Chapter 23
CHAPTER 23
HUDSON
T he rest of the day goes slow. I have another meeting that was delayed till evening, and by the time I drive out of the parking lot, it’s late at night. The first meeting with Randall has set a precedent that I hoped it would. Now, people are getting more confident about getting into business with me. The fear of retaliation from Frank has more or less become nonexistent. I’ve targeted my new customer base to include corporations that Frank failed to provide funds to—people he has no leverage over and that he can’t bully. If all turns out well, and I am confident they will, the money to have inexhaustive cash at hand won’t be an issue.
I get back to the ranch feeling famished as I had just had a single meal throughout the day. As I open the door to the suite. I feel elated at heart as I would be seeing Juliette again. The day had been so busy that I had kept her out of her mind, but on the ride over, she found her way back to my mind. The living room is empty, and without thinking much about it, I walk towards the bedroom to see if she’s there, expecting her to be asleep. As I open the door, she lets out a scream and turns around to face me to see who it is. She is naked, except for the panties she’s wearing.
“Jeez, you ever heard of knocking?” she complains.
“Sorry. I thought you were sleeping.”
“No, I’m preparing for dinner. Frank says we’re having dinner outside in the field. They set up a table. They’re expecting us.”
I walk into the room, gravitating towards her, my hands itching to reach for her breast, but I stop.
“I guess I better head to the bathroom then,” I say, dropping my suitcase on the bed.
“How did your day go?” Juliette asks, reaching for a bra. I expect her to send me out, but she turns around and asks me to help with her bra clasp. Is that a call to touch her? My finger brushes the bare skin of her back as I help clasp the bra together. I control myself and do nothing beyond what has been asked of me.
“Good. I closed some deals today,” I tell her as I take my seat and take off my shoes. It feels so good to have someone to talk to at the end of the day, and truthfully, it feels even better to have her to talk to. “We’re expanding our cash source.”
“That’s sounds like you had a good day. But do you think one or two new sources of cash are enough sustenance? If I know nothing about the business world and Frank, I know he has a lot of cash and has access to more funds than you do.”
“Yes, you’re right. More customers isn’t the best way to fund ourselves and keep us stable at this moment, But it isn’t the only avenue we’re exploring. We’re getting external investors.”
“From around here?” she asks, opening the closet to choose a dress. I point at a red dress.
“You should wear that,” I tell her.
“Alright,” she doesn’t argue.
I returned to her question. “It’s not easy getting big investors here in the country. They’re all terrified of Frank. So, we sought one out from outside the country. They’ll provide us with the necessary funds to keep the battle on. We’re accumulating more customers around here, though.”
I watch her slip into the dress delicately, in such a sensuous way that I can’t tell if she was doing it knowingly to turn me on or if it is inadvertent.
She walks over to me and turns around again so I can help her with the zipper. I stand up to do that, pushing her hair aside, my thumb brushing her neck, and this time, I don’t stop myself. I kiss her, tasting her skin. I hear her moan and want to take that as a message to go on. The talk we had in the morning has all been forgotten. She turns around so her lips are just inches from mine.
“We have to get ready for the dinner. We don’t want to keep them waiting.”
“They can wait. I don’t care,” I tell her.
She stands on her toes and kisses me. “We said never again. I think we should stick to that.”
I groan. She’s right. What am I thinking? We can’t keep relapsing. I step away from her.
“I’ll go take my shower.” I tell her as I continue to get out of my clothes. It’s her turn to watch me, with hunger in her eyes.
“How did your day go?” I ask.
“Well, it was great. I had a good time with Alejandro.”
“The chef?”
“Yes. We made lunch together and made the dinner we’re eating tonight, too. I taught him how to bake.”
“A chef who doesn’t know how to bake? That sounds ridiculous to me.”
“No, it doesn’t,” she says. “Baking is procedural while with cooking, there is more leeway to be inventive.”
“They both use heat to turn something inedible, edible.”
“That’s a simplistic way to view it,” she chastises me.
“I like things simple.”
“That’s just not true,” she retorts as she sits before the mirror to apply her makeup. I stand behind her naked, my cock hardening. She eyes it through the mirror and shakes her head. “Go into the bathroom, Hudson,” she hisses.
“You sure? You don’t want to have a taste?”
“God, you’re unbelievable,” she says, but her eyes tell a different story.
“Oh, you definitely want to.” I chuckle, turning away from her and finally walking into the bathroom. When I get back out, she is ready and waiting for me. I spend the next couple of minutes dressing. I choose a white linen shirt and black pants, and then we head outside, where we can see the whole family waiting for us.
I hold Juliette’s hand as we approach them.
“We’re sorry for keeping you waiting,” I tell them as I pull out a chair for her to sit. She smiles sweetly at me and thanks me.
“That’s fine,” Frank says.
“We were about to start without you,” Elizabeth announces.
A table has been set on the lawn, and light streamers hang above us, illuminating us. The setting is idyllic and beautiful, and I wonder what it’ll look like to have them all gone and for it to be just Juliette and me here.
A romantic dinner? I shouldn’t be having such thoughts about her, but I can’t help it when I find talking to her so easy and always want to be around her.
I look around the table at the people present; Frank and his wife sit side by side, and the lady is quiet and collected as usual. She has a perfunctory smile on her face. Elizabeth sits beside her, looking bored with all of this. That I know, of course, is an act. Elizabeth isn’t one to be bored of anything. She runs a large chunk of Frank’s consolidation and has a knack for picking up on subtle signals. There are whispers that she’ll make an even more brutal chairman than Frank because the company is an entity to which she has no emotional attachment besides wanting to see it grow. They consider her more dangerous than Frank because she owes no one allegiance and thinks only in numbers and percentages.
Maybe Alison is right. It is time we shift focus from Phillipa to this woman.
Frank claps, and the butlers start to serve the meal.
“I heard you had a great time today in the kitchen, Juliette,” Franks starts a conversation. “Alejandro says you’re a fine cook.”
“He flatters me. He taught me all I know.”
“We really don’t know anything about you,” Elizabeth shifts the conversation away from talks about cooking to something more serious. I can tell this is the scrutiny that Juliette had been worried about being subjected to coming up. During the party yesterday, no one had the time.
“That’s because there’s nothing to know,” Juliette chuckles. “I’m not like you people. I don’t have rich or influential parents. My mother is a florist in Dallas, and that’s about it.”
“The articles they released today must have been the highlight of your life then,” Phillipa says and from her tone and look, I can tell something had happened between her and Juliette while I was away. She is even colder and detached today.
“You know what, I think that’s right. When I was in high school, I was featured in the magazine because I won the school’s spelling bee competition. That was the last time anyone ever took so much interest in me and thought me worthy of an article,” she says with a chuckle and takes a drink from her glass. But the rest of the family doesn’t share in her joke. They all looked disturbed and sad. But I can tell she is messing with them. Quickly, Elizabeth shifts the conversation to something more comfortable.
“You guys should tell us how you met. That’s one I’ve been thinking about,” she says.
“We met at the ranch,” I offer to answer that and spill the lie Juliette, and I have cooked up for moments like this. Juliette is good enough to chip in one or two whenever the lies try to catch up with me.
“You rode with her?” Phillipa asks, infuriated. “You never rode with me.”
“There were circumstances beyond my control then.”
“Don’t lie to me. There was nothing like that. You just hated me. Did you ever love me? Did you even ever consider me human? You told me you don’t like riding with people because it doesn’t make you comfortable. But that was a lie. You rode with her. I fucking hate you. I hate you and hope you die!”
She stands up and storms away.
“I’ll go with her,” the mother says and goes after Phillipa. There is silence at the table for a while, and no one seeks to break it. We all just focus on eating.
“Dad and I were talking about this sale predicament,” Elizabeth said and looked at her father for the order to go on. He nods. “We’ve done our research. We know you’ll have increased sales for the month but a massive drop in cash you can spend. That’s a discrepancy that the SEC will be interested in, don’t you think? How do you make much more money but don’t have any available to pay your investors with?”
“They tend to look away,” I say. “It’s only the first time we’ve recorded such a discrepancy. It’ll correct itself.”
“Maybe it will. But then again, what if they get a call from a concerned citizen, someone who thinks that they owe the nation's citizens a responsibility to investigate that unbalanced book? To some people, it might be a move for tax evasion,” Elizabeth continues. Frank watches on, impressed.
“But it isn’t,” I say, knowing the direction of the conversation.
“You say that it isn’t. They won’t come to that conclusion unless they conduct the interview,” Elizabeth says.
Why is Frank letting her speak now? Is he trying to pull back from this deal and let her handle it? I hope so.
“You know what we’re saying, Hudson,” Frank says, shattering my hope.
“No, I don’t.”
“You want me to say it, don’t you?” Frank says.
“If you intend to pull sabotage, I think you owe me that. Be straightforward.”
“Fair enough. I’ll get the SEC to investigate your work processes. They’ll make the point that all operations must stop for the investigation they want to carry out to be correct. I’ll pull all resources available to me to make that happen. Cash inflow must pause and then and only then can they begin. And these things take weeks, sometimes months.”
And in the meantime, I’ll be losing even more money. It is a heartless tactic, no doubt, but it also tells me something else. It’s a move that Frank has never taken before. If word gets out, it’ll sow a seed of distrust in people and cause them to move their money away from his bank. The people will analyze the level of risk that comes with enjoying the loans he provides or a halt in their production and choose that which they feel more comfortable with. The jig is up. Frank is desperate.
“You do what you have to do. I have nothing to hide and will be available to help the SEC,” I tell him.
There’s no going back now.
“Your childish foolishness will be your ruin,” Frank says, his facial muscles tweaking with anger. “You think the world functions without one person bowing to the other. Nothing works that way. You have to let go of what you have presumed to love, or you never really will achieve anything. You pose yourself like you’re unbeatable, like you’re the newly crowned prince of the business world, and I better learn to accept you. It will cost me little to ruin you. But I don’t want to do that. I recognize talent when I see it. It’ll be a waste to destroy you and send you down the same path your father took. It’ll be a shame.
“I think the shame is you are unable to accept that I might be better than you at this. Did it ever cross your mind that I wouldn’t back down because I see beyond the facade of unperturbedness that you put on? I see your worries. I see your fear. You are not unbeatable.”
Frank stands up suddenly, pushing his chair backward. He leans into me, his smile wiped off and replaced by anger and frustration.
“You should learn,” he says and walks away.
I return to eating my meal.
“Hmmm,” Elizabeth says. “You’ve succeeded in getting my father mad. You know that gives you some sense of power over him, right?”
“I’m not interested in having any power over him. I just want him to back down.”
Elizabeth relaxes in her chair, picks up one of the wine glasses, and takes a drink.
“In war, in the kind of war my father fights, there is a winner and a loser, no in-between. When it’s over, only one person will be left standing.”
“Do you want to be left standing?” I ask her.
“I have no fight with you.”
“But it is your company as much as it is his. You don’t want me to ruin that work you've spent so much of your life maintaining, do you?”
“You think my father will lose?”
“No, I think you’re smart enough to make the right bet. As you said, there can only be one winner. And your father isn’t acting like one who wants to win. He doesn’t want to see beyond his nose that the world isn’t what he used to know.”
“He has control,” Elizabeth mentions.
“Maybe. But also, there are companies out there his claws can never reach. Companies looking to solidify their financial standing that can’t afford loans from your father or that your father denied loans.”
“No one will dare fund you.”
“We are a high return on investment company. A steady source of cash. Everyone in their right mind wants to fund us.”
“No one will dare go up against my father,”
I smile at her, passing my message. It isn’t that no one will dare to up against their father. It is that people are already willing to go up against their father. Frank made himself Machiavellian, someone who can’t be bargained with. It was only a matter of time before someone decided they’d had enough of his bullshit and call him out on it
“Who is it?” she asks.
“I don’t kiss and tell.”
Elizabeth is quiet for a while, no doubt considering her options.
“What will you have me do?” she asks me.
“I’ll have you do nothing. Alison will contact you, and we’ll talk more then.”
She nods and stands up finally.
“You’re a force to reckoned with, Hudson, I like that.”
She walks away, leaving Juliette and me at the table full of food.
“Good,” I say smiling at her. “I wanted them all gone.”
“Do you think antagonizing him is a smart move?” she asks.
“I have no idea what the smart move is or not. But I know I’d be a fool to fall to my knees to Frank. He’s played his card. And I’ve found him wanting. He’s in some kind of trouble. I’ll have to find out what it is and use it.”
She’s smiling.
“Why are you smiling?” I ask.
“You worry him,” Juliette says. “I can see it in his face. He is scared of something.”
“Yes, and I’ll find out what it is soon enough when I meet with Elizabeth. Her father isn’t the strong man he once was. He’s gotten shaky, and Elizabeth must worry about him destroying everything because of his pride, only to leave them with nothing. She wants to guard against that. It is her responsibility to.”
“What if she’s playing a double agent.”
“She won’t have any information that can hurt me.”
“I think you’ll win this. I believe in you.”
I wished I shared in the faith she had, but how could I? While I feel fairly confident about some of the things I said, I am making conjectures here, and if it all turns out false, I’ll be the one out on my ass. That wouldn’t be nice.
“I didn’t think I’d enjoy my stay here, but it’s not half as bad,” Juliette breaks into my thought.
“You’re enjoying it so much you’ll be willing to extend your stay?” I joke.
“Oh, no. I want to return home to the things that feel familiar to me.”
“What feels familiar to you?” I ask her.
“My bed, for one. I miss it. I miss the smell of my room, the bodega down my street, and the feel of my satin nightgown on my skin.”
“I think you have a nice nightgown now.”
“Yes, it’s nice, but it just isn’t the nightgown I love. It’s a different one with different feelings. I’m sure you understand.”
I look at her without replying, wanting to get some reaction from her.
“Of course, you don’t. You don’t know how such simple things can be so wonderful and—” she stops, realizing that I’m teasing her. She picks up a piece of bread and throws it at me as I start to laugh.
“You are always ready to give me a piece of your mind.”
“Someone has to do it,” she says with a hiss.