The Billionaire Series Collection

by Lila Monroe

  “Perhaps it sounds strange to you that I should call a company beautiful,” Portia said. “After all, it is not a word one usually associates with strength. But consider the great white shark: a graceful, merciless, ruthless engine intent on seeking out its prize. It does precisely what it was engineered to do, with speed and efficiency, with no apology to those too slow or unworthy to avoid it or get out of its way. Is it not beautiful? Is there no poetry in it, no art?”

  “What the hell kind of strategy is this?” I hissed in a strangled whisper to Grant. “Does she think this is a poetry open mic at a coffee shop?”

  “She’s playing on their emotions,” he muttered back through gritted teeth. “Building them up to make them feel like apex predators, then serving them up a nice plump bit of prey they can rip apart until it bleeds to death.”

  I cast my eyes over the audience, and I was disheartened to see that he was right. Many of them were sitting straighter as they took in her words, their eyes starting to shine. If she persuaded too many people, swayed too many of our supporters back over to her side…

  “Yes, Devlin Media Corp was once a thing of great beauty,” Portia said. “But we failed in our responsibilities. We grew bloated and complacent.”

  The picture behind her changed, showing the company headquarters, but through a dark filter that made the building look dirty, and shot at a bad angle, so that the towers were slightly obscured by the smoke from a fast food restaurant. I silently cursed the Photoshop gods.

  “We began to think like a charity instead of a business,” she went on.

  The picture changed to show an overweight family of six sitting on a couch, watching a television. I recognized the woman; she was one of the most friendly cafeteria workers we’d ever had. I’d missed her when she’d had to go on leave due to a broken leg, but thanks to her health insurance package, she’d been able to come back to work within a few months. How the hell had Portia gotten a picture of her family? That was slimy as hell.

  “We began to throw money at spongers, wastrels, programs that were inessential to the core of our mission, of our purpose.”

  Charts went up along the screen, blaring fire engine red lines showing steadily nose-diving profits. Until you looked at the scale, of course, and realized that Portia had manipulated the graph to give an inaccurate impression, but most of the audience was sitting too far away to see how she had labeled the x and y axes, and she rapidly clicked past it anyway, before even the people close to her could have given it much scrutiny.

  Especially if their eyes were on her face, which she had now set in an expression of noble determination, her shoulders squared as if she were an Amazon warrior given one final mission for the good of all.

  “But Devlin Media Corp can become a thing of beauty again,” Portia said, her voice ringing across the room like a call to battle. “We can once again honor the vision of our founder. We can once again compete in the global marketplace!”

  “We never stopped,” I muttered.

  “Portia doesn’t want competition,” Grant muttered back. “She just wants to crush everyone else and make a throne out of their skulls. I can’t believe I was so blind!”

  I brought his hand to my lips and pressed a kiss to it. “You wanted to believe the best of her. That’s not a crime, or a weakness. That’s just you being a good man.”

  “And thanks to my goodness, thousands of people may be about to lose their livelihoods,” Grant said tightly.

  Onstage, Portia was in full stride now. “This isn’t a takeover from Pinker Inc. This is a chance to reclaim our company’s birthright! This is a chance to enter into this century, onto this world stage, as a power to be reckoned with!”

  She raised her fist as if she were planning to smash all that stood in her way.

  “Once we’ve shed the detritus accumulated over the years, our profit margins will soar. Our business will operate at peak efficiency, delivering results that no one can argue with. We will become faster, brighter, better. With the help of Pinker Inc., we will become a giant in this economy, and no one will be able to stop us!”

  Thunderous applause greeted this pronouncement, and my stomach dropped down to my shoes. I tried to tune out Portia’s final words as she wrapped things up with more misleading statistics and an analysis that would have gotten thrown out of an Econ 101 course—but that I was still afraid the shareholders would listen to, motivated by her rhetoric and her promise of future profit.

  Grant was looking nervous too, and I knew that I had to help him. I took his other hand and pulled him so that he was facing me, not the lying hell-beast onstage.

  “Babe.” I tugged at his arms until he looked me in the eye. “Okay, she got a head start. But I know you can turn it around.”

  He shook his head, defeat creeping into his posture. “I wish I shared your faith.”

  “Hey!” I said. “Listen to me. You are Grant Fucking Devlin. You’ve got a smile that could sell every brand of toothpaste in America, a head of hair that could let a politician get away with slapping a baby, an ass that could make an entire convent of nuns reconsider their life choices—”

  Grant was trying not to laugh. “I’m not sure those are the qualities the shareholders are looking for, Lacey.”

  “You’re likeable and persuasive, was the point I was making,” I said with a little glare to make the ‘Lacey is giving you a motivational speech, so shut up’ subtext more apparent.

  “More importantly, you have two other qualities: a head and a heart. All this research we’ve been doing, you know this company backwards and forwards, not just the flashy surface stuff like Portia does. And you love this company—which is something Portia the Robot From Planet Cut-Throat will never understand. And that’s why she’ll lose, because she’s fighting for money, but you…you’re fighting what you believe in. And that makes you stronger than she could ever dream of.”

  Grant reached out and gently stroked a strand of hair over my ear. My breath caught in my throat.

  “Thank you, Lacey,” he said quietly. “I don’t know what I would do without you.”

  For a second, time seemed to stand still. There was only him, and me, and the look that passed between us.

  Then I couldn’t resist making one more point.

  “Plus, you have an accent,” I added. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Americans? We go crazy for accents. Especially if they’re vaguely British.”

  Grant got a pained look on his face. “I’m Australian, it’s entirely different—”

  “I know, I know, you’re a former penal colony, you’re all descended from convicts, it’s very sexy, now go! They’re calling your name!” I gave him a little push towards the stage where the moderator was announcing the next presentation.

  Grant leaned forward and pressed a kiss to my lips, passionate and full of the promise of more to come.

  And then he was striding onstage, all nervousness shed like an ill-fitting coat, and my heart began to beat so rapidly I could have been mistaken for a hummingbird.

  This was it. Everything that happened from here on out would be riding on this moment.

  The crowd knew it too, and a hush greeted his arrival.

  Grant looked out over the soaring crowd that controlled his destiny, and that of his company, tonight—and gave a sheepish grin.

  “Hey, guys?” he called up to the tech booth. “Can you kill the feed to the screens? I’ve changed my mind about what I want to say.”

  Wait, what? We had been working on this speech up to the last minute—if he just chucked it and—

  Breathe, Lacey. You love this man. Now, you have to trust him too.

  The screen behind Grant went dark, and the only light was the spotlight shining down on him. It should have made him look small. But somehow, Grant seemed to absorb the light and radiate it out from himself even stronger, as if an angel had descended from the heavens to walk among mere mortals.

  Grant strolled to the edge of the stage. A
ll eyes were on him, wondering what his next move would be. He spoke conversationally, barely raising his voice, and yet it rang clearly through the complete silence as his audience listened, rapt.

  “Ms. Smith’s done some pretty fancy talking just now about the numbers. And you know, I originally planned to come out here and explain to you just how misleading and wrong her numbers are. But the plain fact is, well, I’ve already explained to most of you about the different equations Ms. Smith and I are using, and if you aren’t convinced that she’s feeding you a pack of lies yet, well, I’m not sure you’ll ever be.

  “So instead, let me tell you a story.”

  Grant flashed a winning smile at the crowd, and though they were in darkness, I was pretty sure a goodly portion of them were melting into their seats in response.

  “This story begins with a young, spoiled prince, set loose by his parents to wander about his kingdom in search of adventures. Picture, if you will, a towheaded boy of six, wearing a sailor suit two sizes too big for him and an ego it would take him the rest of his life to grow into.”

  Polite chuckles followed his description. Mine was one of them.

  “His kingdom? The headquarters of Devlin Media Corp. Now, when I said that his parents set him loose in search of adventure, I should have mentioned that he wasn’t supposed to venture beyond the floor where his parents’ offices were. Soon enough, however, the foolhardy and arrogant prince discovered the stairwell, and before you could say ‘once upon a time,’ he was irrevocably lost.

  “But just when the young prince was about to give up all hope and start blubbering like a faulty fire hose, he came upon that staple and savior of all fairy tales: a wise and wonderful wizard.” Grant’s eyes misted over with nostalgia, and I swear I could hear the audience sigh along with him. “His name was Louis.

  “Like all kindly wizards, Louis wiped my tears and became my guide. He showed me the magic of his work, the secret potions he used to wipe out stains, the secret passageways he took from place to place so as to appear from nowhere as if by magic, in the halls of the great and powerful. That day, I saw the countless ways in which his housekeeping work, though silent and unsung, benefitted the company enormously. That day, I learned the value that each member of Devlin Media Corp holds.

  “Because Louis wasn’t the only remarkable person I met that day. I met Beth, a mother of four—three of them with special needs—who not only looked after her family but brought the finest accounting mind the world had ever seen to Devlin Media Corp. There are computers who still make more mistakes than Beth ever did. I met Luke, a war veteran who kept the building safe during the week and volunteered teaching kids to read on the weekend. And countless others.”

  I glanced around the room and saw heads nodding, people whispering to each other.

  “And Louis explained to me that that was what made the company so great: all these people, all working their hardest to the best of their ability. And they did it for us because we were the embodiment of a dream, of an ideal, of the future they all hoped for. They did it for us because they knew that this was a company that rewarded imagination and innovation and loyalty, a company that saw the value of their contributions and used their work to sculpt a better future for the whole world. They did it for us because they knew they could trust us, because we had trusted them first.

  “Ms. Portia Smith would tell you that the glory days of Devlin Media Corp are far behind us. But I tell you that today, we have employees who shine just as brightly, if not more so. Mikayla, our development intern who brings brightness and enthusiasm with the morning coffee. Carl, our IT genius, who gives us not only an award-winning website but has saved us millions of dollars in prevented security breaches.” He smiled, his eyes flicking briefly my way. “And Lacey, without whom, quite simply, nothing at all would be possible.”

  I felt my heart melt into my boots. But I still wasn’t entirely sure where he was going with this.

  “So you see, this company can’t be reduced to just numbers,” Grant went on, still conversationally, as if he and the audience were having an intimate fireside chat. “This company is about people. The hard work of a Louis, the imagination of a Lacey—they can’t be reduced to a balance sheet. And we can’t sell them out for a quick buck without shooting ourselves in the foot.

  “My grandfather built something great, it is true. We may never know how he would have guided it today. We can never know how my parents—” Grant paused to wipe away a tear, and there were audible gasps from the audience—“would have shaped it. We can only know what we want to have today, and tomorrow, and go forth to effect that to the best of our abilities.”

  Grant stepped forward, his hands raised in entreaty. Yet the position somehow looked not vulnerable, but noble. Commanding. “Ms. Smith wants you to dream of the past. Ladies and gentleman, I think you should set your sights higher. I think you should invest in our employees and in our dreams.

  “I think that together, we should build a future!”

  Applause erupted, deafening. The first several rows leapt to their feet, and then like a wave, the rest followed. My heart soared, and I could see Grant grinning in hope and delight.

  And yet…there were gaps in those rows. It was hard to see in the darkness, but there were people still sitting down. People who were just naturally undemonstrative, or people who remained unconvinced? How many? Too many?

  Grant came jogging backstage, where he enveloped me in a bone-crushing hug. He was grinning still, but he was also shaking, coming down from the adrenaline high. He was sweating, too, and I didn’t think it was entirely from the heat of the spotlight.

  I hugged him back. “You were amazing, Grant. I didn’t understand at first, but now I do. She told a story—so you told a better one.”

  “I just hope it was better,” he whispered into my ear. “I tried to make them see—I tried to make them understand—”

  And this was the man who’d once been so determined to act as though he didn’t care. This was a man who once would’ve crashed a speedboat before talking about his emotions. He really had changed.

  “I’m so proud of you,” I said, my voice cracking.

  “Not half as proud as I am of you,” he replied, his voice muffled in my hair.

  I stroked his back, wanting to hold him safe from whatever the future brought, and be held safe from whatever future was brought to me by him. “Now what do we do?”

  He sighed, and I heard all my combined anxiety, exhaustion, relief, and trepidation echoed in that sigh.

  “Now they vote. And we wait.”

  35

  I hate waiting.

  Thankfully, Grant did too.

  True, we couldn’t have been doing that waiting in more comfortable surroundings. Our hotel room was the size of a football field, and considerably more opulent.

  The carpet was a deep rich shag that made you feel as though any second you might sink into it up to the knee. Handcrafted furniture with embroidered silk cushions was spread throughout the room so that you could flop down anywhere and be assured of hitting a cushion before you’d gone a foot; a fountain in the center sprayed water in soothing patterns. Paintings that looked almost frighteningly like they might be actual Van Goghs and Picassos lined the walls.

  The hotel staff had even thoughtfully laid out a complementary spread of delicacies for us: salmon tarts, curry chicken finger sandwiches, summer pudding, pickled watermelon spears, lemon white chocolate squares, almond bark dipped in acai berries, and more things that I couldn’t identify but that smelled simply divine.

  I say ‘smelled’ rather than ‘tasted’ because my stomach still absolutely refused to let me eat anything, and mounted a full-scale revolution every time I thought about doing so. In fact, Grant wasn’t eating either.

  What we were doing—in our quiet, dignified, and elegant way—was freaking the fuck out. I was slowly destroying my fingernails with fiddling, and Grant was pacing up and down the suite like a cat. I was pretty s
ure he was going to wear a hole in the carpet, or at least a trail.

  “How long will this take?” Grant muttered for about the sixtieth time, wringing his hands.

  “As long as it needs to,” I soothed, despite my own anxiety. “Give the shareholders some time. It just means they’re thinking it over.” If only they’d think faster.

  He kept eyeing the walls like he wanted to punch them, which was just putting me further on edge. What if he took out a painting? True, he could probably cover the cost, but if these were the originals of whom I suspected they were, my guilt over the loss to the art world would never let me sleep at night.

  Grant started wringing his hands, honest-to-God wringing them, and when he made a fist, that’s when I knew I couldn’t take it anymore. I jumped off my cushion and leapt in front of the nearest maybe-Van Gogh. I could at least protect one of them.

  “Enough, Grant!” There was an edge to my voice, more frayed nerves than actual anger. He paused mid-stride, startled by my shout. “Please. We’re both freaked out right now and you either need to stop pacing the room, or…or find some other way to redirect all that nervous energy.”

  “Oh, I do, do I?”

  A smile quirked his lips as he raked his gaze up and down my body, and I saw the unmistakable hunger in his eyes. I felt heat flushing my cheeks.

  “I didn’t mean—” I started, but he was already striding toward me.

  Okay, I’ll admit it: my arms may have already been held out as he swept me up and carried me into the bedroom, laying me down on the bed as though I were a fragile piece of china he was afraid might break. His lust-darkened eyes devoured me, and I felt my heart speed up, my breathing go short.

  “Didn’t mean what?” he asked.

  “Nothing.” I reached for him.

  He took my hand, his strong fingers interlacing with mine and squeezing tight, as if to reassure him that I was still there.