Stingray Billionaire: The Complete Series (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) (25 page)

What I need here tonight
is a tentative yes, or at least an indication there won’t be any sort of
obstruction to what I have in mind. Even with the contract that removed me from
my position, the board hasn’t taken care of everything. Still, if they all get
their lawyers on this before there’s some credible indication they’ll do what
they need to do, then tonight’s a waste of time. I just need something I can
hold them to when they try to fight this.

After wiping my mouth, I
tap the glass again with the fork.

Eight people laugh and
Ellie just rolls her eyes. That’s the difference between a drunk audience and a
sober audience.

“Well,” I say, “we’re
about to bring out dessert, but before we do, I just want to tell you how
pleasant it’s been having you all here. I know we’ve had our ups and downs,
especially recently, but there’s no reason we can’t be civil with one another.”

“Hear, hear!” Handler
shouts.

Yeah, they’re drunk.

“Now, I know I said
earlier the night didn’t have to be all business, but if you’ll indulge me one
brief aberration, we can get right on to dessert,” I say.

Eight people, though
drunk and charmed, all seem to clench up at the same time.

“Don’t worry,” I say. “I
have no interest in trying to get back in with Stingray.”

They relax, but not much.

“I know I don’t have
rights as chairman of the board, but I would like to propose someone as my
replacement as chief executive,” I tell them. “Why don’t you come on out?” I
call toward the front room.

It’s supposed to be this
shocking reveal that has everyone so flabbergasted they crumble without a
fight, but as Jacque is making his grand entrance, the toe of his shoe catches
the floor just wrong and he barely stops himself falling completely.

Jacque’s three steps
further into the room when he removes his suit coat and lets it drop to the
floor. He’s loosening his tie as he says, “I told you, Niko, I hate these
stupid clothes.”

Yeah, that’s right,
board. Tremble in fear.

“Why did we have to do
this all dramatic anyway?” he asks. “You know I hate talking in front of
people.”

This is why I was CEO
instead of Jacque. He’s more of a free spirit than a businessman. At least
that’s the bullshit line he’s been feeding people forever.

Reeves says, “As
confidence-inspiring as all this is, you’re forgetting that Mr. Snodgrass—”

Ellie nearly chokes on
her wine. “I’m sorry,” she says, covering her mouth, “please continue.”

“As I was saying,” Reeves
continues, “though Mr. Snodgrass—”

Ellie starts tittering.

Reeves looks over at her
and clears his throat. “While
Jacque
—”

Ellie’s cackling loudly
now, and it looks like this Hail Mary is going straight out of bounds.

“I am
so
sorry,” she says. She’s still
covering her mouth, but she hasn’t quite managed to stop laughing. “It’s just
the contrast,” she says. “I didn’t know that was his—please continue.”

Whether this is some
off-the-cuff new strategy or not, Reeves is starting to get flustered and
nobody else seems to want to jump in. Finally, Verne says, “You can drag us
through this if ya want, Nick, but it ain’t gonna matter.”

“Actually,” I say, “it
does.”

I look over to Jacque,
still the inappropriately-named, gangly white boy he’s always been. He sighs
loudly. I just hope he’s remembered the remarks he wrote beforehand. He does
not improvise well.

“I know a lot of you are
surprised to see me tonight,” he says, his voice flat. “As you know, I am not
known for knowing everything.”

And he’s off-script. I
discreetly nudge him with my elbow.

“Right,” he says.

I was hoping the nudge
would get him back on track, but instead, he reaches into the back pocket of
his baggy slacks and pulls out a piece of paper with handwriting on it. He
starts reading directly from it. “As you know, I am not known for having all
the answers any more than any of you. However, when this business was started,
there were a few key principles that set us apart. One of those, as you well
know, was the principal that if we couldn’t afford to take care of our people,
we had no right being in business. It’s no secret you’re planning to move the
company to …” he trails off and lifts his thick glasses. “Oh,” he says, “China,
but this goes against the very foundation of who and what Stingray is, was and
should be.”

Reeves says, “Mr.
Snodgrass, if you wanted—”

Ellie snorts with
laughter, saying, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“If you wanted to take
control of the company,” Reeves says, “why is it you didn’t come forward before
now?”

“Right,” Jacque says, and
moves his index finger in a straight line down the page. “Ah, here it is,” he
says.

At this point, I’m not
even sure I want Jacque as CEO.

“I was concerned that any
movement on my part to step in to replace Nikolai while he was chief executive
officer would undermine his position. I hope you all know I support his work to
keep the company here,” he says.

Geraldine says, “I think
we’re all avoiding the elephant in the room. I don’t mean to be cruel, Jacque,
but as one of your many duties as CEO, you would be a very public face of the
company.”

“That’s the whole point,
don’t you get it?” Ellie asks. “He’s going to be the public head of your
company, so when you announce Stingray’s staying here, your whole public image
gets an overhaul. He’s stepping in to protect the employees of the company.
Tell me, how does that play in the press?” she asks. “I’m sure between the ten
of you, we can work out the minor issues. The fact is, by his very presence at
the helm, Stingray recovers all the trust you’ve lost fighting among each other
these last months.” Ellie takes a sip of her drink. “Also, he’s got robot
Pomeranians, and they are
adorable
.”

I forgot to tell Yako to
give Ellie grape juice instead of wine.

“She has a point,” I say.
“In fact, I’d say it’s the only thing that makes sense. If you move the
company, it might go under, it might not, but you’re also forgetting that it’s
in the bylaws, and you haven’t replaced me as CEO to be able to overturn it.”

“Nominate me CEO,” Verne
says.

“No,” Reeves objects,
“you’d run the company into the ground!”

“Oh, like you’d do any
better?” Verne shoots back.

“I’d do a lot better than
you,” Reeves says.

Mason starts in with,
“I’m the vice-president. Doesn’t it only make sense I should be CEO?”

Then Geraldine says,
“I’ve been doing your work since they dropped you in a chair and put a suit on
you.”

They go back and forth,
undercutting each other with every breath and basically proving to me, if not
to themselves, that none of them can take the position. Even if one of the
members were to get it, the other seven would always be there plotting.

After a few minutes, I
nudge Jacque and tell him, “Step in. Quiet the room. Show them you’re a
leader.”

Jacque nods and says,
“Hey, everybody?” Nobody looks up, so he says, “Hey guys, let’s all be quiet
now.”

This isn’t working.

Ellie whistles loudly
with two fingers in her mouth. We’re all covering our ears as she politely nods
toward Jacque.

Verne is saying, “Jesus!”

Jacque says, “If you’ll
read the relevant section of the bylaws…”

Marly comes in, does what
she’s supposed to do by setting a copy of the bylaws in front of each board
member, and leaves the room. I was starting to forget what it’s like when
things go as they’re supposed to.

“We’re all aware of this,
but while we’re fighting it in court, the company’s going to lose everything,”
Reeves says.

“So don’t do that to the
company,” Ellie says. “You may be able to retire and make sure your grandkids’
grandkids are taken care of, but replacing Nick with Jacque is the only way out
of this now. It’s obvious this is what you should do. Otherwise,
you
will be blamed for it. The three of
us will make sure of it.”

The room is silent.

Everyone’s looking
around, but nobody wants to be the first to have an opinion.

Jacque says, “By the way,
while I’ve been away from Stingray, I haven’t stopped working. I got a lot of
really cool stuff, but if I have to take it somewhere else, I guess that’s just
the way it goes.”

Whoever teaches Jacque to
talk in front of people cannot possibly get paid enough for the chore.

Reeves looks around the
table at each board member individually, still placing himself above them. They
all fall in line, though.

“It appears we don’t have
a choice,” Reeves says. “I would prefer we don’t make the announcement until—”

“Yeah,” I interrupt.
“We’ll find someone to work with him.”

This has been the most
stressful night of my life.

Epilogue

Kola Kitanabu

Ellie

We’re sitting on the
beach, Nick and I. I’m lazily watching the deep ocean waters swell in the
distance.

It’s been one year since
Jacque took the helm at Stingray and the company’s prospering. I
am
still waiting for my own robot
Pomeranian, though.

Everywhere around me,
things are so well-kept. When Nick gave that money to the people of Kola
Kitanabu, they put it to good use. No one’s building a mansion in this
rainforest.

People still recognize
Nick everywhere, but thankfully, fewer recognize me. In the States, some people
walk up to Nick to shake his hand while others walk up to tell him what a jerk
they think he is.

I guess that’s the way
it’s going to be, though.

Right now, Nick and I are
celebrating our engagement. I have to say, with all his money and taste, I was
hoping for more than the standard down-on-one-knee with a ring proposal, but
he’s got a while to make it up to me.

I reach over and snatch
my champagne glass and take a sip.

It’d be great to say we
never had to deal with Stingray anymore, but even as Jacque has brought the
company all the way around and even started breaking internal profit records,
he still calls Nick at least once a day to ask advice on how to deal with this
person or that. At least they got him to talk in front of people without
sounding like an angsty teenager.

It took a while.

Max is standing at the
edge of the shore, biting at the waves as they come over him. Sammie’s pooping
in the sand. This is the life.

Naomi steps to the side
of my beach lounger and says, “Trevor has the car ready whenever the two of you
would like to go.”

For the last six months,
Naomi’s been my personal bodyguard. I know they say it’s not a job for family,
but at the same time, she’s the most conniving person I know, and if anyone’s
going to try anything, she will have already thought of it first.

“Are you just going to sit
there drinking or are you going to acknowledge that I’m speaking to you?” she
asks.

I look over at Nick. He
says, “Thank you, Naomi. That should be all for now.”

My sister walks off with
a grunt and I finally ask the question. “Why don’t you like Naomi?” I ask.
“You’ve been civil with her for a long time now, but you didn’t like her from
the first time I introduced you to her.”

“That was the first time
you introduced me to her,” he says, “but it wasn’t the first time I met her. At
Mulholland Junior High, the jocks were the worst to me physically, but she was
the worst to me psychologically. It wasn’t even a race, either. She was just
flat-out brutal.”

“Yeah, but what did she
do?” I ask. “She must have done something to make you hold that grudge so
long.”

“I’d rather not talk
about it,” he says.

I clear my throat and
hold up my left hand, making a big show of his diamond ring on my finger.

He sighs. “I was in drama
class one day, and she was in there talking to one of her friends. She wasn’t
even in the class, but she was always in there anyway. It always bugged me that
the teachers just went along with it.”

“That’s it?” I ask.

His face goes a deep
shade of red, but he says, “Yeah.” In a rushed voice, he says, “That’s what it
was. They just let her get away with everything.”

“I don’t buy it,” I tell
him. “What’d she do?”

“We had a substitute
teacher one day,” he says. “Her name was Miss Trilby, and despite the fact she
was teaching teenagers, she wasn’t too cautious about the way she dressed. So
I’m sitting there and I have to ask her this question, but I don’t want to
because I had a raging boner from staring at her chest from the back of the
classroom and I didn’t want her to know. But I was a teenager, and she was
wearing a very low-cut top, and it was making it impossible for me to pay
attention to what she was actually teaching.”

“You’ve really come a
long way, haven’t you?” I tease.

He rolls his eyes. “Long
story short, Naomi noticed and she didn’t just blab, she pointed. I was there
with my legs crossed and a coat on my lap, but everyone was laughing and Miss
Trilby was up there with a red face, shaking her head.”

“Oh my god,” I say,
setting my champagne glass back on the small table between and behind us. “
You’re
the kid Naomi was calling the
lumberjack.” I start laughing. Even though I know Nick does not appreciate it,
I can’t help myself.

“Yeah,” he says. “Was it
the worst thing to ever happen to me? Probably not, but it sure as hell felt
like it at the time.”

“So,” I say, “are you
about ready to call it a night? It is getting pretty late if we’re going to
catch that plane back home to New York.”

After much deliberation,
I decided we should keep the beach house.

“Yeah,” he says looking
at me, a smile crossing those tempting full lips.

He holds up his glass,
and I don’t know what’s going to happen. All the forethought in the world
wouldn’t have prepared me for any of this.

Picking up my champagne
flute, I clink glasses with Nick.

I’m not sure what the
future will hold. I’m just glad we’ll be meeting it together.

Somewhere behind us,
Naomi is shouting, “Will you come on already? It’s getting dark and I’m wearing
sunglasses!”

I have to chuckle as I
say the words, “So I’m marrying the lumberjack, huh?”

Nick groans.

“It’s okay, honey,” I
tell him. “I’ve got your back.”

I whistle and Max comes
running. He stops just in front of me, his tail wagging.

I lean forward, saying,
“Max, do you see Naomi?”

Max looks past me toward
the car.

I ask Max, “Do you want
to give her kisses even though we all know she hates that?”

Max licks my arm and wags
his tail even harder than before.

“Good boy,” I say. “Now
get her!
”

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BILLIONAIRE’S
TRUST

By
Alexa Davis

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
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CHAPTER
ONE

Dax

"
What
the hell is wrong with you, Beck?" I
yelled. "You fuck up everything you lay your hands on!"

"Aww, c'mon,
Dax," he said with a hangdog look. "I didn't do it on purpose. It's
not that big of a deal, only a couple of ounces got lost."

"Lost my
ass," I said as I rubbed my eyes and then looked at him. "Beck, I
don't care if you are my fucking brother, if you don't get your shit straight
and run your business right, I'm gonna fuckin' kill you."

"Dax, it's
not my fault," he whined. "I sold the stuff the way you told me, it's
just that your connection shorted me on the buy."

"Bullshit,"
I said. "He's never once shorted me before. This is your fuck up and your
fuck up alone. Get your shit straight, Beck, or I'm gonna have to do something
you're not gonna like."

"Fine,
whatever," he said as he turned and walked across the empty floor. He
stopped before he got to the door and turned to look at me as he spoke.
"You're not always going to be on top, you know, big brother. Someday,
someone is going to come along and knock you off your throne and then where
will you be, huh?"

"Let them
try," I said as I held his gaze. He looked away first and then shoved the
door open with a loud bang before walking out into the street.

I turned to the
figure sitting in the shadows and said, "Keep an eye on him, Riza. He's
gonna fuck things up for all of us, I just know it."

"Don't be too
hard on him, boss," she said as she stood up and stretched. "He's
young and wants to impress you."

"That may be,
but I'm not going to risk the entire business for his growth opportunity,"
I said. My younger brother was a Class A screw up and had been his entire life.
It wasn't entirely his fault.

We'd spent the
first years of our lives in a violent home before my father, a failed inventor,
shot my mother, a financial analyst, and himself and left us orphans. We'd been
placed with my father's mother, an Irish woman who ran a grocery store on San
Pedro and lived in a shack behind the store. We didn't know it at the time, but
she was in the early stages of dementia and often left the store closed up and
us to fend for ourselves while she wandered out into the streets on Skid Row
looking for a way back to her hometown of Dublin.

When she was home,
it was obvious why my father had ended up the way he had and why we rarely saw
my grandmother while he was still alive. She held the firm belief that children
who were heard rather than seen should be severely punished in ways that would
have horrified even the toughest disciplinarian. Gram hated Beck and often
punished him for minor infractions that I was allowed to get away with.
Needless to say, I looked forward to the days when she'd disappear and leave us
on our own. They were a respite from the torment and abuse.

With no one to
check up on us, I quickly got used to being the protector and provider. We
didn't really have to struggle much, since my grandmother was well connected in
the neighborhood and people looked out for us, but it took awhile for Beck and
I to figure out the system. By the time my parents died, we were living in an
abandoned house that had no running water or electricity. The switch to the
Grand brought us into a different world that was more consistent in many ways,
but still left us on our own for long stretches of time.

Gram had little
interest in us, aside from ordering us to stock shelves or haul boxes into the
storage area from the truck that arrived every Monday. She didn't bother to buy
us any clothes or toys or even register us for school.

I had to figure
all of that out on my own.

We moved in with
my grandmother when I was ten and Beck was eight. By the end of the first week,
I knew which neighbors would feed us without asking questions and which ones
were inclined to call nosy social workers. I learned to call Elsa, the woman
who ran the liquor store on the corner of 6
^th
Street and who knew my
grandmother the best, and let her know that Gram was gone again. Elsa was the
one who helped me order clothing for Beck and I and register us both for
school. I quickly became wheeler-dealer and, as a result, I was able to
maintain a good front and keep people from asking too many questions, despite
the oddness of our living situation.

Beck was too young
to know just how strange our situation was, but he quickly learned to follow my
lead and do as I told him. He knew that not following directions would often
lead to something terrible, so he became both cautious and reckless in the way
he behaved. At home, he was a silent child who hid in the storage room or a
closet to avoid the wrath of Gram, but at school, he was a hellion who refused
to follow the rules or even stay in his seat. On more than one occasion, I'd
been called out of class to go to Beck's classroom and deal with his
misbehavior, since I was the only one he'd listen to. It was exhausting caring
for both of us, but I didn't see any other option. So I shouldered the burden
and did the best I could to ensure that we were fed, clothed, and had a roof
over our heads.

 
By the time I was twelve, I was playing dice
with the neighborhood hustlers in back alleys. They taught me about smoking,
drugs, drinking, and what little they knew about women. As a result, I never
touched the first two, but the last two, well, I always say I've never met a
drink I wouldn't sip and a woman I couldn't enjoy. The problem was that I also
learned not to trust anyone.

Except for Riza.
I'd met her on the streets when we were twelve, and she'd quickly decided I was
her best friend. She was taller than most of the boys in our neighborhood and
her exotic looks, thanks to her Honduran father and Moroccan mother, gave her
face a mysterious look of danger. It also helped that her father was a known
drug lord during the ’70s and had a reputation for "disappearing"
anyone who dared cheat or disagree with him. Riza was his pride and joy, and
since I was her best friend, he trusted me.