Trillionaire Boys' Club: The Connector

by Aubrey Parker

  The phone doesn’t ring.

  The door doesn’t open.

  I wake my computer, then fiddle with my spreadsheet of billionaires. After a few minutes, I’m able to actually care about the work and — for the moment, at least — stop thinking about the way Alex’s face looked when claimed by ecstasy.

  The spreadsheet wants to waver in front of my distracted eyes, but I focus until it makes sense.

  There are 156 rows on the spreadsheet.

  156 people, all of whom are worth at least one billion dollars.

  In the leftmost column are names.

  In the next column, Geoffrey has listed each billionaire’s primary business.

  Next to that, the sector they represent. I hate to give the man credit, but Joseph Wilcox had a point: if everyone in the Syndicate is in the Internet sector, it’ll be unstable. But that’s true if we’re too heavy in any one sector, be it manufacturing or entertainment or publishing or software or fashion or anything else.

  Too many eggs in one basket would make the Syndicate vulnerable to changes in the economy and world at large. Diversified, as the spreadsheet is, we’ll be strong.

  Strong enough to weather anything.

  And rich enough to influence everything.

  Next after the market sector column is the person’s net worth, in billions. There’s not one person on this sheet that’s worth less than one, and I’m one of the few who’s hanging by a thread. But I’m the architect, so I don’t need to bring the big numbers. I have enough to qualify as a billionaire, and that’s all that matters. I’m building the network.

  At the bottom, below the proposed members individual worths, is a four-figure total. Four figures, scaled in billions. Meaning over one trillion dollars of combined assets.

  I scroll up and down. Soon my fingers are idly moving, without my permission. A rhythmic motion, just like when I was fucking Alex.

  My thoughts stray, and I think, I didn’t even make her suck my cock.

  I didn’t even have her get on top, so I could watch her ride me.

  I blink hard, trying to center my focus.

  This isn’t about some disposable college girl. This is about business.

  I watch the spreadsheet, focusing on the colors. Blues are most important — they indicate the sub-group Geoffrey and I think of as the Trillionaire Boys’ Club. Light blue are the TBC candidates I still want; dark blue are those who’ve already agreed to join.

  Among the dark blues are Daniel Rice and the all-important Caspian White, among others. The latest is Hunter Altman, who I flew out to pitch a couple of weeks ago. Getting Hunter was a coup. He’s hot right now, behind some of the most popular music acts on the scene today, and the public loves him. He has his girl, and that whole situation is bad in just the right way — ideal for our branding.

  I shouldn’t have bothered with Wilcox, who I’ve colored light red: Old Guard billionaires who I want in my trillion-dollar Syndicate, but who haven’t yet agreed. I approached him too early. It’s obvious now that Plan B should have always been Plan A.

  From now on, I’ll focus only on blues.

  There are 24 blue rows on my spreadsheet, including me, and all have a few things in common:

  They’re all men.

  They’re mostly under forty, with the best candidates under thirty.

  They’re all people who earned their wealth through personal discipline — something that bleeds into the rest of their lives. It means they’re physically disciplined as much as they are in business. There are a few young billionaires on my list who are geeky or ugly, but those rows aren’t blue.

  And lastly, they’re all at least a bit abrasive. Some are annoying. Many are flat-out assholes.

  To sum it up, the blue rows on my sheet are young, hot, stupidly wealthy bad boys.

  We can’t admit we’ve formed a Syndicate, of course, but it’ll be obvious that we’re all singing the same basic tunes. We’ll talk up the same issues. Lobby for the same things. We’ll spend our billions in similar ways. And because the press loves us, the PR writes itself:

  Dozens of bad boy billionaires, playing by their own rules.

  We form the Boys’ Club, and getting the Old Guard to join us will be easy. They’ll be afraid of missing out, or that we’ll unite to bury them. Once they’re on board, the Trillionaire Syndicate will be complete.

  Again I think of Ashton Moran — he could pop the cork too early if I don’t play his game and agree to give him disproportionate voting rights, making those of us already on board look like assholes, and ruining it all before it starts.

  Ashton Moran, who might be the Club’s cockiest member. He’s always wearing something edgy or immaculate, something that no one else would ever wear, but perfectly tailored to his asshole personality. He’s always saying the wrong things. Insulting the wrong person.

  Second only to Caspian, Ashton might be the biggest billionaire that those who know him love to hate. But as much as I’m loathe to admit it, we need Ashton to get others aboard, if strictly from an image perspective. He makes the Trillionaire Boys’ Club look bad enough to be good. At this fragile early stage, we desperately need him.

  But thinking of Moran makes me think of Alex.

  And thinking of Alex makes me lose interest in the spreadsheet.

  I close it and open a LiveLyfe window.

  I tap around, then find her profile.

  I’m struck by Alex immediately. It’s not just her appearance, which is divine. It’s the way she carries herself, even in pictures. She’s only a kid, but the girl has bigger stones than almost any adult I’ve ever known.

  There’s a photo album in her profile of her Christmas vacation to the beach — with her roommate and that frumpy kid she brought to my office. Her privacy settings prohibit me from seeing the full album, but I know Caspian, and he and Evan Cohen of LiveLyfe have their little merger going.

  I have permissions nobody’s supposed to have.

  With a few clicks, Alex’s beach album opens. There are a bunch of pictures of her in a little bikini. It’s not an intentionally sexy suit. Like Alex’s bra, which I took off earlier today before grabbing her tits and fucking her from behind, the suit looks functional rather than provocative. She probably bought it years ago because good girls need to cover up, and this suit did the job.

  But her photos still arouse me.

  All that skin.

  The flat, bare expanse of her stomach.

  The V beneath her small bottoms, hiding her pussy. The pussy I came inside of only a few hours ago

  Then I see something that raises my temperature further:

  A few photos farther on, there’s a snap of both Alex and Jenna with their tops off, discarded on the sand at their feet. They’re covering themselves with both hands, but I’m shocked that she felt this was innocent enough to share with her friends. The camera or phone must have been perched somewhere and set on a self-timer, because that kid Corey is between and behind them with his hands up, a line of footprints hooking to where he is from the camera’s position, as if he’d just run into the shot.

  So Corey saw their tits? Because he’s just a friend and probably gay?

  The thought boils something inside me. Makes me want to punch something, or someone.

  My cock is rock hard. I’m about to take it out and relive some of the better parts of my day when the phone finally rings. I snatch it up, somehow certain that it’ll be Alex, ready to purr in my ear and beg for more. I’m so sure, I don’t even look at the screen.

  “Hello?” I say.

  There’s a slight pause — the kind someone makes when they’re not sure they should be calling. But then a silky-smooth voice says, “Nathan? This is Ashton Moran.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  ALEX

  I WANT TO BE PROUD of Corey, but it’s hard because my mind is on a thousand other things — all of which are only versions or complications of one single topic.

  Corey decided to hike up his test
icles at exactly the wrong time, and he seems to have debuted his spine in a rather dramatic declaration.

  Go big or go home.

  Corey didn’t ask his marketing professor for internship referrals, like I’ve been bugging him to do for a month.

  Nope. Instead, he worked some inconceivable sequence of connections to get an audience with Ashton Fucking Moran. I don’t even know how it’s possible. True, Ashton lives here in Chicago, but Corey has always struck me as charismatic, not well-networked. You put Corey in a situation where he’s comfortable and he can sell anything to anyone. But strip his comforts and he folds like he did three days ago in Nathan’s office.

  I can’t imagine what it took for him to ask his advisor to ask the department head to ask his tennis buddy (who just so happens to work an inconsequential but high-up job at Hurricane Apparel) to talk to some random kid. And once Corey talked to the person at Hurricane, I can’t imagine what Corey said to get him telegraphing a message up the chain to Moran himself, all in a single afternoon.

  It took charisma and guts to do what he did — and it worked. I’m pleased that he finally heeded my nagging, but I can’t process the rest. I can only assume he dropped Nathan’s name, letting whoever-it-was know we’d been speaking with him about Ashton. And maybe that we had a deal to offer, per my earlier proposal.

  But Corey did it all by himself, arranging the most important bones on a Saturday. He ran the numbers, then showed the right people how much they had to gain. I’m bowled over by it all. This could be everything I’d hoped from the start, after overhearing Nathan shouting to Geoffrey about Moran’s extortion and blackmail.

  But that was before.

  And this is after.

  Honestly, at this point, I’d rather that everything having to do with Nathan went away.

  He’s stained my dreams. I don’t want to think about him, but my subconscious won’t stop. For the last three nights my mind has played back our encounter in his office, over and over. I wake up aroused every time. Twice I woke up with my hand inside my sleep shorts, touching myself. And once I went ahead and finished.

  But Nathan himself has, of course, made no contact. And why would he? My father, in his uncomfortable but duty-bound way, used to tell me that boys wouldn’t buy the cow if they could get the milk for free. An unflattering, insulting metaphor, and Dad was always so awkward when he said it, but it stuck in my mind. These past few days, it won’t leave.

  Nathan wanted me. I let him have me.

  So of course he wants nothing else to do with me, now that his itch has been scratched.

  And that might be fine, if not for Corey’s heroic deed — meant, I’m sure, to make up for how he embarrassed me earlier. I can’t tell Corey that he shouldn’t have bothered, because I’m ashamed to admit what I did — even to Jenna. But now that he’s started the ball rolling on this deal, he isn’t content to sit back and let the rich men figure it out. Corey set things up because, as far as he knows, this is exactly what I wanted.

  So I smile and encourage him, even though I wish I could end it, or at least step away.

  And when the stars finally align and we learn that Moran himself will visit the university given the giant domino in his business this promises to be, I pretend to be happy. When Corey tells me that he got the university president to let us attend the meeting, I act like this is terrific news.

  And maybe it is. Maybe there’s nothing to fear. But I keep thinking of how this all started — with Nathan rather than Ashton. The two of them have something brewing that I’ve not shared: Nathan’s idea to form his Syndicate. On one paranoid level, I can’t help thinking that making this happen ushers Nathan’s goal a step closer to fruition, but that he’ll never forget the girl who knows too much.

  I’m thinking this as I sit near the back of the big room, watching the university president and the athletic director shake hands first with Moran, then with a statuesque brunette who introduced herself to us earlier as Alyssa Galloway, Hurricane Public Relations.

  We’ve been instructed to stay out of the way now, but we already met all the players.

  Why are you here if you’re public relations? Jenna asked. I wanted to slap my hand over my face. She shouldn’t even have come, but Jenna was around when Corey made his pitch and shoehorned her way in with sound reasoning: What’s one more person, if we’re just hanging out?

  Galloway gave her a condescending smile, as if Jenna was an idiot. But I thought I saw something else in the smile, too. A sort of assessment, as if each of the three of us were being weighed and measured — catalogued as potential pawns for later use on the board.

  “I can’t believe I set this up.” The room is big, but Corey’s half-whisper is still easy to hear. I flick him a glance, annoyed. He started this ball, yes. But he hasn’t stopped mentioning it, clearly wanting a Hero Parade.

  “Good job, Corey.” I say it deadpan, as if I no longer give a shit. Which I don’t. I’m too nervous, for reasons I can’t even fully articulate to myself.

  “I didn’t realize how hot Moran is,” Jenna says.

  I elbow her.

  “What? He is. He’s all … smoldering.”

  I look now. Moran is staring right at Jenna. He’s been tossing glances her way ever since this meeting began. We all tried to class up our wardrobe, but even professional looks sexy on Jenna. She’s wearing a scoop-neck blue blouse that does nothing to hide her breasts. They’re visible from the top, probably pushed up with a clever bra, and the fabric is snug against them. She has plausible deniability if anyone accused her of trying to be provocative, but nonetheless her look screams dirty secretary.

  “I’d call it smug, not smoldering,” I say.

  I didn’t like Moran at all. He shook our hands after Galloway did, but with a manner more befitting scraping crap from his shoe.

  “Oh, come on. Like you wouldn’t jump on Ashton’s hog,” Jenna snaps.

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “You’re too good for a billionaire clothing titan?”

  “Billionaires are old news to me now. I’m immune.”

  “You’d ride them both.”

  “I would not!”

  Still whisper-speaking, Jenna says, “I saw the way you were looking at shirtless pictures of Nathan Turner before his talk. I’ll bet he got you all lubed up. Especially in person.”

  “Shh!”

  “If he offered to lick your—” Jenna begins, but Corey shushes us anew. There’s a strange look on his face, and it probably matches the awkward look I feel on mine. Jenna was joking, but she came close to the truth. Even Corey seems to think this discussion was too close to the bone. I’ve seen him cut things off before, when discussion turns to anything involving me and men, or me and sex.

  I hear Nathan’s phantom voice as I look at Corey, seeing the way his eyes move between meeting mine and deliberately looking away. Nathan, telling lies about my good friend Corey.

  He’s in love with you.

  He wants to fuck you.

  But no, it’s not like that. It was just one more thing Nathan said to get into my pants. Or into my skirt, as it were.

  I watch Moran, seeing his arrogant head turn from Jenna back toward their talks. I see Galloway watching them both, before also returning her attention to the table.

  I suddenly feel ill. I didn’t want to be here, and now the air is somehow foul. I need to step outside. To catch a fresh breath.

  I excuse myself, and quietly exit into the hallway.

  I’m halfway to the front door of the administrative building when a firm hand reaches from the shadows and yanks me into a recess along the dim hallway.

  “We need to talk,” the man says.

  It’s Nathan, and his face is furious.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  ALEX

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?”

  I mean it as a simple question, maybe tinged with a hint of reproach. This isn’t Nathan’s deal; it’s something being negotiated between the university
and Hurricane Apparel. Nathan’s part, if anything, comes later.

  But it doesn’t come out as a simple question. A dozen other emotions in my voice betray me.

  I’m angry.

  I’m embarrassed, because of what happened before — and how he’s ignored me since.

  He makes me doubt myself, so my usual confidence has left me.

  But I’m feeling other things, too. Things I’d rather not feel, but that are happening anyway.

  Nathan’s face makes my heart beat faster. His touch is electric. I can feel my body responding, like a traitor. As I stand in Nathan’s presence, I feel like shouting at my body for all the little things it’s already doing wrong. My higher mind is disgusted by the way my nipples perk up beneath my shirt the instant I see him. It’s disgusted by the static charge I feel across every inch of my skin, and the sensations blooming between my legs.

  He used you like a dirty rag, I tell myself as I meet his intense eyes. He used you then threw you away.

  “What did you do, Alex?” he demands, still gripping my arm.

  I won’t play this game. “You have some nerve, demanding anything from me.”

  I pull out of his grip, but he grabs me again. This time he pulls me toward a dark office. When he tries the knob and the door won’t open, I find myself shoved into a utility closet. A big one, with one of those wheeled yellow mop-wringer buckets in the corner and shelves of supplies behind us.

  He flips a switch, then slams the door. We’re alone together in the little room, the overhead light harsh and yellow.

  “What did you tell Moran?”

  I didn’t tell him anything. But I’m enjoying having one up on Nathan, even if he’s reached the wrong conclusions. It’s nice to see him caught off guard. “That’s none of your business.”

  “I didn’t ask you to set anything up for me. I don’t want you in my affairs.”

  “What makes you so sure this has anything to do with you?”

  “Don’t be an asshole.” There’s fury in the tension filling his neck, in the grip of his hands. “Moran called me.”