9. Adrian
Adrian
Cute.
Really, the whole thing was just so fucking cute.
I had to admit, Delilah had me on my heels more than I had anticipated.
I had not expected her to get so personal about the King of Diamonds question…
and I had not expected that I would say so much.
For fuck’s sake, I actually talked to a journalist about Virgil!
It didn’t matter that Sarah was a close friend of said journalist; I had spilled the beans on a very private matter to a very public person.
But as I always did, I got my feet underneath me.
And once that happened, I went on the offensive. I pressed. I forced Delilah to come at my beck and bow to my whims. And by the end, I got even further than I thought I would.
I actually didn’t think she’d stick around once I went around my desk. That was an assertive move, but maybe pride or stubbornness on her part would not allow her to leave. Her decision, my win. I went for the touch.
I swore for a split second in there that she was going to let me fuck her. Her eyes almost shut in the way a woman’s do when she wants her only sense to be my touch. I was this fucking close to making it happen.
But then she regained herself.
Most men, in that moment, would have panicked. At the very least, most men would not have the patience to let the woman process the moment. What if she walked away? What if she never came back?
What if?
It didn’t fucking matter. First of all, I knew a woman who hadn’t accepted how she actually felt about me, and that was Delilah Reyes to a T. And second, even if she somehow did find it in herself to stay away…
Well, strangely, it would kind of suck. But in reality, I’d move on. I’d find some other broad to take home with me. And all would be well.
Really.
I was the King of Diamonds, after all. I may not have had the queen I sought, but there were still plenty of tens and nines out there that would more than suffice.
That, at least, was what I told myself.
Days passed. Wednesday became Thursday, a night I would normally head out but ultimately decided against. Thursday became a strangely productive Friday, but even then, I didn’t feel a great urge to head out and find a lady for the night. Why?
The obvious answer was Delilah.
But I didn’t think that was the answer. At least, it seemed too stupid to be.
First, we had some reports of petty crime on our casino grounds that seemed a little too coordinated to be coincidental.
Dante kept insisting on bringing the Black Reapers MC into the circle; I wanted to smack him and remind him how well the last rodeo went.
But Dante never saw a problem he felt he couldn’t charge through, and this sure seemed like one of them.
Second, and more concerning to me personally, was the seemingly annoying issue of some financial discrepancies.
Nothing major, but something that suggested someone lower down the chain might be embezzling.
In every weekly report that I looked at, there seemed to be some numbers off by a few thousand dollars.
Of course, to a business, a few thousand bucks might as well have been like our grandmother forgetting a nickel, and most other businesses would never bother with the matter.
We weren’t like most fucking businesses. I was not like most fucking CFOs. I was a fucking Vale, and I had standards that I expected everyone else to meet.
And frankly, given everything with the Morrils, I took anything askew as a red flag worth investigating.
If it were some dumbass employee using business funds for gambling or drinking, then I’d fire his ass and blackball him from the industry.
Not even the Morrils would be dumb enough to hire him.
But if the Morrils had already hired him for this purpose?
Let’s just say they’d be more fucked than Delilah would be if we found ourselves with our clothes off.
Why does everything keep circling back to her? For fuck’s sake, Adrian, get a grip on yourself.
By the time Friday evening rolled around, I was looking at another spreadsheet with another bit of discrepancy that made no sense to me.
We had strict orders to our employees to categorize all spending, and yet here was another spreadsheet with “Miscellaneous” expenses.
My direct report, our VP of Accounting, would not be the one responsible—I thought, anyway. I’d have to dig deeper.
And then my phone rang.
I pulled it up and saw a 702 number I did not recognize. It could very well have been Delilah, it could very well have been a threat from the Morrils, it could very well have been spam.
What could I say? After not going out last night, I could have used a little thrill.
“Yes?” I said as soon as I picked up. If it was spam, I wasn’t going to let them know it was the King of Diamonds on the line.
“Adrian Vale?”
Ah, beautiful.
That pretty voice couldn’t stay far away from me for too long. There was always a small chance, I suppose, that Delilah Reyes would never speak to me again, but it was about as small as Dante going soft or Cassius regaining his single-man dominance.
“Hello, Delilah,” I said. “Do you miss me?”
I heard her swallow on the other end of the line. She would pretend otherwise, but when I listened closely, I heard everything.
“I missed some details from our interview earlier this week,” she said slowly, before adding, “that I would like to clarify here on the phone.”
“You would?” I said. I chuckled. “Why do you need to do it on the phone?”
“I don’t have that much time, Adrian. And I doubt you do either.”
I glanced down at a tab with my calendar. I always had an event, always had a meeting, always had a gathering with my brothers I could go to.
None of those would ever take priority over the opportunity to fuck a journalist senseless on my office desk.
I just had to be a bit more artful in getting to that point.
“I am a very busy man, this is true. But I am also someone who is best experienced in-person. Wouldn’t you say?”
“If you don’t mind, Adrian, I’m going to get to the point,” she said. “I had intended to ask more questions about your rivalry with the Morrils, but we got distracted.”
A very euphemistic way of putting it, but the dance sometimes entailed calling a duck a bird and a fuck a tango. So be it.
“You asked me at the beginning of our conversation, Adrian, if I’d had any encounters with the Morrils, and I said yes but I wouldn’t reveal my sources. Nothing has changed. However, in corroboration with other people, I have gotten a better picture of the man you are.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. There’s the public persona of the King of Diamonds you have. Then there’s the ruthless private businessman beneath that. And I think beneath that, there’s a person you barely let show.”
Clever. Fucking clever woman.
My admiration for her was genuine here, though I wasn’t going to tell her that. If I ever did, it sure as shit wouldn’t be on the phone. Something deep in my stomach stirred, something that said this might yet create a new type of diamond in me.
But it might also combust and explode, and it would depend entirely on the skillfulness Delilah and I exhibited here. I trusted myself; I trusted few others. Would Delilah be the exception?
“Before we get to the last part, tell me how you would describe the businessman you are?”
“How would I describe the businessman I am?” I repeated.
“How would I describe it? I don’t need to describe it.
You saw my office. You see Ruby from wherever you are.
You see how I dress. That didn’t happen because Mommy and Daddy dropped a billion dollars into our bank accounts.
That happened because my brothers and I are shrewd businessmen. ”
“I heard a saying once, Adrian,” Delilah began, “that to become a millionaire takes patience. To become a multimillionaire takes patience and skill. And to become a billionaire takes patience, skill, and luck. So how would you define your luck?”
“We are in Vegas, are we not?” I said, but that was a mask. The question irritated me. We didn’t depend on fucking luck to get where we were.
If anything, with a dead youngest brother, an older weaker brother, and the secrets of the rest of the Vales, we had bad luck, and we still overcame it.
“We are,” Delilah said. “Some would say you are lucky to have started building your empire right after the King’s Men fell.”
“That’s not lucky, that’s identifying a ripe market.”
“Some would say you are lucky to have gotten the tax breaks and the media attention you have.”
“Again, that’s not lucky, that’s shrewd negotiation and PR.”
“Some would say you are lucky that you have not had your past mistakes and transgressions blow up in the public eye.”
I paused. That sounded an awful lot like a threat.
“Explain yourself,” I growled.
“Tell me about the small family casino business you ran into bankruptcy and bought out a few years ago.”
I laughed. That was the mistake and transgression?
Most people would hardly bat an eye at the war that was business, and the few that did were just screaming babies on the internet.
If ever the public sentiment turned against us for something like that, it wouldn’t take much to remind them that business wars were far, far, far preferable to motorcycle club wars or other illicit wars in the streets.
“That is just how business goes,” I said. “We did nothing illegal at all. You can search through every record and talk to as many people as you like. We acted in our self-interest, they acted in theirs, and that was how things fell into place.”
“That last bit sounds an awful lot like luck.”
I sighed. She wasn’t wrong. I hated that she wasn’t wrong, but she wasn’t. Not that I’d admit that to her.
But truly, she was fucking good. Rare was the person who could bring up something, make me think it was inconsequential, and use it to pin me later on. Rarer still was the person who sounded like she barely took any pride in it, as if verbal sparring like this was something she did on the regular.
“If you wish to call it that, that’s your opinion,” I said. “I made sure that we were well positioned to come out on top when things fell into place.”
“What about the reports of employees who left because of your presence?”
Delilah sounded nervous asking that question. She had good reason to be.
“I’m sorry?” I said. It was a question, but a drunk moron could have heard the ominous tone in the question.
“I’ve had many reports of, shall we say, inappropriate office behavior on your part in many people that I interview,” Delilah went on.
Now she was the confident one, her voice steeled and steady, not judgmental, just factual.
I had to admit that I appreciated that; too many journalists were smug with these sorts of stupid questions.
“How would you respond to those who say you let professional and personal barriers cross over too much? That you, shall we say, play where you eat?”
The question was clear enough. What I really wanted to know was how did Delilah feel asking that question?
Did she want an honest answer? Not the kind of answer that was technically true but didn’t really say anything; I meant the raw, painfully honest answer that even I might feel just a small amount of discomfort at.
Not because I would regret the various encounters, but because I knew legally and from a public image perspective, they could cause trouble down the line.
For me to know how she truly felt, I could not ask her.
Even if I had her tied up to a chair—or my bed, in both cases naked and mine to do with as I pleased—I doubted she would reveal how she felt about the question.
I had to look into her eyes, observe her body language, see how she shifted in her chair.
The more I spoke to Delilah Reyes on the phone, the more the professional journalist I got. The more I spoke to Delilah Reyes in person, the more the woman I got. And would the same be true for you and her?
“Tell you what, Delilah,” I said, smiling. “I don’t think I’m going to give you the fairest answer you want if we’re speaking on the phone like this.”
“Oh?”
In the same way Delilah had forced me into a corner, now it was my turn to do the same, to leave her no wiggle room.
“I’m going to invite you back to my office to get a full interview,” I said, “and in fact, henceforth, I will only do interviews from my office or my penthouse. Think of it this way, Delilah. You want to see the real me? You want to see the details of my life? You’ll only see them this way.
And you should be flattered—no other journalist has gotten this level of access. ”
And no one else will be under the heat and pressure you will be, Delilah.
But you’d better tread carefully, Adrian. You’re inviting her into the heart of your world. Play it badly, and this could blow up not just in your face but in all the Vale’s faces.
As if Cassius, our beloved CEO, getting married isn’t something already blowing up in our face.
“And when would you have me do our next interview?”
I snorted. She was about to find out what I meant with my earlier thought.
“Now.”