his lap, and fell quiet. Silence hung between the three of them.

“No one knows,” Stewy said to Shiv, finally looking her in the eye.

“Okay, good,” Shiv said. “And what is this, like, over?… Ongoing?”

Kendall scoffed, “Jesus Christ.”

“I’m just asking. Could it still come out, in the future?”

“No, it couldn’t,” Stewy said. He added a limp lie: “It’s not ongoing.”

“Are you sure?” Shiv said. “Because you haven’t spent a day apart since we got back.”

“It’s just been easier that way,” Kendall mumbled into his thighs. “We have, uh, we have a lot of — we have shit to discuss.”

“Shiv,” Stewy said, “I swear to you that I am both physically and emotionally repulsed by your brother.”

Shiv laughed at this, and Kendall lifted his head. “Okay, you’re selling past the close,” he snapped at him.

“What close?” Stewy demanded. “Are you even awake over there? She used to do this for a living. She doesn’t believe us.”

Kendall ignored him and said to Shiv, “I’m surprised you didn’t put this shit in your letter.”

“Kendall,” Shiv spluttered. “This isn’t something bad you did! I’m not trying to hurt you right now!”

Stewy was desperate for Kendall to look at him, but he was still refusing to.

“I shouldn’t have brought it up,” Shiv said. “Obviously. I didn’t think you two would act this insane about it. I mean, you guys literally went to my wedding together.”

Stewy laughed at this. “For the bear hug, Shiv! Christ!”

Kendall stood up. They looked at him. He sat down again.

“Fuck this,” he said to no one in particular.

“So no one knows?” Shiv said. “You’re sure of that?”

The two of them were quiet for a long moment, like being the first one to break would incur a penalty. Then Stewy said, softly, “A housekeeper of mine… but she signed an NDA.”

“Okay. When was this?”

Stewy dragged in a breath. Oopsie. Once he answered this, their wad was blown. “2016.”

Shiv’s eyebrows went up in what was obviously a divorce-math way. By all standards, Stewy got an F in divorce math. He had gone back to fucking Kendall before Rava even kicked him out. The overlap was long and shameless; Kendall had once fucked him in their marital bed. All that saved Stewy from being a cliched New York finance mistress was that he was a boy, and Kendall had belonged to him first.

“But not ongoing?” Shiv said in her most cutting tone.

“No,” Stewy lied. He wished he could stop lying. He wished he could get off of the evil terrace.

“Not ongoing, no,” Kendall muttered.

“Okay,” Shiv said. “Cool, so we’re good, I think. I mean, if this didn’t come out when Dad was doing oppo on you, or Rava’s lawyers, I don’t think it’s at risk of coming out now. Unless, of course, it were ongoing.”

“Not ongoing,” repeated Stewy, who couldn’t even sit comfortably due to the not-ongoing bareback poundings that Kendall had not nightly been administering to him.

Much of the resentment he’d felt toward Kendall over the past six months (and possibly over the past thirty years) was bobbing to the surface. Maybe he needed to give in and cry himself to sleep tonight in order to purge it. Stewy didn’t really cry unless provoked, though. He wasn’t like Kendall, who would cry if you looked at him funny.

“Cool,” Shiv said again. It was clear she’d had no idea what she was walking into and regretted having done so.

Stewy couldn’t really blame her. It was common knowledge in Roy-adjacent circles that Shiv had had torrid, toxic love affairs with other women in college, but those were probably a distant memory for her now. She had not continued to fuck them for twenty more years. She had not given any of them four billion dollars. And it was more common for women to be like this about their best friends: to fuck them, and then be mired in decades of attrition warfare and wrathful pining. It was weirder for men. Stewy and Kendall were insane. Shiv had finally seen this for what it was.

Stewy broke the silence again by saying to her, “I can’t believe you saw that when you were twelve. I’m in the middle of rethinking all of our previous interactions.”

Shiv laughed. “It’s rarely crossed my mind, to be honest. I was just talking with my publicist this morning, and she mentioned the letter, and said that if I was implying Kendall had an affair, that those women might come forward. I don’t know why, but that was the first time it occurred to me to follow up on this.”

“I get it,” Stewy said.

“Were you implying I’d had an affair?” Kendall said to her.

“No, not at all,” Shiv said. “You and Rava had a ton of other problems, which the letter was pretty obviously alluding to. I didn’t know you actually had fucked around on her.”

She gestured toward Stewy as she said this, which Stewy didn’t appreciate. Why did it feel this shameful to be acknowledged as a mistress by two people who had both broken their marriage vows? Stewy had done less wrong than they had. He had made no such vows. Vows were for chumps.

“Look,” Shiv added, “if you were a candidate I was working with, I’d ask all these same questions.”

“I’m not a candidate, Shiv. I’m your brother.”

Shiv pinned Kendall with a cool-eyed stare. “What you’re feeling right now is literally just Dad’s homophobia,” she said. “It’s nothing I did or said to you, so stop blaming me for it. Roman’s fucked us enough on this front, I can’t have us crippled by sex scandals the second we take over.”

“I don’t blame you,” Kendall said. “And I don’t feel anything. Are we done talking about this? Can we be done?”

“We’re done,” Shiv said. “All I needed was ‘not ongoing’ and ‘2016 NDA’.” She picked up her phone. “Let’s change the subject, yeah? I should run you both through the list of reporters I’ve been backgrounding, just so you know who to maybe expect calls from at some point.”

Stewy watched her fingers tap the screen. “Shiv?” he said. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

“Fine,” Shiv said easily, not looking up.

“What the fuck are you going to do about Tom?”

Kendall glanced up at Shiv. She kept staring at her phone for a moment, her thumbs no longer moving.

“I mean, are we keeping him in place?” Stewy continued. “Because he’s making us money hand over fist. But he’s a rat, and he’s in your dad’s pocket. So if we have to kill him, let’s do it sooner rather than later.”

“Yeah, I get it,” Shiv said, her voice quiet. She inhaled hard, then got up, leaving her seat to go pace the terrace.

Kendall and Stewy watched her, but she didn’t go far. She walked about ten steps away from them, then turned swiftly on her heel like she was about to fire the opening shot of a duel.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, coming back.

“Okay,” Stewy said. “Do you need help deciding? Because if I were you, I’d slit his throat and throw him overboard.”

Shiv went over to the chair she had been sitting in and rested her hands on the back of it, but she didn’t relax. Her arms were tensed and her jaw was taut.

“Would you, seriously?” Kendall said to Stewy.

“I mean, business-wise, yeah,” Stewy said. “Not saying I’d necessarily ask for a divorce, but if my spouse sold me out to your dad? I wouldn’t include that person in my plans, no.”

Kendall hit him with an awkward, Muppet-y look, and then Stewy realized.

“Huh,” was all he said.

Shiv let out a low little laugh. “Yeah, I think we’re all pretty guilty of selling each other out to Dad.”

“Alright, well, whatever,” Stewy said. “This is why I’m not married.” He picked some lint off of his pants.

“Yeah, that’s why,” Kendall muttered.

Stewy gave him the finger. Kendall’s lips twitched up in an anemic smile.

Shiv looked down at her hands. In a wobbly voice that didn’t match the words she was saying, she said, “What to do about Tom is the eight million dollar problem.”

“Is that how much he gets in a divorce?” Stewy said.

“If the marriage lasts under one year, yeah,” Shiv said. “Eight million in, um, severance.”

“He gets eight million to be married to you for less than a year? And it scales? Holy shit. Do you want a new husband? Because I’ll do it.”

Shiv laughed, which was Stewy’s intention — she had looked like she was about to cry, and that would have been awkward.

“I’m serious,” Stewy continued. “I think I’d be great at that, I’m very low-maintenance. I will cheat on you constantly, though.”

“Oh, same,” Shiv said.

“Yeah, I know.”

Shiv laughed a fake laugh. “Right, but you’d cheat on me with my brother, which isn’t optimal.”

With sarcasm, Stewy said, “It is just so much fun hanging out with you guys, I have to say. Always a non-stop delight.”

“Can I ask you something else personal?” Shiv said. “Are you, like, actually attracted to women, or what’s the deal?”

Kendall coughed out a laugh.

“Fuck you — yes!” Stewy said, laughing too. “Why does everyone have such a hard time believing this?”

“Because you’re Stewy, and you act like Stewy,” Kendall said.

“I’ve been with more women than you have.”

Kendall rubbed his hands together. “I’m just a serial monogamist,” he said drily.

The terrace door slid open, then, and all of them turned to see who it was. It was Jess, dressed in business casual and holding a laptop.

“Jessica,” Shiv intoned in a Logan-y way.

“Jess,” Kendall said in surprise. “Hey. What are you doing here?”

Jess glanced at Stewy. “Stewy called me yesterday, and said to come over around noon?”

Stewy was baffled at first, and then the memory of calling Jess while he was coked out came flooding back. “Oh! Yeah.” Why had he done that, again? Because he was worried about Kendall and, like Shiv and Roman, didn’t know what to do about it besides mobilize his allies? “Hey. Yeah.”

He turned to Kendall, who looked back at him with his standard dour confusion.

“I thought it would be good to loop her in,” Stewy explained.

“Okay,” Kendall said, and beckoned Jess over.

As Jess sat down on the lounge beside Stewy, she said, “I just wanted to say first thing, did you guys know that your dad is on his way back from Italy right now?”

The other three looked at each other.

“No, we didn’t know that,” Kendall said.

“He’s with… everyone, I assume?” Shiv said.

Jess nodded.

Kendall rubbed his palms together. “We knew he’d be back today or tomorrow,” he said to Shiv. “I mean, the meeting’s on Tuesday. He’s not going to risk it.”

“Right,” Shiv said, drawing the word out. “You don’t think he’s going to pull anything, do you?”

“Not if he hasn’t already,” Kendall said. “He has people here on the ground, he could send them to harass us if he wanted. I think he sent Greg as sort of a, uh, a joke, almost. Jess, do you know anything else?”

Jess started to respond, but Stewy interrupted her by leaping to his feet when he looked down at his ringing phone and saw that he was getting a call from Sandi. “One second,” he said, angling his phone screen toward his body so Kendall couldn’t see who was calling. “I’ll be back.”

They all nodded at him. Stewy walked away, stepped back into the apartment and brought the phone to his ear. “Hey,” he said. It was a relief to be back in the air conditioning. “Everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine,” Sandi said. “I just have a proposition for you.”

“Proposition?” Stewy said, glancing out the window to make sure no one was looking his way before he ducked surreptitiously into the hall.

“Yes. My dad and I feel that once the vote is done, we’ll have a moment of leverage that we shouldn’t waste.”

As usual, Sandi’s tone gave little away. Stewy inhaled and said, “And what do you two want me to do?”

“I want to suggest you for CFO.”

The blood drained from Stewy’s head. “Why would we do that?” he said, remaining cool.

“I’d like one of us in the C-suite,” she said. “I want to get rid of Karl Muller, he’s an unwavering Logan loyalist. And the Roys like you — I saw how the four of you were at dinner. There’s a lot of nostalgia there to weaponize.”

Stewy leaned against the wall behind him and sagged down it. “Question.”

“Of course.”

“Why the fuck would I want to take on the job of CFO at the company that’s spent the last year leaking money, lawsuits, federal investigations and dead bodies? The company that’s currently being run like an understaffed McDonald’s?”

“Oh, Stewy, come on. Waystar is one of the biggest media companies in the world.”

“It’s Sears.”

“Well, Eddie Lampert is a billionaire, for what it’s worth.”

“They are not going to like this,” Stewy said. “I’m just letting you know. They’re going to think this is me fucking them. And, frankly, I suspect that this is you fucking me.”

“I’m not fucking you,” Sandi said coolly. “No need to get vulgar. And I think they will like it, actually. We’ll make the demand right after we’ve won the vote. They’re going to be full of adrenaline, grateful to us, and very malleable. It’s going to work.”

“And then what do I do once I’m in there?”

“You’ll keep an eye on the financials, of course. Keep them from doing anything ridiculous.”

Stewy sighed. “I’ll think about it.”

“Okay, that’s all I ask.”

“By the way, I offered Josh Aaronson a board seat — one of the ones that’s going to come up vacant when Kendall cleans house. He’s solid, he’ll work with us.”

“Excellent,” Sandi said. “Okay, I have to go, but I’ll be in touch.”

Stewy said goodbye to her and then put his phone in his pocket, then walked to the end of the hall and peeked around the corner. Out on the terrace, Kendall and Jess were talking while Shiv typed on her phone. Jess was laughing, and Kendall looked less miserable than he had a few minutes ago.

Stewy watched him for a while before he went back out. He was thinking about how he was nothing to Kendall, not really. They had a lifelong romance that went barely acknowledged by them and had never seen the light of day; he was his business partner, yet the stars had never before aligned for them to actually go into business together; he was family, but he wasn’t. Not by law, not by blood.

There was no legitimacy available to them, no system that was willing to shelter them. The only thing they could do was cling to each other forever in defiance of this. How could it not be real when it never ended?

And the clinging begat more clinging. Stewy hated wasting time or money, and Kendall knew this. It was surely part of why he was always demanding his time and money. If he could secure investments from Stewy, Stewy would be less able to leave him. Stewy would have to consider him a sunk cost.

Stewy didn’t think of it that way, of course. He just knew that he felt like he had a sucking chest wound whenever he and Kendall weren’t talking.

/

Shiv left not long after, but Jess stuck around for a few hours, getting filled in on everything that had happened and everything that was going down on Tuesday.

“You don’t have to be in this with us if you don’t want to,” Kendall said at one point, while nursing a lukewarm beer. “You’re totally free to just, like, dip.”

“I’m in this,” Jess had said resolutely.

“I wouldn’t hold it against you. Seriously.”

“No, I’m in.”

When Jess finally did leave, Stewy was in the kitchen putting together a cheese plate. He heard the elevator chime its departure sound, and then Kendall’s footsteps.

After a moment, Kendall came around the corner and immediately pinned him with a stare. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” Stewy replied. “What’s up?”

Kendall didn’t answer as he continued into the kitchen. Stewy, standing at the island with his back turned, was vulnerable to ambush; Kendall came up behind him and slapped him on the ass.

Stewy set down the crackers that he’d been arranging and turned to Kendall, who was now grinning and twinkly-eyed. Stewy caught him around the forearm, then squeezed, squishing flesh and tendon against bone.

“Ow,” Kendall said, grinning even more.

Stewy dropped his arm and caught a handful of his shirt, pulling him in closer. “Hey,” he said. “About the Josh thing… it really just felt like the best move, for a lot of reasons.”

“Yeah, whatever, dude,” Kendall said, dropping his gaze to Stewy’s mouth. “I’m over it.”

“Are you?” Stewy said.

“Yeah. I don’t care. Do whatever.”

Their bodies melted into each other, drawn together by proximity. They didn’t kiss, they just nuzzled. Their lips brushed without fully touching; neither seemed to want to be the first one to make an actual move. Finally, they rested their foreheads together and stayed like that: eyes closed, listening to each other breathe, feeling the brush of each other’s eyelashes.

“I don’t know if I can get through this weekend,” Kendall murmured, his voice barely audible.

“The weekend’s the easy part,” said Stewy, who was starting to get nauseated at the mere thought of Tuesday.

“No, man. Waiting... I can’t take the waiting shit. I’ll go crazy.”

Stewy’s guts twisted as he flashed back to the night of the bear hug. He had the urge to catch Kendall in his cupped hands and keep him there, like a moth. “Let’s go crazy, then,” he said, his voice rising. “Like, on purpose crazy. I’ll call a dealer, we’ll get everything, we’ll just be fucked through Monday. We’ll order takeout and eat foie gras and lobster and do Oxy. And then we’ll go to bed early Monday, go in Tuesday, and crush it.”

It would be fine as long as he could control the bender. With Stewy’s dealers, Stewy’s drugs, Stewy’s constant presence, he could maintain control. Who knew what Kendall would do if left to his own devices right now? Stewy needed to steer him into a controlled slide.

“You want to do that?” Kendall said.

“Yeah, yeah. Let’s do it. It’ll be just like old times.”

Kendall laughed against Stewy’s face. “Okay.”

“I’ll take care of you, dude, I’ve got you.”

“Yeah.”

“We can do this. He’s done for. He’s a paper tiger.”

“Yeah,” Kendall said again, not sounding like he was listening to Stewy at all.

Stewy brought his lips to Kendall’s and opened his mouth so Kendall could slide his tongue in. Kendall tasted like beer. He pressed Stewy into the island, hard, and started grinding their crotches together. The cheese board lay forgotten.

/

Over the weekend, “Not ongoing!” became an inside joke. When they were doing cocaine off of each other’s bare hips and asses, they would preface each line with, “Not ongoing!” before they bent over to snort it. When Kendall woke up in Stewy’s arms on Saturday morning, opening his eyes to see that Stewy was gazing at him and stroking his head, he mumbled, “Not ongoing.” Stewy spat a mouthful of Kendall’s jizz into a K.L.R.-embroidered hand towel and then said it.

“Spitters are quitters,” Kendall said in response.

“Swallowers are masochists,” Stewy countered.

“I am that,” Kendall agreed.

The weekend was spent planning a party that they knew couldn’t happen. If Kendall had people over right now, they would come just so they could leak to the press about him, or Logan would send spies to infiltrate. So the party plans, unconstrained by reality, got ridiculous very fast. Stewy said he wanted to make it an orgy and invite the mayor. Kendall thought the night should end with ritual goat sacrifice.

“We should only drink wine,” he said, “and have live music. Someone playing the pan flute. Or a harp.”

Stewy was lying across him when he said this, running his finger up and down the line of Kendall’s jaw. Kendall was mindlessly stroking Stewy’s hair.

“We could leave, you know,” Stewy said.

“Leave where?”

“The country. If we left now, we could be in Spain in seven hours.”

Kendall met Stewy’s eyes. “The meeting,” he murmured.

“Fuck the meeting, we’ll call in and voice vote,” Stewy said. “Everyone else can handle the fallout, we’ll be on the beach.”

Kendall chuckled. Stewy was just talking, just saying imaginary shit in the vein of their party planning, but he did also mean it. If Kendall had said, “Yeah, you know what? Let’s go,” Stewy would have gone. Stewy wouldn’t have even stopped to put shoes on.

He laid his head down on Kendall’s chest and was quiet.

“Not ongoing,” Kendall said.

“No,” Stewy murmured.

They kept trying to trash the apartment, but Kendall’s staff was too good at cleaning. They were, at forty and almost-forty, not energetic enough to pull it off. By Tuesday morning, the only permanent evidence of their bender was a typo and exclamation point-ridden email that Stewy had drunkenly sent a lawyer, and a pinky nail-sized crack in one of the penthouse’s massive windows where Kendall had stumbled and fallen into it with a beer bottle in his hand.

Stewy felt like shit Tuesday morning. He was hungover, and his brain had the dopamine wrung out of it. He woke up at 5:30 a.m., his eyes burning, a dehydration headache squeezing his skull. There would be no going back to sleep, he could feel it. The only saving grace was that he had insisted they go to bed at 10 the night before.

Kendall was still asleep when Stewy got up. He called his assistant to bring him a Red Bull and an egg and cheese sandwich, then called his concierge doctor to send over a nurse with a banana bag and B12 shots.

An hour later, with fresh needle punctures stinging his thigh and the crook of his elbow, Stewy staggered into the shower with the plastic bodega bag his assistant had handed over to him. He turned the water up to 104 degrees and tilted his face into the spray until he couldn’t handle it anymore. Then he rubbed conditioner into his hair and leaned out of the water so he could drink the Red Bull and eat the sandwich, dry heaving between bites.

This onslaught made Stewy well enough to face himself in the mirror and line up his beard. Really, he looked fine, other than a small broken blood vessel in his left eye.

Kendall was in worse shape. When Stewy went back into the bedroom, he found Kendall sitting up in bed, puffy-faced and miserable-looking. Stewy went over to him and wordlessly started doing a lymphatic drainage massage on his face and neck.

“I’m fine,” Kendall said in protest.

“You need to shave,” Stewy said. “And shower, like, violently.”

Kendall sniffed himself and grimaced. “Yeah.”

Nausea crept up on Stewy again. He ignored it as he sat there, sweeping his thumbs under Kendall’s cheekbones.

While Kendall showered and got dressed, Stewy lay in the bed, staring at the ceiling and trying not to throw up. He had no idea what to expect from Logan today. They were going to effectively back Logan into a corner where he’d have nothing to lose by cutting them down as violently as possible. He could say or do anything. He likely wouldn’t, because Logan was a smart operator who knew exactly when to pull his punches, but it sounded to Stewy like he had stopped pulling his punches when it came to Kendall.

Waystar was an on-fire house, a capsizing ship. Once they forced Logan into a lifeboat against his will, what did it matter to him what he did?

After a few minutes, Stewy grew disgusted by the smell of the bedsheets underneath him (they reeked of semen and sweat) and got up to go put on the clothes his assistant had brought over. He dabbed cologne on his pulse points and then went to stare out of Kendall’s massive windows.

It was another beautiful day, though not cloudless. Towering columns of puffy clouds hung over the skyscrapers like plumes of smoke rising from them. It was windy; Stewy could tell by the way the Hudson was rippling.

He went out onto the balcony for some fresh air and found the air smelled crisp, like fall. This was the first morning this year that the city had smelled like that. There was an exciting charge in the air that unsettled Stewy. It felt to him like the future, like big moves, like absolutely anything might happen. He thought he was old enough to have left that feeling behind. It was a first-day-of-school feeling.

Stewy looked at his watch. It was 7:22 a.m. The board meeting was at 9.

He wondered who was going to show up to this meeting. The vote itself was a formality — Logan had already strong-armed himself into the necessary amount of shareholder approval, and the board had already voted in favor of the GoJo merger, so running the amended terms of the deal by them was little more than legal theater. Logan knew this. He had to have figured out that what they were planning was an all-out coup. He was surely marshaling his forces, but he also knew that seven seats was inarguably more than five seats. So what the fuck was he going to do? Start adding board seats on the spot? Open fire in the conference room? Choke Kendall until his eyes popped out, like Homer choking Bart?

Stewy wasn’t going to voice any of this to Kendall, because Kendall might spiral. A dead-eyed, shark-faced Kendall was so much more useful than a panicked, crying one. They needed the ‘today his reign ends’ Kendall, the Kendall who had destroyed Vaulter and delivered the bear hug, the Kendall who had scrambled back to Shiv’s wedding and changed his wet clothes.

They needed the killer.

Kendall emerged about twenty minutes later, fully dressed and ready to go. He had on an immaculately tailored dark blue Tom Ford suit, and no tie. His eyes were bloodshot and tired, but the puffiness was mostly gone from his face. The shaved head made him seem more serious, almost scary. He looked ready.

“Let’s fucking go,” Kendall said.

Stewy walked with him to the elevator. “Whatever he says to you,” he said, “remember — we have the numbers, and that’s all there is to it.”

“I know,” Kendall said. “You don’t need to remind me. I feel like I need to remind you.”

“Remind me? Ken.”

Kendall called the elevator and shot him a look.

“Your dad and I are done,” Stewy said. “There’s nothing there. You think I’d backstab you and try to go crawling back to him? I can’t even do that.”

“Everyone always does, and he always takes them back. People have to get kicked in the face four, five times before they’ll let go of his ankle.”

“Not me. I don’t bend to your dad.”

“You fucked me in the first no confidence vote.”

“Because you didn’t have the numbers, and he would have just fired me — we’ve been over this.”

“If you had voted with us, we would have had the numbers.”

“I had no way to know that. You never ran through the board math with me.”

Kendall was quiet, then muttered, “You call him sir.”

“I call every old man sir. I call my own dad sir. Kendall, seriously, don’t let him get in your head.”

“He is my head,” Kendall said. “He is literally the voice inside my head.”

The elevator arrived, and they got in. Stewy straightened his tie and exhaled. He wished that he had gone tieless like Kendall; he felt like he had a noose around his neck.

Kendall said, “Sandi sent me an email this morning laying things out, and she said you’re empowered to vote with two seats.”

So that’s where this static was coming from. “I’m always empowered to vote with two seats, it’s procedural. It’s a shortcut so we don’t have to physically drag in Sandy’s mummified corpse and that random fucking Furness VP that Sandi empowered the fourth seat to. Trust me, if I tried to spike the deal, she’d revoke that authority in a hurry.”

“Uh-huh. But you’ve been talking to lawyers all weekend.”

“Yeah, to figure out how your dad will try to fuck us once this goes through. You really think he’s going to let us walk away with Waystar and not bother taking us to court? He’s going to hit us with a bad faith termination lawsuit before we even get him out of the building.”

Kendall was quiet for a moment. “You know, after Apple pushed Steve Jobs out, they started posting massive losses every quarter,” he muttered. “Then they ended up begging him to come back.”

“Your dad has more in common with Steve Ballmer than Steve Jobs.”

“But he built this, and we didn’t.”

“Your dad built a twentieth century company,” Stewy said. “He did a great job. He killed it. I, along with everyone else who got an MBA after 1980, have the utmost respect for what he accomplished. But it’s the new millenium. You know, revolutionaries get complacent, and they become dictators, and then you end up with breadlines.” He patted Kendall hard on the shoulder.

“Breadlines,” Kendall repeated.

/

On their way, they picked Shiv and Roman up, and then Kendall called Sandi so that the five of them could make last-minute revisions to the press release that Shiv had drawn up to announce the takeover. The plan was to hand it off to Karolina the second they had control.

Stewy looked out the window as they did this, uninterested in the siblings’ squabbling over who got top billing, or Kendall and Sandi’s disagreements about what commas should go where. The document had been lawyered thoroughly, so Stewy was of the opinion that it shouldn’t be messed with. But he could never seem to get the Roys to stop focusing on petty details. He tuned them out, instead.

Outside the window, the city was gorgeous and alive, packed with morning commuters. The skyscrapers gleamed sea-blue. Cranes towered overhead, against a backdrop of picturesque billowing clouds. As pedestrians walked through the streets, their coats whipped in the hard breeze.

Stewy rolled his window down a crack so he could get some of that fresh September air, which seemed to have a medicinal effect on his hangover. The sounds of honks, incoherent shouting, jackhammers and laughter poured into the car.

“This is a comma splice,” Kendall muttered. Stewy heard the crisp sound of an expensive pen slashing across expensive paper.

“Comma splice,” Roman repeated in a mocking ‘you are a goober’ tone.

“We can’t look like idiots. This is our first move as the new leadership of the company. It has to be perfect.”

“Nothing’s perfect,” Shiv said, crossing her legs.

“I agree with Kendall,” Sandi’s voice crackled over the phone that was lying on the seat between Kendall and Stewy. “It has to be as close to perfect as possible.”

“I’m just saying we don’t want to overedit,” Shiv said, looking annoyed that Sandi was siding with Kendall. “We should speak with a single voice if we want to calm the market — not put out a jumbled, panicked statement by committee.”

“A single voice,” Roman said. “Your voice.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Rome, I forgot you also worked in politics for ten years.”

Sandi cleared her throat and said, “Stewy, do you want to take a look at it?”

Stewy turned his attention back to the interior of the car. All the Roys were looking at him. “Uh, PR is not really my area,” he said, examining his fingernails. “By all means, let me know when you guys have a legally binding or financially relevant document you want to show me.”

“Your input is welcome,” Shiv said.

“Am I mentioned in it?”

“I mean, not by name, no.”

“Then I have no input,” Stewy said.

Shiv examined him for a moment. Her phone rang in her pocket, and she dug it up and held it to her ear. “Con? Yeah, I mean, nothing new. It’s the same as I told you last night. No, I can’t tell you that. I mean, you’re just going to have to trust me. You don’t exactly have a choice in the matter.” She paused for a moment. “No, I don’t remember what the garden of Gethsemane is.”

Kendall started talking to Sandi again, and Shiv put a finger in her ear. Then Roman insisted that Shiv put Connor on speaker, and the crosstalk grew unbearable. Stewy rolled his window down further and pressed his right temple against the glass.

/

Waystar’s boardroom was on the 70th floor, with only two levels above it for storage and roof access. Stewy wasn’t the type to be bothered by long elevator rides, but his hangover was starting to get on top of him. He felt a hard lurch of nausea as they climbed into the clouds.

When the four of them got off, they walked out into a silent hallway. They could see through the glass walls of the boardroom and its adjacent rooms that all were empty.

“No one?” Shiv said, looking around.

“Freaky,” Roman said. “Is this some kind of mind game? Do you think Dad relocated the meeting without telling us, and he’s got the rest of the board at a fucking, like, McDonald’s in midtown?”

“I think he’s on his way,” Kendall intoned, glancing at his watch and putting his hands on his hips. “It’s 8:20. We’re hella early.”

Stewy was too nauseated to bother wincing internally at ‘hella’. He started glancing around for a bathroom in case he ended up needing to pull trig.

Shiv began to pace with her hands on her hips. She was wearing sleek gold jewelry and one of those double-breasted dove-gray suits of hers, looking like a designer had done a high-end collection inspired by Harry Truman. “We should have waited,” she said. “He’ll have the upper hand. He’ll walk in late with thirty people, like he’s Kanye.”

“We can still have the upper hand,” Stewy said. “We can go sit down, be sitting down when they get here. We can act like it’s already our boardroom.”

“Yeah, let’s throw our shit around,” Roman said. “Let’s take our jackets off and throw them on the floor, and get stuff out of the vending machines and throw the wrappers everywhere.”

He didn’t sound confident as he said this, and his eyes were large and darty.

The elevator dinged behind them, and they turned. The door opened to reveal Sandi, looking well-rested and dressed in dark, modest clothes.

She stepped out, and two of her security guys stepped out behind her. The Roys hadn’t ridden up with a bodyman, but they never did so on Roy property. They assumed a careful eye was constantly aimed at them no matter where in this building they went, always making sure not a hair on their precious heads was harmed.

“Hi,” Sandi said, smiling. Her hair was violently parted today. She looked like she was ready for war.

“Hey,” they chorused.

Stewy, who either needed to barf or do cocaine or both, excused himself to go to the bathroom. He slipped inside and leaned against the door, breathing deep for a moment, then decided what he needed was cocaine.

He locked the door and went over to the sink, laying a paper towel down and spilling a small amount of coke onto it. He cut two little lines with his Amex Black, snorted one, then leaned on the edge of the sink for a moment. Once the initial head rush and bitter sting in his nose had passed, he felt better. He felt clearer.

Stewy leaned down and did the other line, then immediately realized this was a bad idea. His body categorically and absolutely rejected the cocaine. Out of sheer animal instinct he turned on his heel, went crashing to his knees in the bathroom stall behind him, and threw up.

He didn’t throw up often, and this was one of the more disgusting vomits of his life. No one should ever be throwing up Red Bull and eggs. Bile stung his nose, which was already stinging from the coke, and Stewy was so miserable about this that it took him a second to realize something was trickling out of his nostrils.

He opened his eyes and saw blood dripping onto the toilet seat.

“Fuck,” Stewy said, scrambling to his feet. He clapped a hand to his nose and tipped his head back, racing to the sink and tearing paper towels out of the dispenser. “Shit.”

Stewy pressed the paper towels to his face and tried to assess the damage. He had blood all over his palm, nostrils and mouth. There were a few drops on his tie, but none on his shirt. His beard had soaked a lot of it up. He went over and flushed the toilet with his foot.

Someone rattled the bathroom handle, and then pounded on the door. “Hey,” Roman’s voice called. “I need to piss. You can take dick pics later.”

Stewy sighed, then went over and unlocked the door. “Stop projecting,” he said, letting Roman in. It was adding insult to injury to have to deal with Roman right now, on top of his vanity and dignity being wounded.

“Holy shit,” Roman said, “what did you do? Get your face period?”

“You’re like the wittiest guy in the eighth grade. It’s a nosebleed.”

“Yeah, I’m familiar,” Roman said. “So, I take it you and Kendall were doing coke all weekend?” He walked over to the urinal, then shooed Stewy; Stewy rolled his eyes and turned his back so that Roman could pee. He didn’t answer Roman’s question. He didn’t need to — it was clearly rhetorical.

When Roman had finished, zipped up and turned around, he went over to the sink, avoiding the basin that Stewy had bled in. As he washed his hands, he said, “Hey, what’s your deal with Sandi, exactly?”

“My deal?”

“You know. Is there something dirty there? Something psychosexual?”

Stewy didn’t bother making a face of disgust, because all of the relevant facial features were hidden behind bloody paper towels. “No.”

Roman glanced up at him. “Can’t fault me for asking.”

“Oh, I can’t?”

“I guess I’m just wondering why you’re always hanging around people like us,” Roman said.

“People like who?”

“Heirs,” Roman said in an exaggeration of a posh voice.

“Heirsss,” Stewy repeated, drawing out the word, putting on a voice of fake confusion. “Huh. And why would I be doing that?”

Roman ran a finger along the edge of the sink. “I’m sure you have your nefarious reasons.”

“Like what? Money?”

“Please, we all have money,” Roman scoffed. “Like I’d ever think it’s about money. No, power. Look, I know you, man. I know what it looks like when you have your hooks deep into Kendall and your slutty little beard buried up his ass.”

Stewy adjusted the paper towels. “You three came to me. If you’re finding it this hard to cope with the fact that you need my help, you should discuss it with your therapist.”

“Is that it?”

“That’s my answer.”

“You’re not being a very fun adversary,” Roman said, pouting. “Get bitchier.”

“I thought that was plenty bitchy, but I’m busy holding my septum inside my skull.”

“Uh-huh, and that’s another thing,” Roman said. “I haven’t, uh, forgotten that you were the one who was with him when he OD’d in Europe.”

“Fuck you,” Stewy said with real anger, surprising them both.

Roman put his hands up. “You literally were. That’s just a fact.”

“Me plus eight other guys. I wasn’t even with him when it happened, I went to bed early that night. You only blame me because I was the one who called to tell you.”

“No, I blame you because you’ve been skulking around with little baggies of cocaine for the last thirty years.”

“You’re a moron for even bringing this up with me right now, considering what we have to do in half an hour.”

“Look, man, you spent all weekend tuning him up,” Roman said. “I know this. I’m not stupid, and I’m definitely not as stupid as you think I am. You’re an enabler.”

“He would get it somewhere else,” Stewy hissed. “Wake up, he will always just get it somewhere else! At least I was with him this weekend — what were you doing when he drowned in Italy?”

“Probably sleeping, like you were doing in Ibiza?”

Stewy didn’t get the chance to respond. The door opened behind them, and he turned to see Kendall walking in. Kendall took one look at Stewy and said, “Whoa. Dude,” in alarm.

Stewy and Roman exchanged a look, catching their breaths and fixing their faces.

“Your friend is having some side effects from your weekend bender,” Roman said in a stiff tone.

“I just have a nosebleed,” Stewy said to Kendall in exasperation, pressing the paper towels to his face harder.

“Tilt your head back,” Kendall instructed him. He went over to the sink and wet a stack of paper towels, then said to Roman, “Nobody had a weekend bender.”

“Really?” Roman said, lifting his eyebrows. “So you just look like shit for no reason? Bullshit. You both smell like fucking coke sweat and pennies.”

“Roman, with all due respect, get lost,” Stewy said.

“Fine,” Roman said. He dried his hands off, then left, thumbing his nose at Stewy as he went.

Kendall brought the wet paper towels over to Stewy and took the blood-covered dry ones away from him. “Man,” he said, examining him. “You’re going to have to take your tie off.”

“I know.” Stewy sniffed, and Kendall pressed the wet towels to his face. “This type of shit never happens to me.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Kendall said. “This is the kind of shit that happens to me. It’s like you’re the painting in my attic.”

Stewy laughed into the paper towels. Kendall left him and walked over to the sink to wash his hands. Stewy turned to the mirror and removed the wet paper towels from his face. A little more blood trickled out of his right nostril after he did that, but the deluge had stopped. All that was left behind was faint redness in the tip of his nose and his lips.

Kendall turned him and started taking his tie off for him. Stewy submitted to this.

“Nothing on your shirt,” Kendall confirmed. “You’re lucky.”

“Uh-huh.”

Kendall leaned in and kissed Stewy on his lips, which the dribble of fresh blood had reached. He pulled back, and without breaking eye contact, licked the traces of Stewy’s blood from his own mouth.

“Weirdo,” Stewy said mildly.

“Blood brothers,” Kendall said with a manic smile. “You remember when we were kids, and we pricked our fingers and rubbed them together?”

Stewy did remember that. He also remembered that a month after they swore their blood brother oath, an older kid on the playground had told them about how AIDS comes from blood. Kendall ran away in terror over the possibility that he and Stewy had given each other AIDS; Stewy had gone to their homeroom teacher and asked him straight-up if this was possible. Once he had his facts straight, he found Kendall where he was hiding behind a rosebush, squatted down beside him and said, “We didn’t give each other AIDS. Neither of us has AIDS, we can’t give it.”

“But boys give boys AIDS,” Kendall whispered to Stewy, rocking himself back and forth. “I saw that on the news.” (It was, of course, 1988 at the time.)

Stewy was surprised that Kendall remembered this. “It’s less the blood and more that you kissed me after I just threw up.”

“I didn’t know you threw up,” Kendall said, looking disgusted. “Gross.”

“Bro, no one told you to kiss me. I’m just standing here bleeding, that wasn’t exactly an invitation.”

“Are you accusing me of victim-blaming?”

“Well, here we are at the North American victim-blaming headquarters.”

Kendall laughed, then wet more paper towels and came back over to scrub the blood out of Stewy’s beard. When Stewy had had enough of this, he ducked out of Kendall’s grip and went over to the mirror, where he found he looked fine. A little abraded, but fine. His dress shirt remained perfectly white.

“Tieless is a better look, anyway,” said the tieless Kendall.

Stewy nodded, and extended his hand to Kendall, who gave him back his tie. He folded it up and put it in one of his jacket’s inside pockets.

“So you were, uh…” Kendall crossed his arms. “Did you come in here for a straightener, originally?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you have anything left?”

Stewy shot Kendall a look, and Kendall started laughing.

“I’m kidding, dude,” he said. “For once, I’m kidding. I don’t want the coke that makes your sinuses explode.”

Stewy turned on the sink so he could wash the blood off his hands. “It’s the same shit we’ve been doing all weekend,” he said. “I don’t know what my problem is.”

It wasn’t like Stewy to say that kind of thing. It landed heavily between them as a result.

Kendall leaned against the wall beside the paper towel dispenser and eyed him, then said, “You, uh — you — hey, is everything good?”

“Everything is good,” Stewy confirmed.

“You feeling, uh, punky?”

This sounded like something Kendall’s mother would say, not Kendall himself. Stewy wondered if he was wracking his mental files for comforting sentences and had happened to unearth one from way back when.

Stewy rinsed out his mouth and took a mint Lifesaver out of the bowl of them on the counter. He popped it in his mouth, dried his hands, and wiped the remaining flecks of his blood off of the sink. Then he tossed his paper towels in the trash, looked up at Kendall and said, “I’m feeling like I’m ready to help you take your dad to the woodshed.”

“Fuck yeah,” Kendall said.

They dapped each other up.

/

The five of them headed for the conference room’s anteroom and began milling around, trying and failing to look like they owned the place. At quarter to nine, some nameless Roy employees came in and set out a tray of bagels, a bowl of mints, and a dispenser full of ice water that was infused with cucumbers and lemons.

Stewy ate half of a plain bagel to settle his stomach and threw the other half in the trash. He was actually feeling pretty good, now. He felt purged of toxins.

Through the glass walls, they saw the elevator open down the hall. Everyone straightened up their posture and fixed their gaze on the door as it slid open.

Logan appeared and stepped out, flanked by Frank, Gerri, and Karolina. He wasn’t in a suit today; he had on a dark red sweater, but wore a tie underneath it.

Stewy found himself calmed by the sight of Logan in a sweater. He looked like a frail, cuddly old man.

Logan was ambling toward them with his hands in his pockets, looking calm as could be. As he closed in on the door to the anteroom, Stewy saw Kendall, Shiv and Roman all tense up. Shiv drew herself up to her full height, while Roman took a step back and Kendall hugged his arms across his chest.

Sandi stayed still, but Stewy could tell by the set of her mouth that she was nervous.

Logan pushed open the door and stepped inside. His henchmen filed in behind him. Frank turned his gaze airily to the windows, as if there was nothing strange about this situation; Karolina smiled at all of them; Gerri held her hands behind her back and made brief eye contact with each of them, appearing to size them up.

“Well,” Logan said. “Did everyone get a bagel? They’re tasty, these bagels.”

“We’re good, Dad,” Shiv said.

“Oh, you’re good?” Logan said. He turned to Gerri: “Hey, they’re good, Gerri.”

“Great to hear,” Gerri said drily.

“Personally, I’d have something to eat before I staged an armed robbery,” Logan said. “Especially if my first go at it had ended in me crying on the floor like a toddler.”

Roman twitched.

Sandi spoke up, then. “We have the votes, Logan,” she said. “It’s very simple math. That’s all there is to it.”

Logan was like a black hole in the room. Your gaze was drawn to him inexorably, and then as soon as you looked at him, he began to work his voodoo on you. Stewy was ignoring him to the best of his ability.

“I need to talk to you two in private,” Logan said, pointing to Sandi and then to Stewy.

Stewy was silent, and Sandi said, “No, the time to talk to us in private would have been when you were considering this sale. You missed your window.”

“I missed my window,” Logan repeated, smiling. His attention was fixed on Stewy now. “I missed the chance to come to my enemies, hat in hand, and beg you for your sign-off on a deal that makes you rich? Fuck off.”

Stewy stared back at him, keeping his breathing slow, hacking his own central nervous system in order to ward off Logan’s psychic attacks on it.

“You two are making the biggest mistake of your lives, and you know it,” Logan said to him.

Sandi came closer to Stewy, closing their ranks. “Oh,” she said, “but you would say that whether or not we actually were, wouldn’t you?”

Logan let out a gusty sigh. “This is a delay,” he said. “You’re prolonging the inevitable, dragging out the sale while you drive down the price. You’re taking fistfuls of your own money from your pockets and handing it over to Matsson. That’s all you’re doing. You both know that.”

“You’re giving up on Waystar because you’re old and tired, Dad,” Kendall cut in. “We could do something with it. We could be the last legacy media operation left standing, like you said. If you want to fuck off to Lake Como and have sex with your assistant all day without having to worry about any of this, fine, we’ll — we’ll cash you out.”

“You’ll cash me out?” Logan said incredulously.

“Hey, if we can’t, then Mattson can’t,” Stewy cut in. “You made a stock-for-stock deal. Good luck unloading 18 billion dollars worth of GoJo.”

Logan looked at Stewy again, his eyes scanning his face. “Stewart,” he said, “you’re smarter than this.”

“Oh, I’m really not, sir,” Stewy said with a smile.

“You’re fucked, Dad,” Kendall said. “The five people you’re looking at right now constitute a 31 percent ownership stake in the company. Your president and COO are standing right here. You can’t fire us all from the board, and we can kill the deal. We can kill you. You’re done, you’re beat.”

Logan inhaled, then lifted his head and sniffed. “You know what I smell?” he said. “I smell blood.”

Stewy’s stomach clenched. How the fuck — how?

“And sweat,” Logan continued. “The five of you, you’re stinky.”

“We’re stinky?” Shiv said in disbelief.

“You smell weak,” Logan said. “Like one of you isn’t steady… one of you doesn’t buy this. Is it you, Stewart? You’re the only one who doesn’t have a reason to stick a knife in me. Are you about to break ranks?”

Gerri and Frank exchanged a quick glance. Stewy hardened himself and said, “We’re a bloc.”

Logan started approaching Stewy, his gaze unwavering. Stewy stuck his hands in his pockets and held on for dear life. Logan stopped in front of him, leaning ever-so-slightly into Stewy’s personal space, and said, “Kendall. Come here.”

Kendall came, sidling up to them and glancing back and forth between them.

“Kendall,” Logan said again, and lifted a hand up. Kendall flinched, but Logan just put it on his shoulder and squeezed him. “Let me ask you something. Let’s say you vote me off the board, hmm? You go ahead and take over as chairman. Now, what’s to stop the Sandies here from allying against you and doing the same to you? You’re a liability to them, son, you must realize this.”

Kendall looked at Stewy, who was caught in a powerful undertow of emotional nausea and could only look back at Kendall out of the corner of his eye.

“Stewy wouldn’t vote for that,” Kendall said. “They — they wouldn’t be able to get to a majority without his seat.”

“You’re sure of that?” Logan said. “Even if the stock dips past the point of no return? Your friend here is a corporate raider, son. He’s a Series B fuckwad. You’ve brought the fox inside the henhouse. Have you noticed that no matter what happens, he benefits? He profits? He grows his stake in this company?”

Stewy stared Logan down. Logan stared back at him, keeping his hand on Kendall’s shoulder the entire time. The room around them grew blurry. This went on for maybe five seconds; it felt like an hour.

Stewy blinked first, without even meaning to. Logan dropped his hand from Kendall’s shoulder and turned from them, walking away. He continued over to the window and stared out over the city, his hands in his pockets.

Everyone else stood there like idiots. Frank was still avoiding eye contact with the entire room. Karolina cleared her throat and went to go get a bagel, and Roman sat down on one of the couches, bouncing his leg frantically.

Shiv came over to Stewy and Kendall and whispered, “That’s it?”

Kendall shrugged.

Stewy looked over at Karolina and watched her take a bite of the bagel she had picked up, which reassured him that the bagels were not laced with strychnine. “Stay on your toes,” he said under his breath.

“You solid?” Shiv mouthed to him.

Stewy stared her down until she relented. Kendall looked at Stewy in a searching way, but said nothing.

Over the next ten minutes, people filed into the anteroom. The crank Roy uncle, Ewan or whoever, showed up in a tattered fishing hat and said nothing to anyone, just loomed over them all from a corner. Then Paul, Datu and Dewi arrived, one right after the other, and started shooting dirty looks at the Roy children.

“Hey, we’re all here, Dad,” Kendall called to Logan. “Can we get this over with?”

Logan continued looking out the window for a moment, then turned to his son the way one would turn to a pestering waiter. “We’re waiting on a few more,” he said, then glanced over his shoulder. “Oh, here they come now.”

Stewy looked up through the glass and saw Greg, Tom, and Matsson approaching. “Seriously?” he said.

“They’re allowed to be present and observe,” Gerri said.

“They are absolutely not allowed to be present and observe,” Shiv snapped. “What the fuck? This is a boardroom, not a polling place.”

“They won’t be in the boardroom, Shiv,” Gerri said. “They’ll be out here.”

“Okay, great,” Stewy said. “Good thing this entire building is made of glass and everyone is allowed to do whatever they want, intimidation-wise.”

“They’re only here under my dad’s authority,” Shiv said. “As soon as we have control, they’re out of here.”

Datu whispered something to Paul, who chuckled.

“Do you really think you can stop us with cheap scare tactics?” Kendall demanded of Logan.

Logan looked at him, snorted derisively, and didn’t answer.

Greg, Tom and Matsson stopped outside the anteroom and didn’t come in. Matsson walked a few steps away from the other two and glanced down at his phone; Greg stood there like an impotent beanstalk. Tom was gazing through the glass at Shiv, who turned away from him and let her hair hide her face.

“8:59,” Logan announced. “Shall we?”

Kendall strode over to the door to the boardroom, held it open, then beckoned them.

Logan chuckled and went on in. “My son, the doorman,” he said as he passed Kendall.

Stewy followed Logan and clapped Kendall on the shoulder as he went. They were halfway through this; the end was in sight.

Logan took his seat at the head of the table, and everyone filled in around him. Frank and Gerri sat at his immediate right and left, and everyone else filled in as they saw fit. Stewy ended up across the table from Kendall.

The two of them caught each other’s eyes. At this point, Stewy’s nerves had hardened like steel, but Kendall looked like he might cry at any moment.

Stewy squared his jaw and gave Kendall a tiny nod; Kendall inhaled and lifted his chin. Sunlight was pouring in through the conference room windows, lighting his face up. His eyes looked almost amber in the sun.

For a moment, this was all that mattered. The quotidien corporate hog slaughter could wait. Stewy wanted everyone else in the room to excuse themselves so he could spend some time studying Kendall’s eyes in this light.

“Start the meeting, Frank,” Logan said, lacing his hands together.

“Okay,” Frank said, opening the black ledger in front of him. “It’s nine AM, Tuesday morning, and I’d like to call this meeting of Waystar Royco to order. Before we get into our agenda items for today, is there any interest in going over the minutes of the last meeting?”

“Absolutely not,” Logan said. “I’m fighting off a coup. This room is full of terrorists.”

“I just thought, since we’re voting on approval of the GoJo sale, and we had voted on the merger last meeting —”

Logan interrupted him and called down the table, “Does everyone have the fucking agenda and minutes of our last meeting, which I’m guessing you all remember anyway, because it was about a week ago?”

Stewy twirled back and forth in his chair, his arms folded. Everyone nodded.

“Grand,” Logan said.

Kendall raised his hand. “I’m proposing new business,” he said.

“We get to new business at the end, Kendall,” Frank said.

“This vote needs to precede the GoJo agenda item.”

Stewy swiveled fully in his chair and looked through the glass wall behind him, where Matsson, Greg and Tom were looming like Easter Island heads. Karolina stood beside them, her hands behind her back. The four of them looked at Stewy, who winked in reply and turned back around.

“That’s not protocol,” Frank said, flipping through the ledger more quickly. “It’s Robert’s Rules, guys — we handle old business before we move on to new business.”

Ewan sat up in his seat and demanded, “What is going on here?”

“It’s the view of our voting bloc that this new business should be handled first,” Sandi said.

Stewy looked to Logan, who started laughing. “The view of your bloc,” he said. “Okay. Tell me something, are you planning to drag your dear old dad in here and have him vote?”

Sandi went quiet for a moment. “Stewy and I are empowered to cast two votes each,” she said.

“Oh, but I’m the one who extends that power to you, see,” Logan said. “And I don’t feel like extending it today. So, for the purposes of today’s meeting, we’ll say you’re each worth one seat, and Tim and Sandy can haul their asses in here if they’d like to vote as well.”

This was nothing more than a desperate attempt to kill their majority, and it was one that Sandi had seen coming. She took her phone out and started texting. “Tim and my dad are together right now,” she said. “I had prepared them for the possibility that they might have to dial in. I’ll let them know to do so.”

“Well!” Logan exclaimed. “Great. Glad to have them.”

There were an awkward few minutes during which none of them could figure out how to work the VoIP conference phone in the middle of the table. Logan and all of his comrades sat in silence, refusing to help, while Sandi, Kendall and Shiv fiddled with it and whispered to each other. Finally, Shiv got it working.

“Hello?” said Tim’s voice.

“Hi,” Stewy said. “You’re on.”

“Great. I’m here with Sandy.”

There was silence, then a faint, raspy, “Hello.”

“Sandy!” Logan said. “Good morning. Can’t believe you’re not dead yet. Kendall? Go ahead with your backstabbing. We’re all waiting to see if you can get through it without crying.”

Kendall cleared his throat. “I’m not going to waste your time with a speech this time, Dad, mostly because I no longer believe anything I said back then.”

Ewan put his hands up. “I’m going to ask again, and I expect an answer this time,” he said. “What is going on right now?”

“Attempted patricide,” Logan boomed.

Toward the back of the conference room, Datu and Paul were whispering.

Over this general din, Kendall continued: “I am calling for a vote of no confidence in my father. I am calling for the board to remove him from his position as CEO, and his position as chairman.”

“Wait,” Stewy said, putting a hand up. “Logan needs to recuse himself and then leave.”

Roman looked stricken and said, “Does it matter? Can we just get this over with?”

“It’s a matter of principle. He needs to stand outside this time. It’s illegal for him to be in here.”

No one responded or moved, so Stewy stood up, his heart thundering in his chest.

“Sir,” he said to Logan, “please leave the room before I cause a fucking scene.”

Logan laughed at him. “Have it your way,” he said, getting up too. “This is theater, anyway. Custer's Last Stand. Sure, I’ll watch from the audience.”

He left, heading back into the anteroom. Stewy sat back down. His armpits were soaked with sweat.

“Frank,” Kendall said, “can you take a vote?”

“Ah, yeah,” Frank said. “If I must. All in favor of the vote of no confidence in Logan Roy? Part deux?”

Stewy glanced over his right shoulder and saw that Karl had just left the elevator and was heading over. Great, the other guy he was supposed to kill was here. Was Logan trying to fill that waiting room with ghosts of Christmas past?

“Yes,” Shiv said, raising her hand.

“Yes,” Sandi said.

“Yes,” Stewy said.

“Yes,” Kendall said.

Roman paused for a long moment before looking down and raising his hand.

“No,” Paul said loudly.

Frank nodded. “And I’m a no as well, so that’s five for, two against.”

“No,” Dewi said.

“A no from me,” said Datu, with a stern look directed at Kendall.

Ewan sat back in his chair. “I came here today to vote no on the sale of this company to an unhinged Swede who is helping further income inequality and environmental destruction with rapacious and unnecessary advancements in tech,” he said, filling the room with his voice in the same way that Logan did. “Instead, I find out this is another pathetic grab for power from my brother’s children. I vote an unequivocal no.”

Frank nodded and inhaled. “Sandy? Tim?”

“Yes,” Tim’s voice rang out from the center console.

A shaky, “Yes,” followed from Sandy.

Stewy turned his attention to Frank, who looked floored. Silence descended on the conference room like the air had been muffled. No one seemed to want to speak or move.

“I, um,” Frank said, then blew out a breath.

“If my math is right,” Shiv said, “that’s seven for, five against.”

“Uh, yes,” Frank said. “Okay. As vice chairman, I certify that the… the board has removed Logan Roy as chairman and CEO of Waystar Royco.”

He lifted his head and looked at Kendall, who looked back at him.

“Okay, uh, time for the lightning round,” Kendall said, sounding panicked, like he thought Logan might run back into the room at any moment. “Can I nominate myself as chairman? How does this work?”

“Technically, any member of the board can propose a motion, yes,” Frank said.

“Okay, I propose — I propose Kendall Roy be appointed chairman.”

“This is insane!” Dewi exploded. “The inmates are running the asylum! This is a coup! A prison riot!”

Shiv laced her fingers behind her head and leaned back. “Let the record reflect that Dewi Swann thinks this is an insane coup prison riot.”

“Please, everyone, let’s just vote,” Frank said. “I’m abstaining from this point forward, but everyone who’s going to vote needs to vote.”

A cloud moved in front of the sun, momentarily darkening the room and bathing them in shadow. Stewy raised his hand, along with Sandi, Shiv, and Roman.

“Yes,” said Tim, and then Sandy concurred.

“No!” Paul cried, leaping to his feet. “No, absolutely not. No.”

“As vice chair, I certify that the nominating committee has chosen Kendall Roy as the next chairman of Waystar Royco,” Frank said. “What’s the next item on your hit parade? CEO, I would hope? As we do not, at the moment, have one?”

“Yes, I propose Shiv Roy be appointed CEO,” Kendall said, as he got up to go sit in Logan’s abandoned chair.

It seemed that Kendall taking Logan’s chair while he nominated a female CEO was too much for Paul, who threw his hands up and went out into the anteroom.

“For the record, Paul Chambers is now absent,” Frank said, taking a sip from a bottle of water. Stewy noticed that his hand was shaking.

Stewy raised his hand again. Once again, they voted down party lines.

“I certify that the nominating committee has chosen Shiv Roy as the next chief executive officer of Waystar Royco,” Frank said.

Shiv lit up from within. With a smile, she went over to Kendall at the head of the table and stood behind him, leaning on the back of his chair, the two of them silhouetted against the sun. “Rome,” she said.

Roman looked agonized, but he stood up and went to join his siblings, standing on Kendall’s other side. There they were, the three-headed monster. Kendall had a manic grin on his face.

“Fighting crime, trying to save the world,” Kendall said. “Here they come just in time… the Powerpuff Girls.”

Dewi and Datu got up and left the room, too. Ewan stood, said, “You are the worst kind of brats,” and then left as well. Stewy turned and watched him; he didn’t stop in the anteroom, like Dewi and Datu did, but instead headed for the elevator.

Greg, Tom and Matsson were no longer looming near the glass like sharks in an aquarium. They and everyone else had gone over to the couches, where Logan appeared to be holding court. He was sitting on the arm of a couch, talking and gesturing widely; they were all listening.

Kendall turned to Gerri on his right. “Gerri?”

“Yep?” Gerri said.

“What do we do now?”

“Well,” Gerri said carefully, “we’ll need to announce this ourselves, to avoid any leaks…”

“We have a press release for Karolina,” Shiv said. “It should be in her inbox already. I scheduled it to be sent to her at 9:10.”

Gerri glanced up at her. “Great. Are there any other changes you’re looking to make to the C-suite?”

“I think we’re good,” Kendall said. “Roman stays on as COO —”

“I have one suggestion,” Sandi interrupted.

Stewy winced and slid down in his seat in anticipation.

“Go for it,” Kendall said. “I want to foster open conversation and the free exchange of ideas.”

Frank looked like he wanted to die.

“I think we need a new CFO,” Sandi said. “Karl is loyal to Logan — not only the man, but the vision. I think Stewy should fill that role. We need fresh blood.”

Shiv, Kendall and Roman all looked at Stewy, who smiled.

“Just a thought,” Stewy said. “Feel free to say no. Trust me, seriously, feel free. I mean that.”

Kendall was clearly mulling this over, though. “No, I actually like that idea,” he muttered. “We do need to kill Karl. Sorry, Frank.”

“Uh, that’s… fine,” Frank said. “Do what you need to do.”

Gerri met Frank’s eyes, then turned to Kendall. “I assume you’re planning to keep Frank and I on, as we’re still in the room?”

“Yeah, you guys stay,” Shiv said. “We need your input. We want, you know, the best value for the shareholders.”

“Okay, good,” Gerri said, clicking her pen a few times. “Good.”

“Is your attention going to be split?” Kendall said to Stewy. “Can you do this, on top of your commitments to Maesbury?”

It felt impossible, and yet totally plausible, that Kendall didn’t grasp the extent to which he had monopolized Stewy‘s attention over the past year. Stewy took a beat, then said, “I've been into Waystar pretty hard lately, I’ve wound a lot of my other stuff down. This isn’t a huge jump for me.”

Kendall glanced at Frank. “We don’t need to vote on Stewy as CFO, do we?”

“No, as the CEO and chairman, you and Shiv can appoint him directly,” Frank said. “Shall I, uh, go tell Karl he’s fired?”

Roman grinned. “Yeah, Frank, go fire Karl, you slimy bastard. Go fire your best friend. Bye-bye.”

Frank got up and backed out of the room like they would shoot him in the back if he turned around. He went through the door and headed over to the little Logan party in the corner.

“I think I should fire Paul, Datu and Dewi while we’re here,” Kendall said. “We need to do some serious fucking big-guns re-org.”

Stewy sat up in alarm, doing quick board math. If Kendall removed three board members at once, Sandi could run absolute roughshod over him. “Wait,” he said. “Line up your replacements first, then fire them. We can always call another meeting, Ken.”

Kendall nodded. “Yeah, you’re right. Gerri, what kind of paperwork do we need to be doing right now?”

“Well,” Gerri said carefully, “there’s a significant transition process. As a long-standing member of the board, Kendall, I think you’re in a good place to become chairman. You’re familiar with our culture, our finances, and our procedure. Shiv, um… you’re going to need to meet extensively with the head of each department. You’re going to want to meet with our chief human resources officer first thing. And you and I will need to find a time this week to sit down and discuss the DOJ fine and other outstanding legal and financial issues.”

“Okay,” Shiv said, shrugging. “I’m already inside most of this. I shouldn’t have to play too much catch-up.”

That was a worrisome thing for your 34-year-old CEO to say, but Stewy was trying not to worry.

“We have to get going on killing the GoJo deal,” Kendall said. “I know it’s pretty far underway.”

“Yeah, Stewy, um…” Gerri looked at him. “Ideally, you should meet with Karl? I’m not sure how cooperative he’ll be, though.”

“I’m guessing you, Frank, and Karl are all of the mind that this is a temporary situation, right?” Stewy said. “The military seized power, the king’s in a bunker, you three need to just sit tight and Logan will be able to take us to court and undo all this? Yeah, I think he’ll meet with me. Why destroy Waystar when he assumes he’s coming right back to it?”

Gerri stared at him for a moment, then adjusted her glasses. “That’s between you and Karl,” she said.

“One more piece of board business — we need to hire a CTO,” Stewy said. “It’s crazy that we don’t have one. Ken? Can that be a priority for you?”

“What, like, uh, vetting a shortlist?” Kendall said. “Sure. Sure.”

Shiv went over to the door and pulled it open, then called, “Karolina?”

Karolina turned, and everyone gathered around Logan went quiet. “Yes?”

“Did you get my email?”

Karolina raised her phone and checked it while everyone watched her. “Uh, yes.”

“Can you go ahead and blast out that press release?”

Karolina turned to Logan, who spread his arms magnanimously, as if to say hey, why not? “Of course,” she said.

Shiv nodded. “Tom?”

Tom turned to her with raised eyebrows. “Yes?”

“Can you and everyone else who doesn’t need to be here either go back to their desks, or escort themselves off the property?”

“Uh,” Tom said. “Okay. Sure. I’ll just go wait downstairs, then?”

Shiv gave him a blank look. “Wait downstairs for who, sweetheart?”

Tom licked his lips and coughed out a laugh. “Right. Okay. Received.”

They all began shuffling out of the anteroom — everyone except Matsson. Logan went out the door and headed for the elevator, flanked by bodymen, not glancing back at his children even once.

Matsson stayed and stared at them through the glass. He knocked on the door with one knuckle, then opened it a crack and said, “Can we talk? Just the Roys, Sandi and Stewy?”

Gerri and Frank got up and excused themselves. Gerri held the door open for Matsson, and he slouched into the room, his hands in his pockets.

“So,” he said. “Congratulations.”

“Uh-huh,” Kendall said. “What’s up, man?”

“Well,” Matsson said, leaning on the wall behind him. “This is not a fun conversation. Ah, obviously your dad was saying out there how he is planning to sue you — I imagine you probably prepared for that.”

“What did he say?” Shiv said.

“You know,” Matsson said. “Keep our eyes on the prize, stay focused on the deal, he’ll call the exterminators and have you dealt with within the week. But, look, I think no matter how that shakes out — if it’s successful or not — our goal is still to buy you.”

Stewy knew this was coming, but it was still a body blow to hear Matsson admit to it.

“I just wanted to be clear about that,” Matsson continued. “If it has to be a hostile process, that’s fine. Your stock has fallen and continues to fall, so it’s even better for us that way, yeah? We’ll pick you up for pretty cheap.”

“What is this, a fucking verbal bear hug?” Kendall demanded. “What are you doing right now?”

“Ah, no bear hug yet,” Matsson said. He took a piece of gum out of his pocket and popped it into his mouth. “We’ll see how far the stock falls. Hey, I don’t mean to be adversarial, I really don’t enjoy that. I just think maybe once the dust has settled, we can talk and come to an agreement. I think it’s pretty clear that if we don’t buy you, someone else will. With us, we can make it nice. With someone else, who knows.” He shrugged. “That’s it, that’s all I had to say. Hej då.”

Matsson turned and left the room, walking back into the anteroom, where Gerri and Frank were talking in urgent whispers. Stewy felt like he might throw up again.

“We knew that was coming,” he said to Kendall, in an effort to steady him.

“We did,” Sandi agreed. “That’s why I think going back to Pierce should be a top priority.”

Stewy didn’t see much upside for them in that deal, but he knew it might be necessary to stave off a hostile takeover. Of course, if they staved off a takeover for too long, they could end up driving Waystar into bankruptcy.

Kendall nodded. He looked utterly discombobulated. “Did, um — did Dad just kind of slip out without saying anything?”

“Yeah, he did,” Shiv said, glancing at her phone. “I’m guessing he went to go meet with lawyers, if he’s suing us? Christ, Karolina hasn’t sent out the press release yet. Is she fucking with me?”

Roman laid his head down on the conference room table and let out a quiet sigh.

Sandi picked up her own phone and sat there refreshing her email for a few moments. “There it is,” she said, looking up at Shiv. “It just went out.”

“Good,” Shiv said, the color returning to her cheeks. She stared at her phone for a moment, then brought her fist to her mouth and inhaled. “We actually did this.”

“We did this,” Kendall confirmed.

“I’m so full of adrenaline right now.”

“Yeah, I’m, uh, I’m shaking,” Kendall said. “My hands are shaking so bad.” He lifted them in the air to confirm this.

“I feel sick,” Roman mumbled, his voice muffled by the table.

“Let’s open a bottle of champagne, or something,” Stewy said, clapping his hands to his thighs and getting up. He got a head rush as he did. “Big, insane morning. We need to take the edge off.”

“Yeah, then we get to work,” Kendall said.

Stewy turned and looked again through the glass at Gerri and Frank, who looked back at him with faces of stone.

/

The rest of the day was swallowed up by meetings and paperwork. Stewy met with Karl for about two hours in his office, and Karl seemed in oddly good spirits. He let Stewy look at everything he had on hand, which meant Stewy figured out very quickly that 1) Karl had the all-analog workflow of a 99-year-old man and 2) Waystar was barely turning a profit in its most stupid divisions, like the movie studio. This was badly impeding the company’s cash flow.

“This is horrendous,” Stewy said, filling with dread as he flipped through a binder of quarterly reports.

“Ah, horrendous feels a little strong,” said Karl, who was sitting at his desk with his feet up, sipping whiskey. “Are we overextended? Yes. But the studio is in the black.”

“It looks like you’re laundering money,” Stewy said. “Do you realize that? This is like a Mexican drug cartel’s portfolio.”

Karl shrugged.

By 1 p.m., Stewy was officially and legally the CFO of Waystar Royco. He and Gerri watched over Shiv’s shoulders as she filled out the paperwork, and he had to tap her and remind her to use his government name on official documents.

“Otherwise you’re going to get a call from the SEC asking you who the fuck Stewy Hosseini is,” he said.

Shiv crossed out STEWY and wrote SADEQ. “My bad.”

After that, Stewy did his best to help Shiv slam the brakes on the GoJo deal without spooking anyone too badly. He knew if they moved funny here, that would only encourage the short-sellers. To get a more objective view of the situation, Stewy called up Laird — who, upon finding out that he had killed Karl and taken his job, told him he was “a nasty piece of work.”

“Great,” Stewy replied. “Anyway. Can we get down to business?”

After a sharp dip following the press release, the stock price stabilized, with the market cap holding steady at 28B. The street was not quite as horrified by them as everyone had expected, at least not yet.

There was, of course, an ongoing uproar over what they had done, mostly in the financial papers and across the entire Internet. Stewy’s name was trending on Twitter, his phone was ringing off the hook, and he was getting a constant barrage of push notifications about it, but once he put Do Not Disturb on he was okay. After he did that, he texted his parents to say that everything was fine but they should probably not go online much today. Then he ate a protein bar.

It felt like they had committed murder on live television and gotten away with it. Everyone wanted to talk to them, but no one had much of anything to say besides an incredulous, “Is this real?” On the lower floors, they were celebrities. People fell silent when they walked by, then started talking in hushed whispers as soon as they were gone.

Stewy and Kendall loved this. It was everything they had wanted since they were teenagers. Just for fun, they took a walk around the floor that the sales executives were on, and they got cheered like they were co-presidents of the most notorious frat on campus. These guys all wanted to be them; they all wanted to have the balls to do what they had done. They had slain the beast.

/

Kendall felt high the way he had on meth, and the way he had after his press conference. He felt like he was a parade balloon bobbing high over the street, brushing the clouds, waving down at the little people. Colors were brighter, sounds were muted, gravity pulled on him less. Nothing felt real.

As board chairman and nothing else, his daily responsibilities were few. For now, he was mostly following Shiv around and keeping an eye out for her — making sure she didn’t get dismissed and undermined in her first hours on the job. In between meetings, he was texting Jess details for a party that he wanted to have at his place tonight. Not a blowout, but a classy dinner party, a ‘welcome-to-the-new-world-order’ party. He invited the Waystar old guard, Sandi, Josh, Rava, and a handful of old friends. They would all see how good this was going to be, how well it would work.

After he and Stewy took a spin around the sales floor, he dragged Stewy into a utility closet and locked it behind them. Instead of asking him what he was doing, Stewy kissed him immediately. They stumbled backwards, and Stewy’s back hit the wall. Kendall pressed him into it, kissing him more sloppily, biting down hard on his bottom lip.

“I’ve never wanted to suck your cock so bad in my life,” Stewy said breathlessly against Kendall’s mouth.

Kendall’s dick throbbed. He leaned down to kiss Stewy’s neck. “Yeah?”

“Yes, yes, I want you inside me so bad.”

“Which — how?”

“Mouth, ass, I don’t care.”

They dry-humped each other for a few moments, moaning and grabbing at each other’s clothes. Then Kendall whipped his belt out of his pants and unzipped his fly, letting them fall to the floor. Stewy dropped down to his knees, staring up at Kendall as he did so, all soft mouth and dark doe eyes.

“Fuck,” Kendall groaned. “Don’t look at me like that or I’ll come on your face.”

Stewy tugged his boxer briefs down off his ass and licked the tip of his dick. Kendall exhaled shakily, leaning against the wall.

Stewy rose up onto his knees and took him by the hips, wrapping an arm around his waist while taking Kendall’s dick deep into his mouth, where it nudged at the soft clutch of his throat. Kendall’s eyes fluttered; his whole body throbbed with pleasure.

Stewy didn’t love giving head the way Kendall did, but he was a pro at it. He had almost no gag reflex, and he was an expert on how to please Kendall. As he sucked him off, he reached up and wrapped a careful hand around Kendall’s balls, applying the perfect amount of pressure.

Kendall leaned even more of his weight against the wall to his right and gripped Stewy’s shoulders, sighing Stewy’s name through his teeth and groaning. He felt assaulted by arousal, like Stewy was a CIA agent who was using a blowjob as an interrogation tactic.

He didn’t even need to thrust into Stewy’s face. Stewy did all the work for him, sliding Kendall’s cock in and out of his mouth, staring up at him the whole time, wet-lipped.

“You fucker,” Kendall choked out.

Stewy slid his tongue up the back of Kendall’s dick, his eyes twinkling. Kendall grabbed him harder, fisting his hand in his jacket, then came into his mouth while using his own sleeve to muffle the soft cry he let out.

Kendall stayed slumped against the wall, panting, while Stewy got to his feet and spat his come onto the floor.

“Classy,” Kendall rasped.

Stewy lifted his head and smiled at Kendall, then leaned in and kissed him, pushing his tongue into Kendall’s mouth and filling it with the bitter taste of his own semen.

Kendall opened his mouth wide and let this happen. He even went a little limp. After a moment, Stewy pulled back and patted Kendall on the shoulder, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

They quickly pulled themselves together. Stewy found a rag on the edge of a mop bucket, tossed it on the floor, then used his foot to half-assedly wipe up Kendall’s come.

“You want me to get you?” Kendall said, and pointed to the rigid line of Stewy’s boner beneath his pants.

“No,” Stewy said, and undid his belt so he could tuck his dick up under it. “Get me later. We’ve been in this closet way too long.”

Once they were presentable, Kendall opened the closet door a crack and peeked out. No one was in the hallway at the moment, so he stepped out and frantically motioned for Stewy to join him.

They had been out in the hall for all of three seconds before Tom rounded the corner, looking like a collection of squares: a big square head on top of a big square suit. “Kendall!” he said cheerily. “You’re a hard man to find… I’ve been tracking you down for an hour now. Hunting the most dangerous game. Can I steal a second?”

Kendall shrugged. “Sure.”

“Great,” Tom said, and beckoned them both into a small conference room across the hall.

Stewy and Kendall followed him in, and Tom pulled the door shut behind them.

“What’s up, Tomsgans?” Kendall said, sitting on the edge of the table and folding his arms.

Stewy kept his distance from them, wandering around with his hands in his pockets and feigning disinterest.

“Well,” Tom said, “it would be great, as the head of a Waystar division, to get an inside track on the, uh, various maneuvers of the C-suite. I’d like to join this line dance.”

“You’re not outside anything,” Kendall said. “Once we have something relevant to you, we’ll meet with you. Until then, hang tight, just keep doing what you’re doing.”

Tom smiled. “Right. And, sure. But you see where my concerns are coming from.”

“You fucked us,” Kendall said, staring him down. “And you messed up big-time, because Shiv’s CEO. If me or Roman took it, you’d be in a different position. Half the people here have fucked us in one way or another — it isn’t, like, a deal-breaker on its face, you know? But you fucked your wife, assuming she wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. I can’t help you with that.”

Stewy coughed. “I don’t think I need to be here,” he said. His voice was appealingly husky from deep-throating Kendall. “This is family business…”

“Oh, no,” Tom said, all jolly. “You’re Karl now! The C-suite is family. You’re like a bonus in-law. You come over here and take a seat next to me in hell.”

Stewy looked at him like he had seven heads.

“Tom,” Kendall interrupted, “honestly, I don’t know what conversations we can bring you inside of. How do I know you’re not going to leak to Dad?”

“That’s a great question,” Tom said, nodding. “Really, an entirely fair question. I guess my own question is, how are you going to make any fucking money without me?”

Stewy laughed. “It is a good question,” he said to Kendall. “Your profit centers are ATN and parks, really. I vote we strip and sell everything else. Sell the newspapers and TV stations, sell the cruise ships for parts, shutter every non-performing division — satellites, Xerox machines, game consoles.”

“Let the sun finally set on the British empire,” Tom said. “Of course, the smaller you make Waystar, the more tempting it is for someone to come take it over. Easier to steal a pocket knife than a Howitzer.”

Kendall inhaled. “We know.”

Stewy examined Tom for a moment, seeming to take stock of him.

“Look,” Kendall said, “we’ll talk.”

Tom nodded. “As long as we’re talking.”

“Yeah. Definitely.”

“Meeting adjourned?” Stewy said.

“Sure,” Tom said, and turned to get the door, holding it for them.

“Go on without us,” Kendall said.

Tom nodded and went out into the hall. Stewy stepped in front of Kendall, his head bowed, hands still in his pockets.

“He’s a liability to you guys,” Stewy whispered. “How hard would it be to find a replacement? All we need is somebody who’s willing to crack the whip at ATN and embrace conspiracy theory-driven programming. Those guys are a dime a dozen. The only advantage Tom has is that he acts like a roided-up cokehead without actually being a roided-up cokehead.”

“It’s not that simple, and you know it,” Kendall said. “Profitability is — you know. We’re playing Jenga, here, and you want to start yanking shit out at random.”

“I want to take this company to the chop shop so you and I can go do something fun. I always have. I’ve never made a secret of that.”

“Yeah, well… when you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

“I’m the hammer? Why don’t you go ask the guys at Vaulter for their input? Oh wait, you can’t, you killed them all.”

Kendall grinned. “Is it good for the company for the chairman and CFO to be sniping at each other like this?”

Stewy laughed. “Is it good for the company for the chairman and CFO to be blowing each other in a closet?”

Kendall reached out and slid his fingers in between Stewy’s stomach and his belt, tugging him forward a step. “I didn’t blow you, dude… you blew me.”

“What an own of me,” Stewy said, looking unbothered. “I guess that cancels out the approximate ten trillion times you’ve sucked my dick?”

“Yeah, exactly. Are you still hard?”

“No, actually. Talking to Tom got me soft in a hurry.”

Kendall laughed. “It’s up to Shiv, ultimately,” he said. “Her husband, her company.”

As he said this, he found himself relieved and devastated at the same time. It would really never be him. It would never, ever be him.

“Right,” Stewy said. “Though I’m guessing Tom’s takeaway from your conversation just now was that he should find a way to kill Shiv as CEO so that he can deal with you or Roman instead of her.”

“I’m sure,” Kendall said, shrugging. “But that’s her problem, not mine.”

“You don’t want to present more of a united front?”

“We are a united front.”

“The optics are key,” Stewy said. “Your dad spent your entire lives pitting you against each other. You’ve been openly warring in the press. It’s going to be hard to shake the public perception of dissension.”

Kendall sat back, annoyed. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, I don’t know you guys?”

“You don’t know what it’s like, you’re this fucking, you know — doted-on only child, only son — who did you ever get pitted against?”

Stewy’s face and tone were even when he said, “Myself.”

Kendall spluttered at him.

“I wasn’t coming after you,” Stewy said. “It was just an observation.”

“Don’t observe. Observation rejected. It’s outside the scope of your role.”

“I didn’t say it as your CFO, I said it as your friend.”

They fell silent, still looking at each other. Kendall, somewhat breathlessly, said, “Do you ever think about what you would be like if my dad had raised you?”

Stewy nodded yes.

“I do too. And you know what I think? I think he would have raised a killer, and he would have destroyed everything I ever liked about you,” Kendall said, the words tumbling out of him. His throat got hot and clutchy like he might cry. “I think he would have made you such a piece of shit asshole. And what — what does that say about me, you know? What did he make me? What is there to like about me?”

He stopped himself, and he was able to cordon off the tears in his chest, keeping them from reaching his eyes. He just sat there breathing choppily and hiccuping, his stomach quaking. Stewy reached out and laid a hand on his shoulder.

“What is there?” Kendall choked out.

“Ken,” Stewy said, his voice impossibly soft.

“Tell me.”

“I can’t tell you why I like you. I only know that I like you.”

“But I’m a monster.” The tears burst forth, then, like a dam breaking. He bent in half, ashamed, and wept. “I killed my dad… I fucking killed my dad.”

Stewy stepped in closer to him and started to rub his back. He did this for a few minutes, until Kendall had calmed down.

“It’s been a heavy day,” Stewy said. “You’re tired. You should go home around six, get some rest. Me, Shiv and Roman can take it from here.”

“I’m having a party tonight,” Kendall sniffled.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, a dinner party. Did Jess not invite you?”

“I don’t know, I have Do Not Disturb on.”

“I’m inviting everyone. The C-suite, Josh, Rava, everybody. Not Connor, he fucking fled back to New Mexico to avoid all this, ‘cause he loves to avoid. But, you know, everyone else.”

“Kendall…”

Kendall lifted his head and sat up, letting Stewy’s hand fall off him. “Look,” he said, “we’re probably not going to make it out of September, okay? Either my dad is going to take us to court and kill us, because the judicial system is in his pocket, or Matsson is going to kill us, or someone else, or even fucking Sandi. Can you let me throw a party and pretend it’s all good? Can you let me chill on top of the world for a couple minutes?”

The look on Stewy’s face changed, but Kendall couldn’t tell what the new one meant to convey. He looked now like he had in the wine cellar, but wasn’t he angry then? He clearly wasn’t angry now. He was still touching Kendall. So what was that look?

“Hey, man, do whatever you want,” Stewy said. “I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m not,” Kendall said. “As a rule of thumb, no. But thanks.”

Stewy squeezed his shoulder again, then let him go.

Kendall cleared his throat. “You should meet with the two lawyers I have working on the Dad situation — the lawsuit. He’s probably going to file by the end of today, we’re thinking, but I’m sure he’s already talking to the judge.”

“Who are the lawyers?” Stewy said.

“Casey-Ann Gross and Preston Sipes.”

Stewy laughed and reached for Kendall’s blazer, smoothing his lapels. “No shit? Funny.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Just — I gave Preston a handjob once.”

Kendall laughed too, and wiped his eyes with his sleeve. “Are you kidding me?”

“Yeah, in the bathroom of the bar at the Empire.”

“Isn’t he, like, a Mormon?”

Stewy nodded and patted Kendall on the chest. “Oh, big-time,” he said with a smile.

/

Before Kendall’s party, Stewy went home. He worked out, took a long, hot bath with an ice mask over his eyes, then dragged himself out of it, dried off and went to get dressed. He pulled socks, pants and a jacket that were ink-black, Gucci Jordaan loafers, and a scarlet-red shirt. He was intentionally taking the color red back from Logan. It wasn’t his. He couldn’t have it. Stewy looked too good in red.

When Stewy got to Kendall’s, the lights were dimmed, which made the dark blue glow of twilight over the Manhattan skyline look like it was inside the apartment with them. The living room furniture had been moved, and in place of the couches and chairs was a long, long table. It was already dressed with tapered candles and centerpieces that looked like fistfuls of moss.

There were five people here already — Shiv, Roman, Gerri, Frank and Jess — and twice as many staff milling around. Kendall’s houseman took Stewy’s coat and thanked him for coming, then put it away and headed down the hall in the direction of the chef’s kitchen. Stewy could hear Kendall’s voice coming from a distance down that same hallway.

A caterer came by and offered him a cocktail, and he accepted happily. He was about to walk over and join the knot of people standing over by the windows when the elevator chimed behind him.

Stewy turned. The doors opened, and his old friend Paul Dawson walked out. Paul had interned with Stewy and Kendall at Goldman; Stewy was surprised and confused to see him.

“Hey, man!” he said, extending his hand for Paul to shake. “What are you doing here?”

“I actually don’t know,” Paul said in an undertone, unwinding his scarf from around his neck. Kendall’s houseman returned, and Paul handed over the scarf along with his coat. “I’m really surprised Kendall invited me. This looks intimate, too — what is this?”

Stewy stared at Paul for a second, trying to puzzle out why Kendall would have wanted him here. Then he remembered: these days, Paul was a big investor in the app design space. The nutty Roy children were serious about trying to get a Waystar app built.

“Just a little dinner party to celebrate,” Stewy said. “I’m guessing you kept up with the news today?”

“Yeah!” Paul said, his eyes going wide. “Yeah, I mean, congratulations, or, I’m sorry, maybe?” He laughed. “I don’t, uh… It’s hard to believe. Logan Roy going down? I actually didn’t believe it when I saw it.”

“It’s been a surreal day, for sure.”

Paul eyed him. “I guess I haven’t even really talked to Kendall since you guys had your fallout.”

Stewy nodded and sipped his drink. He had gotten custody of nearly all of his and Kendall’s mutual friends in the friend-divorce.

“But that’s all good now, obviously,” Paul continued.

“Oh, yeah,” Stewy said. “It’s all love. It was always all love, we just had some differences in opinion for a while there. You know, money makes everybody crazy.”

“Not you, though,” Paul said with a grin.

“Ha! Yeah.” No, money didn’t make Stewy crazy. Dick made Stewy crazy, apparently. “Hey, it’s good to see you, man. How’s, uh… Tess?”

“She’s good, she’s good.”

Stewy brought him over to the group, then. Shiv, Roman and Jess all said hi to Paul like they knew him, so Stewy introduced him to Gerri and Frank. Then he took advantage of the ensuing small talk to peel Shiv, Roman and Jess away from the group.

“Where are we at, PR-wise?” he said under his breath.

Shiv sipped her own drink. “I have our publications under control,” she said. “The Globe, I don’t know if you saw the big piece they ran, but it was pretty pro-us. American troops raid Saddam’s palace, that general tone. And PGM is going easy on us — I assume because of how much they hate Dad. Or maybe Naomi asked Nan to.”

“Naomi’s back in rehab,” Roman said. “We reported that.”

“Oh, shit,” Shiv said. “Then maybe Nan still likes me? I don’t know. Stewy, I think we should get you on the PGN financial shows Thursday or Friday.”

“Yeah, I was thinking the same,” Stewy said. “I’m in touch with George, I can give him a call tomorrow and ask if he wants to book me.”

“I’m sure he would,” Shiv said. “What better guest is he going to get? Greenspan’s mummy? Honestly, any of us could probably get booked by any talk show in existence right now. You and I can game out the approach.”

Stewy nodded. He really didn’t enjoy going on TV, but he knew he had to. “What about the ratfucking your dad promised?”

Roman inhaled and seemed about to speak, then didn’t.

Shiv swept her hair back. “The tattoo story isn’t out yet. There’s stuff out there about Kendall’s drug use, there’s gossip about Roman being a sex pest — nothing concrete, though, because they know it’s a libel suit if they get it wrong.”

Jess cleared her throat and said, “Shiv, I saw some stories about, um, your marriage.”

“Right,” Shiv said, and nodded. “There’s reporting about me and Tom.”

“Is he coming tonight?” Stewy said.

“No.”

“Where’s he sleeping?”

“At home, I’m assuming,” Shiv said, forcing a light tone.

“She’s invaded my house,” Roman said. “Forced herself on me. She’s leaving stupid red hair in all my drains, and using my soaps and butter.”

“I’m violating the third amendment,” Shiv said.

“Okay,” Stewy said. “Look, I have no interest in being in anyone’s business, but Shiv? Either get your house in order or fire him.”

“I’m looking into it,” Shiv said icily. “Thanks, CFO.”

“Yeah, you’re welcome, chief.”

Roman glanced around them and then said, in a very low voice, “Has Kendall seemed a little, uh… out to lunch to you guys? Like, since the board meeting?”

Stewy nodded.

“I think he’s probably in shock,” Shiv said. “I’m in shock. I don’t think he’s going to go grippy-sock crazy.”

“Hey, I’m in shock too, but I don’t have a history of reacting to shock by doing crack,” Roman muttered.

“Look,” Stewy said, “we’re all keeping an eye on him.”

“Except for right now. Who’s to say he’s not in the back, doing crack with the waiters?”

Shiv’s eyes got large; she reached out and put a hand on Roman’s shoulder. His brow furrowed in confusion, and then he looked back at her, appeared to realize what he had said, and went dead silent.

Stewy turned to Jess and said lightly, “Jess, could you actually go grab Kendall for us?”

“I’m on it,” Jess said, and went down the hall toward the chef’s kitchen.

The three of them waited for her to get out of earshot, then exhaled as a group.

“Rome,” Shiv whispered.

“What? Fucking come on, that wasn’t even — that wasn’t what I was referencing. It was barely related.”

“I know, just tighten up.”

“You two need to tighten up — getting your assholes puckered just because I said the word ‘waiter’ —“

The elevator chimed again, and a caterer came by with more drinks. Stewy set his empty glass on her tray and took a full one. “I’m going to go circulate,” he said to the Roys, and slipped away.

Josh was the next to arrive. Stewy approached him, and Josh gave him a warm hug. As they were pulling apart, he whispered in Stewy’s ear, “Sandi got in touch with me earlier.”

“Oh,” Stewy said, stepping back so he could look Josh in the face. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. It was a good conversation. She and I are on the same page in a lot of ways.”

“Like what?”

Josh smiled at him and said nothing.

“Anything you want to loop me in on?” Stewy prodded him.

“You know, I think there’s going to be plenty to discuss in the coming days.”

Stewy, unnerved, let out an easy laugh. “Alright, man — talk later?”

Josh didn’t say yes or no to that. He just clapped Stewy on the shoulder and walked away from him.

Okay. Not ideal. It looked like Josh and Sandi were mobilizing without Stewy, which meant Stewy had two bad options: he could either sit on the sidelines while the Sandies made moves to rip the Roys to shreds, or he could warn Kendall and have Kendall sprint to appoint friendly board members.

If he did the latter, he would be taking up arms against Sandi, and she would respond by cutting him out of the dealmaking even more than she already was. Plus, where were they even going to get friendly board members? Who the fuck could the kids trust? Jess? Would they have to offer Connor a board seat? Stewy would sooner offer a board seat to a parrot.

The problem with sitting on the sidelines was that he might be putting himself in an untenable position where he could end up with no moves being available to him. If Sandi had decided she didn’t trust him, then he was done for, and he needed to be on maneuvers.

Where, exactly, had he fucked up? Was it because he had stepped in to delay the firing of Datu, Dewi and Paul? Was it because of what Logan had said about him? Was it because he had initially balked at the CFO role? Or was it because he had taken the CFO role? He was now badly enmeshed in Waystar, after all. He was literally a Waystar employee. Maybe Sandi considered him neutralized.

He had always known where he stood with Sandy far more than he now did with Sandi. This was one of the many reasons that Sandy’s stroke had been so fucking annoying.

Stewy was still standing there mulling when the elevator chimed again. The doors opened, and Rava stepped out. She was dressed nicely, but comfortably, like she was going to see a play.

“Oh,” she said. “Hi there.”

“Hey, Rava,” Stewy said, smiling at her. She didn’t smile back, which, whatever. “It’s been — wow, what has it been, a couple years?”

“At least,” she said.

“Yeah. Wild. How have you been?”

“I’m doing well, yourself?”

Stewy shrugged. “Today’s been a little crazy.”

“Uh-huh,” Rava said. Now she smiled, but it was a ‘better you than me, fucker!’ smile. “Yeah, I was surprised to see you were involved in all this.”

“Business is funny like that,” Stewy said.

“Right,” Rava said. “Business.”

Kendall sidled up to them with the swiftness of a guy who had noticed from across the room that his ex-wife and ex-mistress were talking. “Hey,” he said to Rava, hugging her. “Where are the kids?”

“Uh, I didn’t bring them, Ken,” Rava said, shrugging her wrap off of her shoulders and handing it to Kendall’s houseman as he walked up. “I wasn’t really sure why you invited all of us? I mean, this looks like an adult atmosphere.”

Kendall looked around at his apartment with its low lighting, all-adult guests, and passed cocktails. “I don’t get what you mean,” he said.

“Look, come by tomorrow,” Rava said. “They want to see you, and they were kind of confused by your phone call today. They don’t grasp the business stuff very well… they’re mostly concerned about you and Grandpa. You know, they see things online...”

“Yeah, I can explain the situation better in person,” Kendall said.

Rava nodded and gave him an even less warm smile than the one she had given Stewy. She walked away, and Kendall turned to Stewy.

“I saw you talking to Josh,” he said.

Stewy looked at Kendall, whose face was a mask of stoicism. He ached for Kendall and wanted to help him; at the same time, he was thinking that if there was a possibility he was on the outs with Sandi, he needed to act now. The Roy kids might splash him and call him names, but they wouldn’t throw him out of their canoe. They couldn’t. They were surrounded by enemies, and Stewy was — for God knows what reason — acting like a friend.

In his softest voice, Stewy said, “We need to start vetting two new board members immediately.”

Kendall’s eyebrows rose. “Oh.”

“We need people you can trust.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean, should we —“ Kendall glanced over his shoulder into the living room, where there was a soft roar of noise from conversation. “Uh…”

“Go talk in private? Yes.”

“Okay. Yeah.”

They slipped away and started down the hall toward Kendall’s bedroom. Stewy looked over his shoulder and saw that Sandi had just arrived, her hair glowing in the low light. She noticed him looking at her and caught his eye. Stewy kept his face neutral, and Sandi’s stayed neutral too. She kept looking at him until he turned back around.

Kendall turned a light on while Stewy went over and sat on the bed, stretching his legs out and leaning back. Kendall came over to him and stopped in front of him, hands on his hips.

“What’s up?” he said.

“I think Sandi might be trying to build a majority against you,” Stewy said.

“No shit,” Kendall said flatly. “I mean, I figured. No Roy child as CEO, right?”

“Yeah. And I think Josh is already in her pocket.”

Kendall’s face dropped. “Seriously? You got that just from saying hi to him?”

“It was the way he said hi,” Stewy said. “You know how it is when you’re about to get a knife in your back, people don’t tell you straight out, it’s just a look or a tone of voice…”

“No, I don’t know,” Kendall said. “I usually get knifed in my front.”

“Well, the whole world is not Logan.”

Kendall rubbed the back of his shaved head. “So you fucked us, then,” he said in a flat tone. “You were the one who offered Josh a seat. I fucking told you, man, I told you.”

“Alright, full disclosure, I thought I was taking out a little additional insurance against you and Shiv doing anything we didn’t like. I didn’t think that once you were in power, Sandi would consider me allied with you.”

“You didn’t think? That’s unusual.”

“I had the possibility in the back of my head, but the other problem is, there wasn’t really anything I could do about it even if I saw it coming.”

“No contingency plan?”

“I don’t usually stick around after the putsch,” Stewy said. “And as for Josh — he’s just being pragmatic.”

“Yeah, I get it,” Kendall said. “It’s smart to get ready to fuck us. We haven’t consolidated power yet, we’re flimsy.”

“Right, so we need to move fast to fill those other two seats.” Stewy said. “We need people who are in your pocket, but who Sandi isn’t necessarily going to clock as being in your pocket. That way we have a foolproof majority, and we can start swinging our weight around.”

“I’m hearing a lot of ‘we’,” Kendall said.

“Well, no shit, I’m in a corner here.”

“So you’ll vote with us?”

“Yes. If Sandi is trying to push me out? Yes.”

“What if she isn’t?” Kendall said, staring Stewy down. “What if she comes to you and asks for your help to vote us out?”

“Honestly? That move doesn’t make sense to me from a business standpoint. The last thing this firm needs is more chaos and uncertainty. The street would devour Waystar if you had a fourth CEO in as many months.”

“So?”

“So, if Sandi did that, it would be out of spite for the Roys. And I don’t have spite for the Roys. All I want is my fucking money. No, I wouldn’t vote with her.”

“Why would she try to push you out?”

“Probably because of that.”

“Because of what?”

“My lack of spite. Look, Sandi is a lot better-adjusted than you guys, but she’s still a child soldier. I’m not. I’m a neutral party, and I’ll do what’s smart, and that’s become a liability. It became a liability as soon as you took control.”

“You sure it’s not because you’re loyal to me?”

“No,” Stewy said. “Because I’m not.”

“You sure?”

“You want to call my bluff, Ken?”

Kendall tilted his head, and in a very Shiv-like way, said, “I think I already did?”

Stewy had to laugh at that. “You stupid, arrogant asshole…”

Kendall stepped forward between Stewy’s spread legs, brushing his knee against Stewy’s thigh. Stewy tipped his head back and looked at him with interest.

“Why are you doing that?” Kendall muttered. “Sitting on my bed looking sexy?”

Stewy brought his thighs closer together, pressing the meat of them into Kendall’s legs and drawing him in closer. “Why are you always blaming me for the fact that you’re attracted to me?”

Kendall grinned at him. “Hey, in the closet, you said ‘get me later.’”

“I did say that.”

“It’s later.”

“It is later.”

Kendall leaned down and kissed him. He tasted like cigarettes. Stewy tipped his head back and reached up to grab Kendall by his tie, pulling him even closer.

“Be honest with me,” Kendall murmured against his lips. “What do you think I should do?”

“I already told you,” Stewy said, kissing his jaw. “Do what the hedge funds are doing to newspapers… do it to your own firm. Raid it. Strip-mine it. Close up shop.”

“And then what?”

“Hmm?”

They were undressing each other, their hands fumbling with buttons and zippers. Kendall pushed Stewy back a little, then rested a knee on the bed between his legs. “Then what? You said we should build something new together. What would that be? What do we build?”

“Anything, man. It’s up to you. Just give me control of the money and let me handle that part.”

“You don’t think I can handle my own money?”

“No, I don’t.”

“You think I’d just hand you all my fucking money?”

“Yes, I do,” Stewy murmured.

Kendall kissed him again, harder this time. Stewy let him. He was deliriously horny for Kendall for a lot of reasons, including the fact that they had killed Logan that morning, the two drinks he had had, and the apartment being full of people. Stewy was getting tingly all over from the thought of fucking right here, right now.

“I want to fuck you,” Kendall said in a low voice.

“Fuck me,” Stewy breathed back.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, fuck me, I’ve been wanting you to fuck me all day.”

That was all Kendall needed. He flipped Stewy over on his stomach and went in the drawer of the bedside table for lube. Stewy pulled his pants and boxers down, then dragged a pillow over to himself so he could press his face into it.

He started jerking himself off before Kendall even got the cap off the lube. Kendall didn’t bother fingering him, which was fucked up and crazy and stupidly hot. He just pressed his way into Stewy when he was ready, and Stewy dragged in such a sharp intake of air that he got a mouthful of pillowcase. He was used to the burn, and the feeling of trespass, but Kendall usually kissed him while that was happening. It was more lonely to be bent over the side of a bed.

Kendall went deeper into him, making his prostate throb, and Stewy let out a whiny groan.

“Shh,” Kendall hissed.

“Fuck you,” Stewy said under his breath, but he bit down on the pillow.

Once they had a rhythm going, Stewy went back to jerking himself off, his hand bent at an awkward angle so he could shove it between his own body and the bed, which Kendall was aggressively fucking him into. Kendall felt so good. He shouldn’t have felt this good, but he did. Stewy was a pussywhipped dope with Kendall for brains. He was aching for Kendall even now, with Kendall deep inside of him. He needed him desperately, he wanted more of him. It made no sense. There was truly no logic to it.

Stewy wanted to moan and cuss so loudly that everyone in the other room would know exactly what was going on in here, but that was tantamount to suicide, so he lay there biting the pillow like he was getting surgery without anesthesia. His body responded to Kendall without any input from him, clutching and yielding with Kendall’s thrusts. All Stewy had to do was lie there and take it. He liked receiving anal and oral for that reason: it was such a relief to just lie there and take something, for once. It was pretty much the only time he let himself do that.

“Kendall,” he moaned into the pillow, just loud enough for Kendall to hear.

Kendall let out a soft, appreciative sound and grabbed Stewy by the hair for a second, yanking him by the back of his head. Stewy grinned in response to this.

Kendall came before Stewy did, shuddering a sigh through clenched teeth from behind him and then falling face-down on the bed beside Stewy, their arms on top of each other. Stewy kept jerking himself off, closing his eyes and concentrating all of his energy on it so he could just get it done.

His orgasm grabbed him and held him tight for about five seconds, then let him go, taking a lot of the tension in his body along with it. Stewy lay there panting, content, his hand and stomach and the bed now wet with come. His inner thighs were too, he realized, because Kendall had of course come in him. He could never convince Kendall to come anywhere else — not even on his face or his stomach.

“Fuck,” Stewy breathed.

“Yeah,” Kendall said in a raspy voice, squeezing his hand.

“We have to get back in there.”

“I know. How long has it been? Twenty minutes?”

Stewy, who knew it had been a lot less, started laughing. He checked his watch. “Eight.”

“Eight minutes? No way. Bullshit.”

“We’ll round it up to ten for you. Get dressed.”

They went in the bathroom and wiped the come off themselves, then got dressed fast. Stewy spritzed cologne on himself to cover the chlorine smell of jizz, and Kendall reached for the bottle.

“We can’t go back out there smelling like the same cologne,” Stewy said.

Kendall mutely withdrew his hand. He started to do his tie back up and said, “Hey, uh, real quick.”

“What’s up, dude?”

“If we’re in this together for real, I need you to have my back. Like, on all stuff.”

Stewy squinted at him. “What are you talking about?”

“The shit with Shiv,” Kendall said. “When she, uh, confronted us about… you know. You didn’t back me, you broke ranks. You’re CFO now, and I need you to get behind me and toe the party line.”

Stewy, annoyed, stepped into Kendall’s space and tightened his tie for him. “First of all, fuck you, white boy,” he said, pulling the tie a little tighter than he knew was comfortable. “I’ll do and say what’s best for the company and our bottom line, and if I see any of you fucking with that, I’m going to run my mouth as much as I want. Second of all, that was our personal business, and Shiv is your CEO. It’s in your best interest not to lie to her face. I’m not letting your petty sibling rivalry bullshit blow up the most fragile takeover of my entire career. We can either come out of this triumphant, or humiliated, and I don’t get humiliated.”

Kendall seemed to have nothing to say in response to this. He just nodded.

Stewy adjusted the length of the tie, loosening it again. “Watch yourself, Ken. Don’t let this go to your head. Don’t lose sight of the big picture.”

“Fuck you. I’m not.”

“Go be a host,” Stewy told him. “Go call us for dinner, I’m hungry. I’ll hang out in here for like two minutes before I come back out.”

“Fine,” Kendall said with another nod. He turned and walked out, pausing for a second in the doorway and then pulling the door shut behind him.

Stewy kept an eye on his watch for approximately one-and-a-half minutes, after which he got bored, thought ‘fuck it,’ and headed out. When he reached the end of the hall, he heard Kendall saying, “Hey, everybody, please go ahead and have a seat… we’re about to serve the first course, which is an, uh, a deconstructed radicchio salad.”

Stewy walked into the living room to see everyone heading over to the table. The sky was fully dark now, and the bright skyline was twinkling through the windows.

There was an open spot at the end of the table next to Gerri and Frank, so Stewy went over and took that. He unfolded a dark red napkin and draped it over his lap, then looked expectantly at Gerri on his left. She turned away from Frank and said, “Hey.”

“Hey,” Stewy replied, then nodded to Frank, who nodded back.

“I hear you met with Gross and Sipes?”

“I did.”

“I’m checking in with them first thing tomorrow morning, if you’d like to be in that meeting,” Gerri said.

Stewy nodded. Logan’s attorneys had filed a lawsuit — alleging bad faith termination, defamation of character, and breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing — right before the courts had closed for the day. Gross and Sipes were currently working on a response, which they had said would be ready by tomorrow morning at the latest.

“I’m surprised you’re taking point on this one,” said Stewy, who knew perfectly well that she and Frank were counting on Logan’s lawsuit to work.

“Well, I am general counsel,” Gerri said.

Frank sipped his glass of wine.

Once everyone else was seated, Kendall took his place at the head of the table. As caterers started setting out the salads, he lifted his glass and said, “Hey, a toast, everybody? To, uh, new beginnings. And good health.”

The table rippled with waves of movement as his guests lifted their glasses and started seeking out eye contact for the purpose of exchanging knowing looks with each other. Stewy couldn’t remember the last time he had been at a party where the air was so thick with doubt and subtext. Maybe Shiv’s wedding reception, actually.

“To good health,” Stewy said, and clinked his glass with Gerri’s. He didn’t even mean to omit the ‘new beginnings’, it just happened.

“To good health,” Gerri said. The candlelight was glinting brightly off of her glasses.

Stewy barely heard the sound of the elevator chiming underneath the clinking and murmuring. When he placed the sound a moment later, he assumed it was just some late-arriving guest. But then across the table, Roman looked up and said, with venom: “Yo! Gumby! Who invited you?”

Stewy turned, then, and saw Greg and Comfrey walking into Kendall’s apartment looking like Rocky and Bullwinkle if they had been Bolsheviks. Greg had that affable look of innocence to him that he always did, a look that Stewy had assessed as the self-defense mechanism of a craven operator with no skills besides clinging. Comfrey looked like she had just worked for fourteen hours straight.

Kendall got up and started crossing the apartment. Stewy got up too, and followed him.

“What the fuck?” Kendall said. “You can’t be here, you’re trespassing.”

“Your doorman let us up,” Comfrey said. “Kendall, due to the fact that you’re not, um, answering your phone, I’m just here to let you know that Berry is letting you go as a client.”

“What?”

Stewy didn’t care about Comfrey, who was nobody — he was watching Greg. Greg was using his height to his advantage, looming over Stewy and Kendall and scanning his eyes over the dinner table, looking from face to face. He was doing a headcount. He was taking a mental inventory of everyone present.

“Are you guys having dinner?” Greg said, smiling. “You could have invited me, I’m a pretty big fan of dinner. Just, like, as a concept.”

Kendall ignored him and said to Comfrey, “Are you taking him on as a client? You know he doesn’t have any actual money, right? His granddad cut him out of his inheritance, and I’m firing him first thing tomorrow.”

Comfrey gave him nothing in return but a bland stare. Save for the soft music, there was dead silence in the rest of the apartment. Everyone was listening to this go down.

“Uh, Kendall, if I were you, I maybe wouldn’t, like, be so hasty to fire ATN’s new president of operations and distribution,” Greg said.

Kendall turned to him with his palms pressed together. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about. Who —? Never mind. You’re not remotely qualified to do that job, so yeah, I’m going to fire you and find someone who is. Now get out of my apartment.”

“Just so we’re clear that you’re no longer being represented by us,” Comfrey said.

“Yeah, go fuck me to the press, Comfrey. Have fun. You’re jumping ship to the losing side because you fell for some marketing from this fucking, like, walking car dealership inflatable tube man. Good luck with that, seriously. Send Berry my regards, I’ll see you all in a year when you’re begging for change in Prospect Park. Goodbye.”

Kendall didn’t bother moving to enforce this. One of his bodymen, as if possessed by Kendall’s intent, appeared from the shadows and hustled Greg and Comfrey back toward the elevator. He was a few inches shorter than Greg, but twice as wide and a wall of muscle. They obeyed him without comment.

“While you’re down there, can you fucking talk to the doorman?” Kendall said to him. “Take them off the list.”

The bodyman nodded as the elevator doors closed.

Stewy broke away from Kendall and headed back to the table. Everyone was staring at him; Paul looked downright alarmed. Stewy smiled like none of this meant anything to him, then sat back down.

Kendall resumed his place at the head of the table a moment later. He lifted his glass again and said, with a somewhat forced grin, “You know you have people on the run when they’re coming by in person to threaten you, right? Anyway, uh, I wanted to make a toast to Shiv and Roman. CEO and COO. We’re finally in this together, we’re tight. We’re going to take this firm into the twenty-first century, and, I — I’m glad, everyone here tonight, I’m glad you’re all along for the ride. This week might be a little bumpy, but just hold on tight, and we’ll get through it.”

“Isn’t it funny,” Roman said to no one in particular. “We took over the company, and I still have the same job, somehow. Hilarious.”

“He’s kidding,” Kendall said over the ensuing awkward laughs. “Hey, COO is just a title. My brother is integral to our strategy.”

Shiv lifted her own glass. “Here’s to Q4 providing a lot more value for our shareholders, yeah?”

“Here’s to that,” Josh said, to more scattered laughter. He caught Stewy’s eye across the table, and Stewy didn’t let his gaze waver in response. He did notice in his peripheral vision, though, that Sandi was sitting at Josh’s left. Christ.

/

The party wrapped up around midnight when the last stragglers finally headed for the door, holding the bottles of wine that Kendall had been handing out to people all night as party favors.

By 12:15, the only people left in Kendall’s apartment besides Kendall were his staff, some lingering caterers who were packing up their chafing dishes, and Shiv, Stewy and Roman. Kendall’s people took the giant leafed table away and put back the living room furniture, and Kendall’s houseman lit a fire in the fireplace. Shiv turned on a TV on the adjacent wall, and the four of them curled up on a giant couch beside the fireplace, watching PGM’s continuing coverage of the day’s events. Behind them, there was the constant, comforting sound of other people cleaning up.

“I mean, is there any precedent for this?” said PGM’s Katy Perez to her guest, some economics wonk who Stewy recognized but couldn’t place. “I can’t really think of another time in recent history where we’ve seen a boardroom coup this shocking.”

They cut to the wonk across the desk from her, who shook his head. “It’s highly unusual,” he said. “Especially for a family business. I’m thinking maybe of Apple — the 1985 ouster of Steve Jobs, and the 1997 coup that returned him to power — but in the current century? It’s almost unheard of.”

“And to bring on Shiv Roy, a thirty-four year old with almost no executive experience, as CEO,” Katy said. “You know, but it appears this was a desperate Hail Mary from the Roy heirs — and they hinted at some serious executive dysfunction in their press release.”

“Right, in addition to what we already knew,” said the wonk. Stewy recognized him, then: his name was Roger. “What’s already come out from Kendall Roy’s whistleblowing, and the ensuing DOJ investigation.”

“Which raises another good point,” Katy said, nodding. “You know, this new management, they’re facing an historic fine, on top of a mountain of other problems. Are they up to the challenge? We don’t know. It’s possible that this new leadership would conclude that there’s no good option available to them but to sell, which seemingly was the route Logan Roy was prepared to take before his ouster.”

“And we have to assume that was in part because he didn’t have faith in any of his children to take the reins of the firm,” Roger said. “So for them to ally with his biggest rival and take it by force is extremely interesting. And I guess we’ll see if they’re up to it.”

Kendall picked up the remote and muted the TV. Then he reached into his breast pocket and produced a joint. “Anyone have a lighter?” he said.

Shiv nodded and went into her own pocket, handing him one.

Stewy was curled up at the far end of the couch under a blanket, and Roman was the closest one to him, so he wasn’t even expecting to be offered the joint. Roman surprised him by extending it to him once he had taken two hits.

“Stew,” Kendall said, “I told them about the, uh, the Sandi shit.”

Stewy hit the joint. “Good.”

“How do you know Stewy isn’t a double agent?” Roman said, eyeing him.

“He isn’t,” Kendall said with patient stoicism.

Stewy blew smoke at Roman, who wrinkled his nose.

“You’re suspicious to me,” he said. “You’re an only child. Sandi’s an only child. I can’t relate. Inherently suspicious.”

Stewy offered the joint to Roman, then faked him out and snatched it away at the last second. “I have a lot of cousins.”

“I don’t like your gray streak, either, by the way,” Roman continued. “It makes me feel old by association.”

“You think about me way too much,” Stewy said. He offered the joint again, and Roman grabbed it before he could take it away, then passed it to Shiv.

Shiv smoked in silence for a moment, then said, “Why would Sandi be immediately trying to fuck us?”

“I don’t even think she is,” Stewy said honestly. “I think it’s more that she’s preparing for the inevitability of needing to. She’ll probably wait to make an actual move until after we secure a white knight investment.”

Kendall cleared his throat. “Hey, guys, let’s put this stuff to bed for the night.”

Shiv tugged a blanket half off of Roman. “Stop hogging the blankets.”

“I’m not. And there’s a fucking fire.”

“I’m still cold, though.”

Roman looked up at Kendall. “Hey, have them turn the heat up. We’re in a glass box on the billionth floor.”

“I like it cold,” Kendall muttered.

Stewy’s phone rang in his pocket. He fished it out on autopilot, not thinking it would be anyone important at this hour — thinking, maybe, that it was his parents looking for a more in-depth briefing — and then looked down to see Logan Roy.

His gut seized. The kids all looked over at him, and Shiv said, “What?”

Stewy turned his phone screen to them as it continued to ring.

Roman’s face dropped. He appeared to muster himself for a joke, then said, “He’s in your phone under Logan Roy? How many Logans do you know?”

“Like, five,” Stewy said.

“Pick up,” Kendall urged him.

Stewy hit accept and then speaker, laying his phone on his thigh. “Hey, Logan,” he said.

“Hi there,” Logan said. “Did I wake you?”

“No sir.”

“Oh, night owl, huh? I hear you and my son had a little soirée tonight.”

Stewy glanced up at Kendall, whose face wasn’t giving much away. Roman was biting his thumbnail, and Shiv had her arms crossed. “Morale-booster,” he said.

Logan laughed. “I think it’s going to take more than a little wine and salad to smooth this over, Robespierre.”

“It would be a mistake to think of this as political,” Stewy said, picking at the blanket on his lap.

“Would it? You know, I found you odd in Greece. That was a strange move, not bringing our offer to Sandy.”

“It was a bullshit offer, and Sandy and I were clear on what we wanted.”

“And now Sandy’s gone,” Logan said. “Hmm.”

Stewy glanced up, avoiding eye contact with the siblings and instead looking out over the city and the dark water surrounding it. “What’s the reason for this call, Logan?”

“Well, I’d like to talk to you in person. How’s tomorrow?”

“I’m a little busy tomorrow.”

“Oh, I imagine you can find some time in your schedule for me. How about eight p.m.?”

Stewy inhaled and looked at Kendall, who nodded.

“Where?” Stewy said.

“My place,” Logan said. “Fifth Avenue.”

“No, I’m not coming on your turf. Name a neutral spot.”

“Bullshit. I’m a sick old man, aren’t I? You can come over and see me, I’m not going to have you killed. Come armed, if you like.”

Stewy wasn’t able to stop himself from coughing out a laugh at this.

“Twenty-minute conversation,” Logan said. “Not a serious commitment. Come on. You’re not gaining anything by dicking me around, you’re just going to annoy me.”

“Yeah, eight tomorrow at your place, fine. I can do that.”

“Grand,” Logan said, sounding pleased with how fast he had caved. Then, without saying goodbye, he hung up.

Stewy put his phone back in his pocket so he would have something to do with his hands while the Roys stared at him.

“What does he know that we don’t know?” Roman demanded. “He keeps trying to single you out, which means he thinks you’re weak. And you’re not weak, so that means he thinks you’re not committed.”

“That’s not all there is to it,” Kendall said, putting a hand up. “Stewy’s, like, outside of this. He’s not one of us. Of course Dad thinks he can pick him off — he thought he could pick you off, when we went to confront him. He’s going to keep trying that tactic. It’s — it’s his only tactic.”

Roman kept staring Stewy down. Shiv had taken control of the joint and was now smoking it by herself.

“What do you want from me?” Stewy said to Roman. “Should I wear a wire when I go over there? Do you think being impossible to work with is a benefit to you right now?”

“I don’t trust you,” Roman said.

“Great. Don’t. Look out for yourself. But I think you actually do trust me, which is why you’re mouthing off to me.”

Shiv leaned forward to ash the joint in an empty wine glass, laughing. “Yeah, Rome, if you actually didn’t trust him, all of this would be really ill-advised shit to actually say to him. You’re just mad that Dad has written you off.”

“Bitches,” Roman said, and Shiv winked at him.

Kendall snatched the joint from Shiv and started smoking the roach that was left. He must have inhaled some ash and weed bits by accident, because he immediately started choking and gagging. They all doubled over laughing at him.

“Fuck you guys,” Kendall wheezed.

“Drink your water,” Shiv said.

Kendall reached forward and grabbed a bottle of Evian off the table while their laughter petered out. Then he choked mid-swallow and coughed water onto himself, which made them burst out laughing again.