Stingray Billionaire: The Complete Series (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) (16 page)

“Your time was up a while
ago,
and I’m tired of being threatened by
you,” I seethe.

“There are things I will
take to my grave before I even think about them when it’s not you and me
talking,” she says. “I can’t let this be one of those things anymore. Not
unless you turn it around.”

I told the board I might
be willing to discuss the relocation. I never said I was
ready
to change my mind about it.

“Go to the board, then,”
I tell her.

“You’re willing to lose
everything for this woman who, let’s face it, you never really knew in the
first place?” she asks. “Are you doing this because you’re in love with her, or
because you’re in love with the fantasy?”

“I’m not an idiot,” I
snap. “I’m not calling it love at all yet.”

“Then what are you
doing?” she asks. “You want to move the company there because she’s there and
you have it in your head she can’t leave. If you’re not doing it for love, you
must be
crazy,
and the board is doing the
right thing wanting you gone.”

“It’s always lovely
chatting,” I tell Marly. “I’ve missed the way you just charge through what you
want to say and don’t stop when you hit a wall. It’s
admirable
. But now, if you’d do me the privilege of leaving my
office,
we’re done
here.”

“That’s it, then?” she
asks. “I hope, for your sake, there’s a part of this story you haven’t already
told me, because the way it looks right now, you’re intentionally trying to run
the company into the ground.”

“That’s it,” I answer her
original question. Everything else, I ignore. She’s mad. I get it. She’s
confused, and I get that, too. The problem is one day she stopped trusting me.
“There’s nothing about the move that would threaten the company except this
vile perception you’ve been cultivating. Now, as much fun as it is watching
security throw you out, I’d just as soon we all leave voluntarily.”

“What’s going to happen
when she finds out?” Marly asks. “You know it won’t be long once the board has
it. Audiences love all that gushy romantic crap.”

“What do you want?” I
ask. “It can’t just be about her.”

“She was the problem
before you started putting together the exploratory committee on Mulholland,”
Marly says. “Whatever you want to keep telling yourself, she
is
the problem. If it weren’t for your
preoccupation with your friend, the stranger, it wouldn’t matter what the board
tried to throw at you. You’d be bulletproof.”

“Get out,” I tell her.
“I’m not going to
say
it again.”

“I’ve never seen someone
work so hard at destroying everything in their life,” she says, turning finally
and going to the door. “Oh, I’ve seen plenty of people throw good sense aside
to destroy
others
, but this level of
self-immolation’s a new one on me. It’d be more entertaining if I didn’t
believe in you once, look up to you.”

“You never looked up to
me,” I tell her. “That’s one of the reasons I liked you. You know, before you
turned into—”

“Is there any chance I
can get you to change your mind?” she asks.

“No,” I answer. “How long
do I have?”

“There’s no reason to put
it off,” she says. “I know you’re not going to try to stop me. You’re not the
type.”

“What I don’t understand
is why you would do this to me,” I say. “Are you angling to take over as CEO?
I’ve got to tell
you,
before you started
showing your third and fourth faces, I was planning on handing it over to you
when I retire in ten years.”

“Why would you retire in
ten years?” she asks. “You never said anything about that to me.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I
tell her.

“No,” she says, “tell me.
If you’re planning to give it all up, why not just drop out as CEO. You’ve got
enough money for a lot of lifetimes.
Why
bother with all the scandal?”

“It never occurred to me
you’d have trouble making sense of this,” I tell her. “You’re usually such a
smart person.”

“There’s no shame if you
can’t solve a puzzle no one else can solve,” Marly says. “I’ll give you an hour
to change your mind, then I’m making calls.”

“Make your calls now,” I
tell her. “I’m not changing my mind.”

Marly leaves the office,
and though I’m beginning to loathe the sight of this building, I wait a few
minutes. I’m not going to
close myself
in
an elevator with her.

Marly doesn’t understand
why the company needs to move to Mulholland. It’s not something I’m willing to
elucidate for her, either. It’s just the way things are.

If anything, I was stupid
to ask Ellie to come to New York with me. If it
weren't
about her boss, it would have been something else. I knew she wasn’t going to
stay.

As I’m thinking about it,
I don’t know that I should ever have come back to New York, myself. My presence
hasn’t fixed anything. Yeah, the stock price leveled out for a few days, but
when word spread the new office was still on, it started dropping again
regardless
.

Of course, if it keeps
going on like this too much longer, I’m going to be in some serious trouble.
Financially, I’m plenty secure now, but most of my money is tied up in Stingray
stock. Come to think of
it, I
should
probably check to make sure I’m still a billionaire. You fall out of that
particular
club and people
tend to
remember it.

I stood up for my
relationship with Ellie in a pretty monumental way, though. I can feel good
about that.

The phone calls are going
to start any minute. It’s only a matter of how long it takes Marly to
cross
the lobby and get outside.

It’s not an irrecoverable
situation. If anything, it may help public perception. It’s not going to do
anything for investors’ failing
confidence,
and it may just be the end of my reign as CEO, but with enough positive public
attention, I’ll at least have some leverage.

That is, assuming
America’s still got a bit of the romantic in her.

The
situation with Ellie is precarious.
I haven’t even told her
I was that goofy kid from the last three weeks of junior high. When she hears
everything, I don’t know how she’s going to take it.

I should have just told
her, but through all the planning, all the years of planning every angle, I
never accounted for just how hard it would be. Who I was then and now was going
to be a shock if it was the first thing I told her about, but a lot of time has
passed since I had that chance.

Right now, I’m that guy
on television with all the fancy crap. That guy has power. The other guy, the
spindly jackass who’d blush every time
a cute
girl went past, that guy has nothing. That guy
was
nothing.

It’s
early,
and I know she’s sleeping, but the first
rule of damage control is to
break
the
story first. That way you do it on your terms.

I call Ellie.

“If this isn’t God, I’m
hanging up,” she groans.

It’s a good thing my
ego’s not that far out of check. “It’s not God, but I’d still like to talk to
you,” I say, trying to keep my tone as light as possible.

“Oh hey, Nick,” she says
through a yawn. “I’d be glad you called if it weren’t the dead crack of night.”

“I’m sorry about that,” I
tell her. “Listen, there’s something I need to talk to
you about
.
It’s not
how I
wanted to do it, but circumstances have left me no choice.”

“Actually,” she says,
“I’ve been doing some thinking.”

“Yeah?” I ask. “About
what?”

“I don’t know. I feel
like we jumped into this whole thing
so
fast,
and
I
guess
I just got caught up in the thrill of who you are and seeing the world you live
in,” she says.

No.

I start again, saying,
“Ellie, I know things have been moving fast, but—”

“Please,” she says. “I’ve
already
started,
and I’d like to say this
before I wake up too much and can’t get through it.”

My heart is pounding. I
plead, “Ellie, just listen—”

“I don’t think it’s going
to work out,” she says. “If I misled you in any way, I’m sorry. I honestly
wanted to give us a shot, but I don’t think your status or your lifestyle is
a healthy
foundation for a relationship.”

“Ellie—”

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I
have to go.”

She hangs up before I can
even start the sentence, “We weren’t strangers when we met.” I could have
slipped it in there. She cut off nearly everything I said, but she would have
heard that.

Maybe I didn’t want to
tell her. Regardless, she’s going to find
out,
and my calls are going straight to voicemail.

It was going to be bad
enough if I’d had a chance to tell her everything. Now, when she finds out, I
won’t be able to fill in the gaps. If there’s any chance of a relationship in
the future, it’s if I can get ahold of her before the news breaks. But there’s
nothing I can do.

Naomi’s phone is off,
too.

Malcolm sticks his head
into the office
to inform me that CNBC already
has an exclusive locked down with Marly. She’s not just outing me to the board
so they can leak it.

I misjudged
Marly,
and it looks like that mistake is about
to cost me everything not telling Ellie hasn’t already. There’s nothing left
but that final half step off the cliff.

The story writes itself:
rags-to-riches billionaire loses everything, the
story
at eleven.

Cut to commercial.

Chapter
Thirteen

Stock

Ellie

Nick called almost twelve
hours ago, but I haven’t slept. I’m locked in my room, questioning my decision
when Naomi tells me there’s someone at the door.

I drag myself out of bed,
clothed in the oversized shirt that is my sleeping attire, to
find
Helen, my former boss’s widow, waiting for
me.

“Hey,” I say. “I’m so
sorry, when Naomi said we had
company
, I
just figured it was someone else here to blame me for something over which I
never had any control. Won’t you come in?”

“You sound busy,” Helen
says.
She’s always timid.
How she and
Troy ever got along is beyond me.

“I’m not,” I tell her.
“I’d be happy for the company. Please, come in.”

Helen and I have never
really had that many opportunities to talk, but
she’s
always
decent to me. Nervously, she comes into the apartment.

“I really can’t stay,”
she says, “but I wanted to make sure you got this.”

She reaches into her
jacket pocket and pulls out an envelope. “That night when Troy came home,” she
starts, “he told me how the two of you had sold everything in the store. He
wouldn’t stop going on about it until I got in the car with him and he showed
me himself. You should have heard how he was going on about how every time
things would start to slow
down he
’d
cause a bit of excitement over this piece or
that,
and we both knew him well enough to see right through that.”

“It’s all right,” I tell
her. “I don’t mind if he took credit for that. I didn’t have all that much to
do with it as it is.”

“Whatever the case,”
Helen says, “I knew you were never going to see your share of the profits
unless I set it aside. You have to
understand.
Troy
never meant to take money from others. It’s
just
when money fell into his lap, he didn’t know what else to do
but gamble it and try to turn it into something more. That’s what he always
used to say: turn it into something more. He wasn’t
an evil
man.”

“I never thought he was,”
I say. It’s not quite the truth, but it’s close enough.

“
Anyway
,” she says, “here.”

She hands me the
envelope. It’s thick with money.

“Also, the keys to the
shop
and
Troy’s old office are in there,
too,” she says. “I don’t know if you want to try reinvesting that money or not,
but the option’s open if you want it.”

“Helen, you don’t have to
do this,” I tell her. “You should keep it.”

“Don’t do that,” she says
sharply, catching me
off guard
. “My
husband’s dead. I get enough in the way of pity. Besides,” she whispers,
leaning in closer, “before Troy left for Tahiti, I squirreled away a little for
a rainy day, too.” She winks at me.

“Thanks,” I tell her. “I
don’t know what to say.”

“I’m just delivering
money that’s rightfully yours,” she says. “If I may leave you with a piece of
advice before I go?”

“Sure,” I answer.

“Don’t make bets you
can’t cover,” she says. “Eventually, you’re going to upset the wrong
person,
and that person might just make a phone
call to one of the guys you introduced her to the
last
time you went to Tahiti.”

Without another word,
Helen turns and leaves the apartment.

I’m not sure, but I think
she just confessed to being involved in Troy’s—but that’s impossible.

Helen came into the store
once,
and she saw a spider. I offered to
squash it for her, but she picked it up
with
her bare hands and took it outside, saying she never liked to see any living
thing come to harm, no matter how distasteful we may think them to be.

It was doubly
impressive
because the spider was a black
widow. I remember, because I’m the one that took her to the hospital after she
found a safe place to deposit the spider that bit her.

Nah, Helen would never do
anything like that.

Now, with something to
do, I tell Naomi I’m going to be out a little while and leave before she can
give me yet another list of places to pick up
horny
guys
. I’m nowhere near ready to tell her she can stop the smear
campaign. That’s a going to be a whole different kind of a
headache
.

I
get to the store
to find the window hasn’t been replaced yet. It
doesn’t look like anyone’s tried to cause further damage to the store, but
something needs to happen with the window today.

Before I do that, I’m
going to want to get this place cleaned up a little. I hadn’t planned on coming
back here. Once the window
gets replaced
,
the plan was
just to sell the building
,
give half the money to Helen whether she liked it or not, and call that the end
of it.

The unfortunate reality
is that I don’t have anything else to do. There are no jobs here in town, and
I’m not about to move. No matter how many people leave me threatening notes or
call my house and hang up, this is my
home,
and I
’m not
going.

First, though, I head
back to Troy’s office and unlock the door. He was always
on
that computer, but he would switch the
screen before I could see what he was doing on it. I know it’s immature, but
I’m curious.

The surprise ends up not
being that much of a surprise. Everything on Troy’s computer is poker and
blackjack. His browser history is made up of lists of places to find real-money
games on the dark net. I know enough about the dark net
never to go there
.

I’m disappointed it’s not
something more surprising, but also a little relieved the boss wasn’t just in
there streaming hours of porn. That would have been awkward.

I call the glass repair
shop and ask if they know how long it’ll be before they can get around to
Rory’s, but as soon as the woman on the phone realizes it’s me she’s talking
to, she loses the saccharin customer-service voice.

“We’ll get around to it
when we get around to it,” I believe are her exact words before hanging up on
me.

It’ll take some time, but
eventually,
I’m sure I can convince all
these people I’m not the reason Nick didn’t hire any of them before he left
town. Exactly what they thought I could do about it eludes me.

I
guess
people need a scapegoat when it turns out that big break
isn’t coming. Who better than me for that job?

Troy never took me when
he went out for a buy, so the only experience I have with acquiring new pieces
is people bringing their stuff into the shop. I was hoping the glass
was already installed
, or at least that I could
get someone out here today to take care of it, but until that happens, there’s
not much I can do.

As I sit here on what
still feels like the wrong side of Troy’s desk, I can’t stop thinking about how
quickly this town that
I
’ve lived in my
entire life, these people I’ve known forever could just turn on me so fast. I
didn’t have to do anything but catch the eye of a powerful man: that was enough
for everyone to decide they hate me.

It’s not fair, but
stating that fact has never changed anything for anyone.

Still, as I sit here, I’m
finding it increasingly difficult to keep my teeth unclenched, my fists
unclenched.

I’ve done nothing to
these people, yet when their golden goose turns out to just be a guy with a
company and no personal investment in any of their lives, they go after me? I
wonder if Troy was still alive when they broke the window or if they desecrated
this place after word of his death spread.

Neither possibility seems
human, much less reasonable.

I grab my phone and call
the Mario’s Glass back, tapping my fingernails on the desk as the line rings.

“Mario’s Glass where
every day is clear and bright,” the woman I talked to a few minutes ago
answers.

“Yeah, this is Ellie over
at Rory’s,” I say. “I’m going to need someone to come by
today,
or I’m going with someone else.”

The woman sighs loudly.
“I know you like to think you’re too new here to be a part of this community,
but we’re the only glass shop in town.”

“That’s fine,” I tell
her. “I’ll just let Grant know that you’re not pulling your weight.
Come to think about it, the call
probably
shouldn’t come from me. That’s all right, though. There are a few people in
this town who still speak to me. I’m sure with enough
complaints, Grant
will have you reassigned in no time. Where’d the
last person who wasn’t living up to their potential end up?” I ask. “I think it
was sewer duty, wasn’t it? I know you like to think I’m too new here to be a
part of this community, but
I
’ve lived
here my whole
life,
and I know how this
town runs, so maybe you just do your job and put the work order through.”

From an objective
viewpoint, Nick is by far the most powerful individual I’ve ever met. In
Mulholland, though, Grant is the one with all the
cards,
and he does not tolerate someone failing at a job in which
he’s placed them.

Those who get on Grant’s
bad side don’t easily find their way back off it again.

The woman groans. “I’ll
have someone over there today, but that’s the only time you get to pull that
card,” she says.

“Thanks for all your
help,” I say in my brightest, cheeriest voice. “You’ve been great.”

I hang up the phone just
in time to accidentally send Naomi’s incoming call to voicemail. When she calls
back a few seconds later, the strangest thing
happens,
and I
accidentally
ignore that one, too.

There’s enough adrenaline
in my veins I might just tell Naomi Max’s attack command and hope she repeats
it loudly enough for him to hear it. The word is “creep,” but that’s neither
here nor there.

Some guys come by after
an hour or so to get the front window of the store replaced, but not one of them
will look at me, even when speaking directly to me. I’d let my
venom
loose on them, but it’s a lot easier to
threaten someone over the phone.

The first ten minutes
they’re there, the only thing
any
of the
workers says to me is, “Clean up all this glass before someone gets hurt, you
idiot.”

Insult aside, before the
men got here to replace the window, I tried the best I could to do just that.
It’s hard when there’s so much glass over so much floor and all there is to
clean with is an old push broom that’s missing so many bristles it’s just as
likely to gouge the floor as move anything.

Still, I’ve had about all
the conflict I’m in the mood for today, so I grab the broom
anyway
and flip it upside down to use
the metal part of the brush strictly
. It makes
a terrible screeching noise going across the floor, but it’s moving the glass.

I’m most of the way done
piling all the glass into one corner of the shop when one of the men working on
the window, Alan, comes over and puts a hand on my shoulder.

“Let me do that for you,”
he says. “I know you’ve had a rough time around town lately, and I just want
you to know there are still those of us who care.”

“Yeah,” I scoff. “You
guys already have the sheet of glass cut to size, but you’ve spent the last
hour measuring.
First,
you measure the
window; then
you measure the glass. You measure
the
window. You
measure the glass. You
measure the
window. You
measure the
glass. You measure the—”

“I get it,” he says. “I’m
sorry about that. Let me make it up to you.”

Without waiting for a
response, Alan snatches the broom from my hands and starts pushing the thing
like there’s a prize for finishing early.

“Ellie?” an
all-too-familiar voice comes from behind me.

I turn around with a
snicker. “No wonder they got to work so fast,” I tell the man I broke up with a
little more than half a day ago. “What are you doing here, Nick?”

“Listen, I know what it
must look like, but I promise it’s not what you think,” he starts.

“Well, I
think it
you came all the way here from New
York after I told you things weren’t going to work out between us. But hey,
I’ve been wrong before,” I respond.

“I know that’s how you
must feel now, but …” he trails off. “Wait, you haven’t heard?” he asks.

“Heard what?” I respond.

Meanwhile, Alan’s dropped
the broom as the floor’s now clear of glass—though there are now long, metallic
grooves like spider veins on the old, laminated floor. I watch as he tries to
lift the huge piece of glass all by himself and I cover my ears as it slips
from his fingers after two steps and shatters on the sidewalk.