novelraw Chapter 69: Waiting for President Lucian
Chapter 69: Waiting for President Lucian
Everyone was waiting for President Lucian to speak. The silence in the boardroom was absolutely heavy enough to crush the lungs of anyone with a guilty conscience.
A man stood at the front, his neat suit suddenly feeling three sizes too small. His glasses glinted under the LED lights, failing to hide the nervousness on his face.
He cleared his throat, sounding like sandpaper on glass.
At the head of the table, Lucian leaned back partly present, partly waiting for the reply from Thomas.
"The marketing team has drafted a... streamlined launch for the new PCOS medication," he began thinly. "I’ve consulted the manufacturers. They’re eager to proceed with a direct-to-human phase. If we bypass the standard delays and offer free samples for ’private testing,’ we’ll save millions in overhead."
Lucian’s sharp eyes refused to leave the man’s face. "You want to use the public as a laboratory for unvetted chemicals?"
"Y-yes," the man stammered, dropping his gaze to the floor. He had spent months on this. Waiting for President Lucian to like the idea. He wanted a promotion; instead, he felt like he was standing on a trapdoor.
Lucian tilted his head slightly. "Whatever happened to using rats?"
"We used them, sir," the man blurted out.
"And?"
"The results were... inconsistent." He saw that President Lucian didn’t look impressed, so he tried harder. "The researchers believe humans will have a more ’predictable’ reaction than rodents."
Lucian didn’t scold him. Instead, he let out a short, genuine laugh. It was a beautiful, melodic sound that chilled every person in the room to the marrow.
The man froze. All across the table, the board members exchanged panicked glances. Everyone knew that when the President laughed like that, someone was going to pay.
The man gave a shaky, pathetic laugh in return, trying to blend in. One by one, the rest of the board joined in; a chorus of nervous and hollow chuckles from people who didn’t want to be the next name on a termination letter.
Suddenly, Lucian stopped. And the room went dead. His face was surprisingly glowing with a glacial calm.
"You want to gift-wrap a scandal for the press?" he asked, spinning his fountain pen between his fingers with hypnotic pace.
"The media is currently starving for a reason to label us a criminal enterprise, and you want to hand them an illegal human trial on a silver platter?"
"But we’ll use NDAs," the man whispered desperaty now. "We’ll pay them off. No one has to know—"
Bzzz. Bzzz.
The vibration of Lucian’s phone on the boardroom table was like a gunshot. Everyone in the room held their breath. Lucian glanced down, his eyebrows twitching upward. He picked up the device and typed a response with a speed that suggested he had forgotten the room existed.
The man at the front was the first to stop breathing. ’President Lucian never uses his phone in meetings. Never!’
Lucian looked up, his thumb still hovering over the screen. "You were saying?"
"Oh... Oh!... Private selection. We pick a few subjects, keep it quiet, pay for their silence..."
Bzzz. Bzzz.
The screen lit up again. And this time, Lucian frowned. He typed another reply, his focus entirely elsewhere.
"Go on," he sighed, sounding genuinely exhausted.
The man tried to continue, but the energy had left the room. Lucian wasn’t listening anymore. He had already decided the man’s fate.
"Meeting’s over," Lucian said, standing up and closing his laptop with a definitive thud.
The chairs scraped the floor in a frantic rush as the board members scrambled to exit before the air turned to ice again.
"Did you see that?" one woman whispered to her colleague as they hurried down the hall. "He checked his phone twice. And he replied."
The other woman giggled, clutching her tablet. "That’s right. The Cold President is melting. Do you think... is he in love?"
They disappeared around the corner, giggling like schoolgirls at the impossibility of it.
...
Lucian stood by the floor-to-ceiling glass window, the city skyline spread out like a map he had already conquered. He held his phone to his ear, his expression one of profound frustration.
"Mr. Adkins, my apologies, but I’m calling to postpone the dinner preparations for tonight."
"President Lucian? Did something happen? Is everything alright?" Adkins sounded like his world had just collapsed.
Lucian let out a long, weary sigh. Nothing had happened. His wife was simply being... herself.
"Apparently, if I don’t personally invite my wife via text, the invitation doesn’t exist."
Lucian wasn’t aware he married a woman who required a digital paper trail for a meal.
Rubbing his temples, he looked over the city’s skyscrapers. He understood international trade law and complex molecular structures, but he didn’t understand why wife was making him work so hard for a simple dinner.
On the other end of the call, Brian Blythe adjusted himself uncomfortably in his seat. Sitting in Mr. Adkins’s office, the tap-tap-tap of his french leather loafer against the marble floor was the only sound in the room!
His eyes were fixed on Adkins, tracking every shift in the older man’s expression as he spoke into the receiver.
"Oh... you wouldn’t be able to come because something came up with your wife?" Adkins’ voice dropped into disappointment.
The tapping immediately stopped.
His hands immediately ran through his hair as he fought to hide the desperation from Mr. Adkins.
He was indeed desperate to meet President Lucian. To initiate his perfectly curated new business pitch. Though, he had tried and failed at impressing him; mostly because President Lucian was a picky business morgue.
One would think the heartless failed attempts would cause resentment, but it only fueled Brian’s obsession with working with that man.
He thought they’d be a perfect pair, him–being the CEO of a Feminine Hygiene company, and President Lucian–CeO of Better Health.
Together they could change the business world together.
But President Lucian was no easy man to just meet!
K k k k.