Prologue

"Hi big brother," Stephanie said coming into the sun room.

"Hey Squirt," I said, getting up to hug her.

"You know, calling a woman who's 40 'Squirt' seems a bit odd, doesn't it?"

"Want me to stop?" I grinned.

"No!" she laughed. "Did Ashley arrive safely?"

"Yep. Katt and Mikael couldn't be happier. Of course, Ashley will be in Falkenberg for the orientation session soon."

"I'm glad that all went well. But I need to talk to you about work."

I sighed, "You know, it was actually nice being in protective custody. Nobody could bother me."

I pulled out an illegal Havana cigar, cut it, and lit it. I'd received two dozen of them from a friend in Ohio.

"Yeah, but ignoring your phone calls and email for the past week hasn't been good, big brother, especially since you were completely out of touch for months before that. Two of your top customers were getting nervous. You're lucky you have the best CEO in the business. But it took flying the CFO, CTO, the head of development, and the head of customer service and marketing to see both of them. And we flew first class, big brother," she said. "And what's with the cigar? You're usually smoking that ratty old pipe you've had since college."

"You, Elyse, Julia, Dave and Cindi. I bet you five had a hell of a party, too. All on my dime," I said, puffing the cigar. "The cigars came from Cincinnati, of course. And that ratty pipe is very important sentimentally. You know where it came from."

"Hey, asshole, you were the one who decided not to return any phone calls! You didn't even call the bishop back, which surprised me. You're lucky that your day-to-day role is as the best programmer in the company. I mean, everyone knows it's your company, but it's a good thing you let the rest of us run things and you just sit in your corner office and code most of the time. Well, when you aren't meeting with the Board of Directors. And yeah, I know who gave you that pipe."

"It's funny that I work for Dave when I own the company, but it's what I want to do. Fortunately, the Board only meets four times a year."

"You're officially President, remember?"

"Yeah, but the CEO runs everything. Anyway, what happened?"

"When you dropped out of sight for two months, and we couldn't tell them why, those customers got very nervous. We talked them off the ledge. But there're rumors that you're very sick, or that you're going to sell the company. That's causing some real issues with business development. We also took a decent hit to revenue after those union leaders were indicted and we chose to cancel our contracts with all the unions. You have to decide, and you have to make a definitive statement, big brother."

I sighed, "The revenue isn't that big of a deal. You and I could cut our salaries in half and still live quite comfortably. As for a decision, we had our family meeting. I got outvoted. The kids voted against me, the ingrates!"

Stephanie laughed, "What did you expect? They'd have to leave school and pick up and move to Europe. Oh, and one of your messages was from Computerworld. Call them and deny ALL of the rumors."

"I suppose I should. In the end, there's really nobody left to come after me, so moving away isn't all that important. Do me a favor, call Jamie and tell him I want to sell some more stock to the employee stock ownership program. And have him set up some additional option grants, across the board. And I mean it this time. Don't let him leave anyone out, and that includes the receptionist, Squirt."

"You still want to keep 51 percent for yourself?"

"No. So long as you and I have 51 percent between us, there's no issue. And Dad would never vote against us with his five percent. The same goes for the five percent that originally went to Don Joseph. And between Dave, Elyse, Julia and Cindi they have another twenty percent even before the new option grants. They've never, ever voted against me."

"Why would they? You've made them rich, big brother."

"That's where you're wrong, Squirt. They've made me rich. And you helped, too."

"And that's why my husband is so successful and why his team is so loyal - he knows how to give credit where credit is due" my wife said, coming into the room.

Stephanie got up and exchanged a hug with my wife then they sat down side by side on the couch.

"I heard from Phelan-Brown this morning," my wife said. "They have the plans for the new office building drawn up. You need to sign off on those, too. They called here because you weren't returning calls to the office."

"Why do I sense I'm being ganged-up on?" I asked.

"Because you are!" they said in unison.

Birgit came in and sat next to me, and cuddled close.

I put my arm around her, chuckled, and thought to myself that I was the luckiest man in the world.