Chapter 10 - GRANDMOTHER’S EMPTY CHAIRMy grandmother had been dead twelve years.
If she had lived, maybe the family would have exploded earlier.
She hated quiet resentment.
Grandfather specialized in it.
After her death, he let Damian and me become two competing futures of Mercer Systems without ever naming the competition.
Damian believed the company needed aggressive consolidation.
Automation.
Defense contracts.
High-margin software acquisitions.
I believed Mercer had become too dependent on financial engineering.
I had trained as a mechanical engineer and later worked in industrial safety and energy efficiency.
I joined the Mercer board reluctantly.
I cared more about factories than investor conferences.
That became part of Damian’s contempt.
“Plant-floor princess.”
“Union mascot.”
“Grandpa’s conscience hire.”
He called me peasant as a joke long before the funeral.
Because I drove a Volvo.
Because I lived in a townhouse instead of an estate.
Because I sold part of my Class A holdings to fund a climate-engineering foundation.
I called him:
“Prince Damian.”
For years we treated cruelty as wit.
That history complicated the funeral line.
“Choke quietly, peasant.”
He would argue the word was an old family joke.
Maybe.
May you like
Context can turn an old joke into something else.
So can a crushed inhaler.
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