Donovan

DONOVAN
(THE BILLIONAIRE CLUB)

Book
1

By
Vanessa Stone

This
book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are
products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not
to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual
events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Copyright
© 2015 Vanessa Stone

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Chapter 1

Donovan

I left the
guests of my party downstairs after receiving a message from one of my house
staff that I had an emergency phone call. The get-together at my home on Long
Island was a success, but then, they usually were. I enjoyed having small
get-togethers at my house, where I could mingle freely among friends and
acquaintances and not have to worry about business, decisions, or competition.
I had been especially pleased to see one of my best friends, Damien, in
attendance with a young law student with whom he seemed to be developing a
serious relationship, whether he realized it yet or not.

At the
landing of the stairs, I turned right and headed down a short hall. The last
door on the right was my personal home office. It was a warm, welcoming room
and I enjoyed working there. One wall was lined with bookshelves. The other,
facing my desk, was equipped with a widescreen TV and Surround Sound speakers
recessed into the wall. My large oak desk sat at the other end of the room. I
sank into the comfortable leather office chair as I reached for my
"old-fashioned" landline telephone. While I certainly had a cell
phone and was technologically advanced enough to have the newest and latest, as
well as the greatest devices and gadgets on the market, I felt more comfortable
using my old-fashioned landline telephone in here. Sometimes, conversations
with clients lasted an hour or more and I didn't like using my cell phone for
such long discussions.

I didn't
often get emergency phone calls. However, as I owned a number of gyms in New
York City, as well as several out-of-state, and continually attempted to expand
my business as a gym owner and developer from the east coast to the west, I
dealt with emergencies frequently enough that I didn't feel especially concerned
with this one. Probably a glitch in the deal I had recently made in Montana. I
picked up the phone, leaned back in my chair and announced myself.
"Donovan Sanderson here.
Who am I speaking to, and
what's the problem?"

"Donovan."

The voice
instantly got my attention. I hadn't heard it in years, eight years to be
exact. The voice belonged to Shane, my younger brother, named after my parents'
whimsical adoration of the movie by the same name. Shane was two years younger
than me, but I also had an older brother, Cameron, who was two
years
my senior. I had two younger sisters as well, Julie
and Tammy.

"You
do know who this is, don't you?" the voice on the other end asked.

Recovering
from my surprise, I instinctively nodded. "Yes," I said.
"Hey, Shane.
How did you get my number?"

"Doesn't
matter," he replied. "I have some news."

I
instantly sensed that something was amiss. "What is it?" I asked, not
sure I wanted to know.

"Dad’s
dead."

Mention of
my father sent a myriad of emotions rushing through me, but I felt too stunned
at the moment to take them all in. "What?
When?"
 

"This
afternoon," Shane replied. "They think it was a heart attack."

I sat back
in my chair, stunned by the news. "How's Mom?"

"As
you can imagine," Shane said. "Then again, maybe you can't."

I closed
my eyes at the jab and sighed. I had left home eight years ago, and hadn't
spoken to my father, my brothers or my sisters since then. I didn't want to
recall the incident that had effectively estranged me from my family all those
years ago, but I did worry about my mom. I had spoken to her occasionally,
keeping her up to date on my whereabouts, sometimes my business ventures, and
calling her on special occasions and holidays. I wasn't sure if she related my
calls to the other family members, and at the moment didn't really care.

"Will
you come home for the funeral?" Shane asked.

"When
is it?" I asked, numb and trying to wrap my mind around the fact that my
dad was dead.

"Friday,"
Shane said.
"You coming or not?"

I almost
said no, but something in me decided not to. Eight years had passed since I had
last spoken to my dad or other members of my family. Was it time to let bygones
be bygones? None of us live forever, and perhaps it was time to bury old
disagreements and grudges - just as my father was soon to be buried. I had a
feeling that my sudden reappearance in town for the funeral might cause some
family dissension, and I certainly didn't want to cause any more upset than was
already in the works.

"Will
I be welcome?" I asked bluntly. Silence on the other end.
"Well?" I heard a heavy sigh.

"I
think that it's time for you to come home," Shane said. "No one would
expect you to stay, but personally, it’s the least you can do, in my opinion.
What you do after that, I don't much give a shit.”

I paused
several more moments, and then spoke. "I'll be there, Shane. Give the rest
of the family a heads up, will you? I wouldn't want to show up unannounced and
cause more awkwardness than necessary."

"Kind
of late for that, isn't it?"

I didn't
answer, but concluded the phone call. "I'll be there on Thursday," I
said. "I’ll book a room at a hotel——"

"Mom
said that if you decided to come, you'd be staying at the ranch. No ifs, ands,
or buts, and those were her words, not mine. I’ll drop off your truck at the
Amarillo airport. See you Thursday."

With that,
the phone call disconnected. I slowly replaced the receiver. To say I was
shocked at the news was an understatement. While I haven't spoken to my dad or
other members of my family in nearly ten years, I still loved them and thought
of them often. Unfortunately, pride had gotten the best of me. I had always
felt it was my dad's place to make the first move, but knowing my dad, he
probably thought it was mine. Well, it was too late now, for both of us.

I felt a
great sadness rush over me.
Lost chances.
Lost years.
No way to get it back. All of a sudden, our
disagreements seemed so silly, and yet now it was too late to admit it. We had
both been stubborn, a Sanderson trait for sure, but now more than ever, I
regretted my long absence from the ranch.

My dad
owned the Rocking S ranch outside the tiny town of Stinnett in north Texas,
north of Amarillo. The ranch had been in my dad's family for over eighty years,
and he'd wanted me to take it over for him with my brothers when he got too old
to run it, but I hadn't wanted to. He had imagined my brothers doing the
nitty-gritty hands-on work while I ran the financial end, since I always had a
head for numbers and business. I had my own dreams at the time, and they didn't
involve sticking around in a Podunk town like Stinnett for the rest of my
life.
 

Eight
years ago, I was definitely looking for something more adventurous and
stimulating than making promises that I knew I didn't want to keep. My
brothers, Cameron and Shane, seem to prefer small town life, but it wasn’t for
me. Cameron was an auto mechanic and owned his own, or at least he had,
automotive shop in Amarillo, the last time I heard. Shane still lived and
worked the ranch. I don't know what my sisters Julie or Tammy were doing. Both
should have graduated from college by now, but I didn't know if they had come
back to Stinnett, or even in fact where they had gone to college, if they even
had. I wasn’t sure if either was married, or if I had any nieces or nephews.

The
thought made me reflect on my lack of communication with the family. We had
grown up close-knit. My brothers and sisters all got along very well, and we
were like the Three Musketeers plus two.
Always getting into
trouble, laughing, and just horsing around.
None of us had ever gotten
into serious trouble, nothing involving the law or anything like that, but my
mother always swore that we were responsible for all the gray hairs on her
head. I smiled at the thought of my mother, Lisa. She was a gentle soul, a
nurturer by nature, and while she certainly had her hands full with all of us,
she seemed to have balanced her responsibilities as a mother, a ranch owner's
wife, who more often than not was fully involved in the decision-making and
running of the ranch, as well as her home-based career as a painter.

My
mother's painting had brought in extra money to the ranch during lean years,
and, glancing across my office, I admired one of her paintings that hung on my
wall. It was a scene of the Texas plains, the wind blowing gently through
knee-high buffalo grass while in the
distance,
a lone,
old, and stalwart tree defied the ravages of the worst that North Texas weather
could bring to bear against it.

I had no
doubt that my mother would welcome me back, as she loved without condition and
was slow to cast judgments on others. How my brothers and sisters would react
to my reappearance was something else entirely. I had left when I was
twenty-seven years old. In fact, after eight long years, it would be like
visiting a house full of strangers. Julie had just turned sixteen and Tammy had
just turned twenty the year I left. Shane had just turned twenty-five. Cameron
had let me know in no uncertain terms how he felt about my refusal to help dad
with running the ranch, along with my desire to start my own business as an
entrepreneur and move away from the isolation of the north Texas plains.

In the
past eight years I had become quite successful, and was now a billionaire. Of
course, my family didn't know this, as I certainly wasn't one to go bragging
about my business acumen or success when the ranch that my parents ran barely
eked by an existence year after year. Still, the ranch was their life. It had
been my dad's passion, and in all my years of growing up there, I hadn't heard
him complain once. Raising cattle, horses and alfalfa, corn, and wheat was what
he loved to do. He always told me that he was a cattleman in his blood, a trait
passed down from generations. While dad was out on the range most of the time,
my mom took care of the ranch house, the chickens, pigs, goats, and her massive
summer gardens. For all intents and purposes, the ranch was self-sustaining,
and the only thing Dad ever needed to buy that the ranch itself didn't produce
were seeds for some of Mom's garden plants every season.

While Mom
had never said anything, I wondered, as Dad had grown older, if the ranch had
become too much, or if they were breaking even anymore. A rancher's life is
hard, and breaking even was a goal that every rancher in the region, or indeed
any rancher or farmer anywhere, could hope for. Profits were icing on the cake,
but it wasn't as if I could actually ask my mom about the financial aspects of
the ranch. No matter what the answer, even if the ranch
was
suffering, she never would've said a word.

I had
tried to send her money once in the form of a check, but she had sent it back
stating neither she nor my dad needed anyone's charity. She had been gentle
about her admonition, but that was the way they were. They'd make it on their
own or not at all. I guess I could honestly say that it was my dad who
instilled within me the urge to be successful and to do my best at anything I
set my mind to. He had always told me if I was going to do something, to do it
right. If it wasn't right, I was to do it over again until it was. That had
always stuck with me… a lesson that had served me well over the past eight
years as I gradually developed my brand of gyms not only in New York, but
throughout the United States. I doubted if my family knew of my success, as my
gyms were not associated in any way with my name. Ownership and the gym
franchises were designated through my corporation, Fit Bodies.

A burst of
laughter from downstairs reminded me that a party was underway, but I was in no
way interested in rejoining the group. For the first time in a long while, I
felt a heavy shroud of guilt settle on my shoulders. I knew that I had a lot to
deal with in the coming days. This funeral for Dad was in three days. That left
me little time to organize my affairs, pack, call around to funeral homes in
Stinnett to see if funeral arrangements had been made, and paid for, and
arrange for travel and transportation.

Reaching
for the phone, I called my assistant downstairs, overseeing my party. I told
him to come upstairs and meet me in my office. Plans had to be made and there
was no time to waste.

I still
couldn’t believe it. My dad was fucking dead.

Chapter 2

Memphis

I entered
Dori's
beauty salon, owned and managed by one of my best
friends,
Dori
Stevens. We had been best friends since
high school, and in a little town like Stinnett, it wasn't hard to make friends
that you kept for life.
Dori
had worked at the place
through high school, and, coupled with additional summer jobs and hard work,
had bought the shop five years ago when the owner announced she was retiring. I
had been coming here ever since to have
Dori
take
care of my hair. But
Dori's
was more than just a
beauty salon. It was a place, like many small towns, where friends could
gather, enjoy a cup of coffee, and chat. Much like an old-fashioned barbershop,
Dori's
was the go-to place for the ladies of Stinnett
to catch up on gossip, news, or with old friends.