Season 3 chapter 20
The Corporate Suspension
The newly repaired double doors of the executive suite slowly pushed open.
Filoska Vinten stood in the doorway. Her hands were shaking. She had dark, heavy bags under her eyes from six straight days of agonizing insomnia. She looked visibly tense, sad, and entirely exhausted from the sheer, paralyzing weight of Leon Debestez's death threat against her little brother. She forced herself to swallow her tears, needing to be strong to pull this lie off.
Sitting directly in the center of the room, relaxing on the incredibly expensive leather sofas, were Kniya and Malesh.
At the sound of the heavy doors opening, both trillionaires looked up from their respective comic books. They saw Filoska standing in the doorway, completely pale and deeply distressed.
And then, being the absolute, completely socially unaware idiots that they were, both Kniya and Malesh completely ignored her obvious emotional trauma and gave her a wide, entirely genuine, bright, and cheerful smile.
"Ah! Filoska! Welcome back!" Kniya greeted happily, waving a hand.
Before Filoska could even open her mouth to speak, Malesh aggressively flipped a delicate page in his ancient, leather-bound tome, completely dismissing her presence to focus on his academic outrage.
"Kniya, this fart novel is so fucking bad," Malesh stated flatly, his voice dripping with profound disappointment. He tossed the priceless Rare Edition 6969 onto the glass coffee table. "I could write a much better, highly tactical biological manual than this absolute garbage. What even are the steps mentioned in this? They are completely inefficient. The author clearly had zero understanding of gastrointestinal physics."
Kniya's cheerful smile instantly vanished. He violently threw his Demon Lord comic onto his mahogany desk.
"Malesh, fuck!" Kniya shrieked, completely losing his mind. "Can you literally stop talking about the fart novels and passing gas all day?! I am entirely sick of it! It is disgusting! I am trying to run a trillion-credit corporation, and you are reviewing ancient flatulence scrolls! As the Managing Director of this headquarters, I am hereby giving you the official executive order: you are fucking suspended from the company!"
Filoska stood in the doorway, staring at them in pure disbelief. She was dealing with an underground royal assassin, and they were fighting over bodily functions.
"What are you guys literally doing right now?" Filoska whispered, rubbing her temples.
Before Kniya could answer her, Salesh strolled into the office holding a stack of market reports. He stopped, looking back and forth between the two screaming billionaires and the exhausted Vice President.
"Kniya, you absolute idiot," Salesh sighed, dropping his reports onto a chair. "Malesh doesn't even work in Kavilson Steel. He is the Managing Director of Malesh Energy Limited. How the fuck are you going to suspend him from a company he doesn't work for?"
Kniya's eye twitched furiously. His capitalist ego refused to lose.
"Okay, so I can do one thing!" Kniya yelled, slamming his hand on his desk. "I am officially revoking his security clearance! I will not allow him the permission to enter into this corporate building for fucking five days! Hey! Fucking guards!"
Kniya aggressively slammed his panic button. "Please come up here right now and drag this degenerate out of my fucking office!"
The Open Bribe
Within seconds, four heavily armored Kavilson Steel elite security guards burst into the room. They immediately surrounded Malesh, grabbing him tightly by the shoulders to drag him off the leather sofa.
"Okay, stop, stop," Malesh deadpanned, not resisting their physical grip at all. He looked up at the guards with cold, calculating eyes. "Guards. Let's be rational about this economy. Your hourly rate working for Kniya is pathetic. Here is some real money. Take it."
Without even standing up, Malesh calmly reached into his tailored suit jacket and pulled out a massive, incredibly thick wad of high-denomination corporate cash. Without breaking eye contact with Kniya, Malesh started directly stuffing the cash into the tactical vest pockets of the guards holding him.
The guards looked down at the money. They looked at each other. Their strict corporate loyalty instantly began to melt, and their grip on Malesh's shoulders significantly loosened.
"Okay, I see the hesitation. You want more," Malesh observed logically, his voice entirely flat. "Take more."
Malesh casually reached into his other pocket, pulled out another massive stack of credits, and shoved it into the remaining guards' pockets. It was essentially a year's salary in five seconds.
Kniya's jaw literally dropped to the floor. He watched his elite, highly vetted security force slowly let go of his business partner to count their new wealth.
"What the actual fuck is happening right now?!" Kniya screamed, completely devastated by the betrayal. "You are literally bribing all my loyal guards right in front of my fucking face! In my own office!"
Malesh calmly brushed off his suit jacket, adjusted his tie, and looked at Kniya.
"Kniya, this was incredibly easy," Malesh stated with zero emotion. "Corporate loyalty is a myth."
"You corrupt fucking bastards!" Kniya roared at his security team, his face turning purple. "You easily bribed idiots! Get the fuck out of my office before I fire all of you!"
The four guards didn't need to be told twice. They immediately clutched the cash, turned around, and sprinted out of the room to go deposit their new fortunes.
"Ah, Malesh, but there is one crucial thing!" Kniya yelled, rolling up the sleeves of his expensive suit. "If you can bribe the guards with your dirty oil money, you cannot bribe me! So I will physically take you out myself!"
Kniya lunged forward across the coffee table, trying to grab Malesh's wrist and violently push him toward the door. Malesh planted his feet, refusing to move an inch, and the two grown men began to awkwardly wrestle in the middle of the executive suite, completely ignoring the fact that Filoska was watching them.
The Royal Marriage Theory
"Can you both please stop for one second?!" Filoska yelled, her voice cracking with genuine strain.
Kniya immediately stopped wrestling. He let go of Malesh, aggressively straightened his ruined suit jacket, and looked at Filoska with a highly confident, incredibly arrogant smirk.
"Okay, Malesh, I knew that this would happen," Kniya declared proudly, pointing a finger at Filoska's sad, exhausted face. "Look at her. I told you."
"Kniya, you act like you know everything that would happen in this universe," Malesh replied, straightening his own tie and sitting back down. "But you do not know about this specific thing. I logically know that she required the relief for something genuinely important and close to her heart. There was an actual family reason for that six-day absence."
"You know what 'family reason' it actually was?" Kniya challenged, raising an eyebrow like a smug detective.
"Yeah," Malesh reasoned. "It was related to someone's death, or some kind of special noble ceremony, or a thing like that."
"No, it is not like that at all," Kniya countered with absolute, arrogant certainty. "It was related to her forced marriage with an ugly-looking guy. I know that."
Filoska's eyes widened in sheer panic. "What?"
"Fuck the crap, Kniya," Malesh rejected bluntly, his deadpan tone making the phrase sound entirely robotic. "What the fuck are you literally saying right now? It can't be true. I don't think so. You are just saying literal shit to entertain yourself."
"I am absolutely not saying shit, Malesh!" Kniya argued, waving his arms dramatically to emphasize his point. "Think about the aristocratic economy! These royal idoits are deeply inbred and physically repulsive! They specifically target highly competent, physically acceptable corporate executives like our Vice President to fix their degrading genetic bloodlines! I logically bet the guy has a massive overbite and smells like cheap estate horses!"
"That is a severe biological assumption with absolutely zero market data," Malesh deadpanned, completely unamused. "And logically, Filoska would simply reject the dowry. She makes a massive corporate salary working for us. She does not need an ugly noble's dirty money."
"You cannot reject a royal dowry!" Kniya shrieked, leaning over the glass coffee table. "It is a legally binding social contract! If she rejects it, the crown will legally seize her assets! It is a hostile marital takeover!"
"A hostile marital takeover?" Malesh repeated, rubbing his temples in pure exhaustion. "You are completely mixing corporate law with feudal delusions."
"Malesh, I'm not joking this time," Kniya insisted, walking behind his desk and crossing his arms. "This is really serious aristocratic gossip. You know, there is a fucking weird tradition in the royal family network. The young women of the royal family are suddenly called in on the excuse of a massive 'emergency'... and when they arrive, their marriages are permanently fixed! It is kind of a fucking tradition just to give them a terrifying surprise!"
"What the actual fuck?" Malesh muttered, genuinely disturbed by the sociological implications. "That is highly inefficient. It cannot be true."
Filoska stood entirely frozen by the door. Kniya was a complete, blundering idiot, but his insane theory was terrifyingly close to the truth. She had been called in for a royal surprise. But it wasn't a forced marriage. It was a hostage negotiation with Leon Debestez.
"Let me affirm that to you right now, Malesh," Kniya promised. He slammed his intercom button again. "Security! Send up that one finance member! The one with the royal ties!"