Chapter 4
Alex
One year later
"Sir, I had your suit from the dry cleaner's delivered directly to your home," Eric, my personal assistant, informs me as he pokes his head through the door. "You know, for the charity gala at your house tomorrow?" he adds, apparently having seen the blank look on my face.
"Great, Eric. That will be all for now," I reply, and Eric nods, closes the door behind him, and leaves me alone in my office.
For a moment, my eyes linger on the door, and I wonder why it never occurred to me to hire a male assistant sooner.
Far fewer problems. I used to go through female assistants like some people go through underwear.
And why? Because I enjoyed seducing them, but things always got complicated at the office afterward.
Not a single woman could understand that it was just about the pleasure.
They always thought I'd fallen in love with them or something.
But then there was the other woman: Beth.
Tomorrow, it will have been a year to the day, and maybe it's because of her that I've had absolutely nothing to do with the preparations for the charity gala this year, leaving everything to my assistant.
I trust Eric; he's been with me for almost a year now too.
It's not the first charity gala he's organized for me, and he knows how much events like these bore me.
What really gets to me is the fact that, a year later, I'm still thinking about Beth. And I even still know her name. Normally, I forget the names first, followed shortly after by the face. But with her? I don't know why, but she seems to have made herself at home in a strange corner of my brain.
Still, the sex was... nice.
Although, is nice the right word for a woman who has multiple orgasms under me from my touch, the sight of which makes me come too, and who can still give me a hard-on behind my desk today just from thinking about it?
Damn it, I really need to get laid again.
It's been way too long. It might sound strange, but it seems I've somehow become picky.
Not that I have anything against one-night stands.
On the contrary. But the sex just seems..
. ordinary, most of the time... nothing special.
Almost as if that little flower girl set some kind of benchmark.
A standard against which I measure everything else.
The word doesn't really fit, but it just came to mind because I have a benchmark analysis on the monitor in front of me that a department head sent over, one I've been waiting on for a long time.
"That's ridiculous," I tell myself, trying to shake off these jumbled thoughts. That's in the past. If I keep this up, I'll be thinking about her all day tomorrow. And that can't happen.
At least the benchmark analysis offers a small distraction, albeit an unexpected one.
One of my department heads prepared the quarterly figures for me and went way overboard with the PowerPoint animations.
I'll have to remind him at the next meeting that I'm not interested in flying pictures and little lightning flashes on the slides.
Why do some people still think that's modern?
The numbers themselves aren't bad. On the contrary, the profit is excellent.
But as I like to say, the trend... it's pointing downward.
And that pisses me off. Especially because of the column added at the end of the slide—a benchmark against Jake's company, which has definitely become my biggest competitor over the last year, snatching a lucrative store location or two and even some talented employees from under my nose.
And that's something I absolutely can't stand. Not only did he learn the ropes of the business from me, but our conversations have also become more and more insolent. He seems to think he's the hottest shit on the goddamn planet.
On the other hand, I've heard that my ex-assistant, Dilara, is also driving him up the wall.
I'm sure he's already fucked her since she started working for him right after I fired her.
I, for one, am still glad I never touched her, even though I entertained the thought more than once back then.
But Beth, the flower girl, changed everything.
Admittedly, I was pretty annoyed at first that Dilara went to work for Jake.
But apparently, she's managed to scare off some important business partners with her unpleasant attitude.
Maybe Jake would be even more successful without her, and I'm convinced he only keeps her around because she rubs his dick between her big tits during their late-night overtime and.
.. no, that's too disgusting. I don't even want to imagine it.
And there my mind drifts again. To that evening a year ago, or rather, the morning after, when Dilara was suddenly standing by my bed, shaking me, and I at first had no idea what was happening.
I saw Beth next to me, still fast asleep. The sun wasn't even up yet, and I remembered what we'd done all night. Shit. Just thinking about it is giving me a hard-on again.
Anyway, Dilara had said something about an emergency, that I should get ready and drive to the office.
I keep asking myself why I didn't ask what kind of emergency it was, since we work in the food industry, after all.
My company has numerous locations all over the country; we offer the best burgers and a bunch of other meals that Americans love.
So what emergency could possibly justify a trip to the office in the early morning, on a Sunday no less?
As it turned out, it was about my helicopter again.
It hadn't received landing clearance after a team of mechanics had finally gotten it in the air.
Due to a fuel shortage, it had landed—of all places—on the roof of Jake's recently acquired tower on 42nd Street.
He was furious, of course, raving on the phone and threatening to blow the whole thing up into some overblown press event with the headline: Rodgers Crash-Lands. Jake's Burgers Helps Where It Can.
It was basically a trivial matter, but I knew how customers think.
They'd favor Jake's place for the next few weeks simply because of a headline and a few pictures.
So I made the problem go away and called in a favor Jake still owed me.
At least the guy had a shred of decency left.
That settled the matter. But Jake said that now nothing would stop him from poaching my employees and locations, because we were even.
I thought it was nonsense at the time, but he's been true to his threat, and that annoys me just as much as the fact that I didn't need to leave the house to handle the incident. I could have taken the call from the edge of my bed and then, with Beth...
In any case, she was gone when I got back.
Dilara told me she had stormed out of the house.
She'd tried to stop her, but Beth didn't seem interested.
Dilara asked if she could comfort me, unzipped her dress, and was suddenly standing stark naked in front of me, right in my foyer, practically shoving her silicone breasts in my face.
But I didn't want her. I was angry that Beth might have thought I didn't want to see her again just because my assistant had woken me up over a trivial matter and now wanted to get screwed by me.
It was too much. I fired her on the spot, told her to go to hell.
And that's what she did: she now works for Jake.
RING RING RING
The phone rips me from my thoughts.
"It's Troy, sir," my assistant explains.
"Put him through," I say.
"Troy, you old dog. How's it going? It's been a while. You back on the prowl?" I ask my high school buddy, with whom I hit just about every nightclub back in the day, getting into all sorts of trouble.
"On the contrary, my friend. Things are serious with me and Monica," he says.
"How serious?" I ask, feeling my heart rate speed up.
"So serious that I'm calling you right now to ask you, a very busy CEO, to save the date: July 24th. Because that's when Monica and I are getting married. And you're cordially invited. With a plus-one."
"That's... I don't know what to say, man. Congratulations."
"Thanks, buddy," he replies. "Invitation's on its way." Then I hear a voice in the background. "Monica wants to know if you're bringing someone."
"I... I don't know yet. Is it okay if I let you know?
" I ask, unable to stop Beth's image from appearing in my mind's eye again.
What was wrong with me? I'd basically forgotten about her for a year—okay, not entirely, that would be a lie.
I had tried to find her. But there were hundreds of flower shops in New York, and I hadn't ordered the flowers, and they were thrown out the next morning.
So how was I supposed to find her? So I gave up.
Oh, man, am I getting this worked up just because the charity gala is at my house tonight?
"It's all good. I'll be in touch. Take it easy."
"Will do," I reply, and we end the call.
RING RING RING
My phone rings again the moment I hang up.
"Who is it now?" I ask Eric.
"It's..." He hesitates. "It's him," he says quietly, and I know who he means. It's Jake. Eric has developed a sense that every time the name Jake is mentioned in my company, I'm liable to hit the ceiling. So he avoids the name to keep from catching my wrath. Smart kid, my assistant.
"Put him through," I snap, feeling my body tense up.
"Alex, old pal. So, how's life on the losing side?" he says, sounding as smug as ever.
"What do you want, Jake?" I ask. "Are you just calling to stir up trouble? Or do you want to tell me who else you've poached? Or have you finally realized you're an asshole?" I snap, balling my hands into fists.
"Alex, Alex. Easy now, bro."
"We're not bros anymore. Not since you stabbed me in the back and copied my business model."
"Alex, my revenue will be overtaking yours soon enough. Then no one will give a damn who was here first. And once I have that little shop on 4th Street, things are really going to blow up. There's a little business in there. You know the one I mean?"
I say nothing, though I know exactly which one he means. How did he even find out about that place? We'd been in written negotiations with the landlord for over a year and had been sending offers to the tenant so we could take over the shop. And now, just as we're about to close, Jake interferes?
"Jake. This is exactly what I'm talking about. You let us do all the work, and just before we seal the deal, you come and piss in our soup. I swear to you..."
"Always with the threats, Alex. What then? You gonna punch me in the face, like last time?" he asks, alluding to a clash at a summer party in the mayor's garden. He provoked me there, too, and nothing felt as good as decking him, even if it didn't solve any business problems.
"Actually, that's a great idea. Is your nose straight again? Can you still smell Dilara's pussy with it when you're going down on her?" I ask, trying to get a rise out of him now.
"You're such a dirty, rotten little..."
"I've got someone on the other line with more brains in their head. I gotta go," I say, grinning, because I somehow feel like this round of our little sparring match goes to me. I press the button to switch to the other line, where the little red light has been blinking for a while.
"Eric? Who is it?" On the side, I scribble a note on my pad, which has the company name ARS Group printed in large letters in the corner.
An abbreviation for Alex Rodgers Group. I note that we need to step up our efforts for the shop on 4th Street.
Jake is not getting his hands on that one.
This is a race I want to win. Whatever it takes.
"Sir, excuse the interruption. It's just... the shop on 4th Street," Eric stammers, a little uncertainly.
"What about it?" I ask hurriedly, a bad feeling churning in my stomach that he's bringing it up right after Jake did.
"I just got an email with the report from the guy we sent to make another, higher offer." He pauses. "No luck. He also said that the flower shop is getting on in years and the owner made it pretty clear what she thought of him."
A flower shop with a feisty owner? I quickly scan my notes. There's nothing in here about it being a flower shop. Everywhere it just says retail. The issue only landed on my desk three weeks ago because none of my people seemed able to handle it.
Could it be that... no, that would be a huge coincidence. I dismiss the thought and wonder instead if feisty flower shop owners are my new type.
And so what if they are? This is about business now. Maybe I can work my charm on this woman, too. And maybe that'll get us somewhere. But I'd have to do it without revealing that I'm the head of ARS Group. Playing with fire, but it might just work.
"I'm going to pay the shop a visit. Right now," I say to Eric, hang up the phone, gather my things, and hurry out of my office.
Let's see where my charm gets me.