I pulled out my phone and scrolled through my notes.
“The secondary assembly line in Building B. It’s older and slower, but it should be able to handle priority orders if we redistribute the workflow.”
“That would require completely reorganizing the production schedule,” he said.
“Then let’s reorganize it.”
For the next two hours, I worked with the production team to redirect orders, contact clients, and implement a temporary manufacturing plan. It wasn’t perfect, but it would minimize delays and keep our most important customers satisfied.
By eight a.m., when the office opened, we had a solution in place.
Derek arrived around eight-thirty looking polished and professional in another expensive suit. He found me in the production facility, still wearing the safety gear I’d put on to inspect the broken equipment.
“Mom called,” he said. “She was worried about how your first day was going.”
“It’s going fine,” I said, pulling off my safety glasses. “Crisis management is part of the job.”
“You handled this yourself?”
“I handled it with the team. That’s how problems get solved.”
He was quiet for a moment, watching employees move with purpose around us.
“I would have called Grandpa,” he admitted.
“I know.”
“Or scheduled a meeting to discuss options.”
“I know.”
“You just… fixed it.”
“That’s what needed to be done.”
We walked back toward the main building together.
“Paige,” Derek said as we reached the executive floor, “I owe you an apology.”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
“Yes, I do.” He stopped walking and faced me. “I’ve spent three years treating you like you were playing dress-up while I was doing real work. But the truth is, I’ve been the one playing dress-up.”
The admission hung between us.
“Derek—”
“Let me finish.” He ran his hand through his hair. “I wanted this job because I thought it would make me important. But you wanted to do this job because you thought it was important.”
He shook his head. “There’s a big difference.”
“You could still learn,” I said. “If you wanted to.”
“Could I?” He gave me a rueful smile. “Really? Be honest. Do you think I have what it takes to be good at this?”
I studied his face.
“I think you have what it takes to be good at something,” I said. “Maybe just not this.”
“What should I be good at?”
“What do you enjoy doing? Not what you think you should enjoy—what actually interests you.”
He thought about that for a long moment.
“I like working with people,” he said finally. “Not managing them, but connecting with them. Understanding what they need. Building relationships.”
“That’s valuable in business,” I told him. “Just maybe not in the CEO role.”
“So what are you saying?”
“I’m saying we should figure out where your talents would be most useful. Client relations. Business development. Partnership management.”
His face lit up slightly. “You’d want me to stay?”
“Derek, you’re my brother. You’re not incompetent. You’re just misplaced. Of course I want you to stay.”
The relief in his expression was obvious.
“What about Marcus?” he asked.
“Marcus and I talked yesterday. He’s interested in focusing on strategic planning and investor relations—things that use his financial background but don’t require operational oversight.”
“And you think that will work? All of us working together without the hierarchy Dad and Mom planned?”
“I think it will work better than the hierarchy Dad and Mom planned,” I said. “Because it’s based on what we’re actually good at instead of what looks right on paper.”
Derek was quiet as we walked to the elevator.
“You know what’s funny?” he said as we waited for the doors to open.
“What?”
“I spent three years being jealous of your relationship with Grandpa. Those weekly meetings. The way he talked to you. The way he listened to your ideas.”
“You were jealous.”
“Of course I was. He was grooming you. And I couldn’t figure out why. I thought maybe you were his favorite because you were the youngest, or because you reminded him of Grandma, or—or because I was doing the work…”
Derek laughed. “Yeah. That possibility never occurred to me.”
The elevator arrived and we stepped in.
“Derek,” I said as the doors closed, “I need you to know something.”
“What?”
“Those meetings with Grandpa—they weren’t about planning a coup or undermining you. They were about learning. Every week he’d ask me what I’d discovered, what problems I’d identified, what solutions I was considering. It was like school, but for how to run a business.”
“Why didn’t he offer the same thing to Marcus and me?”
“Did you ever ask him questions about the business? Real questions—not about strategy or vision, but about how things actually worked?”
Derek was quiet for a moment.
“No,” he said finally. “I was too busy trying to prove I already knew everything.”
“That’s the difference,” I said. “I asked questions because I wanted to understand. You avoided questions because you thought you were supposed to already understand.”
The elevator opened on our floor.
“It’s not too late,” I added as we stepped out.
“If you want to start asking questions now—”
“Would you teach me the way Grandpa taught you?”
The question surprised me.
“Of course,” I said, “but it won’t be easy. It means admitting you don’t know things. It means spending time with people you’ve been treating as subordinates. It means getting your hands dirty.”
“I can do that.”
“Can you really?”
He considered it seriously. “I don’t know. But I’d like to try.”
As we reached my office—Grandpa’s old office, which still felt surreal—Derek paused.
“Paige.”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For not making this a power trip. For still wanting us to be a family. For giving me a chance to figure out who I actually am instead of who I thought I was supposed to be.”
I smiled. “That’s what family does, isn’t it?”
“Because I’m not sure our family has been very good at that lately.”
“Then maybe it’s time we got better at it.”
He nodded and headed toward his office.
As I watched him go, I realized something had shifted—not just in the company hierarchy, but in our relationship. For the first time in years, Derek and I were talking to each other like equals. Like siblings. Like people who might actually work well together.
It was a promising start, but I knew the real test would come when the novelty wore off and the daily grind of running a business together began.
Still, for now, it felt like progress, and progress was all I needed.
Three weeks later, everything changed again.
The invitation arrived on expensive card stock with gold embossing:
You are cordially invited to celebrate the retirement of William Montgomery and the future of Montgomery Industries. Black tie required. The city’s most exclusive venue. Five hundred guests.
I stared at the invitation sitting on my desk next to the quarterly reports that showed our best performance in company history.
“Looks fancy,” Marcus said, appearing in my doorway with his own invitation.
“It is fancy,” I replied.
“Mom’s been planning this for six months. Before Grandpa made his announcement about you.”
“Exactly.” I leaned back in my chair. “Which means this party was designed to celebrate Derek’s ascension to power.”
Marcus came in and sat down. “So what happens now?”
“Now we find out how committed Mom and Dad are to their new reality.”
The truth was, I’d been dreading this party since the moment the invitations went out. In the three weeks since becoming CEO, I’d been too busy actually running the company to think about public relations and image management.
But this party—this party was all about image.
My phone buzzed. A text from Mom: Sweetheart, can you come by the house tonight? We need to discuss party logistics.
“Duty calls,” I told Marcus, showing him the text.
“Good luck,” he said. “You’re going to need it.”
That evening, I found myself back in the family dining room. But this time, the atmosphere was different. Mom had spread party planning materials across the table like a military operation—seating charts, catering menus, timeline schedules.
“There you are,” she said when I walked in, her voice artificially bright. “We have so much to discuss.”
Dad was sitting at the head of the table looking uncomfortable. Derek was notably absent.
“Where’s Derek?” I asked.
“He’s processing,” Dad said carefully. “The party situation is a bit complicated for him.”
I sat down and looked at the materials spread across the table.
“How complicated?”
Mom cleared her throat. “Well… the invitations went out months ago before we knew about the change in circumstances. So the wording is a bit…”
She handed me a copy of the invitation.
I read it again, this time noticing what I’d missed before:
Join us as we celebrate William Montgomery’s remarkable career and welcome the next generation of leadership to Montgomery Industries.
“The next generation,” I repeated.
“It was meant to refer to Derek and Marcus,” Mom said quickly. “But now it could refer to you too, of course.”
“Could it?” Dad shifted in his seat. “Paige, we need to talk about expectations for this party.”
“What kind of expectations?”
“Well,” Mom said, consulting her notes, “we have investors coming, board members, important clients—people who’ve known this family for decades—and they’re expecting to see a certain dynamic.”
I felt that familiar flutter in my stomach.
“What kind of dynamic?”
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