Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The executive boardroom at Hawk Enterprise was dead silent by the time I walked in. Not a respectful silence. It was a silence bred by fear. There was a difference.
The floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked Newport Harbor thirty stories below, while twelve executives sat rigidly around the black marble table, pretending they weren’t already aware that someone’s career was about to end.
I removed my suit jacket slowly, handing it to my assistant without taking my eyes off the acquisition reports displayed on the digital screens at the front of the room.
No one spoke, which was smart, because if anyone in this room believed I walked in here this morning interested in excuses? They were about to learn otherwise.
I loosened the cuff of my shirt once before finally speaking. “Three media outlets,” I said calmly. “Three.”
The room remained silent.
“I know I’m not standing in this room just to talk to myself,” I said, my gaze shifting toward legal first. “Someone explain to me how a confidential acquisition tied to Hawk Crown Reserve leaked before the contracts were finalized.”
No one answered quickly enough. That was a mistake.
I leaned forward slightly, planting both hands on the table. “Perhaps I should simplify the question for the people in this room who are struggling with basic comprehension this morning.”
The legal director swallowed hard before answering, “Titus, we believe—”
“I am not paying you all twenty-six million dollars annually for beliefs,” I said, my tone steady and lethal. “I pay you for certainty.”
The energy in the room tightened instantly.
“Now, let me ask again.” I straightened slowly. “Who failed here?”
A younger executive across the table shifted nervously. My eyes followed him as he dared to speak up.
“Mr. Hawk, we traced the leak back to a third-party communication—”
“So, your answer is that your team outsourced vulnerability,” I said after I cut him off cleanly and coldly.
“Mr.—”
“That’s an interesting strategy, considering none of you seem intelligent enough to manage the damage afterward,” I said as though the man hadn’t interrupted me.
Nobody moved or looked at each other. The thing was this: fear kept executives honest, and most of all, profitable.
I walked slowly around the table now, each word measured.
“You people seem to misunderstand something about this company,” I said after I stopped behind one of the chairs. “Hawk Enterprise did not become what it is through comfort and the simple ease of how business works.”
My gaze swept across every face in the room.
“This empire is what it is today because I remove any and all weaknesses before they spread and cripple my company.”
Complete silence.
I looked directly at my legal team. “Ladies and gentlemen,” I said, “you have until noon to identify exactly who leaked that acquisition. If the Maldives go up in price because of this error…” I took my seat and calmly adjusted my cufflink.
“I’ll replace every attorney in your department by the end of the day. ”
“But, sir—”
“You’re all dismissed,” I said, cutting off the incoming barrage of requests for leniency. “I want my answers by noon.”
By noon, legal had answers, and unfortunately for everyone seated in the boardroom, so did I.
The acquisition timeline was displayed on the digital screen as legal carefully sifted through financial records, communications, and security reports related to Hawk Crown Reserve.
Then the final image appeared. It was a private dining room at Cipriani.
I stared at the surveillance still without expression.
Across the table sat one of Hawk Enterprise’s senior acquisition directors beside a brunette socialite.
It didn’t take long to identify the woman and learn that her entire career seemed to revolve around attending parties she wasn’t clever enough to belong in.
“I struggle to understand how some of you treat these trips I pay for as a fucking vacation.” My jaw tightened at the image, and then I turned to the man in the picture, who was currently sitting across the table from me, and I narrowed my eyes at him.
“What’s worse, you leaked a confidential acquisition over martinis with that woman? ”
The man straightened immediately. “Titus, come on. I never explicitly—”
I ignored the fact that his brain had misfired and that he had, in the moment, lost his sense of professionalism. Feeling that he could address me so familiarly at a time like this was the least of the reasons I wanted to drill the son of a bitch.
“You discussed Maldives acquisitions with a woman who dates investment reporters,” I said, my voice lethally calm as I cut him off. “And somehow your defense is that you didn’t leak it explicitly?”
Nobody in the room moved.
The executive swallowed hard. “I believed the environment was private.”
I almost laughed. Private? Jesus Christ.
“You believed,” I repeated slowly, “that discussing my billion-dollar acquisitions in a public restaurant while trying to impress a woman…” I paused, leaning forward slightly, “…was private?”
The man’s face drained of all color because he knew embarrassment was the least painful thing awaiting him today.
I glanced toward my head of legal. “Effective immediately, revoke all access credentials tied to his department.”
“Titus, allow me to explain…”
“No.” That single word silenced the room instantly.
I watched as the man’s eyes filled with tears and noticed the wedding band on his finger.
“I need this job,” he choked out.
“For what reason?” I questioned him, pointedly looking at his wedding band. “Providing for your wife, perhaps children? Or for taking free vacations and fucking a random woman because you wanted to feel important for one evening?”
He instantly covered his left hand. “That’s not—”
“Now you can get a sense of what it feels like to be completely irrelevant,” I said as I stood up to leave the room. “Maybe you and your wife can exchange stories about that feeling, since it’s exactly what you did to her when you pulled this stunt on my company.”
That evening, I welcomed the reprieve of having drinks alone in one of the lounges at my hotel.
I’d even considered finding some woman to fuck just to get the poisonous anger from today’s events out of my system, but with my mind somehow held captive by Catalina these days, I knew it wouldn’t be worth it or help matters.
Hell, it would probably just have me wondering what it was like to be with her, and I didn’t need those thoughts swimming around in my head while I was indulging myself.
Shit. I needed a goddamn drink. It only took that bastard cheating on his wife and threatening my Maldives purchase to finally remove the challenges I had been trying to overcome with Cat. She had been out of my mind for most of the day.
As if the annoying, intrusive thoughts from today weren’t enough, I spotted the fucking weasel responsible for putting me in the rejection crosshairs of Ms. Veléz.
Seeing Jameston in my hotel’s VIP lounge nearly made me laugh at the irony of it all.
I ordered a double from my staff and watched him carrying on in an overly zealous conversation with a group of people I barely recognized—though I was sure the only reason he’d been admitted into my building was that they happened to be VIP guests of mine.
Why the fuck was he even here? The man hated everything Hawk Enterprise stood for, yet there he sat in my private members’ lounge, drinking eighteen-year Macallan beneath my hotel’s name, embossed on crystal glassware.
What a piece of shit.
I crossed the room with my drink just as he stepped up to the bar. He noticed me approaching and smirked slowly, like being inside my building somehow leveled the field between us.
It didn’t.
“Enjoying the hotel with your friends?” I asked calmly, sliding one hand into the pocket of my slacks.
“Business associates, and yes,” Jameston leaned back in the leather chair. “I’ll admit,” he said casually, “your staff pours a decent scotch.”
I glanced once at the bartender. “Don’t pour him another glass unless he tips you at least fifty percent.”
A couple of men nearby immediately hid their smiles behind their glasses.
Jameston’s jaw tightened.
“Are you always this territorial?” he asked.
“I just know you’re a generous man,” I smiled, sipping my drink. “And you most likely tip as well as I do.”
“Fifty percent?”
I smiled into my glass. “You said I was your hero growing up, and you wanted to be just like me.” I tilted my head, eyes studying his. “Well, here’s your first lesson.”
“Please,” he rolled his eyes.
“Unless business isn’t doing so great out here on the West Coast and you can’t afford it?”
His eyes grew severe. “Those people?” he pointed toward the table he had left.
“Yes,” I nodded toward the large table. “I believe they’re the only reason you were admitted to my VIP lounge?”
“Their yacht company will be acquired by my father’s company by the end of the night.”
I studied the group. Christian’s mention of acquiring a yacht company immediately made me think of Dorian and Jace Stone.
I’d always been close to them, and this was exactly the industry their father dominated—yachts and private aviation.
Knowing Everett Stone the way I did, I knew he’d gladly acquire the company just to force the Jamestons out of here.
I hadn’t spoken to Dorian or Jace since learning the Jamestons were in town, so I had no idea whether they even knew yet.
“I didn’t realize your family was entering the yacht brokerage industry,” I said to Christian, still eyeing the group.
It was easy to see they were upstarts. Just by the way they wore their suits and flaunted their wealth. And quite obviously… the fact that they were members of my hotel. Status, of course. I smiled, took one more sip, then set my drink on the counter.
I looked at Jameston. “First rule in business, kid,” I said, setting this dipshit on his ass. “You want to play with the big boys like me?”
“I never said that.”
“You’re out here trying to grow your family business the same way I did, aren’t you? That whole hero-bullshit line you fed me at your gala?”
He rolled his eyes. “You really took that to heart, didn’t you? I didn’t mean it. In fact, I’ve always hated you and your family.”
I smiled at him again. “Good,” my eyes widened. “Allow me to give you a fantastic reason to ground that hatred.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m just talking business,” I said, smacking him a little too hard on the arm before walking toward the group of associates he thought he was going to seal a deal with tonight.
“Ladies,” I acknowledged the women. “Gentlemen,” I said, turning to every cheating bastard at the table, with their mistresses clinging to them.
“Mr. Hawk,” one man rose to shake mine. “A true honor to meet you,” he said.
“I trust your service tonight here has been nothing short of perfection,” I asked, nodding toward the group.
“Absolutely.”
“That is fantastic,” I said. “Now, before I leave, I was just informed that you all were looking to merge your yacht business with the Jameston Group?”
“We most certainly were,” another man said with a smile.
“How long have you been in this industry?” I asked.
“Fifteen years. We took it over after our fathers passed away,” another said.
So, they were all legacy owners whose fathers’ hard work had built something. They were just riding on the status of their inheritance.
“Mr. Hawk,” Christian said from behind me. “They don’t need—”
“So, I trust you’re looking to expand globally?” I kept my focus on the men in front of me.
“Absolutely, but Christian did say it would take a couple of years,” the first man said.
“What if I could arrange a meeting with the CEO of a company that could get you there in less than a year?” I smiled, knowing the Stone family would explode the wealth of these people virtually overnight, and Dorian and Everett loved devouring small upstarts, especially when the children who took over the company had no fucking idea what they were doing.
“That depends,” the man said, eyes darting back to Christian, then to me. “Who is this CEO?”
“Being in the yachting industry, I’m sure you’re all aware of Aurelian Stone & Air?”
Their eyes widened, but I concealed my smile.
“Everett Stone?” one asked.
“Indeed,” I answered. “And his son, Dorian, oversees their European division—”
“Aurelian Iberia,” another answered.
“Exactly, you all seem to know the power in your industry,” I said. “Perhaps a meeting with Mr. Everett Stone might be worth considering before signing papers with a company that has no experience in the yachting industry?”
“Sorry, Christian,” one of the guys looked at him. “But we would be fools not to consider this.”
I smacked Christian too hard on the back. “Well, I’ll leave you all to your drinks and have a meeting arranged with Mr. Stone at my headquarters for Monday at two in the afternoon.”
“Holy shit,” one of them said as I turned to leave.
“You’re a fucking piece of shit,” Jameston said.
“I’m a man of my word,” I corrected him. “I promised I would give you a reason to hate me, and it seems I succeeded.”
“Well, I’m a man of my word, and I trust you won’t like what I have to say about your little project, Catalina Veléz.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? I can assure you that woman is not my project.”
“Word travels quickly,” Jameston said smoothly. “Especially when you’re making headlines these days and desperate for a planner.”
I looked at him quietly. Dangerously.
“What is being said about her and me?”
His smile widened. “Careful, Hawk. Men who chase women like her usually end up disappointed.”
Wrong answer. I stepped closer slowly. “You seem confused about something.”
Jameston held my gaze.
I briefly lowered mine to the glass in his hand before looking back at him.
“You’re drinking and planning acquisitions in my hotel lounge.” I stepped closer. “And discussing a woman whose name should never leave your mouth again while you’re in my presence.”
“Not to worry about that. She’s my tenant and therefore already quite untouchable to you there.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “As I said, this will be the last discussion about that woman.”
“Rejection sucks, doesn’t it?” he said as I walked away from him.
For the first time, I was actually grateful Cat had rejected my ass. Jameston thought she’d shot me down, and that was exactly what I needed him to believe. It kept both her and her business out of his crosshairs.