RATS AND SNAKES

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Logan asked to see Dorothy when she returned from L.A.

She got the text mid-flight and her heart dropped. That could mean anything when it came to Logan. Did he want to talk to her about her father? Had he found something to chew her out about? Or did he simply want to hold a meeting with his CMO-in-training?

She had spent another day in California after leaving Hakim's house. While she spent most of it in the hospital with her dad, it gave her a great excuse to ignore his texts. And by the time she did answer him, she had a flight to catch in eight hours. There wouldn't be a chance to spend another night with him, to her relief.

The morning after she touched down in New York, Dorothy poked her head into Logan's office. He beckoned her in, and she put on a faint smile.

"Come in, come in," Logan said. "How's your father?"

"He'll be alright." She smiled and said, "No major damage. A broken leg can't slow him down that much."

"Good, good..." Logan leaned forward and said, "So. What's the plan for Cruises?"

"Cruises?"

"Sure. I asked you for a plan for Cruises. Where are we taking it? How are we marketing it? How are we going to turn a profit? So... What've you got?"

"Right. Cruises. Um..." Dorothy pinched the bridge of her nose and laughed. "Fuck."

Logan raised a brow. "What's the plan, Dorothy?"

"We... We had a five-year plan for Cruises, but it fell through," she said. "We, um, ran into some budgeting problems."

"Oh. Budgeting problems." He nodded. "Why the fuck would there be budgeting problems if you're the CMO?"

Dorothy winced. "We're making adjustments as needed―"

"Well, if it's a budgeting issue, I want Karl on it." He glanced at her, then shook his head. "Fuck off."

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Julián moved out during her trip to see her father. Dorothy had come home to an empty apartment, but she didn't hate the silence. There had been plenty of that ever since Shiv's wedding, even with Julián around.

She had already made plans to move out the following week. Sitting on her couch, curled up amid blankets and half-packed boxes, she put on a movie. It ended up being some shitty 80's B-roll flick, but she sat and toughed it out until her phone buzzed with an incoming call.

"Roman?" She frowned. "It's eleven P.M. Why are you calling me at eleven―"

Roman cut her off with a curt, "Yeah. Hi."

"...What's going on?"

"Can you― can you get over here? Gerri isn't budging."

Dorothy had spent her day frantically trying to come up with a better plan for Cruises. It involved working with Karl at Logan's request, but he didn't kick her off the project, so she couldn't complain.

She had heard something about a lack of performance with Vaulter, though. It gave her hope that she wouldn't be under the gun for too long. If Vaulter, Waystar's most recent acquisition, couldn't bring in the right numbers, then Logan would worry more about that than the five-year plan for fucking Cruises. She only knew that Logan had put Kendall and Roman on the Vaulter issue, and she didn't need to know anything else.

She laughed. "Are you asking me to sort out your Vaulter problems right now?"

"What? No. I need a second opinion," he said.

"From the CMO-in-training? Who has nothing to do with this?"

"Uh, yeah."

"I'll be there in fifteen minutes. Don't blow up the building in the meantime."

"Yeah. Okay. ...Thanks, Dot." Then he huffed and spat, "Fuck you!"

Dorothy just smiled and watched the caller ID disappear on her screen. This wasn't a marketing problem at all, but it was big. And she was still hell-bent on climbing the Waystar chain of command, with CEO being the big prize at the top of the mountain. Helping the co-COO with this shitshow would look good on her part.

She would have turned up to the Vaulter building, but Roman texted her an address with a quick message― Dress casual. I hope you like IPAs, because that's all these fuckers drink.

Dorothy could handle her beer. Roman, not so much. She still remembered the time he got drunk off of cheap beer at a party― because what other alcohol was there to buy on short notice in a small town?― and puked on the front lawn of some kid's summer lake house. That was... What, their junior year of high school? She hadn't been a witness, but she remembered the party ended not long after that, and he was the talk of both prep schools the next day.

Luckily, the IPAs the Vaulter hipsters drank were fucking gross. Roman barely choked his down, while Dorothy tried to be a little smoother about avoiding hers. They didn't need to worry about having one too many tonight.

They did make progress, though. The Vaulter hipsters got chatty when they had alcohol in their systems, even to Dorothy, a total stranger. And once they left, she and Roman could debrief and discuss the past hour of conversation... Namely the efforts some Vaulter people were making to unionize.

"Jesus," Dorothy muttered as the last of the Vaulter people left the bar. "I'm opening a tab. Order what you want, just don't bleed me dry."

"Thank fucking God." Roman pushed his half-full IPA away and waved a bartender over. "A vodka martini. Dry and straight up. And..."

He glanced at her, as if that was her cue to speak. She blinked, then grinned and said, "Oh, you're ordering for me?"

"Yeah, I am."

"I'll have a Cosmopolitan. Thank you, dearest."

"You're so fuckin' weird," Roman muttered. "Now can we talk about what the fuck just happened?"

Dorothy grinned. "What, like most of Vaulter trying to unionize? Your dad is going to crush that effort like a fucking bug."

"Yeah. I don't know," he mumbled. "Do you― do you think Vaulter is a good idea?"

"What, like buying it? I don't know. It's too late for my opinion on that."

"No, like keeping it around."

"I mean, everything is digital these days, right?" Dorothy shrugged. "The numbers are down right now, but expanding digitally is still a good idea. Not that you need to expand with Vaulter. Worst case scenario, you gut it and find a more profitable company."

Roman scoffed and said, "You should've sold the idea to my dad. He thinks you're perfect. He'd listen to anything you say."

"Okay, that's bullshit," she said. "I've had plenty of fuck-ups."

"Mmm, but not in his eyes..."

Dorothy huffed and reached over to grab the toothpick garnish from his martini and pluck the olives off. He protested, but eventually grumbled something and let it go. She flashed a smile at him, popping an olive into her mouth.

"You're too stressed," she said. "Relax. The Vaulter shit will sort itself out. Just enjoy the night before you pitch your idea to your dad tomorrow."

"Yeah, you wanna help with that stress relief?" He mumbled, but his heart wasn't in it.

"It's a twenty-minute walk to my apartment," she offered, and grinned at him. "Shut up and drink your martini, Rome."

They wound up staying later than they expected, ordering another round of drinks, and splitting a plate of shitty bar nachos. It felt good to eat something cheap and greasy and kind of disgusting. Like they were two normal people and not heirs to a major film studio and a huge media conglomerate, respectively.

Dorothy's phone buzzed on the wooden bar counter, and she glanced at it. Hakim had texted her― Call me? Miss you. Followed by a heart. A fucking heart. She shut her phone off, but not quickly enough.

"Is that your new boyfriend?" Roman snickered. "Are you trying to piss your dad off?"

"He's not my boyfriend," she replied. "He works for my dad."

"So you're trying to piss him off."

"Fuck you."

He reached over and wrestled her phone out of her hands. Dorothy snatched it back, glaring at him as she stowed it back into her purse.

"Okay, okay," Roman said. "Just, you know. I'm sure your dad will appreciate the diversity points."

"Diversity points?" Dorothy asked.

"Uh, yeah." He motioned to her purse and said, "This is the second middle-class, humble background, not-white guy you've brought home in a row. It makes you look cool and progressive. Next thing you know, you're gonna be tweeting about anti-racism and drinking fucking Smirnoff Ices."

"Oh, fuck you!" She snapped, and stood up. Slamming a fifty on the counter, she added, "You can close the tab. Good luck with your stupid fucking Vaulter thing."

In the end, Waystar gutted Vaulter. Dorothy didn't really care when she had a five-year plan to pitch that might cost her career, but she made sure to remind Roman that she had given him the suggestion to gut it.

Creating said pitch took up most of the next two days after Vaulter's shutdown. But after she and Karl pitched the new plan for Cruises, Logan put a hand on her shoulder and pulled her aside.

"That was smart," he said. "Letting Karl take over the plan."

"I didn't have much of a choice," she mumbled.

"It's a lesson, Dorothy. Don't bite off more than you can chew." Then he smiled and patted her shoulder, and she left the office with a strange weight on her chest.

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Dorothy pressed "send" on what would probably be the longest text message of her life, then shut off her phone. And just in time, because the doors to the conference room opened and Logan walked in.

"So?" He asked.

"Just... Taking five to regroup," Roman said.

Logan looked around the conference room. "I've got three banks, fifty lawyers, two PR agencies, DF Kings, and an army of private dicks trying to fight this takeover, but take five to eat my pastries, why don't ya?"

Dorothy pushed the croissant in front of her away as Gerri said, "We were actually at, uh, something of an impasse... There were some doubts as to whether an acquisition is really what we need right now."

"It is. The bigger the better. And I have it." Logan glanced around and said, "We're going for PGM. Pierce."

"Okay... Again?" Gerri nodded. "Great."

Dorothy tried to keep her look of surprise and apprehension self-contained. She didn't need Logan to see just how completely fucked she thought the idea of buying Pierce was.

"We leverage up and eat Pierce, we're too big for Sandy and Stewy to come for," he said. "They'd fuckin' choke."

Gerri nodded. "It's an interesting challenge, because last time we tried it, their surrogates called us 'cultural vandals' and 'poison in the well of public discourse.'"

The rest of the conversation didn't mean much to Dorothy. She and Tom had been exchanging looks, and their unanimous opinion of Logan's decision seemed to be "What the fuck?"

"Great. Forward. Fast." Logan glanced around the room. "We all like this?"

She nodded along with the rest of the group, but once Logan left, the atmosphere took a considerable turn for the worse. Turning to Tom, she nudged him, and he leaned in closer.

"Something tells me Pierce didn't lie about Logan being poison in the well of public discourse," she murmured.

"Well, no," Tom said. "I think it's great. This is a huge acquisition to really defend the fortress from Sandy and Stewy, you know?"

"Uh-huh." Dorothy grinned at him. "Are you married to Shiv or her father, Tom?"

"Well, I'm just saying―"

"Say what you want. I'm saying that Logan doesn't leave room for other opinions."

Roman caught her eye from the other end of the table, and she straightened up before he could say anything. She leaned over to Tom one more time to add,

"I guess we'll see what happens in Hungary."

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Truth be told, Dorothy probably shouldn't have been on the hunting trip to Hungary in the first place. She wasn't technically Waystar's CMO yet, but Logan offered, and who was she to say no?

She spent a good portion of the eleven-hour flight to Budapest on her phone. As Connor's campaign manager, she had a lot of shit to deal with now that he had sent her a video for "beta testing," as he put it. Personally, she thought that the line "Who's there? Uncle Sam. And where's his hand? In my pants," wouldn't sit well with the American people. Connor disagreed.

And on top of that, Maya had been texting her for days. Right before Logan announced that he wanted to buy Pierce, Dorothy had sent Maya a huge text explaining everything. Who she was to Hakim, the fact that they had slept together, and how much she regretted it.

Maya took it about as well as anyone could take that kind of news. No one wanted to hear that their husband had cheated on them, but Dorothy had plenty of screenshots and an overwhelming urge to never speak to Hakim again. She didn't feel any regret as she sent photo after photo of damning evidence.

Maya didn't respond for a good ten minutes, so Dorothy set her phone down. Just then, Logan shouted, "Fucking rats. Rats!" And with those words hanging in the air, she decided that it would be a great time to grab a drink from the back of the plane, as far from Logan as possible.

Kendall must have had the same thought, because she ran into him in the back. "Hey, Ken. What the fuck was that?"

"Uh, someone's trying to write Dad's biography," he said.

"You'd think he'd like that," she murmured. "Maybe Waystar Studios can make his biopic, too."

"Yeah, well, someone talked. Someone inside."

"Let me guess, you're off the hook?"

Kendall gave her a look. "It, uh, doesn't matter. We're gonna find out who it was, and... Yeah. Dad's gonna feed them to the dogs."

"So... You're off the hook," Dorothy repeated. He started to say something, but she cut him off with, "Whatever, Ken. You took your medicine, whatever the fuck that means."

He had set his phone on the counter, and it buzzed as she reached for a glass. She caught a glimpse of the incoming message just before the screen went dark― Sounds good. What do you say to getting coffee sometime?

"My lips are sealed," she said, and grinned as she nudged him. "Good job gutting Vaulter, though."

"Yeah, uh, thanks." Kendall nodded and grabbed his glass. He didn't say anything as he slipped his phone into his pocket, but he didn't need to.

The hunting lodge could have been more accurately described as a castle in the countryside of Hungary. Dorothy didn't bother looking around just yet. She would have the entire afternoon to admire the interior design― being a woman, it seemed, disqualified her from the "hunting" part of the company hunting trip.

Before the men left, Logan once again declared that he wanted Pierce. Karolina and Gerri didn't seem too thrilled. Dorothy, standing off to the side with Roman, stifled her laugh with a cough.

"Sorry, is this funny to you?" Roman asked.

"No," she said, and feigned a look of utter sincerity. "I think buying Pierce is a great idea."

"Oh, you're so full of shit," he muttered.

"I'm not taking insults from a guy dressed like a less-sexy version of Catwoman," she replied, and patted him on the shoulder of his leather jacket. "Have fun doing nothing for three hours."

She stuck with Gerri for most of the afternoon. They didn't talk much about Pierce or the biographer issue, and when they did, the conversation went nowhere. Dorothy eventually found her bedroom and spent an hour on the phone with Maya, going over everything she had said over text and more.

Dorothy, having worked in L.A. for most of her adult life, knew plenty of local lawyers. She gave Maya a list of names, offered her support in any way she could, and stressed again how sorry she was. Hearing Maya sniffle on the other line made it hard for her to breathe properly.

By the time she hung up, dinnertime had rolled around. Dorothy sat between Frank and Gerri, making polite conversation and hoping her eyes weren't as red and puffy as she thought.

A waiter put a glass of something in front of her as Logan called, "A toast. Frank, you wanna...?"

Next to her, Frank stood and raised his glass. "To old friends."

Dorothy raised her glass and drank, wincing at the burn the liquor left in her throat. Across from her, Tom laughed and made some remarks about it as well.

"Why'd you come, Frank?" Logan asked.

"Here?" Frank laughed. "Because you invited me."

"Uh-huh," he said. "Not on a recon for some of your old stuck-up pals?"

"Logan, we're old. I try not to leave fences broken," Frank said.

"You're a fucking creep."

Dorothy glanced around the now-silent table as Logan continued tearing Frank down. He spewed insults about Frank's job, his estate, his girlfriend... And when he had finished, he stood up and looked around.

"Someone has spoken to Michelle Pantsil," he said. "We've got rats on this ship."

Michelle Pantsil, the author trying to write Logan's biography. Dorothy had no reason to talk to that woman, although she had certainly received emails asking to meet with her. Oh, it would be nice to have Logan's goddaughter give testimony as to what kind of a man he was, but Dorothy didn't want to have her name tied to anything said about Logan.

"And Pierce. What's going on, hmm? Who's got my back? Who's really behind me?" Logan began to circle the table, saying, "Anyone? Anyone wanna own up? Anyone wanna rat out a rat?

He tore into Karl next, then Tom. Dorothy listened, put her phone on the table with everyone else when he demanded them to, and kept her mouth shut. Logan had known her for thirty years. What sort of dirt did he have on her? And if he did have anything on her, did she even know about it?

Logan sent Karl and Tom over to stand in the corner. Then he turned in her direction. "Gerri, stand up. Stand up! Now, Pierce."

"Well, I..." Gerri sighed. "To be perfectly honest, I've had a few doubts."

"Honesty." He glanced around. "Do you see that, everybody? Honesty. Dorothy, stand up."

Slowly, Dorothy pushed her chair back and stood up. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Roman grinning a couple of seats over, and she set her jaw.

"Pierce," Logan said. "What do you think?"

"You want honesty? Okay." She held her head high and said, "I think Pierce is a waste of time and there are better things you could sink twenty billion dollars into."

Logan had a twinkle in his eye as he said, "Now that's honesty. Greg! Stand up."

Dorothy didn't pay much attention to what he asked Greg, but she did know that he got sent to the corner, too. She sank back into her seat and reached for her glass of wine with a shaking hand, and she distinctly heard Roman mutter "cocksucker" under his breath.

She and Gerri exchanged a look as Logan turned his attention away from the table and over to the three men standing in the corner. Boar on the floor, he called it. Two sausages, three men, and whoever didn't get a sausage was the rat. They watched as he made them get on their knees and oink, before he threw the sausages and all hell broke loose.

"This is fucking sick," she muttered. Beside her, Gerri sighed and glanced away.

She didn't look at Tom when it was over. She didn't look at Greg or Karl, either. Getting shot would have been less painful. At the very least, Kendall started a new shitstorm by wrestling Roman's phone away from him, so she had that to focus on.

Once Logan left to get the "prizes" for his "boars," Dorothy poured drinks for herself and Gerri and sat down again. Between Roman snapping at Kendall for looking through his phone and some of the other men oinking at Tom, Greg, and Karl, they had created a pretty good depiction of hell for her.

Logan came back wheeling a cart. "All must have prizes!"

"What's in there?" Tom asked. "What's the prize?"

Kendall stepped forward, phone in hand. "Hey, Dad? It was Roman. Roman talked to Pierce. He, uh, took a call from Naomi Pierce."

All the fight left Roman at that moment, and he turned to Logan. "Dad―"

"Roman," Logan began. "Did someone get at you?"

"Dad, I didn't betray you," he said.

Kendall held up the phone. "Then what's this call from today? Why are you talking to her?"

"Come on, man. I wasn't trying to fuck the deal, I was trying to land the deal. I was trying to help, I..." He paused. "I thought it would be a nice surprise."

"Roman..." Logan shook his head. "You're a moron."

"I am not a moron, Dad―"

"How much is a gallon of milk?"

For the next few minutes, Dorothy stayed quiet and kept her head down. She didn't want to be the next person Logan asked about a gallon of fucking milk. It was milk. She wasn't the most humble person in the world, but she knew better than to act like she was a regular American. Regular Americans didn't have summer homes and attend boarding school. Regular Americans knew the price of a gallon of milk.

"I am surrounded by a bunch of snakes and fucking morons!" Logan snapped. "You're a bunch of silk-stockinged fucks! Who backs me on Pierce? Who?"

"None of them do, Dad," Kendall said. "They're all against it. Karl's lying, Ray's lying, Gerri's playing both sides."

"Well, here's news," Logan said. "We are going after it. And what's more... I. Will. Win."

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After everybody started to trickle out of the dining room, Dorothy grabbed a fifth of whiskey from the cart by the door. Greg was the only other person in the room, and she raised a finger to her lips before she left, whiskey in hand.

She noticed that one of the bedroom doors in the castle had been left ajar, and she poked her head inside. Roman snapped at her to fuck off, but she just grinned and leaned against the door frame.

"Looks like you had the same idea," she said, and motioned to the drink in his hand.

"Yeah, we're all alcoholics here," he muttered. "What do you want? Are you gonna ask me the fuckin' price of... I don't know, soap?"

"Actually, no." She shrugged. "I was going to pity-drink myself into a stupor, but now that you're here..."

Dorothy stepped inside, kicked the door shut, and sat on the steps leading to the window in his room. "I don't want to talk about tonight."

Roman made a face at her over the rim of his glass. "Uh-huh."

"Actually, I want to talk about Lily."

"Lily?"

"Yeah. I heard you had a housewarming party with Shiv and Tom?"

"What, did you want an invite?" He asked. "Sorry. It was a couples-only dinner."

Dorothy rolled her eyes and said, "She is pissed at you. Tom texted her or something and he said you basically fucking bodyshamed him―"

"I didn't bodyshame him―"

"You said he looked like a Transformer, Roman―"

"Okay, well, it's fuckin' true―"

"And this is why you're a PR nightmare," she said, and took a drink from the bottle in her hand.

Roman scoffed. "What about you?"

"What about me?"

"Yeah."

"Oh, well, I'd just love to hear Roman Roy's opinion on my body―"

He gestured to her. "Like, you're too tall for any guy to be interested in you, but you have nice tits, so they keep you around."

"Thanks for the compliment... I think?" Dorothy laughed and raised the bottle to her lips. "You're a fucking piece of work."

"Yeah, yeah, just say you want to fuck me."

"I'd rather play boar on the floor."

Roman finished his drink and she offered him the bottle in her hand. Reluctantly, he took it and sat with her on the steps, but not without making a big deal about her drinking straight from the bottle. He stopped when she threatened to take it away, though.

They wound up laying on the floor, taking turns drinking from the bottle, and staring at the ceiling. Any attempts at conversation didn't lead to much. They were either too drunk or too worn out to bother insulting each other.

Eventually, Dorothy peeled herself off of the floor and stumbled back to her room. She woke up to a pounding headache and the fifth of whiskey, now very close to being empty, sitting on her desk as a reminder of the night before.

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The only noise in Lily's apartment came from the video playing on her phone as she sprawled out on the couch. A knock at the door made her jump, but she brightened almost immediately and went to answer it.

"I thought we could make something for dinner," she said over her shoulder. "Risky, I know. How was the trip?"

"...It was fine," Tom said. He followed her into the kitchen, where she had poured them each a glass of wine. "How are you?"

Lily smiled as she set out a handful of vegetables. "I'm good. You can make pasta, right? I think it's, like, the only thing I can make without screwing it up."

"Yeah," he said, and smiled. "Yeah, I can make pasta."

Tom rolled up the sleeves of his button-down and took the knife that Lily handed him. They stood side-by-side, Tom in his work clothes, Lily in just an oversized shirt. Even though they made idle conversation, neither of them seemed to be paying much attention.

"Maybe I should've made dinner before you got here," Lily mumbled as she shot him another look.

"Really?" Tom wrapped his arms around her from behind, resting his chin on her shoulder. "Why is that, honey?"

She shifted to give him a look over her shoulder, but she couldn't hide the smile playing on her lips. "You know why."

Tom just laughed as Lily turned around completely to kiss him. She stepped away just long enough to move the cutting board aside and hop up onto the countertop. Then she pulled Tom into another kiss, and when they broke apart, she could only smile down at him.

Her smile masked the panic that the unfamiliar weight on her chest gave her. And when she cupped the side of his face, she touched him with shaking hands.

"I missed you," she murmured, and ran a hand through his hair.

"I missed you, too," he said. "Can dinner wait?"

She laughed and gave him another kiss. "Yes, it can."