The Billionaire's Bad News Baby

1. Elio

Manhattan had never looked brighter. Even this late into the night, it seemed to Elio that everything was sparkling and giving off light in a special sort of way that never happened during daylight hours.

He was watching the party from a little nook he had found for himself in the penthouse suite. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out across the city, lights everywhere far below, mirroring the stars above. And inside was just as glittering. Crystal glasses shone as people sipped their drinks, diamond rings and pearl necklaces reflecting the soft lights from above. Even guests’ smiles seemed to be shining as they talked, ate, drank and laughed in a dizzying blur of golden luxury.

Elio stayed in his partially private nook, wishing he could go home. More accurately, if he was going to be working — and this party definitely counted as work — he at least wanted to be at the office instead of here. At least then he could be productive. He could look over the latest international supply contracts that had come through or prepare for the meeting he had with his advertising team later in the week. That would be useful. That would, at the very least, be interesting.

Unfortunately, it was his party for his company, so there was an obligation to be there. His work might be his life, but he didn’t enjoy this side of it. Showing up, smiling, doing the rounds of handshakes and kisses on cheeks. It felt unproductive. His product could speak for itself; organically grown grapes from the heart of Italy, distilled and matured to perfection and poured into wine glasses for his guests. He’d named this newest incarnation Oro — Italian for gold — because that’s exactly what it was. It was the best. But there were expectations, the main one being that he actually showed up, looked halfway enthused and gave a speech and a toast.

The smell of wine was dizzying, glasses full of rich, red liquid in everyone’s hand. Despite the itch to leave and be alone for a while, Elio found himself smiling, just a little. It was satisfying to finally see the product in people”s hands, delighting everyone’s taste buds. There were plenty of wineries around the world with an innumerable number of wines at everyone’s fingertips, but it was something special to be one of the best. Elio split his time between New York and Italy, not only running the business side of things but also making sure to be at the vineyards in person to make sure the product was perfect.

No matter how much he tried to hide in plain sight, it wasn’t easy for Elio to fade into the background. He was taller than most people, and olive-skinned thanks to the Italian blood in his veins. Along with his dark hair and ice-blue eyes, he cut a striking figure, especially at a party wearing a custom pinstripe suit. Already he’d had several women approach him this evening, looking for who knew what. A date? A relationship? A bit of attention? That was all fine. He complimented their dresses and then made excuses and found another corner to hide in. They were probably very nice ladies; they were certainly beautiful. But he didn’t have time for a relationship. He barely had time to breathe most days.

There were plenty of familiar faces in the crowd, but Elio caught sight of one that he knew better than all the rest. Marc, his lawyer and the man responsible for overseeing pretty much every contract that passed through Elio’s life and business, had done the rounds of the room several times. Marc was a master of small talk and flattery. He was probably out there scoping out who had actually shown up versus who had declined to attend, gathering gossip and information with the subtlety of a pickpocket. Which were all reasons why Elio had hired the man, so he could keep his hands clean and his privacy intact while Marc had the time of his life wallowing in the shallows. Soon enough, Marc found him in his corner, a glass of wine in hand and a satisfied smile on his face.

“You look very pleased with yourself,” Elio said as Marc stopped beside him.

“Oh, I am,” said Marc, taking a polite sip of his drink. “I’ve had quite an interesting evening.”

“Care to share with the class?”

“Everyone loves Oro, Elio, but you knew that already.”

Elio allowed himself a moment of smug pride. The product was good enough that he had been sure it would stand on its own two feet, but still, it was always nice to have the validation.

“That’s good to hear,” he said. “But not all that interesting.”

“Plenty of other businessmen have been chattering away,” Marc said in a conspiratorial tone, talking just loud enough to be heard over the music and buzz of the crowd. “Those gentlemen are not so happy about how good the wine is.”

“But they still admit that it’s good?” Now that was music to Elio’s ears. Marc waggled his eyebrows, equally pleased.

“They all know it’s amazing. That’s why they’re all going to stare daggers at you when you get up on that platform and make a speech.”

Elio groaned. “Do I really have to?”

“You sound like a ten-year-old.”

“Ten-year-olds have some valid points sometimes, you know.”

“You’ll be fine,” Marc said dismissively and patted him on the shoulder. “Just relish how mad you’re about to make your competition. Bask in the glory of all those sour faces. Go on and get it over with.”

Without further ado, Marc gave him a good shove and sent Elio flying from the safety of his corner. Several people noticed his rather abrupt entrance back into the main space, so there was no more room for retreat. Elio gave them all polite smiles and greetings and wove his way through the crowd towards the dais where the band was performing to make some sort of speech, cursing Marc the whole time. He hoped the man would at least get a killer hangover tomorrow morning for making Elio do this when a press release would just as easily do the job.

Hating every second, Elio walked up the single stair onto the musicians’ dais and motioned for them to pause for a second. God, even they were looking up at him expectantly, waiting to hear what he was going to say. As the crowd heard the silence, they turned and saw him standing there, the entire room now focusing its attention on him like some lethal laser beam.

Elio took a moment to try and find his voice, which had promptly run away from the attention, and desperately hoped that it looked like he was simply building suspense. He spotted Marc by the edge of the crowd, who raised his glass to him with a reassuring nod.

Fast, simple and elegant,Elio told himself. That’s all you need. There doesn’t need to be substance when image is everything.

Collecting himself with his best showman’s smile, Elio faced the crowd and raised his glass to the expectant faces.

“Good evening, everyone,” he said, his voice flowing through the room. “I’ll keep this short and sweet. The success of our new Oro line has been humbling, to say the least…”

A rough cough came from the middle of the crowd, interrupting Elio’s focus. A few more words and he would be done. Then he could step down and retreat.

“Uh, so I wanted to say thank you to everyone attending tonight…”

There was more coughing this time, louder and unending, and Elio tried to power through and finish his speech.

“So, I, yes, I hope you enjoy the rest of the?—”

But he couldn’t even finish the sentence as there was a collective gasp from the crowd, clearing a space in the center of the room as everyone moved back like a school of fish swimming in sync. In the middle was the coughing man, bending over and clutching at his throat and chest, tears in his eyes from the effort, his face as red as the wine in the glass that fell from his hand and shattered on the ground. Now it was fairly obvious that the man wasn’t coughing; he was choking. Elio felt his whole body turn cold and still as he watched, unable to move, unable to do anything at all.

One of the wait staff leapt into action from the side of the room, grasping the choking man from behind, who was grappling at his throat like something out of a horror movie, and gave him the Heimlich maneuver. After a few good thunks to the stomach, the man seemed to swallow whatever it was that had been stuck. He sucked in a whoosh of air and then promptly fainted, collapsing in the waiter’s arms, who looked on in horror, not wanting to place him down on the floor covered in spilled wine, and instead the man hung limply from his arms.

Now that the man who had choked was quiet, hanging there unconscious, and even though his face was still beet red, Elio recognized who he was: Noel Preston, owner and CEO of Southern Valley Wines and also Elio’s biggest competitor on the market. Elio’s stomach sank through the floor.

It was all a bit of a blur after that. An ambulance was called, by whom Elio never found out, probably another member of the waitstaff, and paramedics wheeled the tuxedoed man away from the scene, his chest heaving with a noisy rasp with every breath he took. People watched on in fascination, horror, or a mix of both. Elio noticed a few people shamelessly taking photos of the spectacle or recording on their phones. After the ambulance left, other guests started trickling away as well. The atmosphere had no hope of recovering, the whole room full of whispers and the feeling of something scandalous hanging over them.

Elio was one of the first to leave, slipping out a side door when no one was looking, unable to take another second of being trapped inside.

* * *

Sleep came to Elio in fits and starts that night. The only reason he had been able to snatch any sleep at all, he figured, was because of plain old exhaustion. Then his mind would prod him awake with thoughts of partygoers choking, ambulance lights flashing through glass windows, and red wine spilling from glasses and staining carpets and cocktail dresses. He wouldn’t call them nightmares; he was thirty-five and far too old to be having nightmares… but they set him on edge, his jaw aching from grinding his teeth when he woke up.

So when Marc appeared at his penthouse apartment at the frankly unforgivable hour of eight a.m., Elio didn’t feel like engaging in polite small talk as they sat opposite each other in the dining area. He chased painkillers with orange juice, trying to clear the searing headache that was stabbing at his temples, while Marc made himself comfortable.

“So?” Elio asked, prodding at his lawyer, who looked up from his phone with a frown of concentration.

“So? So what?” Marc asked, and Elio’s headache immediately got worse because this was not his jovial colleague and friend who was as irreverent as possible in any given situation. This was Marc Esposito, lawyer extraordinaire, in full flight. So something wasn’t looking good, and Elio would rather know about it sooner than later.

“So…” Elio said, holding the cold glass of juice to his temple. “Why are you here so early and why do you look like you’re going into battle?”

“Because going into battle is a pretty good summary of what’s happening.”

“So some gossip rags will sink their teeth into someone choking at the launch party. Why is that battle worthy?”

“Not just someone,” said Marc sternly, not deigning to look up from his phone. “Your biggest competitor.”

“Well, I’m not the one that shoved something down his throat.”

“No, but someone as volatile as Noel Preston is probably going to make it seem that way.”

Elio sighed and desperately wished that he was still in bed. “You think he’s really going to drag my name through the mud?”

“I think he’s going to drag your name through the courts.”

That made Elio sit up a bit straighter. “You think he’s going to sue me?”

“I’d bet money on it.”

“Let him try. It was a freak accident.”

“It doesn’t matter what it was. It matters what it looks like. And what it looks like is your biggest competitor, on the night of you launching your biggest product yet, nearly choked to death. If people get even a whiff of the word suspicious, then you are royally screwed, my friend.”

“God, why does it always come back to how things look?” Elio groaned, rubbing his hands down his face.

“You making a secretive little getaway didn’t help optics,” Marc said.

“It was either leave or go back to standing in the corner,” Elio said tightly.

Marc shrugged as if neither option was great, but what was Elio supposed to have done? Fallen to his hands and knees and sobbed at the tragedy of Noel Preston choking? Comfort other guests who had been looking on with glee as if this was the best show of their lives? The whole thing had felt like an out-of-body experience and the thought to stick around for optics had, for once, never crossed his mind.

“I’ll just tell everyone you were investigating what might have gone wrong…” Marc muttered, more to himself than Elio, tapping notes into his phone with deft fingers.

“He didn’t chew his food. That’s what went wrong.”

Marc raised an eyebrow at him and said nothing.

“You really think he’s going to come after me?” Elio asked, already knowing the answer.

“Noel Preston is one of the richest people in the country. He is your direct competitor, and he is also known as one of the most litigious people in existence. Couple that with the fact that it was your party he choked at? Yeah, I think he would love nothing more than to use it as a reason to come after you.”

Elio sank down in his chair and prayed to whatever God might be listening that he could disappear into a puff of smoke. That would solve a lot of his problems. Unfortunately, his prayers seemed to go unanswered and he remained in his chair, firmly in reality. He sighed and resigned himself to the legal and social hellscape that Marc seemed so sure was on the horizon.

“So what do I do?” he asked.

Marc, of course, seemed to already have a plan in place.

“Let’s stick with flying under the radar and keeping quiet. That would be my advice, and I would advise you to follow my advice to the letter. You’re no good at public statements, so we need to play to your strengths.”

“So, what? I just hang out here all day? Work from home?”

Marc gave him something like a sympathetic smirk. “You’re wonderfully innocent sometimes,” he said.

Elio rolled his eyes. “That’s not an answer, Marc.”

“By lay low, I mean leave the country, Elio,” he said, and Elio felt a chill run down his back when he realized Marc was being perfectly serious.

“God…” Elio muttered, lifting the glass of juice back to his temple.

“When I said Preston loved a lawsuit…”

“Right, so, by quiet, you mean silent.”

“As the dead. You have that lovely island of yours. I’d recommend taking a vacation.”

“For how long?”

“For as long as it takes for all of this to settle down.”

Elio waited a few moments, waited for the punchline to this awful joke, but Marc never gave one. He sighed, put down the glass and set about organizing a jet for a trip to Italy. But he could still look at this in a positive light, the glass half full and all that… At least if he went into hiding, he wouldn’t have to go to any parties any time soon.