Trillionaire Boys' Club: The Connector

by Aubrey Parker

  “Yes,” I say. “That.”

  “Don’t you see? It’s perfect. Of course it’s not realistic. Only your mother could love you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And you? You’re so emotionally retarded, only a woman with serious issues would believe that your cocky, aggressive come-ons could ever pass for real affection.”

  “Girls with issues are always the hottest.”

  “But Ashton, none of that matters. We’re not trying to sell the media on reality. We’re trying to sell them on what they want to believe. That’s always easier. Why do you think I launched Mateo Saint’s all-meat menu by publicizing his hundred-thousand-dollar donation to PETA?”

  “Mateo donated a hundred thousand bucks to animal rights?”

  “No, of course not. I tried, and PETA rejected the donation. Very loudly and very publicly. The publicity PETA gave us by bitching at Mateo for his gall in even attempting the donation was worth way more than a measly hundred grand. Their anger and indignation launched the all-meat menu through the roof. But the reason I knew to try that tactic was because PETA is a loud group that desperately wants to believe Mateo’s restaurants are evil. But that’s their belief, not reality. The meat he uses is ethically raised, but PETA isn’t interested in the truth. So we play with desire, not reality. Understand?”

  “Not really. Mateo was crucified over that.”

  “For a while. But then it passed, and now he’s as much a contender for Nathan Turner’s little billionaire group as you are. Ask Papa John or whoever’s behind Little Caesar’s if they can say the same. Negative publicity is underrated.” She gives me a sly smile. “Just wait until I find a way to get you sued by Disney.”

  “You’re trying to talk me into something different.”

  “It’s pretending to fall in love, Ashton. You can do that, can’t you? Isn’t that what you do with the women you fuck?”

  “I prefer women who know it’s their job to go down on me. High maintenance girls — the ones you have to pretend to actually like before sticking your dick in them — become stalkers.”

  “You’ll be worth $5 billion soon, optimistically. But you have a niche fan base. It only matters so far, seeing as the clothing is what truly sells Hurricane, but it does matter. Our publicity options are limited to garden variety commercials and ads so long as you, yourself, aren’t good on camera.”

  “I’m on camera all the time. I have two interviews lined up tomorrow.”

  “For a small audience who’s decided to like you despite your many failings. But what if we could get people to actually like you?”

  “People love me.”

  “Men love you. Women, not so much. I think it has something to do with the way you see our gender as a long series of holes on an endless golf course. But women do love your clothes, Ashton. Right now, only those who don’t find you personally repugnant will buy from you, but rest assured: your misogynistic, rakish ways are costing you sales. Hurricane Apparel could be LuluLemon, but you’re so fucking notorious that those women shoppers all know who’s behind your brand. And a lot of them say, ‘Screw that guy. He hates women, so I’m not buying his clothes.’ They buy LuluLemon and you lose a sale because you’re a big public fuckface.”

  “I like how you use all the best industry buzzwords.”

  “Think about what happens if we stage a real relationship. We get a girl and you ‘fall in love’ with her. We start with contacting bloggers through a dozen or so different accounts at once, all of whom claim to have ‘caught’ you with a ‘secret girlfriend’ that you’re trying to hide from the press. A Fiverr gig will get that started. Start it up with the right bloggers and they’ll contact my office to ask about you and this mystery girl. Of course I’ll deny it all. But I’ll protest a little too much, then eventually I’ll get ‘sick of all the harassment’ and send out a press release that ‘backfires’ and suddenly oops, everyone knows that billionaire bad boy Ashton Moran is sneaking around with some girl on the sly — but unlike someone having an affair, the philandering Moran is hiding his fidelity. It’s always the same girl, and the paparazzi keep catching them kissing sweetly. And then people start to realize, ‘Oh wow, we haven’t seen Ashton fucking his way through any modeling agencies lately!’ And then bang-zoom, just like that … everyone in the world knows you’re smitten. You’re in love with one and only one woman.”

  “Cute,” I say. “But I’m not interested.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it sounds boring. How would you like to fuck one guy forever?”

  Alyssa gives me a look that says I’m not getting off the hook that easy. For one, she’s a woman and therefore wired differently. And second, I’m not sure how much Alyssa gets laid. I’ve wanted to fuck her since we met, but I’d be afraid she’d bite my dick off the entire time.

  There’s a stereotype that men are intimidated by strong women. It’s totally true.

  “Love is bullshit, Alyssa. You’ve been in publicity long enough to know that.” It’s half true. I’m not sure exactly how old Alyssa is, but there’s no way she’s older than 25, making her younger than me. Only her ruthlessness and results have gotten her to where she is.

  “It doesn’t matter if it’s bullshit. This isn’t about reality, remember? It’s about what people want to believe. And here are two things that most people very much want to believe: One, that there’s such a thing as true love, and that every story has a happily-ever-after waiting to happen.”

  I actually snort laughing at this.

  “And Two, that every hardass like you secretly has a heart of gold. Nothing’s hotter than a guy who’s strong on the outside, yet soft in the middle.”

  I try to laugh at that too, but Alyssa’s now giving me her most dick-biting stare.

  “You’re always looking for the next big move, Ashton,” she says, dead serious. “I’m telling you, this is it. Hurricane has serious penetration among professionals, and the expected trickle-down into the consumer market that cares about such things. Everyone wants to be like Mike. Now you’ll have the same in collegiate sports. Hurricane has high production but inventory to spare. We’ve done all we can with what we have. You hired me to make you more money, and I’m telling you: The bottleneck to your company’s growth, as of right now, is you.”

  I look away, annoyed by it all — mainly because Alyssa is the best and most media-manipulative publicist I’ve ever seen, and I’m sure that she’s right.

  She pulls something glossy from her bag and slaps it on the table.

  “Family Circle has a circulation of sixteen million,” she says, poking the brightly colored magazine. “Do what I tell you and they’ll consider an interview. It’s my job to make sure that happens. Then Good Housekeeping and a dozen other rags who’d never touch you now will follow. We get you into these magazines as a guy who’s sweet and full of family values deep down, and you become LuluLemon, but oh-so-much bigger. Hurricane will take their lunch money. Do you get me, Ashton?”

  I look at the magazine again. There’s a teaser for an article on six ways to build your own bird feeder. Imagining myself inside its pages makes me want to retch.

  But yes, I get her. And I agree.

  “We find you a girl and you publicly fall in love over the course of maybe six months. And take my word for it: your business will blow through the roof.”

  “If I can only fuck one girl — at least in public — for six months, then she has to be hot.”

  Alyssa nods, trying and failing to hide a tiny smile, now that I seem to have granted her idiocy permission. “I already have someone in mind.”

  “Who?”

  I expect she’ll show me photos of some model or actress.

  Instead, her smile widens. “You’ll never guess.”

  WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

  The story of the Trillionaire Boys’ Club continues in book 2: The Clothing Mogul.

  SHIT YOU SHOULD KNOW

  I have many thoughts on storytell
ing.

  The question is whether you have the same (or at least complementary) thoughts on the reading of stories. I honestly don’t know. After I explain what I mean over the next few pages, maybe you can hit me up on Facebook or something and let me know if I’m on target.

  Trevor’s Harem is my favorite Aubrey book so far — okay, I guess it’s sort of a series, which begins with The Burning Offer. (You can get that free on your bookseller of choice here, by the way.) I love that series because it’s a psychological rollercoaster. You think you know what’s going to happen; something else happens; you feel you’ve got the mystery sorted out; another wrench enters the works to prove that it’s not sorted at all.

  Trevor’s Harem is as much a puzzle box as it is a romance, and that’s not even accounting for its sexual sociology and extensive research.

  Or the AI. Ahem.

  When I published that series, I had people tell me I’d put too much into it. “Readers just want a fun romantic plot,” they said. “You’re making things too complicated. You’re making your readers think too much instead of letting them be swept away.” And there was also an unspoken, almost secretive postscript to follow: You really don’t have to put as much effort into your stories as you do, Aubrey. You can wing it and write twice as many books in half the time.

  I’ll be honest. My thought on that was, “Fuck the market. I’m going to write what I want to write. Sometimes I write simple stories (books like Hotel Indigo are straightforward and fun) but sometimes I don’t … and won’t. I’m not going to worry that I’m ‘outsmarting my readers.’ The readers who like the stories I tell will find me, because my ideal readers aren’t easily outsmarted.”

  I hope I’m right about that. Because much, MUCH more care went into Trevor’s Harem than you currently have enough information to know. I’m building up to something BIG in 2017, and that “building up” continues in the Trillionaire Boys’ Club series. I’m cross-threading Aubrey’s book world with another world — a world you almost certainly don’t even know exists. Yet.

  It’s important, as I write these books, to get the details right. All this preparation, book by book, primes my most loyal readers for a GIANT payoff. I hope you’ll agree. I hope you’ll feel it’s been worth the wait when my grand plan (insert mustache-twirling evil-guy laugh) is finally unveiled.

  So why am I telling you about all of this in the first book of the Trillionaire Boys’ Club series?

  Well. Because Trillionaires.

  See, the inspiration for the Trillionaire Boys’ Club came from that scene in There’s Something About Mary where Ben Stiller picks up the homicidal hitchhiker. (You can watch it here, but look out for NSFW language.) The guy’s all fired up because he has this great idea for a workout program based on “8 Minute Abs.” His new-and-better plan is called “7 Minute Abs,” and it’s a great idea because it’s a full minute less. Think about it — what’s better, eight minutes or seven? Obviously seven, right? The idea is going to make the guy a ton of cash!

  Then I got to thinking about the billionaire romance genre.

  And I thought, SEVEN FUCKING MINUTE ABS! Which in this case translated to, “Why read about billionaires when you can read about trillionaires?”

  But there was a problem with the concept — one that recalled the criticism I got about Trevor’s Harem being “too smart.” I knew I was in danger of thinking too much again with this new series … and asking my readers to come along for the journey.

  The idea of anyone being a trillionaire is an absolutely ridiculous concept — at least as of the time I wrote this book. The richest person in the world, according to Forbes in 2016, was Bill Gates. And do you know how much he’s got? $90 billion. NINETY BILLION DOLLARS. FOR THE RICHEST MAN IN THE WORLD. He’s not even a tenth of the way to a trillion. What a pussy.

  But I still liked the idea of writing a “trillionaire book,” so I couldn’t let the idea die. The absurdity combined with my desire to write it anyway put me at a crossroads as an author.

  I had two possible choices.

  The first was to finally heed those who said I could (and should) write “less logic and complexity” into my stories. I could just write the damn story without overthinking it. The unwritten backstory would go like this: “Nathan is a trillionaire. There’s no real reason he’s amassed over ten times more money than anyone else. He just has. Deal with it.”

  The second choice was to do what I did in Trevor’s Harem: write the story that spoke to me most and risk committing the sin of too much plot for a romance novel, according to those who say such things.

  Obviously, I chose the second option.

  And hopefully — judging by the fact that you’re reading this author’s note — you feel it was the right decision.

  So: Was it?

  I’m imagining you saying yes.

  I have a lot of faith in people. Especially my readers. And I’ve always believed that artists should create their art in the way that’s most true to them and accept that even though some people won’t vibe with it … the “right” audience will vibe the fuck out of it.

  So yes, I put epigenesis and gene promoters into Trevor’s Harem whether it was “too much” or not. And hell yes, I created what I think is a pretty plausible way for a “trillionaire boys’ club” to form even if critics might feel I’ve overthought and perhaps explained it in too much detail.

  See, in my opinion, there’s nothing sexier than plausibility.

  I could spin a yarn for you that’s full of unlikely bullshit. And you could, if you wanted, lose yourself in it for a while. But at some point, you have to put the book down and return to reality.

  The intent, in making my stories as real and plausible as possible, is in bringing fantasy to life. I want you to keep feeling these stories after they’re over. I want to excite you with the sense that this secret bad-boy cabal could actually exist.

  Meaning: Book boyfriends are important. I think you deserve the very best ones.

  So the cabal was born. Officially, Nathan’s Trillionaire Syndicate will some day have around 150 members, but only the seed group — composed of the youngest, hottest, most camera-friendly of them — calls itself the “Trillionaire Boys Club.” That’s whose stories you’ll be reading in this series. And that’s how I’m bringing you trillionaires without trillions in any single pocket.

  There are a lot of old, stodgy billionaires in the cabal, but not in the Boys’ Club. And there are women in the cabal, too, but again … they’re not dudes, so they can’t be in the Boys’ Club. Both are realistic elements I require for this to feel real, because most real-life billionaires aren’t that hot. Having ugly ones in the background while focusing on the hot ones lets us have our cake and eat it, too.

  So, you might be asking … what’s next?

  Well, as with all my stories, you probably figured out that this book leads into the next, which will lead into the next, even though you can read them in any order you want. The next book is about Ashton Moran, who my mind sees as a slick-as-hell Adam Levine. That book will come out about a month after this one and is called The Trillionaire Boys’ Club: The Clothing Mogul.

  The third book is written — and the fourth, fifth, and sixth are already planned. I’m seeding the hero of that very important sixth book in the one you just read, so if you’re sharp, you’ll start to see him take shape in later books. Filling out the lust, as it were.

  Always the puzzles, here with Aubrey.

  Oh, and there’s more: That sixth book forms the bridge I’ve been slowly building ever since my first book — but especially since Trevor’s Harem. After that sixth book comes out, you’ll start to see my (insert nefarious laugh again) GRAND PLAN. My series that will follow TBC #6 is already halfway done and will punch you right in the face. In a good way. But face-punching nonetheless. :)

  After that? Well, my plans continue. (Yes. I’m that sneaky.)

  Anyway, that’s it for my long-winded explanation of 1) why I wrote a b
unch of trillionaire books, 2) why I tried so hard to explain a plausible world for them to live in, and 3) why I’m sure my readers are far, FAR smarter than my critics seem to think they are. You? You’re not just a reader. You’re a super-reader. You’re still here with me. And for that, I love you.

  In closing, I’ll sloppily drop my contact information because fuck it; I’m tired from all the writing. So here it is, in messy fashion: You can join my email list here for discounts and deals. You can friend me on Facebook here and “like” my page here.

  So that’s all, folks, as a famous rabbit once said.

  If you liked this book, please tell a friend about it. I’ll keep writing books as long as new people keep reading them. And if you’d like to know what happens with Ashton Moran, go here to check out the next Trillionaire Boys’ Club book: The Clothing Mogul. It’s hot as hell. I promise.

  Thanks for reading. Readers like you mean the world to me.

  — Aubrey