Game of Revenge Read online

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2019 Charlotte Larsen

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission from the author.

  Published by BUOY MEDIA LLC

  https://www.buoy-media.com/

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. The Author holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.

  Cover design by Juan Villar Padron,

  http://www.juanjpadron.com

  Special thanks to my editor Janell Parque

  http://janellparque.blogspot.com/

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  While some people measure life in terms of minutes, weeks, and years, others count the number of sensory pleasures and thrilling experiences, and yet others quantify life’s value as their material assets.

  Me?

  I measure my life in the number of people I destroy.

  Chapter 1

  A thick, crème colored envelope, lined and embossed, had arrived that morning. It contained the invitation to join the select group of high players that he had been working so hard to attain. For a couple of hours, he is ecstatic. Images of his past victories flash through his mind. His skin tingles, a powerful sexual urge wells up in him, and his chest expands. He is the alfa male, the all-conquering. He all but pounds his chest as his stalks the apartment.

  Then the rush subsides. He calms down. Sits down. His body quiets. He savors the thrill as an aftertaste…as the lingering scent of a woman who passes.

  Then there is nothing.

  In the space of less than an hour, he has traveled from ecstasy to a sunken, hollow feeling in his guts. The fire of motivation that used to fill his being is gone. The driving force that has given his life direction for so many years—is gone. He has achieved what he wanted… No, what he derides with a force that had put him at the very top of the heap.

  Now? Now what?

  How is he to spend the rest of his life now that his momentous life mission has been accomplished? What is he to do with his energy, with all this power and wealth he has built? How will he create meaning in his lonely, driven life?

  The room is growing dark. A persistent winter wind lashes against the windows. He gets up from the deep leather lounge chair, his legs stiff from sitting in a frozen posture for hours. He automatically reaches out to pull the curtains on the deepening sky but holds back. No, let the darkness stay as a vision of what will come, he thinks to himself. The room seems to become alive. Shadows are materializing in the corners of the large drawing room, creeping out from behind the geometrical lines of the modern Nordic furniture that decorates the room.

  This darkening sky is descending over a defenseless metropolis that is relying on flimsy electricity to see, to do, to live, to exert its power. A stray thought enters his mind: how easy it would be to weaken the modern world by sabotaging the electrical current—the life-current of modern civilization, its beating pulse. Everything would be brought to a hold. Cars wouldn’t move, at least not the newest of them. Computers would soon run out of power: no home entertainment, no work. Even more vitally, the whole system of information would be unavailable. The hospitals could get by on generators for emergency procedures. But the banks, the insurance companies, and the courts would be without knowledge. Foods in the supermarkets would rot, and foods in transport would get stuck on the roads as gas would run out, and ships would be lost at sea. Goods would sit in huge containers at harbors and on trains and trucks.

  We would be thrown back to the Dark Ages, quite literally, only without the skills to service, he thinks. We would be helpless. Babes in the woods. Creatures destined to die because a single current disappeared.

  What…?

  What is the single current that would bring damage to his enemy? What are the power lines in the enemy’s universe? And who, precisely, is the enemy?

  He paces the room, his sneakers squeaking against the hardwood as if they are peeled off the floor with resistance. The stiffness in his legs lessens as he picks up his pace. Back and forth. Back and forth he strides across the gleaming floor, the size of which exceeds the living space ordinary people have in their entire homes.

  In his hand is a framed yellowed photograph of a woman in her early thirties. Blonde. Prominent cheekbones. Sad eyes.

  “I promise!” he whispers, his fingers touching the glass ever so gently. “I promise I will set everything right!”

  And then inspiration strikes him, and he knows. He knows exactly what to do.

  Determined, he walks to his desk. With a bounce in his step, he turns on the computer, grabs a yellow legal pad from a drawer in the glossy mahogany desk, rolls up his sleeves, and begins laboriously drawing the skeleton of a family tree. An observer would have spotted and probably questioned the tattoo of six digits on the writer’s left forearm.

  Three hours later, the floor is strewn with crumpled pages, yet on the pad, he has now drawn a complex family tree of connecting boxes. Most boxes have names; some are blank. But they are all connected.

  His lips stretch into a wolfish smile. He gets up, gathers the crumpled sheets, and throws them into the fireplace. He smells paper burning, then wood catching fire: the smell of childhood—the scent of innocent. Only his childhood was never innocent.

  Over the coming weeks, his research will be compiled, adding to the framework he has drawn. He needs background information on the living children and grandchildren, such as information on their families, activities, political leanings, as well as where they live and what they do. And most importantly, he needs information on their secrets, their vulnerabilities.

  He could ask somebody else to do it. But a secret shared is a secret known. He has always believed that. A lifetime of hard work has gotten him to where he is today. He knows how to settle into a task and complete it. He can do it again. He can do it now. He will do it now.

  He gets up and heads to the kitchen. He needs a large, strong pot of coffee. The work he has set for himself is momentous. And it will have desperate consequences for certain people who right now are retiring for the n
ight, unsuspecting and guileless.

  Chapter 2

  Executives stand in clusters at tall café tables, drinking coffee, gossiping, and laughing. An expectant atmosphere lingers in the massive foyer at the Munkebjerg Hotel these last minutes before the Asnerock General Assembly commences. She hears the sound of a thousand bees humming, and the smell of industrial brewed coffee overpowers her.

  A journalist catches sight of her and calls out, “Camilla Bang-Henriksen!”

  The sound quiets down for an instant as everybody turns to peek at the young woman.

  She smiles and nods her way through the crowd. Some raise their hands. A few even slap her on the back as if she’s one of the boys. Her smile grows larger. She is one of the boys. Cameras flash. She feels like a rock star. She enters the big conference hall. The cavernous room is a seventies’ horror show of exposed dark stones and narrow window slits that barely let the daylight in, with brown carpet and walls. A mausoleum from the time of the Cold War, oil crises, and home-knit sweaters. She shudders.

  Lars Reinwald is waiting. He hugs her with more force than the situation calls for. “Don’t ever let me be kept sweating for so long again, Camilla.” His voice is unusually high-pitched, and his words tumble out. His blond public-school hair falls, as usual, into his eyes, which he brushes away impatiently.

  Why is he nervous? She wonders. “I am sorry, Lars! There was an accident on Little Belt Bridge. Both lanes were closed for forty minutes. I should have come here last night like you did, avoiding the daytime traffic.” She nods toward the raised platform stage where two men and a woman sit at a table covered with green baize. It looks like one of those tables she remembers from her graduation from business school. She smiles at her colleagues from the executive team. They return her smile. It is a great day for them all. They can afford to be magnanimous and for one day put aside their fierce competition.

  The conference hall is bursting with chatter, every seat taken when Lars rings the bell. From her seat at the baize-covered table, Camilla scans the crowd. About 200 people, she reckons. Most people are small investors, but in the front row sit the industrial investors and analysts who will later be interviewed by the press as to their estimation of stock value and prospects. Toward the right, in the front row, the board is sitting. Five men in their late fifties and early sixties, with gray hair, dark suits, and tanned faces revealing the modern executive male with healthy sports interests. You all look so alike, she thinks. You could be brothers.

  At the back of the room, the press has set up their cameras. They’re ready and bored. None of them became journalists or photographers to portray commercial successes. But they are professionals, and they’ll do a decent job of it for nothing else than their pride in the trade.

  She knows that every word she says, every facial expression, and every nuance in her voice will be interpreted and enlarged. The same goes for her colleagues on the executive team.

  “Welcome to the Asnerock General Assembly,” Lars says. His voice is still slightly higher-pitched than normal. A vague sense of nausea hits her. She shrugs it aside.

  “It’s great to see you all. We have planned a couple of exciting hours for you. First, we will take a look at the past year; Camilla Bang-Henriksen will take us through that. Then, Owen Lindemann will present prognoses for market development, and finally, we will unveil the strategic considerations we have made for the future. However, Hans Otto Larsen won’t give away all our secrets, as the press is present.” He receives decent applause, and the show is underway.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, investors and analysts, allow me first to introduce Camilla Bang-Henriksen. Some of you already know her as the sharpest CFO in the country. For those of you who do not know Camilla personally, well, your loss!” Smiles broaden, the applause is louder now. Lars turns to her with an inviting gesture, “Camilla, the scene is yours.”

  She gets up and smooths her skirt, feeling her thighs warm through the fabric and a tingling sensation in her stomach. “Thank you, Lars,” she smiles at him. The tiny microphone on the lapel of her suit jacket has been tried and tested. And the PowerPoint presentation, blown up to cinematic proportions behind her, has been run through not just by her, but by her colleagues in the executive team and the technicians. She closes her hands around the glossy edges of the podium and looks out over the sea of pale, predominantly male faces and dark suits. Basking in the positive expectations she feels radiating from several hundred people, she feels strong, powerful, and ready—a queen in her element.

  She glances at the first slide, which is shown on a small screen in front of her, showing simultaneously on the bigger screen behind her: “A GOOD YEAR” in massive font fills the screen. She clicks the presenter. A new slide appears: “A REALLY GOOD YEAR!” Pictures of bubbly champagne and flags fill this second slide. It’s exactly the kind of tasteless graphics that small investors can understand, she thinks. Poor taste all around.

  She smiles big at the audience. They smile back. The atmosphere is warm, familiar, and expectant—all except the first row, that is. They keep their cool. It’s part of their role. But the rest, the small and medium-sized investors, have already surrendered. Camilla is aware she presents well. She is at her best age, quite young, but old enough to have authority. She has dressed with conservative care in a tight black skirt, black suit jacket, white poplin shirt, medium-high heels, and discreet jewelry. Her hairdresser had come along in the chauffeured car to do her hair and neutral makeup. Camilla knows she is perfect for this role. She’s just what they want. She is, at this moment, a fantasy of the ideal female executive: reserved, correct, and with a hint of sexuality, just enough to signal that she likes men and that she is not a ball crusher or a dyke. In this male-dominated universe, only a lover of men stands a chance.

  “It has been a really good year for Asnerock.” Her voice is clear and powerful. “We have managed to keep cost levels down yet grow our top line. We are particularly proud of that. The EBITDA margin—and for you who are not accountants…” she smiles to let the audience know that she doesn’t hold any lack of financial understanding against them, “…let me explain: The EBITDA is our earnings before tax, depreciation, and amortization. It has gone up to a whopping 36, which is the highest we have produced in the company’s history, and 28% higher than the previous financial year.” With a wide smile showing her pride, she is charmingly authentic. When the applause breaks out, she gestures toward her management colleagues at the baize table and nods at them. She lets them take the credit. The applause continues. She holds up a hand, asking for silence.

  She cruises through the presentation, delivering the perfect opening phrase for each slide. She has rehearsed these opening sentences to ensure interest, but she delivers them almost casually. In this way, she builds tension that carries to the next slide. She does not get stuck in details or technicalities. She has practiced the presentation in front of the bathroom mirror for several days. She is pitch-perfect.

  The numbers are great. She has made sure of that. And she is the one to present them to the investors as religious offerings in a bloodless drama. Today is the peak/defining moment of her career so far. When she is done with her part of the presentation, Lars will take over and make an announcement that Camilla Bang-Henriksen is now a 3% partner with retroactive effect from the start of the year. It is a substantial ownership that she has worked for over the last eight years—eight years without weekends or holidays, eight years where she has been available to employees and management colleagues twenty-four hours a day, and eight years without a private life. The papers have already been signed, but it still doesn’t feel real. Maybe it will when Lars tells the many people in the hall. She has actually become a millionaire. On paper, she is worth fourteen-million now. Fourteen-million!

  “And with this, ladies and gentlemen, I end the presentation of Asnerock’s overall performance over the last ten years. A development, I’m sure you agree. This is something we all can all be proud of.�
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  She clicks to the last slide. Even before she sees the slide on the podium’s small screen, she knows with each fiber in her body that something is wrong. Absolutely, completely wrong. Somebody behind her at the green baize table draws a sharp intake of breath. But the room, the enormous room filled with hundreds of people, is eerily quiet. She senses disbelief and horror. At the rear of the room, the press wakes up—finally, a story. Breaking news even.

  She looks down at the small screen and struggles to take it in.

  The seconds tick away. Then Lars is at her side, elbowing her out of the way, hitting a few keys on the small keyboard. The screen turns black. She moves back toward safety. But deep in her mind, she knows safety is an illusion right now. Her heart beats too fast, and she feels like there is a knot of ice in her stomach, a loud swishing sound in her ears.

  Lars lifts his arms and says, “Let’s all just calm down. There is a perfectly rational explanation for this. It’s...” He has forgotten to turn on his microphone, and the technician runs onto the podium, thrusting a hand deep into Lars’ trouser pocket, causing Lars’ eyes to pop in surprise. The technician nods to Lars, disappears, and Lars recovers his composure. “Please understand that this is a misunderstanding. A bad practical joke. A very sick joke.”