The Boardroom

Archie Smith, the burly, sixty-year-old Chief Financial Officer of Larkridge Holdings, had poured every ounce of his being into the company. For forty years, he meticulously navigated the treacherous waters of finance, pledging unwavering loyalty, and spending countless, solitary weekends poring over ledgers in his second-floor office, which offered a dismal view of the parking lot. He had witnessed five CEOs rise and fall—some ousted, some disgraced, one vanishing into obscurity. Archie had outlasted them all.

But today, the summons crashed upon him like an executioner's drum.

He entered the boardroom with a measured gait, his fingers twitching as he tugged his cuffs down over thick wrists, striving to quell the tremors in his hands. The room loomed, vast and icy, its walls clad in austere gray stone and lifeless art. The long mahogany table shone with an intimidating, merciless sheen, each seat filled by senior executives—men and women in their forties and fifties, eyes sharp as blades, lips drawn tight. They remained silent. They did not acknowledge him.

At the head of the table presided Harlan Rusk, the newest CEO. Seventy-three years old, skeletal, with white hair slicked back, cold as frost on glass. His stare was fixed and unyielding. He did not rise.

“Mr. Smith,” he commanded. “Take three steps forward.”

Archie complied. The marble beneath his feet amplified the soft squeak of leather soles, a sound magnified by the oppressive silence.

Rusk drew a deliberate breath. “We have meticulously unearthed your embezzlement. Layered transfers, falsified consulting fees, appropriated petty cash—each too minor to draw attention individually. But collectively... monstrous.”

A frigid sweat erupted beneath Archie’s dress shirt. He blinked, his voice faltering. “I—there was pressure. The pension shortfall. I never intended—”

“Spare us your excuses,” Rusk barked, his voice cutting like a whip. “This isn’t a plea bargain. This is sentencing.”

The pronouncement reverberated like a clap of thunder.

Removed your clothes!” Rusk bellowed

Archie's heart hammered as he pivoted slightly toward the exit…this cannot be serious. But before he could move, Rusk’s voice thundered with an overwhelming authority: “Where do you think you're going?”

Two shadows emerged from the dim corners of the room—security personnel clad in black, their physiques designed more for extraction than negotiation. One wore gloves. The other, mirrored glasses.

“Stop,” Archie implored, hands raised, struggling to reclaim some shred of dignity. “This—this isn’t legal. This is a board meeting.”

“This,” Rusk said icily, “is a reckoning. You want to keep your pension, your benefits, your reputation—then you’ll cooperate. Or these gentlemen will strip you themselves.”

Archie’s jaw worked. His tongue felt too large for his mouth. He looked around the table for a friendly face. No one met his eyes.

The guards stepped forward.

The first tore open his shirt—white buttons scattering across the floor like the end of a poker hand. The second yanked down his trousers with a single motion, revealing thick thighs, pale skin, and worn cotton briefs that followed a second later. Archie stumbled as they wrenched him upright again, his belly wobbling, chest heaving.

The overhead spotlight found him there, trembling and exposed. A man once feared in budget meetings now stripped to the flesh like a butcher’s hog.

A low snicker came from the far end of the table. Another followed. Someone muttered, “Disgusting.”

Rusk raised a hand. One of the guards produced a thick black marker.

“No,” Archie murmured. But the cap was already off. The tip pressed against his chest—just over his heart. Thick black strokes carved the word EMBEZZLER across the pale plain of his torso. The smell of ink mingled with his sweat.

Archie closed his eyes. He felt thirty years of gravitas fall away in a single, oily word.

“Kneel,” came the command.

He resisted for a breath. But the guards moved. Down he went—knees slapping against the cold marble. His stomach hung, his shoulders rounded. He felt like a punished dog.

“Speak.”

“I need to use the bathroom” Archie said meekly.

The request floated past the ears of the executives, a reed-thin note swallowed by the bigger music of humiliation in the room. The guards exchanged a fleeting glance, then moved as one. The gloved one pinched Archie at the waist, not hard enough to bruise but with clinical precision; the other flicked nimble fingers beneath his ribs. The tickle was shocking, weaponized, a childish torment rendered grotesque by context. Archie shuddered. A jolt shot through him, heat surging to his cheeks, shame clogging his throat. He tried to wriggle away, but they held him with surgical certainty, searching out the softest zones, the locked-in, vulnerabilities.

A strangled yelp burst from his mouth. Laughter, involuntary and guttural, became a pleading grimace—and then the dam broke. The urine came hot, immediate, unstoppable. It darkened the marble, pooled between his knees, splattered the shins of the gloved guard and arced across the stone in a thin, ignoble stream. For a moment, the only sound in the boardroom was the wet pattering and Archie’s strangled groan.

With a synchronized revulsion, the guards released him. Archie collapsed—no, melted—directly into the puddle he had made, warm fluid seeping into his knees and thighs. The marker ink ran, bleeding down his flesh in streaks.

A riot of laughter bloomed around the table—sharp, staccato, mean as dog bites. Even Harlan Rusk permitted himself a smile that split his sallow face

“I…” Archie swallowed. His throat hurt. “I apologize to you all. I let down this company, and all of you who trusted me.”

Rusk leaned forward. “Say it again. Look each of them in the eye.”

So Archie did. One by one. “I’m sorry, Lawrence. I’m sorry, Malcolm. I’m sorry, Cho. I’m sorry, Malik. I betrayed you.” His voice cracked. “Please… forgive me.”

Silence followed. The longest yet.

Then Rusk stood. Without flourish, without a smile, only a severity that was a force of nature. “Rise, gentlemen,” he intoned.

Chair legs shrieked against marble; the executive board, every last one, stood shoulder to shoulder. Their gazes locked on Archie with the kind of dispassion reserved for failed horses and broken machinery. Lawrence, the florid-faced VP of Sales, undid his belt with a click. Cho’s hands hovered at his own waistband, impassive. Malik, the youngest, eyed the proceedings with a species of clinical curiosity, as if eager to see how far the human mechanism could degrade under orchestrated shame.

“Archie,” Rusk said, circling the table, “Our institutional memory is long. Justice lags, but it does not forget.” He moved behind Archie, one hand on his bony shoulder. The other, with slow, ceremonial care, undid the fly of his own tailored slacks.

Archie blinked up at them—at the seven men, some gray, some with the dewy look of second careers, none sympathetic—his mind a slipstream of unreality. Was this what a career’s worth of compromise bought—a half-erect column of strangers, the urge to please persisting even after all rights to dignity had been stripped away?

Rusk tipped Archie’s chin. “Consider this your last fiduciary duty,” he said. “And you will demonstrate excellence.”

Archie’s lips parted, words forming—indignant, terrified, pleading. But with the threat of forfeited pension wounded and hovering, and the memory of every child’s tuition payment he’d ever made, he obeyed. A practiced obsequiousness took over, the same muscle memory that had composed a thousand contrite emails and performed a million defenseless bows of the head. Lawrence’s cock, robust and thickly veined, bobbed in front of Archie’s face, its tip glistening. Archie’s mouth opened—mechanical, unthinking—and the taste was immediate: sharp, faintly acrid, a living shame.

“Atta boy,” Lawrence grunted, his hand cradling the back of Archie’s head as if steering a problematic printer into a closet. “Let’s see some of that Smith dedication now.”

Around the circle, belts unfastened, flies gaped; the board’s erections sprouted in unison, a garden of long-neglected lust and power. Archie cycled through them—awkward and desperate, a mind somewhere else but lips and tongue performing each task with clockwork diligence. One after another, the men crammed their dicks into his mouth; the rhythm was haphazard, the words clipped and professional—“Faster, Smith.” “You can do better; performance matters.” “Don’t slack off now, not when it’s crunch time.”

Malik came first—an urgent, hissing gasp—and the semen was hot and salty, spattering the back of Archie’s throat with a precision that made him choke. Rusk, by contrast, was slow and meticulous, his strokes unhurried, as if savoring the sacrament. He emptied himself fully, fully, into Archie’s mouth; the old man’s hands never faltering, his eyes bright and cold as bourbon on ice. Lawrence and Cho finished together, ropes splashing from nose to chin, and the rest came in a series of grunts and half-muffled sighs, a liturgy of release more transactional than erotic.

When it was over—sticky, spent, and echoing in the humid, recoiling silence—Archie remained knelt, the taste of humiliation raw on his tongue, a spectacle of degradation rendered redundant by the dribble on his thighs and the marker scrawl across his chest. He did not dare wipe his mouth. He did not dare raise his eyes to the table. In the

Then Rusk said, with a thin-lipped smile: “Your punishment is not complete. You will now walk the length of this building to your office, as you are. Retrieve your belongings, return clothed, and stand here again.”

Archie’s eyes darted. “That’s… a hundred yards. Past the entire fourth floor—”

“Correct,” said Rusk.

A thin chuckle began somewhere behind him. Phones rose. Cameras clicked.

The guards dragged him upright and nudged him forward. The door opened.

Out he went.

The hallway was worse than the boardroom. Endless cubicles. Rows of watching eyes. Some startled, some amused, some cold with quiet vindication. Fingers pointed. Someone whispered, “Is that Smith?”

Archie shuffled forward, hands cupped weakly in front of him, but there was no hiding. His body—pale, sweaty smelling of dried urine and semen —was a walking bulletin of disgrace. His skin burned with humiliation, and yet, under it all, he felt strangely hollow. This was his penance. This was his price.

At last, his office door.

He entered, trembling, and changed. The suit—once a symbol of prestige—now felt like paper against scorched skin. The fabric scratched. The knot of the tie choked.

When he returned to the boardroom, no one spoke. He stood in silence before the table.

Rusk surveyed him.

“You will continue in your role,” he said. “On reduced salary. You will sign a confession. We will not press charges, provided you remain compliant.”

Archie nodded once. His voice was gone.

“You may leave.”

As he turned and walked out, his mind replayed the scene again and again. And behind it all, one question pulsed like a drumbeat: Was this justice—or theater?

In the world of men in suits, sometimes the only difference… was the audience.