Part 3: Played by the Billionaire
Chapter 1 – Julian
Hot coffee in my hands, I burst into the executive conference room where my business partner Preston Bradley is already speaking with our esteemed guest.
“So glad you could make it on such short notice,” I say to the man sitting in one of twelve leather office chairs. His commanding presence overshadows even Preston’s charming façade. Then again, it’s not often we get men who look like Damon Monroe in Portland… unless they are my brother.
I’ve suddenly set myself up for the biggest gay joke I’ve ever conspired in my own head, and I have five seconds to redirect my thoughts to something more appropriate.
“It’s my pleasure.” Damon stands up and shakes my hand from across the table. Strong and sturdy. Excellent. One thing my father always taught me was that you can learn a lot from a person’s handshake. All right, so back then he meant a man’s handshake, but the same can be said about all people from my own experience. “I’m always looking for excuses to come visit the west coast. You have more breathable air than we do back east.”
I don’t take a lot of stock in my American heritage, but whenever east coast bigshots like Damon Monroe compliment my city, I’m inclined to puff myself up. Of course we have wonderful air. Of course we do.
“This is my assistant, Ms. Alisha Oduya.” I shake hands with a lovely woman wearing a colorful blouse and skirt that makes me wonder how my girlfriend Alyssa would look in such audacious patterns. I’m half-tempted to ask Ms. Oduya where she gets her makeup as well. The bright red of her lips and the pink on her eyelids matches perfectly with her dark skin. She absentmindedly pats the very top of her afro after shaking my hand. “I’m afraid my usual assistant couldn’t make it. Besides, Ms. Oduya has never been to Portland before.”
“Make sure you give her a bit of a break this evening, Mr. Monroe,” Preston says with a fresh, charming smile in Ms. Oduya’s direction. I can already hear it now. “I made sure her break from Monroe was good and hard, if you know what I mean, Julian.” One day, my business partner will stop hitting on every beautiful woman who comes into our offices, but today is not going to be that day. “Portland’s a small city, but we have plenty to do downtown.”
A sunglassed man flexes his muscles in the corner. Ah, that’s right. The Monroes are big on personal security. I had bodyguards as a kid, but since opening my own enterprise I only hire them when I go out of town for business or if we get the odd threatening letter in our inboxes. Can never be too sure these days.
Preston is even more laissez-faire about his security. That man will stumble drunk through Chinatown and make friends with every panhandler he comes across. They love him, because he’s loose with the Benjamins and loves to buy out the old stock from Voodoo Donuts to pass around. This is assuming, of course, he had a fun night at the nearest strip club.
The bodyguard implies that we should be wary of asking out Ms. Oduya. Well, I don’t see a ring on her finger…
“My assistant Vern will be joining us soon,” I assure the table. “My other assistant Alyssa will be joining us as soon as she starts the afternoon shift.” This meeting had to be done right after lunch to accommodate Monroe flying in earlier this morning. I would like Alyssa to sit in on the whole meeting, but we don’t always get what we would like.
(Unless you are me. Recently, I’ve been getting everything I like from Alyssa. Ask me what we did last night in my hot tub. Go on. Ask.)
“We can go ahead and get started.”
“Sounds good.” Damon swings one leg over the other and folds his hands in his lap. A golden wedding ring glistens on his left hand. I went to a lot of executive weddings last year, but Damon Monroe’s hitch at the Justice of the Peace and the subsequent to-do in the Czech Republic was not something yours truly was invited to.
I was, however, invited to and attended Ethan Cole’s wedding back east. I bring this up, because that’s who walks through the door with his wife acting as his personal assistant.
What. The. Hell.
Cole and Monroe are in the top position to help Preston and me fund our next big venture. Cole and Monroe are, for a lack of a better term, rivals. They’re both in the same line of business, even if they don’t always tarry in the same industries – Monroe is more hospitality and technology based while Cole gets his kicks from publishing and hedge funds. But they both have vested interests in funding the next greatest and latest ventures around the world. Why not? Preston and I have a wonderful track record of getting projects off the ground and making our other investors millions of dollars without lifting a finger. Of course, Cole and Monroe both want a piece of the Bradley & Marcus pie if they can swing t.
Suffice to say, both men knew they would be meeting with me this week… a day apart. Cole wasn’t supposed to be here until tomorrow!
“Gentlemen!” Ethan Cole says with a surprised smile on his young face. Out of all the businessmen in this room, he’s the only one who is completely self-made, and it shows in his unrefined manners and expressions. Oh, he’s very good at mimicking his new peers like Damon Monroe and myself, but we old-money boys can smell new-money coming from the other side of the tracks the moment they put a single toe on those rusty rails. “Didn’t know it would be a full house this fine Tuesday morning.”
The confusion, irritation, and frustration mounting the conference room almost throws me off my game. That never happens.
“I see we seem to have had some scheduling confusion,” I say through gritted teeth. Vern. Damnit. He never messes up like this. In fact, he had assured me more than once that Monroe was scheduled for Tuesday and Cole for Wednesday. Yet here I am, looking into the young faces of Ethan Cole and his busty brunette wife.
When Vern walks into the room, he has to do a double-take. Apparently, he’s as shocked as I am.
He also looks at me with the biggest oh shit! face I have seen on this otherwise placated man.
“Jasmine,” Ethan says to his wife. “Please tell me we don’t have the wrong day. We seem to have been misled.”
Her confusion is the worst in the room. On the other side of the table, Damon Monroe chuckles and exchanges a quintessential alpha male look with his biggest rival on the east coast.
“It says Wednesday right here, hon.”
“Can I see?”
She hands him her iPad. Ethan Cole scrolls through the email from my office and looks up at me, his boyish façade finally crumbling. Ah, there’s the power-hungry capitalist who made himself a billion dollars in only a few years.
“Well,” he says with a devilish smile. “I’m always up for a challenge, anyway.” He looks to Damon Monroe and his equally confused assistant. “If you’d like, we could come back later when he’s done throwing you out, Monroe.”
“Careful, Cole. Those be fighting words.”
“Mr. Cole, er, Mrs. Cole.” Vern clasps his hands together after putting his things down on the table. “I have no idea how such an error was made, but I take full…”
“Vern,” I say. “Hallway.”
Poor chump is scared witless. He thinks I’m firing him, doesn’t he?
Well, maybe.
“Excuse us, gentlemen. Mrs. Cole.” I nod to her before escorting my assistant out into the hallway. Preston jumps in and does what he does best: damage control between conflicting parties. He’s got everyone laughing within thirty seconds.
Vern has pulled up an old email on his phone. “I can confirm that this is the correspondence between us, sir.”
I take his phone from his hand and look over the dates. Sure enough, it says Wednesday. Mr. Cole’s assistant replied to confirm. I would say this was an error on Cole’s end, but the email his wife shows him definitely said Tuesday. My head hurts.
“Any other emails between us since then?”
Vern hurriedly goes through the sent folder, his face paling. “Yes, sir. Looks like there was one Thursday afternoon with the… new date.” He shows it to me.
We both see the same damning detail right away. No, not that the date for Cole’s appointment is wrong. But the person who signed off on the email was not Vern.
It was Alyssa.
My lovely, usually smart-as-a-tack girlfriend and second assistant was the one who sent a follow-up email on my behalf. She was the one who messed up the dates and made sure Cole showed up on the same afternoon as Monroe.
Alyssa. Who isn’t here right now for me to hold accountable.
“Well,” I say, flushed. I hand Vern his phone back and glance into the conference room. Cole and Monroe sit on opposite ends of the table, trading jabs and laughing at Preston’s increasingly stupid jokes. My business partner sends me a look that implores me to get my ass back in there and figure something out. “We’ve got some hands to shake and cocks to blow.” I got most of those epithets from my gay-ass brother.
Oh, Ted would love this. He would also be a bigger man than Preston actually is and smooth everything over with his oozing charm that even gets me sometimes. Guess that’s the one advantage of being a gay man in this line of work. He knows how to stroke those alpha male egos in ways even I cannot understand.
Hopefully not too well, though…
“Gentlemen,” I say again the moment I enter the conference room. Both Cole and Monroe glance in my direction. “I am so sorry for the mix-up. We have located the source of the confusion and can unfortunately say that it came from my office’s end.” I turn toward Ethan Cole. “I know you’re one of the busiest men in America. How can we fix this for you?”
“As much as I wish I could say we’ll come back later, I unfortunately have another important appointment up in Seattle tomorrow. It’s either today or some other week, I’m afraid.”
I grimace, afraid he was going to say that. “Then let me propose that you and my business partner Preston take up the other conference room. We can all reconvene later. Dinner and drinks are on me tonight.” I flash a smile to Mrs. Cole and Ms. Oduya. “That goes for everyone in this room, of course.” I owe it to Vern, too, for giving him that mini heart attack. Even so, he and I are going to have a long chat about his responsibilities. Such as how it’s his job to perform oversight on anything Alyssa does on an administration level. Something was left amiss, and Vern should have caught it!
The Coles agree to go with Preston. I think it’s best for me to conduct the meeting with Damon Monroe, anyway. Preston can talk to literally anyone, old money or new money. I, on the other hand, work best with men with the same background as me.
I continue to apologize to Damon until he can’t take it anymore and insists that we continue with our meeting as planned. For the next ninety minutes, I pitch what we’re selling, and he talks about how much money he has. That’s the basic gist of what we’re up to, anyway. Nothing super interesting, unless you’re me and think venture capitalizing is fun and games.
The Coles and Preston rejoin us for the final half hour of the meeting. That’s also right around the time Alyssa finally joins us, her own office tablet in her hand and a little skip in her step.
I almost forget what she has done when I see her. Shit, I had seen her this morning when we left my penthouse, my arm slung around her and trading knowing looks with my driver. She was all over me until we got to her campus and let her out so she could go to her nine o’clock class. I’m sure some pap somewhere clicked a shot of me making out with her, forbidding her from leaving me until I copped one more feel of her ass and stuck my tongue down her throat. The way she acquiesced to everything was the epitome of what I wanted from this relationship.
Ever since Saturday night, our relationship has changed. These past three days have been Alyssa and I seriously discussing what we want, both sexually and emotionally. I think she finally realized that I am serious about taking care of her in return for her taking care of me.
And she’s embracing that submissive side of herself she never even knew was there. Which is why she becomes more docile, more agreeable in my presence. No, I’m not out for a hardcore lifestyle with my girlfriend, or any woman I decide to spend the rest of my life with. But I am appreciative of a woman who has a certain personality that jives with my own.
Alyssa is to give all of herself to me, little by little. There are jokes about young feminine virgins falling head over heels for the first man they sleep with. I suppose that was me. Oh, fuck it. I know it was me. I had no idea when I seduced her, of course, but since then? I’ve been making the most of it.
I want to kiss her the moment she walks through the door. But this is business. Cole brought his wife, but they are not making doe-eyes at one another. Shit, they haven’t even reached one year of marriage yet, and they’re showing more professionalism than me right now.
“Allow me to briefly introduce my second assistant, Alyssa Pendleton.” I motion for her to sit on the other side of Vern. “Don’t mind her. She’ll be helping Vern take notes.” Then we’re all having a nice, lovely chat.
Both men glance at me and then at Alyssa. Damon Monroe leans back in his chair and smirks as if he’s won another billion dollars. Ethan Cole spares himself that charade by glancing at his wife. She blushes.
Never let it be said that I don’t keep good company.
