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CHESS AT A FUNERAL ──────
PEOPLE WERE MOURNING HER FATHER. A terrible loss, they said. No one even knew he was sick, they said. A true testament to how hard he worked, apparently. Because that is the only reason he hid his cancer from the world, because he was a hard worker. It wasn't because anyone else would've been chomping at the bit to steal his board seat, or switching his pills out for cyanide at the first chance, just to speed the job up.
When he was first diagnosed, he'd sat Ruby down and told her what was happening. And then he told her that he named her the sole heir of the Carrington estate, and the only person allowed to have his seat on the board at Waystar Royco.
Then he told her that no one could know that he was dying, because they would kill him quickly and push her out of the company before either of them could blink. Weak links were not worth anything, weak links meant necrosis, they would cut off the dying limb before they even tried to save it.
Having heard her father's lectures over the years, she knew well not to trust the people they worked with. Sometimes you had to take that gamble, but more often than not, it was easier to just keep all of your cards close to your chest. He always told her that they were all predators. They were out for blood, and the second they felt you were holding them back, you'd be killed, kicked out, or made an example of.
It's why now, standing front and center at his funeral, Ruby felt no camaraderie amongst any of the hundreds of people in attendance. No family member, or friend she'd known since high school felt like they meant their sorry. She could see it in the older ones' eyes, they were mad. They were annoyed that no one knew about her father's health issues, and therefore no one could use it to get their own way.
His will bound the company shares to her, secured her his seat on the board, and though she had little trust in anyone, she knew that Logan Roy cared too much about appearances to try and push her out. She was a good worker, he knew that. She would've ended up on the board one way or another, this was just the way it ended up playing out.
But it doesn't change the fact that there are countless others claiming it's pure nepotism, or that she somehow slept her way to the top, in a company full of people she'd known as family her whole life.
That was another thing her father always told her, though. Men don't like a woman with her own power. They don't like when women can have their own identities, and can survive with or without them. Men don't want to be wanted, they want to be needed. Otherwise they'll feel like everything's a joke, centering them as the punchline.
Everything her father ever told her about men was a joke.
So Ruby takes no words as truth, no comforts as genuine, and no talk of work as something serious. Everyone who is anyone is at her father's funeral, and they've all got their eye on her, waiting to see the first sign of a crack in the foundation that is the Carrington name. At the first scent of blood, they'll pounce, and she'll be fucked. She's not slipping. She won't slip.
