Chapter 36 Asher
ASHER
“You killed him, you fucking idiot!” One of the men in the ski masks yells at the other—his voice strikes me. There’s something familiar about it.
“We were ordered to break him until he gave us information, not kill him in the process!” another masked man shouts, panicked. “We have to make it look like an accident! No one can know!”
“What about the kid?” the third masked man shouts. “He has to go. No one can know what happened here!”
Grandpa’s limp, dead body is hauled from the ground by the first two masked men.
They shove him into the back of his car.
The third man picks me up and throws me over his shoulder.
I fight, kick, scream, but he punches me in the ribs to shut me up and keep me still. My breath is knocked out of my chest.
I’m thrown into the back of the car on top of Grandpa’s body.
I roll off him, screaming, panicking. What’s happening?
Where are we going? Why hasn’t someone come for us?
Grandpa pressed his alert button when the masked men pulled us from the car.
That was a long time ago. Where is security? Why didn’t they come?
The door shuts, and the car darts away, tires squealing.
Only one of the masked men is in the car.
He’s driving grandpa’s long limo recklessly.
The faint lights outside the dark window blur by faster than I’ve ever seen them as the driver speeds up, swerving, and I fly off the seat, landing on the floor next to Grandpa.
“You must always wear a seatbelt, young Mr. Langford,” my security guard’s words ring through my mind. Mr. Henley is always pushy about my seatbelt.
In a haze, I wriggle my way back up to the seat with my bound hands.
I can’t reach the over the shoulder seat belts, but the center seat only has a lap belt.
I shimmy onto the seat, grab the lap belt, and toss it, trying to throw it over my lap.
I try one, two, three, four times before it works.
I turn my body and grasp for the buckle with my bound hands, but the driver veers, knocking me onto my side.
I inch my way back up to sitting, frantic.
Too fast. We’re driving too fast. I look behind me, over my shoulder, trying to get the lap belt into the buckle.
My hands shake as I try to fit the buckle together.
The two pieces clink against one another, but don’t connect.
I try again, and again. Each time I’m close, the car hits a bump or swerves.
Clink, clink, clink. No connection, just the two pieces hitting against each other.
The car engine revs, and we pick up more speed.
The driver begins to shout out a Catholic prayer in a hysterical, manic voice.
I try again. Finally, click. The seatbelt is fastened! I use my teeth to grab the excess length, and pull it as far as I can, tightening the belt.
The fabric of the belt barely leaves my mouth before the boom of the crash.
Everything goes dark.
The scene rewinds. I watch as it all moves backward until we’re back at the beginning.
The unfamiliar scent of strong cologne from the front seat hits me. Grandfather notices it, but not before we’re already driving.
“Who are you?” he demands.
I stop playing with my action figures and look at grandfather. His face is full of anger . . . and fear.
Then I realize what he’s asking. This isn’t Grandpa’s driver. Grandpa’s driver is older, and he doesn’t wear this sour cologne I can smell all the way in the back of the limo.
The car swerves around and drives in the opposite direction.
“Get down, Asher,” Grandpa commands me.
I see him hit the panic button hidden in his watch. He nods at me, and I do the same. I’m so scared I start to cry, but I know I have to be quiet. I’ve been trained on this. My security guards have gone over the protocol with me many times. Stay down, stay quiet, hit my panic button.
The limo pulls into an old warehouse. The door to the limo opens, and a large man in a ski mask lifts me out. Three more throw Grandpa to the ground.
The man holds me, and I thrash against him.
He hits me on the head with the handle of his gun.
A pop rings through my ears, and black spots pepper my vision.
The man sets me down, and I teeter on my feet, still seeing stars.
The man shoves fabric into my mouth from behind, then pulls it tight.
He binds my hands and holds me tightly to him.
I can do nothing as I watch the other men shout at Grandpa and tie him to a chair.
I can’t hear what they say. All I can hear is my heart beating in my ears.
The men hit and punch Grandpa, then point a gun at his head. They kick in his knees. They yell and shout and threaten. I cry and scream and try to get free, but the man holding me is too large, too strong. My shouts are muffled by the gag in my mouth.
Finally, one signals to the man holding me, and he carries me toward Grandpa and the other men. The man holding me hits me with his gun again, slicing my skin open near the corner of my eye. Blood dribbles down my face. He shoves the gun to my forehead.
One of the men leans down toward Grandpa. “We can make this easy, or we can make this hurt.”
“Asher,” a voice says.
I thrash in bed, my mind pulling from my dream.
“Asher!” Now I recognize Ella’s voice, pulling me up, up, up, and out.
I sit up, gasping for breath. Ella’s hands are on my shoulders. Her face appears before mine.
“It’s okay, baby. It was just a dream.” I can hear her words, but they’re distant, an echo. I vaguely feel her hands skate up to my jaw, and she holds my face in them. She kisses my lips.
“We can make this easy, or we can make this hurt.”
Why is that phrase so familiar?
“Asher, look at me.”
Ella climbs onto my lap. She wraps her arms around me.
“We can make this easy, or we can make this hurt.”
My mind drifts back to earlier this year. A rainy day in late winter. Charlotte in my apartment, taking it in.
“Your penthouse is so impressive, Asher. I’d love to live in a place like this,” she says as I hand her a glass of wine.
I’m annoyed with her, but I like the fling we have going on, so I bite my tongue.
I don’t want her here. I don’t bring women back to my penthouse, and this is exactly why.
Women know I’m wealthy, but when they are in my home surrounded by the grandeur of it, that point seems to hit on a more profound level.
I always insist on meeting women at hotels.
Hotels keep the lines clear, and it keeps women out of my personal space.
Charlotte showed up unexpectedly, and I was busy finishing up work, so I let her up.
I’m regretting it now.
“Let’s go,” I say.
“Go where?”
“To the Plaza, as planned.”
“Why would we go to the Plaza? I’m already here.”
“I don’t fuck women in my home,” I snap, my patience waning.
She gives me an incredulous look. “Why not?”
“I just prefer hotels.”
“Your home is nicer than a hotel.” She sets her glass of wine down and runs her hand over my cock and pants. “I’ll make it worth your while.”
I groan as she starts to unbuckle my belt. I step back, and her face is incredulous.
“You’d really hold off on sex just to go to a hotel?”
“I told you; I don’t mix these things with my home life.”
She smirks at me, unbuttoning her blouse. She tosses it aside. Then her bra follows. “We can make it quick today, if you prefer.”
And when she’s successful at getting my fly open and her hand down my briefs, my resolve starts to crumble. But I still pull away. She grips me tighter, and my traitorous cock hardens. Another groan slips past my lips. Fuck. She knows she has the upper hand.
She suddenly removes her hand. “We can make this easy, or we can make this hurt, Asher.”
Her skirt hits the floor, and she stands before me in nothing but her panties.
“Fine,” I growl. “But upstairs in one of the guest rooms. Final offer.”
“Fuck,” I hiss to myself.
“What is it?” Ella asks. “Asher, talk to me.”
Another memory.
A board meeting. Everyone is arguing. Conrad and Henry are pushing to sell Greenspan.
“It’s a fucking suck on resources!” Henry shouts. “We lose twenty-five million dollars per year on Greenspan.”
“And for the fifty-millionth time,” I yell, “fossil fuel energy will eventually run its course and another source of energy will be needed. If we’re not investing in it now, we’ll lose billions in the future by not being prepared.
Technology comes at a cost, yes, but when that technology lands in the everyday lives of the citizens of the globe, that cost will be recouped and more. ”
“We’re not budging on this, Asher,” Conrad grinds out.
“You agree to the sale, and the buyer will agree to let us keep what we have of Greenspan’s IP as it stands now.
Or, we can go over your head and sell to any other buyer who will insist on taking all previous Greenspan IP and wiping our servers clean.
You’ll lose all the research you’ve paid for. ”
“Why the fuck would we sell and keep the IP? We’d need to find another company to take that IP and keep developing that technology.”
“But we could find a smaller company to do it, and we could negotiate pay at a much smaller scale and cut our losses in half each year.”
“And risk having less brilliant minds working on this IP? That’s not worth it. This is a technology race, so I will have the best and the brightest working on it. I’m not willing to sell and get some second-rate scientists just to save a few bucks.”
“Twenty-five million isn’t a few bucks.”
“To you it isn’t,” I say with a smirk.
“You’re so goddamn arrogant that you’re going to ruin this company!”
“I’ve made this company more money in five years than you’ve made it in thirty. So, tell me again how I’m ruining this company.”
“I want this sell!” Conrad says.
“We have the agreement of the majority of the board.” Henry puffs out his chest. “So, we can make this easy, or we can make this hurt.”