“He’s still in love with you, you know,” Nathan says, watching the door.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Nathan acts like he doesn’t hear me. “The only difference is that he’s willing to set his love aside now that he knows you won’t return it, and mature enough to turn one love into a different kind.” Nathan shakes his head. “That’s something I’ve never been able to do.”
“I asked you a question.”
Still Nathan keeps speaking. Ignoring me. “I don’t wish you well, Alex.”
“Well, that’s nice of you.”
“And unlike Corey, who’s more level-headed and sensible than I am, I don’t just want you to be happy.”
“I don’t want to talk to you anymore. I don’t want to see you. I told you that in, like, a hundred texts.”
“I don’t want to be your friend,” he tells me, now finally sitting. “I don’t want to hang out. I don’t want things to be okay between us again. I don’t want to give you a shot in my company because you’ve proven yourself valuable, and I don’t hope you succeed and thrive now that our time has passed.”
“You’re a son of a bitch,” I say, turning.
“Have you forgotten, Alex? Have you forgotten what it is to be a billionaire?”
“I’m not a billionaire.”
He sees my hesitation, then seizes it. He’s standing again, beside and behind me. I let him take my arm, hating my cowardice. I let him lead me back to the chair I was surely meant to sit in, hating myself for being so spineless. “You can’t leave me, Alex.”
“That sounds like a threat.”
“You can’t leave me because you’re already mine.”
I look up.
“I didn’t heed my own lessons. I tried to ignore them. I thought you’d be able to move on, and because of it, that I’d be able to let you do it. A healthy man — a sane man — would be able to let you go. Anyone else could see the damage you were doing to my work. I should have cut you off. You’re obviously a weak link. You negotiate like a virgin. You do business as if it’s founded on puppies and hope. You’ll never see an open throat and instinctively strike. I explained how I work, and it bothered you. You couldn’t stomach it, nor do what was necessary for the greatest good. But even as I tried to let it all end — for the best, of course — I betrayed who I was. I’m a billionaire. And that means the world, as it exists, is something I will forever own.”
“You don’t own me.”
“I tried to call. I texted. And emailed. I’ve been trying for a week. I have better things to do with my time. It was ridiculous, for me to expend so much effort chasing a girl.”
“I’m not interested in being chased by you.”
“It doesn’t matter. I won’t let you go. I can’t.” He smiles, to soften this stern diatribe, then adds, “I refuse.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“Without question.”
“You gave me commands and conditions. You insisted that I make the deal with Ashton.”
“That’s not what I said at all, Alex. I said the deal with Ashton was off — something that was made formal the other day, and I know Geoffrey told you all about it. I wasn’t insisting that you do anything to try and stop it.”
That’s not how it went down. “You said that if I didn’t bring Jenna into it, we were finished.”
“I never said that. And I would never say we were finished.”
I spool my mind back. Is that possibly true? “You’re bad for me. You make me into someone I don’t like.”
“Someone you don’t like, or someone new?”
“Both.”
“Corey doesn’t think I’m bad for you.”
I remember where we are, and it hits me like a brick. I didn’t run into Nathan on the quad, or rush somewhere to confront him. He came to me, and did so here, in Corey’s room, through my friend’s interference.
Don’t be mad. I swear I think this is what’s best.
When I don’t reply, Nathan continues. “He came to me. To my office, like the impetuous little asshole he is.”
“Corey’s timid. He’s not impetuous.”
Nathan gives me a look to say, Thanks to you, he is now.
“At first he seemed to want a fight, because I’d hurt you. He came with a head of steam, and all sorts of ill-founded threats. But the more we talked, on and off over this past week, the more he changed his mind. The more Corey understood what I wanted and how I felt — two things you were unwilling to hear from me. So he offered to make the connection, so you could at least hear me out on his home turf. He practically insisted on bringing me here today.”
“Corey went to you … to talk about me?”
Nathan nods. “And he told me that you blabbed all about us. Breaking the cone of silence. You know that’s unacceptable.”
“I didn’t say anything to him about your Syndicate.”
“Fuck my Syndicate.”
That catches my attention.
“I have all the money in the world, Alex. Don’t you remember what I told you?” He holds his hand out flat, raising it as he runs through a series of points. “This is survival. This is success. This is wealth. And this is unthinkable wealth, where you can have anything you could possibly ever want.” Then he points toward the ceiling. “Billions is all the way up there. I’ll never run out of money, no matter how hard I try to waste it.”
“What’s your point?”
“That I’m used to paying anything for what I want,” he says, shrugging, “so I thought nothing of spending a trillion dollars to be with you.”
Nathan takes my hand. He scoots closer.
“I was wrong to try and change you. You remind me of a better version of myself. You’re bold but not stupid. Strong but not inflexible. Brash but not obnoxious. And you know how to fight, but also when it’s right to yield. I’m sure that dangling Jenna in front of Moran would have been all it took to save his Syndicate nomination, seeing as he wanted to join anyway but was too proud to back down without reason.”
Nathan pauses, squeezes my hand tighter, looks at me with his eyes softer than I’ve ever seen them. “I was angry when it fell through, but then I realized that I wasn’t mad at you. I was angry at myself, for being so bullheaded. The Trillionaire Syndicate was never supposed to be about raw, bludgeoning power. It was supposed to be about elegance. We weren’t meant to batter the world into submission. The trillion dollar pot, used wisely, should operate like a surgeon. Subtle, not bold. Wise, not foolhardy. It was meant to shift the world, not to crowbar it apart by any means necessary.
“So if the Syndicate had to begin with gambits and threats? If the first act in its creation was to shove aside the one person with enough morality to counterbalance its sheer force? Well. Then it wasn’t a thing worth forming at all.”
I blink at Nathan. He’s captivated me. I feel his hands in mine, thinking only of his touch. And his eyes. Those soft, cornflower-blue eyes.
“I love you, Alex. God knows I should know better than to love you, but I do just the same.”
“I … I love you, too.” It’s hard to say because I’m so shocked by it all, but there’s no question that it’s true. The entire time I’ve been angry at Nathan, my anger has been birthed by hurt. He opened my heart, and I was so sure that he’d broken it.
I watch the man in front of me.
This isn’t the Nathan Turner the world thinks it knows. This is the Nathan Turner that belongs to me … as much as I belong to him.
“So it’s over,” I say. “All you worked for — gone.”
“Seems so,” he says. “But now we can begin.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
NATHAN
THE VOICE ON THE LINE is curt. Bitchy, even. It snaps at me the way my mother used to. “You win,” it says.
“I’m sorry, Alyssa,” I reply. “I’ll need to hear you say that again.”
There’s a beat as Alyssa seems to recalibrate, probably because my voi
ce isn’t what she expected to hear. “Is there a contract?” It comes out sounding like a demand.
“For what?
“Don’t be an asshole, Nathan.”
“But I’m so good at it,” I say.
There’s a long silence on the line — so long, in fact, that I almost wonder if Alyssa hung up. I know she didn’t want to reach me. I’m holding Geoffrey’s phone, because he gave it to me. We both figured Alyssa would call tonight, and that she’d want to handle this thing one representative to another.
There was supposed to be no need for my involvement, or Ashton’s. One of us said, “Have your people call my people,” and so it was done.
But I didn’t want it to go down that way. I wanted to hear Alyssa choke.
Alex enters the room behind me. She gives me a look and I raise my eyebrows, asking to be alone. I want to savor this. But she doesn’t listen. Instead, she stares me down, in that way that made me fall in love with her that first day after barging into my office.
It’s not her compliance that turns me on. It’s the way she refuses to listen.
She sits beside me and whispers, “Alyssa or Ashton?”
I mouth: Alyssa.
I figure she’ll nod like a victorious supervillain, but instead she does something that almost makes me break the mood with Alyssa by laughing out loud: she mimes the act of unzipping her fly, then holding the back of an invisible head while it bobs up and down.
Make that fucker choke on your dick, her pantomime says.
I wave her away, but after gathering myself I tip the phone and lean in so she can hear. Alex deserves to savor this — to have Alyssa beg and suck her metaphorical dick, too — because while I can make calls and arrange meetings, I don’t have quite the same swagger as my new Network-Manager-slash-girlfriend. I’m rich and powerful, but Alex is bold and hot. When we went in to see Evan, Cole, and the Forage guys, their side of the deal didn’t stand a chance.
Sure, nobody has the magnetic bad boy power of Ashton Moran.
But given the nearly $100 billion combined net worth of our four latest Boys’ Club initiates — meetings Alex and I mastered together — Ashton’s swagger pales in comparison to the piddly $2.2 billion that he brings to the table.
We weren’t exactly going to push out a press release announcing the Syndicate’s seed group had doubled in size, but we could leak a rumor of an undefined partnership, and did. The media started chattering about those rumors earlier today — and, as I figured, Alyssa still hasn’t had the guts to blow our secret.
It only took a few hours for her to see the news and realize what it meant. A few hours for Alyssa to stomp in anger, pout, then go to her client and advise Ashton Moran to hop on board before he missed the boat completely.
In both our ears, Alyssa says, “Level with me, Nathan. How did you get Evan Cohen?”
“Trade secret,” I say.
The truth is that Caspian White and Evan, despite their publicized disagreements throughout the GameStorming/LiveLyfe buyout, are great friends behind closed doors.
“Mmm-hmm. And Aiden Page and Onyx Scott?”
I nod as if she can see me. “Forage,” I say, naming them both as their company’s single entity. “They’re all-in.”
“Who’s the ‘rumored fourth’?”
I don’t have to tell her this — which means telling Ashton. But what the hell; Ashton is finally crawling back. It doesn’t matter that he’s reconsidered the Syndicate on his hands and knees as much as he’s done it on my terms. We’ll still soon be partners of a sort, and I share with my partners.
“Cole Ellison.”
“Hmm,” Alyssa says, but I can tell she’s impressed. Sage Business Systems might not be as sexy a business as the Forage search engine, but Cole is worth $12.8 billion and just so happens to look kind of like that guy from Mad Men. He’s also got close ties to Ben Stone of EverCrunch, and I think we all know the rumors about EverCrunch — they’re as scintillating as the rumors about Daniel’s company, Eros.
Change the world, indeed.
“Get me a date?” she says, trying to break the tension.
I laugh without answering. But the funny thing is, I’ll bet she’s serious.
“So anyway,” Alyssa says. “You’ll send me papers to give Ashton to sign?”
“We will consider his application,” I say.
Alex tries to stifle a giggle, but doesn’t entire succeed.
I’m sure Alyssa will make some sort of haughty threat and tell us to knock it off, but instead she sort of huffs. I can tell she’s donning her severe face — the one that people have learned to fear, because it means that the powerful Alyssa Galloway still has a final ace up her sleeve.
“Is that Miss Wynn there with you, Nathan?”
I give Alex an Uh-oh — you’re in troooooouble! face, but she clears her throat. Alex is wearing her big girl panties. After negotiating nearly a hundred billion dollars into my Syndicate, she’s intimidated by nothing. “Hi, Alyssa.”
“So nice to speak with you again,” Alyssa says. “Why, I don’t think we’ve talked since you hung up on me.”
Alex doesn’t bite. She smiles up at me. “Good times.”
“Good, indeed,” Alyssa agrees.
Now I’m rolling my eyes. “Goodbye, Alyssa.”
“Just send me those papers, Nathan.”
“Sure thing,” I say. “I’ll have Geoffrey send them in the morning.”
Alyssa makes a little sound of agreement. Then as I’m preparing to hang up, she says, “Oh, and Alex? I look forward to talking again.”
Alex smirks at me. “Of course.”
“Maybe Friday.”
Alex furrows her brow.
But Alyssa doesn’t give her a chance to respond. She charges on, finally playing her ace. “You know, when Ashton comes to get Jenna for dinner?”
SNEAK PEEK: THE CLOTHING MOGUL
Continue reading for a sample chapter of the second book in the Trillionaire Boys’ Club series:
The Clothing Mogul
CHAPTER ONE
ASHTON
“YOU HAVE TO FALL IN love.” Then, because she’s my publicist, Alyssa adds the key word: “Publicly.”
I laugh, but she hasn’t stopped looking my way. “You’re serious.”
“Of course I’m serious. A public romance is better than ads, better than commercials. It’s real. More or less.”
“Absolutely not. No fucking way.”
For me, no fucking way is enough. Alyssa made a joke and I chuckled. But I’ve half-forgotten it already. I have my phone out, and I’m playing with this new app that R&D developed to help with custom-fitting of our athletic apparel.
But Alyssa’s still looking at me. And I know that look. She has that little notepad she uses when she’s brainstorming, crossed arms pressing it to her chest.
I meet her soft brown eyes. She has long brown hair that frames her face in waves. Her lips are a little open and always look kissable. I very much want to push Alyssa up onto my desk, spread her legs, and have myself a pussy buffet.
Unfortunately, she knows me too well, and would never allow that to happen. She’s entered this office more than once to find me and some girl doing exactly that.
“Next,” I say.
She continues giving me the laser stare. “Are you even listening to me?”
“Of course I’m listening.”
“What’s Hurricane Apparel valued at right now?”
I shrug. We make clothing that would easily kick Under Armour’s ass, even if it was only athletic wear. But Hurricane is all souped up with sensors, and monitored by a family of apps. We don’t make clothes; we design valuable tools for athletic performance. Half the pro athletes in the country right now wear Hurricane, and we signed a huge collegiate deal a few months ago — both thanks to and in spite of my “good buddy” Nathan Turner and his dealmaking.
I should know my company’s valuation, because big numbers make girls want to suck my dick, but
then I’ve got to figure out profit and loss, carrying costs and inventory, employee expenses and downtime ratios, account for factory changes and unions (except in China, har-har) and so on. I’d love to memorize one number and always offer it as unyielding, but a touch of OCD won’t let me.
“You really don’t have any idea, do you?” Alyssa asks.
“The accountants know.”
“Maybe the accountants are stealing from you.”
I give Alyssa a look.
“Fine. What are you personally worth right now.” Because that, she knows I know. I’d write it on a name tag and wear it at cocktail parties if I could.
“$2.2 billion.”
“And if you had to guess … after all the collegiate expansion plans are fully rolled out and—”
“Double that.” I’ve run the figures. Of course I know my bottom line. It’s like knowing my shoe size, not that I’d ever wear shoes that weren’t custom.
“So generously, you’re closing in on a $5 billion personal net worth.”
“For now.”
“If you listen to me, though, and take this seriously—”
“I am taking it seriously.” I’m still holding my phone, now checking LiveLyfe and barely paying attention. Alyssa leans forward and takes it. I look up, annoyed.
“You’re an asshole,” Alyssa tells me.
“I’m glad I pay you so much.”
“It’s okay. It’s your brand to be an asshole. It’s your brand to be a narcissist. Everyone knows the names of your designers, and why your underwear is better than all the other labels, but I’m suggesting something that adds a dimension to your arrogant, obnoxious personal brand and promises enormous potential without taking anything away from what you already are.”
“Nobody would believe it.”
“That you could fall in love?”
I don’t even like hearing the words. It’s not that I’m immune or grossed out, like a kid considering cooties. It strikes me as naive and simplistic, given where I am and where the company is. Alyssa might as well be suggesting we have a tea party and invite our suppliers, or reward our best salesmen with soft pink pillows with rainbow needlepoint on the front. My office has slate gray walls with original art in bold colors — the full-room equivalent of a sober suit paired with a power tie. But the way Alyssa is pitching this idea, I figure her next suggestion will be to get motivated by hanging a poster showing a kitten hanging from a branch, bearing the caption, Hang in there, baby.
Trillionaire Boys' Club: The Connector Page 14
