章節 45: Chapter 45

"Okay! That's enough madness. Let's get some food in you two before I lose my mind." Archer turned around and went to the paper bag on desk, pulling out two wrapped bagels. He then proceeded in walking over to Henry and Joshua, shoving one at each of them. "Eat." When he was met with two confused looks, he just closed his eyes and rolled his head back. "Just eat."

After watching the man for a couple more seconds, they both slowly took the bagels, unwrapping them before starting to eat. Since there were so many different fillings in the breakfast bagels, the two men ended up having to put all their attention onto making sure nothing spilled out as they ate.

Seeing them successfully distracted, Archer turned around with a sigh, sending Samuel a helpless look before addressing the junior PA. "Sorry about all of that. Do you mind going to HR and telling them Joshua wants the three out by the end of the hour with no severance pay and get Meads here for after lunch. I'll inform the presidents."

"And don't mind those two, they don't usually behave like that. They were just up most of last night after a tough evening." Samuel decidedly did not tell her to not talk about it, if Archer was going along with Henry's ridiculous plan, letting people know Joshua was that angry will help their cause.

The young PA just nodded, looking at the Joshua and Henry, who seemed like completely different people all of a sudden. They had been cold and harsh just a minute earlier, happily talking about pushing the blame onto one person and manipulating people's view on the situation. But now, they looked like two children silently eating, so focused on their food that they were not even aware what was going on around them. This time, when she looked, she could see the faint shadows under their eyes and weary statures. While she could not compare with Henry having never seen him before, she could with Joshua. Now that it had been mentioned, she could see that the man was not as put together as usual, his physical actions a little sluggish.

A yawn escaped Joshua as the junior PA and two heirs watched, making him bring the back of his hand to his mouth to cover it as he did. His eyes felt a little itchy as they welled up from the yawn, so with one hand, he used his knuckled to gently rub the inner corner of his eye. It did not do much to relieve the itch, so he continued the action while eating with his non-dominant hand. Being too tired, however, meant that he accidentally pulled out a slice of tomato instead of properly biting through the flesh. A small part was between his teeth, the rest falling and hitting his chin before hanging there.

The onlookers watched the fumble. They only just heard the impossibly quiet, tired and dissatisfied whine; a crestfallen look covered his features. Even with all of this, Joshua continued to rub his eye. The man who had been dubbed perfect by everyone who had met him really did seem to embody a child in that moment.

Joshua's hands were full – the thought of putting his breakfast down or to stop rubbing his eye not once occurred to his tired self – so he struggled as he tried to get the remaining tomato slice into his already filled mouth, causing his cheeks to bulge a little. On his features was a clear sign of how much concentration he was putting into his actions. As he succeeded with his small mission, he moved onto trying to chew the contents of his overfilled mouth. Joshua was clearly unhappy with the mess of tomato and sauce on his chin but unable to do anything about it, the corners of his lips were also messy.

From next to him, Henry glanced at him, too tired to be surprised or even question the mess on Joshua face. Balancing his half-eaten bagel on his knees, he pulled out a handkerchief and turned Joshua's face toward him. As Joshua continued to chew and rub his eye, Henry wiped the food off from his chin and mouth.

Neither were aware enough to realise how they were acting in that moment. There were also blissfully unaware of the three sets of eyes who watched the scene unfold with a scary focus.

When he was done, Henry folded the handkerchief on itself and put it back in his pocket. But as he did this, the precariously balanced bagel fell to the ground. Henry could only look as it teetered and a dropped, deconstructing on impact with the ground. His shoulders fell with the corner of his lips as what happened slowly processed in his brain: he had lost his food. Just as disappointment started to settle in, a quarter of a bagel was put into his hand.

Joshua, who had finally stopped rubbing his eye but yet to turn his head back, had seen the sad situation. He did not think twice about carefully tearing the remains of his own bagel in half and giving it Henry.

Neither were smiling, their faces mostly blank, but as they turned away from each other and back to their food, it was clear as day they were at ease.

"Is that how they usually act?" The junior PA was so in shock that she no longer cared about formalities. But when she received no response, she was met with Samuel Reyes covering his mouth with his hand, Archer Lore pinching the bridge of his nose.

They had both heard her, but both were filled with conflicting emotions. The scene had been not just cute but naively romantic, but also the sudden change in behaviour was getting a little too much for them.

"Your guess is as good as mine. They're a mystery even to us," Archer eventually answered truthfully.

Samuel nodded in agreement, removing his hand from his face. "We don't see them tired often but what we have seen is not all that consistent, it hurts our heads a little." The confession was not only honest but held true for everyone in their two families, excluding Penelope and Meera.

The young PA could only nod, deciding her own head hurt too, but it was more than a little. If she stayed any longer, she felt she might lose her mind. Realising that, she did not hesitate to leave the office. She headed straight to human resources.

The whole ordeal had been longer than any of them had realised. It was only when Samuel looked at his phone, he realised that the two men had already been eating for ten minutes. All their actions were just incredibly slow. All he could do was sigh and share a hopeless look with his friend. "They're cuteness doesn't matter anymore, why is their behaviour always so inconsistent? Were the two always like this?"

"I've got no clue. I thought Joshua was always the same and just indifferent to everything. Either he's changed a lot, or we've all been reading him wrong the whole time."

"I know what you mean. Henry's always acted youthful yet mature, but was never that childlike, not even as a kid. But look at them, they can barely do more than one thing at a time."

Archer did look, and it was true. The two were so engrossed in eating the remains of their food, focused on every bite, chew and swallow, they did not even hear the conversation in front of them. "God, this is such a mindfuck." But after a couple seconds, he had to turn away and dropped his head back again. "But shit, they cute." Samuel could only hum in response. They two older brothers really were troubled.

In the end, the two heirs managed to piece together what sanity they had left and sat down at Joshua's desk, video calling the presidents that were still in their 'meeting' from Archer's tablet.

They wasted no time in explaining the situation that had led to Joshua decided to remove three of their employees with no severance pay. Since it was not their company, neither Caroline nor Marcus voiced their opinion on the matter. Of course, it was no secret that the two would want the men fired too, it had been their son that was being harmed by the slander. Hanna and John waited until the two men explained everything, including Henry's 'solution', Samuel's offer to help and Joshua's loaning of his own management team members.

The response Archer and Samuel were finally met with was definitely not what they were expecting; not to such a degree, at least.

"Well, since the work can be covered easily, good fucking riddance." No one had heard Hanna curse in a long time, it was the only indicator of her burning rage. From her face, one could only see mild anger. "We absolutely don't need people like that in this company, the threat of the Q Group and essential operations are nothing compared to their actions. Thy even dared to insult Henry to his face. Completely unacceptable."

"Have you contacted Meads?" John asked, grabbing his wife's tablet – his being used for the call – and looking through their company files for the relevant employment contracts.

"Yep."

"Good, they've already broken a couple clauses of the top of my head so no severance should be fine. But I am going through this with him to see just how much we can get these three for. Haerin, call internal affairs and tell them to start an investigation on all three and to see if there have ever been complaints before. Archer, I'll send you a list of which of Joshua's people you can take. Have your subordinates keep a close eye on essential ops, if anything seems strange, tell them to let internal affairs know immediately."

"Ah and tell the PR team to not supress the matter if the press gets a hold of what happened. I quite like Henry's plan. It shouldn't ruin Joshua's image badly, if worse comes to worst, we can protect him." Apparently, Hanna was also all for throwing Joshua under the bus. However she sincerely thought that Henry's rash, slightly cruel plan would work in their favour; Hanna Lore had never been wrong with this kind of thing before.

Once seeing that the Lore family had reached a consensus, the Reyes joined the conversations. The six of them discussed the initial plan they had come up with for the merging of their essential operations, throwing about ideas on how to move things forwards a little earlier to avoid any more strain from unexpected internal situations.

After 25 minutes, the call ended, the parents forcing themselves back to the work they should have been doing before the call; they had been horrendously distracted by the presented wedding plan. By this point, when Archer and Samuel turned their attention to their respective brothers, Henry and Joshua had fallen asleep, leaning against each other.

They looked peaceful. Too peaceful for either of the brothers to bear waking them up. After a couple pictures, they decided to leave them to rest for the day. After all the hard work they had put into planning almost the entire wedding within a single night on a whim and all the trouble Henry already up to today, they really did deserve rest.

They left the office as Archer received an email from his father, consisting in the people he could take from Joshua's team.

As he contacted them, Samuel took his phone out and sent a text to Felicity Osei, she was not just Henry's current manager but had also been Samuel's when he had been interning himself. He was requesting for Henry to get the rest of the day off, which worried Felicity since she knew something had happened the day before. In the end, he assured her it was nothing serious and mostly due to an almost sleepless night and two too eventful days. He even sent one of the pictures he had just taken to her to prove his point.

The accounting department ended up working overtime, they had gotten a little distracted while gushing over Henry's relationship.

And they were not the only ones. The four presidents also found themselves stuck in the office long after usual hours, they had all been too slow with their work during the day.

In the end, both companies were almost completely run by their heirs. That night, they both vowed to make sure their younger brothers never lost sleep again, it was only cause for trouble and they were the only ones to ever suffer from it.