Chapter 1
Room Three – Multiple Partners
Riaz~
I had a love/hate relationship with my job, and I could admit that it was mostly hate, though it paid well. I was the CEO of RM Security Innovations, and though I had stopped going into the field years ago, every now and again, I grabbed my tools to see to a project personally.
Like today.
Granted, getting out from behind my desk from time to time helped to keep me from getting complacent, but there really wasn’t a huge threat of that happening anyway.
Having grown up in a big family, laziness hadn’t been tolerated in our household, something that I was grateful for now. As a teenager, not so much.
Early on, my parents, Miguel and Suzanna Marco, had decided on six kids, and eight people in a four-bedroom house had been the stuff of nightmares.
Now, had they’d been all boys, all girls, or an even number of each, things might not have been that bad.
However, when they’d had my sister, Valencia, that had caused a bit of crowding.
Since a girl could not share a room with boys, that had left three of us in one room together, and my eldest brother, Miguel Jr., moving into the living room had just caused more issues with space, though Clemente and Javier had been thrilled to finally share a room together.
At any rate, with my father working as a car salesman, and my mother working as a dispatcher for a trucking company, they had worked long hours, leaving the household chores as our responsibility, and Miguel Jr. hadn’t been about to get yelled at for any of us, and so he had ruled us younger kids with an iron fist. So, between Miguel Jr., Clemente, me, Javier, Guillermo, and Valencia, the chores had never gone undone, and the only exception had been Valencia after hitting puberty.
Once a month, we’d left her alone, letting her wallow in her biblical agony in peace.
All that to say that it had all paid off in the end.
During my sophomore year in high school, and due to late registration, I’d been forced to take a mentoring elective because all the other classes had been full.
So, not caring one way or the other, the school counselor had enrolled me into an IT mentorship program for credits, and within a few weeks, I’d found my calling.
For whatever reason, my brain had taken to informational technology as easily as a summer’s day, and there’d been no going back for me after that.
That one class had led me to where I was now, and after four years of college, a pile of student loans, and the refusal to fail, I was a thirty-four-year old millionaire, and since my company was privately owned, I was in complete control of where my life went from here.
Now, while my company had its fingers in all sorts of endeavors, its primary focus was security.
In a world where there were monsters everywhere, it was a very profitable line of business.
However, while I loved what I did, I hated the reason for it.
I hated that people didn’t feel safe in their own homes or places of business.
I hated that people needed proof of a crime before they were taken seriously, which was the reason that I was here now.
Again, normally, I wasn’t on site when installing a new system, but having a big family made these kinds of jobs important to me.
I currently had a crew at Robards Elementary because a child had almost been abducted a couple of weeks ago.
It’d been a domestic custody dispute between a divorcing couple, but it’d been a big enough deal that the school had decided to upgrade its security system, and the school’s administration had reached out to me personally because Javier was a teacher here.
That was another reason why I’d decided to see to this project personally.
Not only had Javier vouched for me, but between all five of my siblings, I had a ton-fuck of nephews and nieces, and I couldn’t imagine anything happening to them, much less with no clues or proof.
As for me, I didn’t have a wife or any children yet, but that was because I’d been too focused on my career, something that my parents appreciated, but they still bugged me about kids whenever I went over to visit.
“How are things coming along?”
I turned at the voice of the school’s counselor, Teal Cromwell, and outside of keeping children safe from harm, if there was a perk on this job, it was this woman.
Ms. Cromwell was as beautiful as they came, and there was something to be said for the exotic nature of her heritage.
Plus, not only was she about five-foot-one, petite, and had black hair with these deep brown eyes, but she was also smart enough to have gotten degrees in child development and literature, something that couldn’t have been easy.
Granted, it was said that most Asians were smart, so there was that.
However, I wasn’t a fan of stereotyping, so I tried not to read too much into what ‘they’ said.
In addition to being the school’s counselor, she was also certified to be a literary professor, though she’d chosen to teach English to elementary children over working at a college. At any rate, not only was Teal Cromwell gorgeous as fuck, but she was also rather intelligent.
Turning from the mobile computer station that I had with me, I said, “Good. We’ll be done before the day is over.”
She gave me a curt nod, but I wasn’t offended. From what I’d heard, she’d been the driving force behind this upgrade, so it was expected that she’d be taking this seriously. While it didn’t do anyone any good to judge others, I wanted to believe that she wasn’t as uptight as she was coming across.
“Well, even if your brother didn’t work here, your company has a solid reputation, Mr. Marco,” she remarked stoically.
“You researched my company?”
The woman looked at me like I was stupid, but that was okay; I liked expressive women. “Of course, I researched your company. Despite Javier being a very exceptional person, you can never be too careful when it comes to the safety of children.”
“I completely agree,” I replied easily, doing my best not to smile at her. Since it was obvious that this was very important to her, I didn’t want her thinking that I was making fun of her. “Especially, when you consider how many nephews and nieces I have.”
That dark gaze of hers regarded me carefully before saying, “We also appreciate the discount, Mr. Marco.”
“My name’s Riaz,” I told her, giving her permission to use it. “And it’s no big deal.”
“I disagree,” she replied primly. “The labor discount is tremendously generous.”
When Javier had first approached me about this job, he’d been very forthcoming about the school’s budget, and like most public schools, funding was a nightmare for them.
In a perfect world, schools would matter more than golf courses, but that just wasn’t the case.
In fact, it was actually rather amazing how people preferred glamour over raising smart kids, especially when you considered that they were the future.
At any rate, once I’d seen the numbers, I had immediately written up a bid that subtracted the labor rate, eating the cost. Javier had been thankful, and while I could admit that most companies wouldn’t have done it, I had more money than I’d ever need at this point, so it really wasn’t the huge sacrifice that people were assuming.
“Tremendously generous would have been to do the entire job for free, Ms. Cromwell,” I countered. “That would have been the generous thing to do.”
She eyed me again before saying, “Well, I suppose that we’ll just have to agree to disagree on this subject, Mr. Marco.”
Okay.
Just then, one of my electricians, Eddie Blunt, came jogging over. “Hey, Riaz,” he called out. “We found another alcove near the parking lot that you might want to look at.”
As Eddie stopped in front of us, Teal Cromwell said, “Well, I think I’ll let you get back to work, and I’d like to thank you again, Mr. Marco.”
“Not a problem,” I replied kindly, and as I watched her walk away, I wondered just what it would take to make that woman loosen up.
“I don’t remember any of my teachers ever looking like that,” Eddie snorted regretfully.
“Me neither,” I chuckled.
“It’s a damn shame, really.”
Shaking my head, I let the topic of hot teachers go, then got back to business. “So, show me where this alcove is. I want to make sure that we have the entire campus covered.”
“You don’t think that this system might be a little too sophisticated for them?” he asked as we headed towards the parking lot. “I mean, it’s a pretty fancy upgrade, boss.”
“It’ll be fine,” I assured him. “After all, the system does most of the work.”
Because my general concern for children was genuine, I had chosen one of our best security systems for this job, and while it was a bit much, it wasn’t all that complicated.
Plus, we already had a training and troubleshooting session set up for the administration and the few teachers that they had selected as backup.
Since RM was very thorough with all its jobs, we made sure that our clients also knew what the hell they were doing.
Or else, what was the point?