Rise Of The Belittled Billionaire.

Chapter 9

Immediately Derek was on his feet before the second knock landed, already grinning, already forming the words in his mouth. He rolled his neck. Cracked his knuckles. By the time he reached the door he was practically vibrating with the pleasure of it.

“Here we go,” he said, mostly to himself. He pulled the door open wide and started talking before he even finished looking. 

“I knew it. I knew you couldn't even make it to the end of the street, you useless, spineless — ”

At that moment he stopped.

The man standing at the door was not Ethan.

He was somewhere in his late fifties, small-framed and precise, with the kind of face that had done a lot of worrying over a long period of time and wore it in the deep lines around his mouth. He had worked at Sutton Cosmetics for eleven years. His name was Mr. Graves, and he was the head of the production floor.

He looked at Derek's expression, then past him into the house, and pressed his lips together like a man who had rehearsed what he was about to say several times on the way over and still wasn't sure it was going to land well.

“Is Director Sutton available?” he asked.

Mia came downstairs still sharp-faced, her composure back in place, Jade half a step behind her. Karen stayed on the couch. Derek leaned against the wall with his arms crossed.

Mr. Graves stood in the middle of the sitting room and held his hat in both hands and did not sit down when offered.

“I'll come straight to it,” he said. “I've been trying to figure out how to bring this to you for the last three months, and I kept telling myself it wasn't the right time, but — ” He exhaled. “— there isn't going to be a right time, so.”

“Mr. Graves.” Mia's voice was even. “Whatever it is, just say it.”

He nodded once. 

“The Radiance line. The scar correction cream, the dark spot formula, the deep cleansing serum, the acne clearing treatment, the stretch mark balm — every product in that line that has been carrying this company for the last three years.” He paused. 

“Ethan developed all of them.”

The room didn't react immediately. It was the kind of statement that takes a moment to land because the mind keeps trying to find a way to file it somewhere that makes more sense.

“I'm sorry?” Mia said.

“Every formula in the Radiance line,” Mr. Graves said again, quietly, like he understood that saying it twice was necessary. 

“Ethan Cole developed them. Him and his mother. He brought them to me about three and a half years ago and he asked me he specifically asked me  not to tell anyone he was the source. He said to put it through as internal development, that he just wanted the work to be used, that he didn't need the credit.” He looked at his hat. 

“I should have told you. I know that. I'm telling you now because we're out of product, and we need it to come mix and set the formula so we can resume production, we currently have thousands of orders but not product, please call him immediately.”

Jade made a sound that wasn't quite a word.

Karen set her teacup down.

“That's not possible,” Mia said. Her voice was flat but something behind it was beginning to shift. 

“Our development team analyzed every one of those products. We have professionals on staff. You're telling me none of them noticed that the work was coming from —”

“They received the formulas already completed,” Mr. Graves said. 

“Their job was to verify and scale, not to originate. They didn't develop anything. They worked from what Ethan handed me.” He looked up. 

“The scar cream alone has brought in more revenue in two years than everything else in our catalogue combined. The dark spot remover  the one that cleared up the discoloration issues some of your senior clients had been dealing with for years —” He glanced very briefly toward Karen and then looked away. 

“That formula came from his mother's research. Everything in the Everlasting range came from their work together.”

“The Everlasting range,” Mia repeated slowly.

“Yes.” Mr. Graves nodded. 

“The one the industry publications have been calling the biggest skincare breakthrough of the decade. The one that got you invited to the procurement summit. That one.” He folded his hands over his hat. 

“I want to be very honest with you, Director Sutton, because I think you need to hear this clearly. We don't have the master formulas. We have the production-ready versions that Ethan handed to me, but the root compounds, the base chemistry, the core of what makes all of it work he never wrote that down here. He kept it. And I don't think he did it to be difficult. I think he just never expected he'd need to hand it over because he never expected to stay this long outside the company.”

Silence.

Real silence. The kind that fills up a room completely.

“So what you're telling me,” Derek said slowly, pushing off the wall, “is that without him, we can't replicate the products.”

“We've tried,” Mr. Graves said simply. “Three months ago when I first started getting concerned about stock levels, I quietly asked two of our chemists to reverse-engineer the base formula from the existing product samples. They couldn't do it. The compound structure is  it's not standard. It comes from a methodology that his mother developed over decades, and without the source documentation, we can't reconstruct it.” He looked at Mia. 

“If production continues at the current rate with what we have stockpiled, we have maybe six weeks before we start running short or everything. And the procurement conference is in five.”

The silence cracked.

“You're lying,” Jade said immediately, stepping forward. “Ethan Cole could barely hold a conversation at company events. He worked floor level. You're standing here telling us that man was responsible for — ”

“Jade.” Mia's voice stopped her cold.

Jade closed her mouth.

“Why didn't he say anything?” Mia asked, and for the first time since she had come downstairs, her voice had lost its edge. There was something underneath it now. Something that sounded like a question she was asking herself more than Mr. Graves. 

“If he had all of this if he and his mother had formulas worth this much why would he stay? Why would he stay here and say nothing and let us —” She stopped.

Mr. Graves looked at her with an expression that was not unkind but was completely honest. 

“He asked me once, about a year into working together, whether I thought Director Sutton would ever regards his mother. I told him I didn't know. He didn't say anything else about it.” He picked up his hat. “I think he stayed because he wanted to. I think his mother asked him to look after the people she'd helped. And I think he kept it quiet because he didn't want the credit. He wanted —”  He seemed to consider the word carefully. 

“He just wanted things to be okay. For all of you.”