Chapter 4
KAIRO
“It’s really not that difficult.” Erin leans forward and places her palm flat on the table, her steely gaze locked onto the man across from her. “Just kick them out.”
“Do you want a lawsuit on your hands?” Donald snaps back. “If it were that easy then we wouldn’t have this issue, would we? We’d be happy sailing months ago because we would have forced them all out.”
“It’s one bakery.” Harvey, the man at the farthest end of the table, drawls while toying with his red silk tie. “It can’t be that much of an issue.”
“They’ve been there long enough that it is an issue,” Donald replies with a low grumble. “We could have solved this weeks ago if you’d just used the report—”
“No.”
My voice cuts through Donald’s reasoning before he even gets halfway through, and silence falls around the board table.
Months ago, Donald proposed conducting this deal in the most underhanded manner possible.
Digging up whatever old dirt he could on the family or their finances no matter how far back they had to go.
That was the norm under my father’s rule.
Silver Canopy has a ruthless reputation because my father never took no for an answer and never backed down.
He toyed with the law to get what he wanted and it placed him high on a pedestal as a savvy businessman.
Even before his death, I saw the truth.
He was a bully in his personal life and his work.
Stepping into the role of CEO after his death placed me in the position where every pair of eyes watching me expected me to follow in his footsteps, and to an extent, I have to.
Forced to honor every old deal that was a work in progress before his death, I’ve watched people lose their entire livelihoods and homes just because their property touched the wrong invisible line on the ground.
The past two years, I’ve lived in the shadows of his atrocious deals, and this apartment complex is the last one.
But I’m at my limit.
Underhanded tactics, bullying, and threats? I can’t stomach another day like this.
“No?” Donald raises one aged, bushy brow at me. “Kairo, we’ve spent months working on this development. We have construction on standby, and builders and more are all hampered in their work because of one stupid bakery.”
“I don’t care.” I meet his gaze as coolly as I can. “I know what you want to suggest and I’m not doing it. We do this properly.”
“Why?” Harvey smooths his tie down his chest. “What does it matter?”
Telling him I’m tired isn’t an option.
“This is my father’s last deal. The last way we can honor him and everything he did for this company. So we’re going to do it properly.”
A murmur of agreement rises around the table and my excuse is thankfully accepted.
“Well, we have to think of something,” Erin says after a moment. “They’re stonewalling us.”
“They’re behind on rent,” pipes up Penny. “By four months, about to be five.”
“We did raise the rent pretty high,” Erin agrees. “But they’re still refusing to play ball. Their lawyer keeps preaching about how long they’ve been on the land and how it buys them some grace in the eyes of the law.”
“Then kick them out once they reach six months,” Donald sighs. “We’ve waited this long, what’s two more months?”
“I’m not paying those workers for two more months of zero work,” Harvey scoffs.
“What else can we do?” Donald asks, slumping back in his chair and brushing away the crumbs from his complimentary morning croissant.
“Make them another offer,” Penny says. “But low-ball them. Make it lower than we’ve offered before and much lower than anyone else around them accepted. And raise the rent again. With Christmas around the corner, it’s the perfect time to apply financial pressure and force them to sell.”
They’re like hyenas, sitting in an ivory tower debating how to make someone’s life worse just so this deal will pass and they’ll all make a shit ton of money.
I’m not innocent in all of this either.
My blood is on every bad deal I’ve forced through in the past two years because my father’s memory has been more important than anyone’s morals.
But this is the last one.
The last deal, and then I’m free from his shadow, free from his chains, and his ghost can finally leave me alone.
A chill prickles at the back of my neck, so I stand suddenly and button my suit jacket while everyone’s eyes fix on me.
“I’ll talk to the owner.”
“We’ve tried that,” Erin says with a grimace. “They won’t take our calls anymore and direct everything through their lawyer.”
“That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try. This is the last hurdle, correct?”
A murmur of agreement rumbles through the table.
“Then that’s settled.”
“What about the rent?” Donald leans back into the table and tries to catch my eye. “We can raise it again citing the age of the property. Will you present the low offer?”
“I don’t know, Donald.” My tone turns snippy and I still avoid his gaze. “You lot have had a year to get this bakery sold, but tell me, have any of you gone to speak to the owner face to face?”
“Like I said—” Erin starts to say, but I cut her off.
“No. I mean you.” I point at her, then everyone else around the table. “Have any of you spoken to them personally? Or did you all send lawyers and assistants?”
“So what if we did?” Trent, a relatively silent board member near Harvey, suddenly speaks.
“What does it matter? These people only listen to money and threats. And who runs a bakery these days? Everyone is baking at home, microwave cupcakes and shit. People like us don’t talk to people like them.
One wrong word and you have a lawsuit on your hands. ”
It’s like my father suddenly spawned in the boardroom and is talking directly to me.
My stomach tightens, and a cramp spreads low down to my waist with an anxious flutter.
“I’ll speak to them,” is my last comment on the matter before I leave them all to their quiet debates and squabbles.
I’ve spent years treating these people as nothing more than names on a page.
Maybe the trick to getting this deal wrapped up by New Year’s is the personal touch every asshole in there lacks.
The bakery is located on the main street of a small town, a minute’s drive from New York City.
I admire the beauty of the place as I enter.
I had no idea that this much beauty and nature existed so close to New York.
Having lived my entire life in the city or on the various jets my parents would cart me around in, small gems like this little town have never been on my radar beyond the names stamped on the contracts of my father’s latest business deals.
I pass trees lining streets covered in colorful flags, parks filled with happy, laughing children, small craft shops, cafes, and even an antiques shop with lights glittering in the windows.
Then we turn onto a quiet street.
Empty.
Void of life.
The hardware store on the corner is the only place showing signs of activity, but a closing-down-sale sign sits outside the open front door.
The next three stores are dark and empty.
One was a beauty salon, one was a toy shop, and another looked like it was some kind of jewelry store.
There’s a closed-down clothing store, a restaurant, and then we drive past the bakery.
Just A Sweet Thing.
My world slows as we drive past.
Warm, orange light fills the shop with life.
The main window is decorated in orange, red, and yellow leaves falling from a decaying tree with a couple of pumpkins and skeletons lining the bottom, left over from last week's Halloween, no doubt.
Glitter coats the window as a young woman leans close from the inside and sticks her tongue out as she smooths her hand over a freshly-applied turkey decal above the pumpkin.
Behind her, an elderly woman tips her head back and laughs while handing change to a grinning customer balancing a box of cakes on one arm.
And in a second, my glimpse of life into that bakery is gone as the driver continues.
“Pull over here, Martin.”
“Sir?” Our eyes meet in the rearview. “It doesn’t look safe.”
“Why, because it’s quiet?”
Martin nods. “Let me park around the corner.”
“Fine.” Pressing back into my seat, I massage my thigh and gaze out the window.
Since my father’s passing, my mother has been overbearing with security, and it took all my powers of persuasion to stop her from putting a high security team with me everywhere I go.
I suspect Martin is more than just my driver, given the muscles he hides under that suit and the casual yet firm way he directs my movements.
Anything to keep Mother happy.
Once parked, I climb out and immediately hold up a hand to Martin. “I don’t need an escort.”
Martin fixes me with an easy smile. “I’ll be right here.”
Something about his tone makes me feel like he’s not telling me the truth, but he doesn’t follow me as I leave the parking lot and turn down the empty street leading to the balcony.
This is what I wanted the other board members to see.
From the top floor of our office building, this street is nothing more than a line on a map, a name at the bottom of a blueprint for luxury apartments.
They don’t see the empty, sold buildings or feel the coldness that radiates from every soulless doorway.
This is the world my father built.
This is the legacy he leaves behind.
And I’m just as guilty.
Once this is over, I’ll spend the rest of my life directing Silver Canopy into much more fruitful endeavors to try and offset all the damage he’s done.
I glance both ways while crossing the street but as I walk, someone comes around the corner of the street on the opposite side with several boxes piled in her arms.
She stumbles slightly but quickly regains her balance and clutches tighter at the white cardboard in her arms, then she adjusts them to one side and my heart stops.
It’s her.
The woman from the bar.
I haven’t been able to stop thinking about her since that night over two weeks ago.
She was such a beautiful presence that I started to think I’d made her up and all that had happened was a drunken wank in a toilet stall.
She’s been in every dream since that night and warmed my thoughts each time pleasure has coiled in my gut.
Adeline.
She’s as beautiful now as she was then, maybe even more so.
Her dark hair is scooped back into a thick ponytail that swings from side to side as she walks.
A checkered shirt hugs her voluminous curves, and her gorgeous, thick ass is wrapped in light blue denim jeans. And her lips.
Thick and full and bitten by her upper teeth as she walks down the street completely oblivious to me.
I reach the sidewalk and turn to face her as she walks toward me, searching for the right thing to say.
She left without a word and I never got her real name or her number.
All of that points to her never wanting to see me again, but she’s here.
Somehow, she’s found her way back to me in such a quiet street that it has to be fate.
As she gets close, my pulse quickens and suddenly, my tongue won’t work.
Everything I can think to say just sounds creepy and weird. I’ve lost all ability to strike up a normal conversation.
What’s wrong with me?
I don’t get nervous.
Anxious, yes, but I’ve never been tongue-tied trying to talk to a woman.
She gets closer and closer with the boxes blocking her line of sight, so I step to the side to avoid her and clear my throat.
“Thanks!” she calls around the boxes, unable to see me.
“Adeline?” The word chokes out of me like dust and I suddenly feel like I’m a teenager again trying to get the attention of the hot cheerleader in school.
‘Adeline’ stumbles to a stop and then spins rapidly toward me, trying to find me on the other side of the boxes piled in her arms.
As she does, she steps back and her foot slips off the curb.
She squeaks in alarm, so I reach for her to catch her, intent on stopping her from falling.
A mistake, it seems.
As soon as my fingers close around her warm wrist, a sharper yelp of fright escapes her, and she wrenches herself away from me like some kind of knee-jerk reaction.
In doing so, she stumbles fully backward, unbalanced from falling off the curb, and trips into the street.
“No!”
In the same second, a car horn blares loudly like a deafening siren, and I’m frozen in place, watching in horror as a passing car slams on its brakes, but not before it slams into Adeline and throws her over the hood.
Her boxes fly up in the air, splitting open, and as she lands with a sickening thump, glittering toppers and decorations rain down from the sky.
“Adeline!”