Bruised (Hunt Brothers Saga)

by Timothy S. Allen

  It was not a small temptation to stay in San Francisco. Morgan, for how much he had grown, still underestimated what I was capable of in terms of bullshitting my way into something I wanted. Not even Edwin Hunt could outwit me; almost no one I knew could. Only lust got in my way, which meant no man would ever fool me.

  Yes, it was Craig Taylor who had fucked me over, but that was a function of telling Layla too much before sex, not me spilling the beans at dinner.

  But Morgan had a point, even if he hadn’t made it directly. Andrew would not take kindly to overbearing prospectors—he wanted the soft sale, the gentle introduction, the slow kind of work. I couldn’t give that to him if I surprised him; put Edwin and me in the same room, and we’d both lose the sale.

  Maybe that would provide some gratification in fucking over Edwin, but it would be as short-term as a single breath, because in the very next one, he would find a way to make my life hell until the day he died. And then, maybe even beyond that.

  Begrudgingly, I got on the plane. But as I did, I made sure to send a couple of texts Andrew’s way so he wouldn’t forget us.

  “Enjoyed meeting you. Keep us in mind and don’t decide anything until you speak to anyone. If someone tries to pressure you on the spot, they’re not going to help you in the end.”

  I felt like that was warning enough for what Edwin Hunt would try to do. I had to hold my nose and pray that Andrew did not fall prey to his games.

  I had hope, but not much. I had a feeling my prayers wouldn’t be answered.

  Chapter Eight

  Two nerve-wracking weeks went by in which neither Morgan or I had the faintest of ideas what had happened or would happen with Virtual Realty.

  Morgan advised me that as soon as Edwin Hunt got back, he bragged about how he had the deal in the bag and that nothing would prevent him from signing with Hunt Industries, but both of us knew better than to fall for that talk. Edwin Hunt was many things, but an honest truth teller was not one of them. If he felt that he could buy the moon, he would tell everyone he had until someone showed incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.

  And even then, it was no guarantee.

  Andrew responded to my message from the plane saying he would definitely do so, but other than that, our conversation was sporadic and rare. I had to have an ironic laugh at myself when I realized that this was probably how Layla felt reaching out to me—she kept hoping I would respond with positive news, but because of where I stood, I wasn’t going to give her much.

  It was the same damn thing with Andrew. I kept texting him hoping to hear that he had interest in working with us, but I wouldn’t get anything. I had to rely on the hope that he would not fall for Edwin’s lies and manipulations, but it was just that. Hope. Nothing more.

  Morgan, though, started to take it worse. He would text much more frequently, and when I heard him on the phone, he sounded like a man in prison who was there for all the wrong reasons. I was always glad to never have had to work for Hunt Industries, but hearing Morgan now made me even more grateful that I had declined all of the offers from Mr. Hunt to join his company. If his only natural son felt like a slave, how would I have felt? How would anyone at the company have felt?

  More than once, I let myself look at reviews of working at the company. I have to admit, I felt some degree of schaudenfreude when I saw the negative reviews complaining about Mr. Hunt, but it’s not like it did any good. Edwin Hunt was printing money so fast that he could have taken five decades off and he still would have enough money to retire. Such as was the nature of being a billionaire.

  I still remained vigilant in doing my work at home, but aside from a couple of mediocre leads, I didn’t really have much to do. Morgan wasn’t that interested in the small fry, either. In fact, I began to believe that he saw the investment in Virtual Realty as his “Get out of Jail” card from Hunt Industries and had merely given me Claire and Rising Sun to get my feet wet and my confidence boosted. It wouldn’t surprise me if he intended to sell our share of Rising Sun within two years.

  Things really came to a head, though, at the end of the second week when Morgan came over to my apartment, a rarity.

  I had ordered pizza in anticipation of his arrival and had a hot pie of extra cheese, pepperoni, and mushrooms waiting for him, but Morgan looked stricken with disease when he walked in. He didn’t even acknowledge the pizza. I grabbed a slice as if to remind him by sight what I had, but he did nothing.

  Instead, he plopped on the couch, groaned, and placed his head into his hands. Knowing just the trick to cheer him up, I poured him some whiskey and placed it by his hand. Except not even this cheered him up.

  I began to feel paranoid by his defeated body language that we’d been found out. My mind began to shift to all of the places we could go—maybe Australia, maybe San Francisco, maybe somewhere in Europe. Just any place but the finance capital of the world. Anyplace Edwin Hunt would not be.

  “Dude, what’s going on?” I said.

  Morgan didn’t say anything.

  “I need to quit. I need to quit right now.”

  I had tremendous sympathy for Morgan, but to be honest, I don’t think I could have heard a better line considering his face. I was fully ready for him to say that Edwin would be coming over to announce we were out of the family, or at the very least that Andrew had chosen Edwin’s firm to be the investors for this round of funding.

  But quitting? Morgan could survive that, no matter how stressful it was.

  It was interesting, though, how quickly he had come to that conclusion. For as much insanity as had happened in the last three months, it had only been three damn months. Most places didn’t have anything of that degree happen in three years, let alone three months.

  “I should have listened to you all these years, warning me about joining my father’s firm and saying you wanted to do it on your own,” Morgan said, finally grabbing the whiskey. “I always thought you were crazy. Who wouldn’t want to take over a ten-figure company? Well, you had a point. It sucks being Edwin Hunt’s son.”

  He took a big gulp.

  “First, I told you so,” I teased, which brought a slight smile to Morgan’s lips. Good, it was what I had hoped for. If he had reacted more negatively, we would’ve been in a world of hurt. “Second, I know you want to quit, but we need to finish that deal with Andrew.”

  “I know, I know,” Morgan said.

  I don’t know that I’d ever seen him be that tired and that weak. He looked like a man beaten down not just in the course of a single day or a single work assignment but over the duration of several months—which was not even the full picture, given that he’d been less of a son to Edwin Hunt and more of a family intern.

  It was a shame, really. If Morgan controlled Hunt Industries, it would almost certainly be run more ethically. God knows it would’ve been under my watch.

  Our watch...

  “Third...”

  My voice trailed off as an idea so insane, so crazy that it almost seemed dangerous, came to mind. What I would soon be proposing was an idea verging on insanity—telling Edwin Hunt to fuck off to his face seemed less dangerous than this.

  But on the other hand...

  “What if we found a way to take control of Hunt Industries?”

  “I’m sorry, come again?”

  Morgan’s face looked like I had just told him we needed to swim to the bottom of the ocean and fight sharks with nothing more than our pinkie fingers. The analogy was a little more apt than I had intended for it to be.

  “This investment, you and I both know that it’s the kind of game changer that could become an infamous Silicon Valley unicorn someday, right?” I said. “It’s poorly run right now, but if we get Andrew to agree to let us come on in some fashion, it’ll make us billionaires in no time. I don’t think there’s any disagreement in that regard. When that happens... what if we buy enough stock to get seats on the board? What if we buy enough stock through Morgan & Chance Holdings to make decisions and
eventually force Edwin off the company?”

  The more I thought about it, the more I not only liked it, I loved it. I admit, some pettiness played a part in this. Edwin Hunt thought in terms of months and a couple of years, but I was looking at the truly long picture. So long as the old man didn’t croak, he wasn’t going to leave his namesake company until he died. Though he was definitely on the older side, in his early 70s, he wasn’t a man who looked to be on the verge of dying anytime soon. He had some chunks on him, sure, but it wasn’t like he was the picture of obesity.

  The idea of using this to get back at him for what he did to me with Layla... what he threatened to do to me for refusing a job with him... oh, how delicious that would be.

  I also knew right away it would destroy the family dynamic and produce a hell of a lot of lawsuits. Morgan would have his own troubles to face, and if he refused this idea, then my fantasy would remain just that, never extending beyond the maniacal thoughts in my mind. But... I mean, how could I not think about it?

  “I think I heard you, but say it one more time,” Morgan said, as if I had just changed his life with my words. “You want to take over Hunt Industries in a hostile takeover. For real. Seriously?”

  “Why not?” I said, trying to speak faster than my mind could consider the insanity of what I had just proposed. “As much as we dislike the business relationship with your father, he does have an enormous collection of assets and this company is extraordinarily valuable. If we take it over, we get to keep the Hunt name so it makes sense. And maybe your father will hate your guts, but we’ll be nice enough to give him the dignity of a gracious exit while we do it as a hostile move in private.”

  Morgan just laughed in between sips of his whiskey.

  “He would never forgive that,” Morgan said.

  “Yeah, but in a way, he would respect it,” I said, even though I knew both of us were right. “He would realize we had just pulled off the greatest deal ever without him ever realizing it. He may hate us, but he’ll respect the move.”

  “Begrudgingly and hatefully,” Morgan said, though he did not disagree.

  My phone buzzed on my counter again, but I ignored it. I had no intentions of speaking to either Layla or Claire tonight. I had to deal with Morgan for right now and our future, especially since our future seemed to be getting bolder and more aggressive by the minute.

  “Let’s do it like this,” I said. “Let’s focus on those middling companies that can become hot shots like Virtual Realty. The decision is still a ways off. I still speak to Andrew and he has not said a word yet about choosing anyone else. Has he to you?”

  “Not yet.”

  “So we’re still good there. This is going to have to simmer a bit, so we can’t act now, but when we get Virtual Realty—”

  I had not said if on purpose. It was not by accident that I said when.

  “We will have direct oversight and help it grow and grow. When it’s big enough, we sell off enough to make a hostile takeover of Hunt Industries.”

  “We’ll need to do it swiftly and in one action,” Morgan said.

  I liked that he was already thinking in terms not of whether to make the move, but how to make the move. Granted, I’m sure this wasn’t the end of his deciding whether or not to do it—undoubtedly, we would have many more conversations like this in which I would have to convince him of the need to do this takeover.

  But that on the first night, it had already happened...

  “If we wait at all or if we go slowly, then Edwin will see it and he’ll just buy all the stock himself,” Morgan said. “He’ll laugh at us and then make a mockery of us to the board, even if we do have seats on it.”

  “Unfortunately, very true,” I said.

  It was striking that Morgan could see so clearly on his father how this would go. I wondered just how much he wasn’t saying in terms of how he felt. Something that had not yet come up but was slowly entering my mind was how Mrs. Hunt would react to all of this.

  I loved Mrs. Hunt, I really did. I never had any feelings of any kind toward Edwin, but I would have done anything for Mrs. Hunt. I knew if this happened, she would feel like she was caught in the middle of a vortex, pulled apart at the seams as she tried desperately to hold a family together that, she had subtly suggested to me a few years ago, never should have existed in the first place. And it wasn’t fair to her in the slightest.

  It almost made emotional to think about it, but it had to be done. I had to do it for all of the things Edwin Hunt had done to my life.

  “Chance, you are one crazy motherfucker,” Morgan said. “Like, those words undersell it. You’re a fucking deranged motherfucker for thinking you can do a hostile takeover of my father’s firm. Which is precisely why I’m so intrigued by this idea.”

  He stood up, brushed off his suit, and did something he should have done when he walked in.

  He grabbed a slice of pizza.

  Finally, Morgan showed some of that same glimmer I’d come to associate with him.

  “We won’t be acting on it anytime soon,” I reminded him. “My guess would be the soonest we can do this would be in five years.”

  “I know,” Morgan said. “But this gives us something to shoot for. It’s an idea. It’s...”

  It was indescribable. But it was audacious, daring, and more than a little bit of proof that we weren’t dependent upon Edwin Hunt for all our success. We could topple the tyrant instead of just inheriting the throne the easy way.

  “It’s necessary,” I said with a smile.

  Chapter Nine

  Morgan and I had more than a few drinks that evening to celebrate the idea that had come to mind and its potential effects.

  As we drank, we shifted to less serious topics, including which girls we were chasing, what shows we’d recently been watching, and what we planned to do with all the money we’d soon be making. I mentioned that Claire had probably come on to me, but I emphasized that I was being overly cautious after what happened with Layla. Morgan did not seem flustered or bothered by what I had said in the slightest and just told me to be careful.

  It was an easy enough recommendation, and when Morgan left, I was feeling all sorts of giddy and excited. We had a long-term goal, one that would make us both wealthy and satisfied. We would win out over Edwin Hunt, whose deals had become too short-sighted to succeed against our long-term plan.

  But in the state of drunken arousal that I was in, I did something that Morgan had warned me not to do but I did anyways.

  I set up drinks with Claire the next night.

  IT WASN’T LIKE I WAS blacked out when I made the suggestion. It wasn’t like I was surprised when I woke up and saw I had suggested drinks at 8 p.m. that evening. In fact, I was much closer to being sober when I made the text than drunk. I knew exactly what I was doing.

  I just wanted to celebrate, even if the celebration put me in a position of something resembling danger. I just told myself to be careful and to keep Claire at arm’s length if she tried to flirt.

  I tried not to think about why I had really messaged her too much, knowing if I did, I probably wouldn’t like the answer. I wouldn’t like the idea that I was feeling a bit lonely and wanting the intimacy, no matter how fake it was, from Layla.

  Nevertheless, when the evening rolled around, I made sure to dress my finest, throwing on a crisp white button down shirt, nice slacks, some sharp, black wingtip shoes, and a nice but not extravagant watch. I shaved my neck but not my face, the better to give the appearance of some sexy scruff, and made sure I wore my finest cologne. I may have said I didn’t want to attract that kind of attention from Claire, but it sure didn’t seem like it.

  I didn’t mind, though. I could always say I was just dressing to impress a business client. Even if the truth...

  I didn’t let my mind go into it too much, however. I realized how much I had shifted since my first encounter with her, when not only had I not seen her as someone I could pursue, I didn’t even find her all that at
tractive. Funny how things changed so quickly... and so desperately when I wasn’t getting any because of my work and my social life.

  When I showed up at the bar, I flashed a big smile as I saw Claire in the back. Notably, she wore a slightly seductive dress, one that revealed more of her chest than before. She was far from sexualizing herself as Layla had, but it was a sharp departure from the business, button-down Claire that I had known up to this point.

  “Glad you could join,” she said as she hugged me. “I began to think you would never make the offer.”

  Ouch. But... playful. That’s a departure.

  “Well, I did make the offer, we just had to work on finalizing it.”

  I was speaking to the business offer that served as the pretense for us meeting up tonight. I had a bad feeling about where we were actually heading. And honestly... the feeling wasn’t that “bad.”

  We sat down and I was surprised to see Claire slide me a gin and soda.

  “I know what you like, why wait?”

  Well, at least part of her was true to form. I took a sip, savored it, and smiled at her.

  “Well, I think this is going to be the start of something delightful,” I said. “It’s hard to have a bad night when you’re indulging in a drink as good as this.”

  “I would say so,” Claire said. “So Morgan told me you were in San Francisco.”

  Morgan told you, huh? I wasn’t sure whether to be alarmed or not by this bit of news. I was more curious as to whether or not Morgan and Claire had discussed me in any further detail. Going to San Francisco in and of itself was far from a big deal. Going to San Francisco and gossiping about me in further detail... that might have meant something else.

  “I did,” I said. “When business beckons, we have to move.”

  “Seems like it’s less we and more you,” she said with a soft chuckle, a rare addition of emotion considering her normal silence and straightforwardness. “Chance Hunt, criss-crossing the country, making deals, left and right.”