Stingray Billionaire: The Complete Series (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) (21 page)

Fumbling with the
controls, I finally give up and crawl out of there. Once there’s a less
interesting floor beneath me, my vertigo begins to fade. I’m still lightheaded,
though, so after slowly rising to my feet, I find Nick’s bedroom.

We haven’t exactly
“reconnected” since I’ve been back, and while sex is unlikely tonight, it’d be
nice to feel him sleeping next to me.

I hedge my bet and dress
down to my underwear. Slipping under the covers, I feel like I’m lying on a
cloud, assuming that cloud was also warm and safe and perfectly supported every
inch of my body like a womb. That’s it. The mattress feels like a womb if a
womb wasn’t closed off and messy. It’s kind of like what it’d be like sleeping
on a cloud in a womb on another cloud.

Maybe I am a
little
drunk.

As I drift off, my
thoughts play over fantastical visions of lavish cocktail parties and all the
glorious excess I’ve been telling myself I’m somehow morally above. Tim and
Darla would be there, of course. That gentleman from Microsoft, perhaps he’d be
there as well. I’m especially interested in his charity work.

I wake up feeling a
little silly, the memory of how I drifted off still somehow fresh in my mind.
The next moment, the covers on the other half of the bed are being pulled back
and Nick is climbing into bed.

It occurs to me Nick
might not be where I am. He’s been much more amiable since Amelie and that
mess, but when I first got here, he had some things on his mind and we haven’t
hashed them all out yet.

In a whisper, he asks,
“Are you awake?”

Not knowing how to
answer, I say nothing. My back is to him. Still, I feel exposed lying here.

My act of doing nothing
apparently does the trick, though, and he settles in not too close, but not too
far from me.

“It’s hard, you know,” he
says, whispering. “There are some things I’ve wanted to tell you for so long
and when I finally work up the courage to say them, you don’t want to hear
them. If I don’t say them to you sooner than later, I’m going to go crazy.
Maybe this will have to do until you can trust me enough to hear it.”

Could be I’m still
dreaming. I open my mouth slightly to see if the motion feels real, but I
didn’t brush my teeth before bed. My eyes start watering, the inside of my nose
burning. I’m awake all right.

I close my eyes, but only
after I close my mouth. Yeah, sex is not an option tonight.

Not feeling the usual dip
in the mattress as he moves, I’m nearly startled “awake” when I hear Nick
breathing so close to me. My eyes
are closed
.
His lips softly brush against my
forehead,
and he returns to lie somewhere at least a foot away from me, though it’s
impossible to tell with precision just how far.

This bed is fantastic.

“What I wanted to tell
you,” he whispers, “is that we didn’t meet in the store. I didn’t just happen
to spot you through the window. I know you don’t recognize me and you may not
even remember me, but we went to school together for a while back in eighth
grade.”

I feel like I should say
something, but I can’t move.

He whispers, “At the
office, everyone’s heard me say at least one quote from my dad. They’re great
for inspiring fear and discipline, but the truth is I hated my dad. It’s easy
to turn a threat into advice if you word it right.

“We were always moving
and I was an alien to everyone I met. As soon as I’d get to where I almost had
the courage to try to reach out and maybe make some friends, dad would get new
orders. We were never allowed to argue. Orders are orders, and I get that. Even
where I was supposed to get some sense of comfort, or at least belonging,
though, was just praying dad wasn’t home. If he was, all I could do was pray he
was in a good mood. He wasn’t in a good mood often.

“There was a lot of stuff
that I don’t want to talk about from back then, but after a while, everything
was just so bleak,” he murmurs. He takes a breath.

Does he know I’m awake?

He whispers, “When we
were in school, I knew who you were, or at least I’d seen you, but we hadn’t
crossed paths except in the halls between classes. I was so young and it was so
stupid, but at that point in my life, it just didn’t seem like there was any
point in going on. Things at home kept getting worse and those who did know who
I was at Mulholland Junior High were just brutal. Whether it was because I was
the new kid or because I never said anything, it didn’t matter. It feels a
little stupid thinking about it now, but back then, that was all I saw. Truth
is, it was stupid, but you get beaten down in so many ways, you start believing
you deserve it.

“That doesn’t matter now,
though,” he mutters. “All that’s lead up, but you’re not awake.” He waits a
beat. “Are you?”

I’ve already waited too
long, so I don’t respond.

“The first time we ever
spoke, I had my belt off and I was standing on a milk crate beneath the limb of
one of the oak trees way back behind the school. It was already summer and no
one was there, I figured it’d be the best place to get some privacy,” he
whispers. “I was holding the belt and just starting to thread the end through
the buckle before attaching one end to the tree and the other around neck and I
heard footsteps coming through the dry leaves.

“When you first saw me, I
was sitting on the milk crate, trying to put my belt back through my belt
loops,” he stifles laughter. “It didn’t work so well. When you came around that
last tree and saw me, you stopped. I figured I was caught, or at very least
that whatever was going to happen would only be more reason to climb back up on
that crate once you’d gone again.”

My heart is slamming
against my ribcage. I remember him, only his name wasn’t Nick or Nikolai or
Nicholas or anything like that. The man lying next to me hardly bears any
resemblance to that scrawny little kid with the glasses so thick his eyes
looked twice as big as normal. Still, when I saw something familiar in his
eyes, is
that
was I was remembering?

“That didn’t happen,
though,” he continues. “You just said, ‘Come on,’ and kept on walking through
the trees. I didn’t know what else to do, so I stood up, finally got my belt
around my waist and followed you. I don’t think I talked once that first time
we went for one of those walks, but I didn’t need to. Right from that moment,
it was like you and I had grown up together or something, only I’d somehow
forgotten everything I knew about you and you had to fill me in again.”

We had a very different
experience of that day. It’s mortifying to think now, but I thought I’d walked
up on him either getting ready to masturbate or just finishing. The way he was
messing with the front of his pants, I had no idea what was really going on.

It was awkward, but I
didn’t want him to hate himself like I was pretty sure I would in his shoes, so
I passed it off like nothing was wrong. I’d been in enough knock-down drag-out
fights with Naomi, I was confident I could take him if he tried anything. I was
embarrassed, though, so I talked.

What embarrassed me most
of all was as we kept walking, I became painfully aware that I was getting a
little crush on him. The
bespectacled,
quiet,
dorky kid I thought I caught pulling his
ding-dong wasn’t exactly who
I
thought I
should have any interest in, however unconscious.

“That’s how I know so
much about you,” he says. “After that first day, I thought I’d never see you
again. Dad had already gotten his orders for his next assignment. He’d already
left,
and
mom
and I would have to follow in a week or two once they’d gotten things going
with the house. The next day, though, I went back out to that grove. I didn’t
understand why I felt like I had to do that. When I went the second day, I
didn’t wear the belt.

“I was out there under
that same tree for a while, but sure enough, there you were, saying, ‘Come on,’
and then we just picked up where we left off,” he whispers. “I didn’t even tell
you my name until the third day. My first name is Nikolai, but my dad always
hated that mom talked him into it. He picked my middle name, he said, because
it was the name he ‘should have gotten,’ being that his life was the military.”

As he says it, I mouth,
“Cornelius.”

“My little history lesson
at the diner was me testing the waters,” he says. “
Actually,
you’re not
awake,
so I don’t have to play it cool: I was nervous out of my
skull,
and I just grabbed the first thing my
mind put in front of me.

“Two weeks, though,” he
continues. “It was the best two weeks of my life. For the first time, I had a
friend. The day before we left, I wanted to tell you I was going, but I didn’t
know how. I was thrilled to have someone
see
me, but didn’t know how to deal with that and having to move the next day. I
thought it would be weird to make a big deal about me leaving, so I just didn’t
say anything.

“You don’t know this yet,
and I don’t know how long it’ll be before you decide you’re ready to, but you
saved my life,” he whispers. “Those two weeks gave me a glimpse into a world I
didn’t think I was meant to have any part of, and I have loved you for it ever
since. All of this is for you. I went to college, intending to make something
of myself before I tried to reconnect with you to prove I wasn’t that gangly
nobody anymore.” He chuckles, “I didn’t anticipate ending up roommates with
Jacque.”

Chapter
Eighteen

Culture Shock

Nick

Reeves is droning on
about something I stopped paying attention to about ten minutes ago and my cell
phone buzzes in my pocket. The man hesitates a moment when I pull the phone up
and check the message, but he picks up again after a few seconds.

Ellie just sent me a
text, asking if she and Naomi can stay at the beach house again for a few days.
She says she wants to get out of the city.

As much as I don’t want
to see Ellie’s sister ever, I write back, “Sure thing. There’s a card in my
nightstand. Use that when you book the ticket and Trevor can get you the keys.”

“Nick?” Reeves asks.

“Yeah,” I say, “so
basically what you’re telling me is that you did such a good job smearing me,
if I don’t leave the company, it’s going under no matter what, huh?”

“We didn’t smear you,
Nick,” he says.

“I’m sure after a couple
more weeks in jail, my former housekeeper is going to get tired of lying awake,
wondering if her cellmates are going to shank her in the middle of the night;
she’ll open up about everything,” I say.

Reeves exhales. “Can we
continue, please?” he asks.

“Sure,” I answer. “You
know I can’t say no to you people.”

Reeves eyes me a second
and continues, “The problem is we’re at scandal overload right now. Even the
picture, which is definitely breaking more your way, isn’t doing anything to
slow our plummeting stock price.”

“What you want me to do
is the same thing you’ve wanted me to do since before I brought up the idea of
the Mulholland office,” I say. “You want me out of the way without any more
hassle so you can quietly fire everyone and put the company somewhere you
barely have to worry about wages.”

“Nick, we’re past the
point of pride here,” he says. “You picked up some friends with the picture,
but those friends are pointing all their animus at the company, and are
boycotting Stingray and its products in protest. Nick, no matter how you look
at it, we’re going to need you to resign or we’ll be forced to start removal
proceedings. We’re at that point now, and we can’t afford to wait much longer.
The company’s going under.”

“Just out of curiosity,
what would that look like: me resigning?” I ask.

“We’d want to make sure
you were taken care of, of course,” Reeves says. “We had hoped to discuss those
terms with you. Nick, we’re not your enemies here. We just don’t want to see
the company go under, and I think you can respect that.”

“I
do
respect this time it wasn’t a maid with a camera,” he says. “I’m
glad you people are starting to grow the courage to stand up for your
convictions, bravo.” I start clapping, but for some reason, nobody joins in.
Huh.

“Nick, this is serious,”
Mason Handler says. The guy may be cold evil wrapped in a wrinkly exterior, but
he
does
have a great name.

Slowly, I nod. “Yes, it’s
serious,” I respond, “but I’d rather see this company financially implode than
stand idly by while you undermine everything we’ve been trying to do—”

“So you’re saying you
want
Stingray to go under?” Geraldine,
my CFO asks.

“No,” I answer. “What I’m
saying is I’m not the one who’s trying to damage the business. You know a big
part of the reason we’d kept the public’s trust as long as we have is because
of the promise never to take the company overseas or cut salaries to employees
below the level of upper management, right? As much as I’d like to take credit
for everything good that’s ever happened to the company,
that
is what made us stand out in the early years. Even when
everyone was telling us you couldn’t run an American company like this without
outsourcing
something
. We’ve been
proving them wrong for years, and now you’re telling me because
you
have betrayed that confidence and
that
you
have been doing whatever
possible to hurt my reputation,
I
should be the one to step down?” I ask. “Pull the other one.”

“If it meant the company
would rebound, I’m sure there’s not a member of the board who wouldn’t step
down,” Reeves says, “but that’s not what we’re looking at here.”

“I know,” I answer. I
point at Reeves, saying, “You never trusted me. When the company first started,
I knew about the meetings to try and convince Jacque to throw his support
behind someone else as CEO. I don’t blame you. When I first started, I didn’t
know anything about being an executive, and I had a hell of a learning curve in
front of me. You still see me that way. That’s what this is about, isn’t it?”

Reeves says, “Let’s not
make this personal, Nick.”

“I’ll step down if Jacque
takes it,” I answer.

“Has he answered your
calls yet?” Verne asks, smirking at me.

“You know you can’t stop
it if he decides to take the company,” I tell them. “Even if you succeed in
knocking me off the top of the mountain, he steps in and you’re not going to
have time to smear him out of a job, too.”

“We’re not trying to
s—damn it, Nick!” Reeves growls and slams the table with his fist. “Will you
wake the hell up already?”

Everyone on the board but
Verne averts their eyes. They may be behind every word, but they like to
preserve the appearance, however flimsy, of calm objectivity and Reeves is
straight up calling me out.

“Don’t you see what
you’ve done to the company by not allowing this move before now? From what I
hear, you’re still thinking about moving headquarters to Mulholland!” Reeves
spits. “If we’re going to talk about people sabotaging things, maybe we should
start with that!”

I sit quietly a moment.

It’s been a while since
I’ve been yelled at—with an audience, that is. I smile. “I bet it felt good,
finally getting that out after all this time, Reeves. Damn it, I’m proud of
you,” I tell him. “Also, that’s a no to everything. If you can guarantee me we
don’t lose one job here, and that the company will make it intractable that we
stay headquartered right here, no matter what you or anyone else who may follow
me has to say, I’ll sign the paper right now. You can keep whatever golden
parachute you’ve had in mind. But you’re not willing to do that, are you?”

Nobody answers.

I stand up and adjust my
tie. “It may just happen that you get me out of here and manage to screw
everyone we ever made a promise to, but you’re not there yet,” I tell them.
“For now, I want each of you to write me at least a page, but no more than two,
on ideas you have to save the company that don’t involve moving it overseas.”

“Homework, Nick?” Verne
asks. “Really?”

“Call it a show of good
faith,” I answer. “If nothing else, it’ll show the public that you at least
considered other options before you decided to screw the world.”

There’s nothing more to
say or do here, so I give one more glance to the board and walk out of the
room.

After telling Nolan, my
lead assistant, to hold my calls, I head into my office and shut the door.

This is really happening.
In the room, I project confidence because I can’t afford to look weak, but I’m
running out of moves. They’re going to remove me. The investors are behind it.
At the end of the day, that’s all that ever matters.

Where the hell is Jacque?

I pick up my office phone
and dial the number, but it just goes to voice mail. Jacque sold his shares not
long after our IPO made us—him, me, and a lot of others—very rich people. He
won’t answer my calls because he’s probably still mad at me for calling him a
coward and a traitor after he told me what he’d done.

That was before I ever
had this office. It was a while before I learned never to make things personal.
Of course, that’s a lesson I’ve found myself conveniently forgetting over the
last few months.

For now, I pour myself a
drink, sit in my fancy chair, and try to tattoo the view from this window into
my brain. It won’t be long until it’s nothing but a memory.

*
                   
*
                   
*

It’s after nine o’clock
and I’m still at the office when Nolan knocks on my door and shows himself into
the office.

“There’s a call for you
on line two,” he says, “someone named Naomi.”

“Take a message and then
tear it up,” I tell him. “Anything else?”

“She says it’s urgent,”
he tells me. “She said, ‘Something’s wrong with Ellie.’”

I press the button for
line two and pick up the phone, saying, “What happened?”

“Oh, hey Nick,” Naomi
says. “Yeah, so I just got to the beach house and there are a lot of people
here.”

“People?” I ask. “What do
you mean? Where’s Ellie?”

Naomi clicks her tongue,
saying, “I don’t think she’s doing so well. You should probably get here and
talk to her.”

“Is she all right,
though?” I ask. “What’s going on?”

“She’s fine …
physically,” Naomi says. “I don’t know. You should probably get here, though,”
she repeats.

I say, “I’m on my way,”
and I hang up the phone. Sending a quick text
to
Trevor
to let him know I’m on my way down, I leave the office. I try
calling Ellie’s phone a few times, but it just rings.

When we pull up to the
house, I’m more than a little surprised to see dozens of cars parked in the
long driveway.

I get out and tell Trevor
if I’m not back out in ten minutes, he can go home from the night. Music is
blaring so loud the doors, windows, and walls of the beach house do precious
little to dampen the sound.

The place is packed.

People smile and greet me
as I walk through, but none of them seems to know where Ellie is, though
everyone remembers seeing her at some point in a different part of the house.
Why any of these people are here, I don’t know.

 
After looking for ten minutes, I don’t find
Ellie, but I do find Naomi. She’s nursing a drink and chatting to Rave
McAllister, one of the only rock stars I still let into any of my homes. Most
of them think they’ve got to be Ozzy Osborne, snorting ants off the ground or
they don’t have any credibility. If that’s their thing, it’s fine. I just don’t
like being the one to clean it all up afterward. Rave’s okay, though.

“Naomi, have you seen
Ellie?” I ask.

Naomi doesn’t even look
at me, she just waves her hand in my general direction, I can only assume as an
attempt to dismiss me so she can keep talking to Rave.

I tap her on the shoulder
and she spins her head toward me, saying, “
What
?”

“Hey, Naomi,” I say,
“welcome to my home. Enjoying the party?” I nod to Rave who nods back.

“Oh, Nick,” Naomi says.
“Yeah, I think she’s out in the hot tub or something.”

“What’s the matter?” I
ask.

Naomi rolls her eyes.
“How should
I
know?” she asks. “Go
talk to her.” With that, she turns back to Rave.

I have tried to like that
woman, but I’m convinced it’s never going to happen.

Making my way out back, I
cross the deck and make my way around to the side by the pool, dodging people I
didn’t invite here all the way. My position is already weak as it is. I don’t
need it going public I’m throwing an A-list party while my company’s going
under.

First thing’s first,
though: I need to make sure Ellie’s all right.

I come around the side of
the house to find the pool dark, but filled with people and what has to be
almost as many crowded inside the hot tub. To be fair, the hot tub is just
about as big as the pool. As if the party wasn’t bad publicity enough, the only
clothes or bathing suits I see are collected in little piles around the water.

The few people who bother
to notice the lord of the manor’s home erupt in a cheer when they see me, but I
can’t find Ellie. I finally spot her about a quarter of the way around the hot
tub, talking to a semicircle of people.

She’s naked right along
with everyone else.

I walk around to where
Ellie has her back against the hot tub wall, and I set my hand on her shoulder.
She looks up at me, saying, “Hey, baby! We were just talking about you. Why
don’t you come in and join us?”

“Where did all these
people come from?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” she says.
“Ralph here says he’s from New Jersey, but I haven’t had a chance to get to
everyone yet.”

“Why is there a party at
my house and I don’t know about it?” I ask.

With that, everyone but
Ellie scatters. On their way out, it seems they fill others in because soon
it’s just
Ellie and me
.

“What’s your deal?” she
asks. “Andre and I thought it would be a good way to blow off some steam after
all that’s been going on lately.”

“Andre?” I ask. “You
called Andre Moriarty, just about the sleaziest guy making movies—and he
doesn’t even do porn—and the two of you decided to throw a party?” I ask. “Now,
when
everything
is hanging in the
balance?”