Chapter 40
F or all of Edwin’s bluster on the phone, life still felt quite good in the coming days.
Andrew Patel of Virtual Realty, the CEO of the company, and I finalized our investment contract, and we sent the money over by the end of the week.
For all of the worst-case scenarios I could think of with Hunt Industries, almost all of them involved them finding a way to steal our investment and leaving us out to dry, so this felt like a major hurdle to clear.
I worked my charm while Morgan worked his last name. When pressed, of course I used my last name, but I tried to avoid that bastardly name as much as I could. Only because of how well MCH worked as initials on multiple levels did I keep my last name—I had long moved past considering myself a Hunt.
And, well, legally, I was pretty close to requesting the name Chance Givens once more.
Part of me didn’t want to do it until the old man croaked just so he would spend the rest of his life with me sharing his last name, which was kind of petty, but who better defined petty than Edwin Hunt?
What better way to get back at the old man than by showing him I could beat him at his own game, as I had done once already?
They were questions I didn’t spend too much time pondering, though admittedly I really should have spent zero time pondering them.
Nevertheless, by the time Friday rolled around, I had a new reason to not worry about them too much—I had a date scheduled with one Claire McLendon, the girl who was… kind of a fascination for me.
It was weird to call someone whom I had had such aggressive sex with a close friend, but that’s really how I saw her.
We would never be serious, mostly on account of her insistence and my own issues after Layla, but we sure had some wild times between the sheets.
I valued her relationship exactly for what it was, and the fact that she overtly set the boundaries of what we had made us function that much better.
I didn’t have to worry about trickery or deception—we could just fuck and let it be.
And in some respects, it was a good thing that it was just that.
Not surprisingly, Sarah Hill had never said a word after she friend requested me.
My initial lust at seeing her gorgeous body had faded as I soon realized that she had merely wanted a connection of the social media variety, not the romantic or sexual variety.
Sure, it was fun to think about, but that’s all it was—fun.
It didn’t go beyond that in any fashion.
That, and according to her profile, she still lived in New Zealand. That was kind of an obstacle that was hard to overcome, especially since I didn’t exactly have access to unlimited funds like the Hunts had.
I put it all behind me, though, when I saw the perfect girl-next-door cocktail dress of one Claire McLendon waiting for me at the bar that we had first made out in. I approached her, gave a casual shrug, and brought a laugh from her.
I didn’t kiss her when I came to her, but only because we’d agreed upon it beforehand.
Now that we had done it like animals at her place, we didn’t have to have that tension between us, building toward an unstated goal.
We could just make sure to protect what we had and not take stupid risks, such as having the appearance of a CEO making out with one of her investors.
“Hello handsome,” she said, careful not to raise her voice over the din of the night.
“Hey sexy,” I said gruffly.
When I pulled back and sat across from her, I saw exhausted eyes fighting through the week, albeit ones happy to see me.
“You look like you worked double time this week,” I said as I raised my already-ordered glass of gin and soda, which Claire happily met. “And for you, as the founder of a startup, that’s saying something.”
“You’re telling me,” Claire said with a sigh.
She took a prolonged gulp of her drink before she softly placed it down.
She looked like she had something on the tip of her tongue she couldn’t quite let loose.
I could have said many things in that moment to get her to speak, but I just chose the best option.
Silence.
“We had another employee quit today.”
“Another?” I said, feeling concern. I was past the point of being concerned if Claire spilled details to me—we had finalized a contract over the week, and I decided not to say anything. I was above what Edwin Hunt would have done, or what Craig Taylor, Layla’s sociopathic uncle, would have done.
Maybe it made me a weak businessman. Maybe I should have felt much better about it. Maybe I should have thought more about it.
But, nah. It just felt right, and I never told Morgan what she had told me. It just felt… right.
Provided Morgan doesn’t find out.
“Yeah, and this one was weird,” Claire said.
“He quit without any notice. Like, he walked into my office at 9 a.m. and said he was quitting on the spot. He was the first hire I’d ever made, a software developer, and he was with me the last fourteen months.
I could see some of the more recent hires not being on board, but this one just seemed way the fuck out of nowhere. I had never expected him to quit.”
I didn’t see disappointment in Claire’s eyes, but I sure saw a hell of a lot of confusion. I wondered if this confusion was what I looked like during the whole fiasco with the Taylors.
“Did you ask if anything was going on?”
“Well, see, that’s the thing,” Claire continued. “I asked him for an exit interview and he looked like he wanted to get the hell out, as if someone was holding a gun to his head.”
The imagery struck me immediately. But it didn’t feel… possible.
“I eventually persuaded him to sit down and told him that we would do it off the record, in that I would not write anything down or record anything we discussed. It still took quite a bit of persuading and asking to get him to agree. And when I did… it was like I was a monster to him. He said that he had discovered some lies about the company that he didn’t want to believe, but he felt he had no choice but to. ”
“Like what?”
As bizarre as it sounded… well, no, it didn’t really sound bizarre anymore.
This was Edwin Hunt’s game at work.
It had to be. There was no other explanation. Instead of attacking us directly and being obvious about it, Edwin was hurting those whom we liked and loved the most, suffocating them until we tapped out on behalf of them.
But if that were true—and it was a truth that I felt justified in assuming—then how had he known about Claire and I?
How had he gotten enough research on her to know who her employers were?
And how had he managed to effectively reach out to them in a way that got her lead developer to quit on the spot?
“He said that I had plans to sell the company and leave them all out to dry, that I was going to sell it to someone who would take the IP and then shut down the business,” she said.
“I tried to emphasize to Karl that that wasn’t the case.
Yes, I was looking for investors, he saw you when you walked in, but I wasn’t looking to sell.
That was very different. But Karl said that’s what I would try and say. ”
“Fuck,” I mumbled.
Claire thought I was empathizing, which I was, but more than that, I was realizing just how cruel and ruthless Edwin was. We were about to enter a world with no sacred cows other than Edwin’s cash flow. Not only were Morgan and I not safe, those close to us weren’t either.
Maybe you’re just being paranoid about all of this. It’s not inconceivable. She had an employee quit before this big blowup. Maybe she just doesn’t have the experience necessary to get a business up. She did well to get it where it is, but it didn’t have the escape velocity. Maybe…
“Well, I’m no software developer, but if you need any help with the business, just say the word,” I said with a smile.
“Chance, you’re sweet,” she said. “But I think I’m good for now. I mean, it’ll be more work for me, but…”
“It’s OK,” I said.
I felt really tempted to put my hand on her shoulder or on her hand, but I consciously stopped myself, fearful and paranoid of Edwin’s spies here. Just meeting in public was a risk, but at least we had the cover of being an investor-CEO combo.
Then again, it’s not like Edwin Hunt needed a scandalous reason to hurt me and those I cared about. He already had reason enough, and if he didn’t, he could probably fabricate something.
“Right now, MCH just has you and one other client in our portfolio,” I said as I took a gulp of my drink. “We’re looking for more, but I have plenty of time to help. It’s not like I want you to fail. One, that would mean we lose six figures, and that’s not fun. And two, I like you.”
“Chance.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know you are, and that’s why I want you to stop before you go to far,” she said with surprising force. “I know you and I can tell a lot about you already. Don’t get too wrapped up in my world before you suffer, OK?”
I grimaced and finished my drink. I just looked down at the glass for the longest time, knowing full well she was right.
Damnit, Claire was right. I had gotten wrapped up in Sarah Hill. I’d gotten wrapped up in Layla Taylor. And now, using the pretext of our business relationship and us “just being friends” as a shield, I was allowing myself to get wrapped up in Claire McLendon.
I had to fucking stop. I had to.
“OK,” I said with a sigh.
“Hey, don’t sweat it too bad,” she said with a wink. “You still get to come back to my place later tonight. I don’t think you have to worry about avoiding getting too wrapped up into that.”
I looked up into her eyes at that moment and saw the eyes of a girl starving for me. She’d had a day from hell, and there was only one antidote.
To have me naked between the sheets, to have me controlling her, and to have me pleasuring her every inch of her body.
Well, I decided, she would get that.
But she would get so much more than that. She would get much, much more than she ever bargained for.
“You want to get out of here?” I said.
Claire tried to laugh and make it a game, but I was having none of this. Her wink, her look, it had not just turned me on—it had put me at the highest setting of sexual arousal, and there was no turning back now.
I grabbed her by the wrist, led her outside, and began the walk to her place as I whispered her all of the filthy things I was about to do to her.