The Bose music system came on as it always did at precisely 4:45 A.M. with the sound of calming Caribbean waves to rouse Tom Wamgsgans from his slumber. Of course, Tom had not been sleeping much lately. In fact, he had been awake for close to an hour, staring a hole in the ceiling as his mind churned over the mess his life had become and what the day ahead would bring. It had not been an easy six months for the newly-minted CEO of Waystar Royco, which was (for now) a subsidiary of the Swedish technology company GoJo, but all that was coming to an end.
While everyone was all smiles when the deal was consummated in the Waystar boardroom, fissures began to form almost immediately. Tom knew going in that GoJo’s CEO Lukas Matsson saw Tom as a mere figurehead, a front man who would smooth whatever regulatory concerns might exist but was expected to carry out Lukas’s vision for Waystar’s five divisions without complaint. And Tom, ever the good soldier, had tried to do so, but the Waystar ship had a leaky hull and Matsson’s inexperience in the U.S. market immediately made things worse.
The deal dazzle that accompanied the signing of the agreement barely lasted a day. The Raisin, still fuming that ATN had helped nudge him out of the White House, took one last bit of revenge, directing the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice to investigate GoJo based on its inflated subscriber numbers. Moreover, Gil Eavis, who would return to the Senate when the protracted legal battle over the election was narrowly resolved in Mencken’s favor, teed up his own investigation. Between the two, GoJo was being bombarded with subpoena requests it was ill-prepared to handle as it figured out how to replace Gerri Kellman, who had secured that eye-watering sum of money and retired to an Italian villa.
Of course, Tom’s promotion did not help. As head of ATN, his decision to call the election for Mencken put a target on his back and Matsson’s decision to elevate him in spite of that action only added to the company’s political headaches. When the Supreme Court effectively handed the presidency to Mencken when it rejected a request by the Wisconsin Secretary of State to conduct a revote due to the loss of nearly 100,000 votes in a fire whose cause was never determined, Wamgsgans was burned in effigy outside ATN’s headquarters. Weeks of nationwide protests only made things worse, and Mencken’s inaugural took place with a level of security unseen in Washington, D.C. since the Civil War. The chaos would continue as Mencken attempted all forms of executive power grabs that launched litigation in courts throughout the country amid continued unrest in the streets.
While the company was being buried in document requests, public ire was aroused further when Ebba Karlsson, GoJo’s communications director, filed a sexual harassment and workplace discrimination lawsuit against Matsson and GoJo, itemizing, in excruciating detail, Lukas’s aggressive, bizarre, and improper behavior toward her and the frat house environment he cultivated among his senior staff. She became the star witness at Eavis’s public hearing and her tale of sex, drugs, and an out-of-control CEO who was exposed as a not just a creepy stalker, but worse (in the eyes of the tech community) a wannabe who was not even a real coder, captured the public’s imagination. It was the kind of story that hit the sweet spot for news coverage, tapping into #MeToo, the public’s distrust of social media companies, and its insatiable appetite for tabloid journalism. Matsson’s complete unfamiliarity with the U.S. media landscape only added to his misery as he fired off (and then deleted) ill-advised tweets and made rambling pronouncements in interviews, before finally going radio silent behind a phalanx of high powered attorneys and an increasingly fed up Karolina, who began to wonder whether she could stomach working for another erratic leader.
The wonky crisis management response led Matsson to make another fateful choice. Seeing the blowback from ATN’s central role on election night, he followed through on his decision to change its editorial direction. The revenue-generating echo chamber that kept conservatives angry and engaged was flipped, as Lukas promised, into something more Bloomberg gray. Tom outsourced the mass firings that Lukas ordered to Greg, newly promoted to Senior Advisor to the CEO, who dutifully carried out his instructions. Viewership followed the mass migration of ATN talent to Vera News and Freedom Voice America, resulting in a ratings free fall that made ATN look like a local public access cable channel and an advertising exodus that left the news channel mortally wounded. The election night call for Mencken had turned into a poisoned chalice. Waystar could not reap the financial benefits of having been first to call the election for Mencken and Mencken, doing what he could to stanch the bleeding of his tainted presidency, distanced himself and his administration from all things GoJo, allowing the SEC and DOJ investigations to continue.
If that was not enough, after sinking tens of millions of dollars into reshoots, advertising, and CGI, Kalispatron: Hibernation premiered to widespread ridicule, little box office, and would ultimately be nominated for a dozen Razzies as the worst movie of the year. The studio was hemorrhaging money, adrift in its C-suite following Joy Palmer’s firing, and was having difficulty attracting scripts or actors because of the parent company’s support for Mencken on election night. Still more, the cruise line division continued to struggle and when Lukas pulled the plug on Waystar’s Living+ experiment, another potential source of revenue disappeared.
The final nail in the coffin happened when GoJo reported its first post-acquisition quarterly earnings. The India numbers failed to rebound and the stain from Waystar’s role in Mencken’s election caused a significant drop in U.S. subscribers. Lukas no longer had to worry about forum monkeys on Reddit, institutional investors had soured on him too. The company’s stock plunged by more than 75 percent as analysts came to realize it was suddenly dangling by a thread. GoJo had borrowed billions to acquire Waystar but the profit centers it relied on were shriveling on the vine. The company was bleeding out and some Wall Street analysts whispered about bankruptcy since no clear path existed for GoJo to pull out of its death spiral.
Laying in bed, Tom could only cringe and quietly stew over the fact that the one person who might have been able to navigate the political firestorm – his wife – had taken herself out of the public eye, spending the remaining months of her pregnancy holed up in the couple’s triplex or taking long weekends at the summer palace in the Hamptons, where the winter chill invigorated her as she prepared for motherhood. The arrival of Matthew Logan Roy Wamgsgans on Valentine’s Day was bitter irony. There was no love in Tom and Shiv’s marriage anymore, just a cold, calculated arrangement to keep up public appearances. And while Tom loved his son, the demands of his job made it impossible for him to spend meaningful time with his newborn and Shiv’s iciness just made things worse. Their marriage, such that it was, only existed on paper.
Tom arose, going through his morning routine with little energy. After nibbling on some breakfast, showering, and putting on his suit, Tom gave Mondale a quick rub on the head and walked out the door. As he made his way to the chauffeured Land Rover that toted him around Manhattan, Tom barely noticed a slight man in coveralls glide past him. And just as Tom was about to get in the car, a second man approached. “Tom Wamgsgans?” The man asked. “Yes,” Tom replied. Without missing a beat, the man reached into his jacket pocket, handed Tom an envelope and said, “you’ve just been served.” Tom was still a few hours away from being fired but Shiv was already filing for divorce. By the time Tom had processed the information, the locksmith he had brushed past was already changing the locks on the front door to the couple’s triplex. Shiv peered down from one of their floor-to-ceiling windows with a grim expression on her face.
Across Central Park, a much different morning was unfolding. Kendall Roy started his day as he had for the last six months – with ten minutes of meditation to ground him for the day ahead. While Roman had teased him as a Buddhist in Tom Ford, Kendall found comfort in eastern philosophy. It helped maintain his sobriety, which was intact save for the occasional evening Scotch, but more importantly, it helped him move past the crushing defeat he suffered at the hands of his younger sister and Waystar’s board of directors. Gone was the haunted man who had spent that fateful day staring blankly into the Hudson River.
After a day of moping, Kendall pivoted to his next plan of action. It began with a call from Stewy Houssani. His long-time friend had backed him before the board and sensed a business opportunity in all this electoral confusion. What if, Stewy asked, he could find investors to step in and support Kendall’s acquisition of Pierce? While Stewy relished a good fight, Nan Pierce had no stomach for all of the uncertainty Mencken’s election created and was looking to get out – quick. Kendall needed little convincing. Sticking to his gut instinct that Matsson would screw up the company, Ken dumped all the stock that made up half of his payout from the acquisition, walking away with just north of a billion dollars when the cash portion he also collected was added in. Thanks in no small part to his bravura public appearance at Waystar’s investors conference and the impromptu eulogy he delivered at his father’s funeral, investors were eager to back Kendall’s next venture. That, plus Stewy’s connections among hedge fund managers and the work Tellis had already done lining up investors, allowed Kendall to close on PGM just three short weeks after his ignominious departure from Waystar HQ. For good measure, he agreed to Nan’s request that Naomi stay on, albeit in a figurehead role, so the family’s name stayed on the masthead.
But keeping a Pierce name attached to his new toy would only get Kendall so far. In a political culture that monetized conflict, he needed someone steeped in the ways of Washington to be in charge of the day-to-day operations. Fortunately, Ken’s old pal Nate Soffreli was available and as keen on settling scores (for different reasons) as he was. Nate took the Jimenez/Eavis loss to Mencken particularly hard and after more than fifteen years scratching his way up the ladder as an aide in Washington, he had watched his dream of making it to the White House go up in smoke along with those Wisconsin ballots. He was looking for an exit strategy, a way to get back at the people he believed had stolen the election, and a salary orders of magnitude better than what he earned as a Capitol Hill grunt; when Ken offered to put him in charge of PGN, Nate jumped at the chance.
Kendall understood intuitively that Mencken’s contested victory was an opportunity for a news operation to be the tip of the spear in fighting back against his agenda. What would be referred to as “the resistance” became a rallying cry, and with Nate sharpening the tone of its on-air talent, PGN’s ratings skyrocketed. Its commitment to truth telling at a time of disinformation and its investigative work exposing the damage being done within the federal government earned the media empire plaudits and Pulitzer nominations – the type of cache Kendall longed for and his father had never achieved.
As Kendall, Nate, and their team went about reorienting Pierce, Ken kept one eye on the happenings at GoJo. He had not lost his desire to go “reverse Viking” and the myriad of challenges GoJo faced after it acquired Waystar provided the opening Kendall was looking for. It did not hurt that Ken had a mole deep inside the company. From his perch at Tom’s side, Greg saw which way the wind was starting to blow. He had not advanced this far without being a good reader of the room and as GoJo’s fortunes faded and Ken’s rose, Greg saw an opportunity to hedge his bet. It was not much, just the occasional check in text, but the intel Greg provided gave Ken a better sense of whether he would need to engage in trench warfare or be greeted as a liberator.
With Greg confirming much of what was causing GoJo’s precipitous fall, Kendall decided to go for it – a full blown acquisition of the company that had swiped his birthright and doing it on the cheap for good measure. He knew money would not be a problem. Not only was GoJo’s value sinking by the day, but Kendall’s star was burning brightly, and the idea of a prodigal son reclaiming his family’s company would be an irresistible lure. But in order to achieve his goal, Kendall knew he had to deploy a strategy that took advantage of the current moment but also covered his tracks. At Chiantishire, Logan had lectured Ken that business is a knife fight in the mud and Ken had finally absorbed that lesson. If he wanted to flip the script on Matsson, he would need to employ a clever PR strategy and a team of pit bulls to do it.
For that he deputized Hugo Baker, who was part of the kill list that swept out other senior Waystar managers the day Lukas took over and came over to work for Ken immediately thereafter. Hugo’s job was two-fold: leveraging the good publicity Kendall was getting to further burnish his credentials while kneecapping everything and everyone else from that brief, but erratic, interregnum around Logan’s death and the presidential election. In the retelling of this story, it was Kendall who would be framed as the one who saw through Lukas’s shadiness only to be betrayed by his siblings.
Hugo’s task was made easier by the series of bad decisions Lukas made post-acquisition, but he added important color for reporters writing about the Roy family. He did this by primarily pointing the finger at Roman. It was Roman, Hugo told reporters from New York magazine, who was to blame for Joy Palmer’s firing (a fact she confirmed on the record), Gerri Kellman’s resignation, and, Hugo strongly implied, forcing ATN to call the election for Mencken (a claim given more credence when Darwin Perry, furious over having been used by Roman on election night, also agreed to an on-the-record interview which downplayed Ken’s role and emphasized Roman’s strong arm tactics). When this spin was added to Roman’s public meltdown at Logan’s funeral and a few juicy tidbits about his unsteady negotiating tactics in Norway, the public perception that Kendall was the adult in the room while Roman was in over his head came into sharper focus.
But tossing Roman under the bus was only half the job. Hugo also needed to sling mud at Shiv and Kendall gave him plenty of ammunition to do so. In Hugo’s telling, Shiv was resentful over her father’s decision to name Kendall as his successor and to get back at him, turned on her brother. Nate helpfully supported this narrative, confirming Shiv’s perfidy via the calls she made to him while the deal hung in the balance and Kendall offered the coup de grace, an exclusive about the siblings’ huddle in the Caribbean wherein Roman and Shiv “crowned” him only to have her double cross him twelve hours later. Neither Roman nor Shiv was in any position to push back. Roman was stumbling out of various and sundry bars and nightclubs in a drunken state, post-grieving, if you will, not just his father’s death, but all the carnage he created in its wake. Shiv, resigned to never attaining the power she thought she deserved, opted to focus her attention on her child and little else.
The rest of the story wrote itself. Kendall’s Living+ presentation, the gravitas he displayed at his father’s funeral, Logan’s succession side letter, and the good will he engendered as he refreshed Pierce all fed into the narrative he had long craved but always been denied – that he was a business leader worthy of his father’s name. Besides, even if Roman or Shiv had wanted to push back, trying to muster an argument that Ken was guilty of the great sin of wanting to keep the “Roy” in Waystar Royco would not have garnered much traction. The pieces were falling into place. Pierce’s market cap was on a rocket ride while GoJo’s was sinking like a stone. But if Kendall was going to swoop in and pillage the Nordic village, he needed to tie up one final loose end – Andrew Dodds.
Kendall could have left well enough alone. The Scottish police had closed out the Dodds case long ago, writing it off as “death by misadventure.” There were only three people who knew about the story in real time – one was dead (Logan), one was now on an endless shopping spree in Italy (Marcia) and the other now worked for him (Colin). But Kendall had shared a version of the story with his siblings and while each was quiet for now, removing this potential source of blackmail was the wise thing to do.
Kendall reached out to Lisa Arthur, who devised a plan with manageable legal exposure, but if executed properly, would get his story out in a way that would minimize Kendall’s liability, could not be challenged, and deflect blame for the whole affair to people no longer alive to dispute it. In short, Ken signed an affidavit telling an embellished version of the truth. Ken was driving and in an impaired state but it was Andrew who caused the accident by reaching for the steering wheel and causing the car to go over the bridge and into the water. Kendall stated that he attempted – several times – to rescue Andrew but was unable to do so. As importantly, as Ken did with Living+, he used Logan as a foil to bolster his story without Logan being alive to contradict it. Kendall pinned the blame for the cover up on Logan, who, according to Kendall, wanted to avoid any embarrassment for his daughter on her wedding day whereas Ken wanted to come clean but agreed to keep quiet. The story had the added benefit of exonerating Colin, who also elided responsibility by claiming he was just following Logan’s orders.
Lisa coordinated with local counsel and Scottish authorities to wire the whole thing in a way that made Ken look sympathetic. Ken flew over, ostensibly for a ceremony in Dundee commemorating his father’s life, and while he was there, surrendered to authorities and pled guilty to driving under the influence and leaving the scene of an accident. In his public statement of contrition, told with the patina of guilt Ken legitimately felt about what happened that night, he took responsibility for his actions, apologized to the Dodds family, and announced a generous donation toward drug and alcohol treatment programs. Later that day, he visited the Dodds in their home and, along with a private apology, handed them a check for $10 million. Afterwards, the group made a joint appearance outside the home where Andrew’s parents thanked Kendall for coming forward and offering them closure for a loss they continued to suffer.
With that landmine defused, Kendall turned his attention to his business plan for the GoJo takeover. It was not a heavy lift. After all, he had been the one who initially pitched the idea of acquiring the Swedish streaming service back at Josh Aronson’s estate. GoJo had followed the path of many other tech start-ups. Its initial, massive burst of growth made it a Wall Street darling, allowing it to borrow large sums of money as its valuation increased so that it could scoop up other services to maintain growth, but the house of cards had collapsed when its subscriber numbers were exposed as bogus, its revenue dried up, and its cash on hand dwindled to service the debt it carried. Kendall brought in Ebba to give him a better sense of how the company operated internally, and her download confirmed what he suspected – the streaming app was useful but the rest of the parts shop was not providing much benefit. Instead of having a multi-national news, entertainment, and recreation conglomerate acquire a streaming service to expand its reach, the opposite had happened – a business version of the tail wagging the dog, a mistake Kendall intended to undo.
For Waystar, Ken would finally get the chance to correct the mistakes he thought his father had made. The parks and cruises division would have an all-female leadership team that would also be charged with building out the Living+ concept. Kendall tracked down Comfry Pellits to run comms for the division and convinced Jess Jordan to return to work under her. ATN would revert back to its pre-GoJo form led by Cyd Peach. Having both PGN and ATN would fulfill Kendall’s observation to Rhea back in the Waystar safe room that the former gave viewers what they needed (objective news reporting) while the latter gave viewers what they wanted (verbal combat). It would also monetize both sides of the political divide - a true win/win. While the folks at Waystar’s movie studio would not be thrilled, Ken also knew that having PGM in the fold gave the company balance that would smooth whatever concerns talent had about working with (or for) Waystar 2.0.
Ken filled out important spots on his team with familiar faces. He enticed Lisa away from her law firm partnership with a generous compensation package and the title of General Counsel. She would be across all the issues that arose within the company, liaise with the politicians and regulators whose palms would need greasing to move things along, and trouble shoot problems as they popped up. Frank, impressed with the work Kendall had done in such short order, agreed to come back as Vice Chairman and since Karl had retired to his Greek Island, Ken asked Tellis to come in as CFO. Ebba was hired as Hugo’s second in command with a focus on integrating what would remain of GoJo into the new and expanded Waystar Royco empire. Finally, Greg the Egg would stick around in a similar role as he had under Tom – sussing out office vibes, being charged with taking care of miscellaneous tasks, and, when needed, being a hype man to boost his boss’s mood.
With his financing in place and his leadership team lined up, Ken submitted his proposal to Lukas, who took a screenshot of the executive summary and tweeted it out below a poop emoji. GoJo’s board was of a different opinion. With their fiduciary duty to the shareholders, the board saw Kendall’s offer as a needed lifeline for a company teetering on the brink of failure. While Matsson pitched the board hard to reject the offer, promising he was capable of turning things around, the facts said otherwise. The company’s legal problems were not getting any better and GoJo’s lifeblood – its subscribers – was leaking away. After a little back and forth between the board and Ken’s team, a deal was struck. PGM would acquire GoJo at a valuation roughly a third of what it was six short months previously. GoJo would write a large check to Ebba to settle her claims, leaving Ken and his brain trust to resolve the company’s issues with the U.S. government. For that, Kendall would lean on his new team. Lisa and Nate made for a formidable duo. The former would work with the SEC and DOJ to resolve their investigations and the latter would rely on his deep ties to Senator Eavis to assure him that Kendall would clean up Lukas’s mess while providing Gil with more opportunities to appear on both PGN and ATN.
And so, Ken slipped on what was now his standard CEO uniform – a dark blue suit and a crisp white dress shirt opened at the collar. His phone pinged as he headed out the door, a text from his older brother. “Congrats, Kenny” it read over a selfie of Connor and Willa at the U.S. embassy in Dubrovnik. Ken chuckled to himself – Conner, a freaking ambassador. Fikret and Colin were waiting curbside as Ken left his building. “To the Death Star!” Ken exclaimed, as Fikret navigated the Mercedes SUV into Manhattan traffic heading toward Waystar’s headquarters. When the trio arrived, Frank, Tellis, Lisa, Nate, Stewy, Greg, Hugo, and Ebba greeted him with big smiles and pats on the back. “I told you Frank, one head, one crown, bigger than dad ever was,” Ken said as the two men shared a hug. The group headed to the elevator bank that would take them up to Waystar’s boardroom where the rest of the team was waiting.
Tom’s trip to the office occurred in stony silence. That Shiv was filing for divorce was not entirely unexpected. After all, they both knew Tom would soon be out of a job. Worse, the bad press Tom received – from the cruise line scandal to Mencken’s election – effectively made him unemployable in any of the Fortune 500 companies based in New York. But the abruptness of her decision still stung. She was moving to enforce their pre-nuptial agreement and, more painfully, suing for sole custody of little Matty. Tom may have gummed up Shiv’s legal options by conflicting out some of the city’s top tier matrimonial attorneys, but she had an equity stake in GoJo’s acquisition that still netted her hundreds of millions of dollars and enough sense to trust her financial advisors as she slowly sold off her GoJo shares into a declining market. Tom was not so fortunate. The stock options he received when he became CEO of Waystar were now almost worthless and aside from his salary and the agreed upon payout he would receive under the terms of the pre-nup, he did not have the kind of money he would need for a protracted court fight. Ordinarily, Tom would confide in (or take his frustrations out on) Greg, but the two men were no longer on speaking terms. When Ken’s team sent over its kill list, Tom was not surprised to see his name on it, but he noticed Greg’s name was conspicuously absent. He quickly put two and two together. While Tom could have fired Greg, it would have been pointless because Kendall would have just hired him right back.
The logistics of the signing ceremony had been worked out in advance. Matsson refused to travel to the States because he was dodging a Congressional subpoena and did not want to risk being picked up by the U.S. Marshals. Instead, he designated Tom to sign the documents on GoJo’s behalf. When Ken’s team entered the boardroom Tom and a few soon-to-be unemployed GoJo executives were already there. The two men had not spoken or seen each other in six months. While it was a long shot, Tom made one last attempt to avoid losing his job. “Kendall,” he said with faux sincerity, “you really have done it. If there is anything I can do to help with the transition – ” before Ken cut him off. “I’m good, Tom. You’re out.” Deflated, Tom retreated to his chair and scribbled his name in each place his assistant had marked. Ken did the same and with those strokes of the pen, the deal was done.
With the paperwork complete, Ken walked down to his dad’s old office. It, along with Waystar, were now his. There would be good days ahead as well as challenges, but for now, he gazed out the window at New York’s skyline with a contented look on his face. He pulled out his phone and called his son. Things had improved slightly with Iverson and Sophie. Rava kept them upstate for a week or so after the election and as Ken’s life stabilized he did his best to mend fences. Although Rava took note of what Pierce was doing under Ken’s leadership, there was too much peanut butter between them. They now communicated solely through their lawyers; however, Rava also knew that it was important for their two children to have some sort of relationship with their father and she encouraged them – at their own pace – to reengage with him. Ken wanted not just to right the wrongs of his own parenting but be a better role model to his son than Logan was to him. “Hey buddy,” he said when Iverson picked up. “Dad’s calling you from grandpa’s old office.” “Listen,” he continued, “I’m going to have Fikret pick you up tomorrow morning so you can come into work with me.” “Ok, dad.” “Can’t wait, pal. I love you,” Ken replied. As Ken hung up the phone, new Jess (whose real name was Lauren) popped her head in at the door. “Kendall, I have the White House on Line 1.” “Thanks,” he replied. Ken picked up his desk line. “Hello, Mr. President.”
THE END
