Money, and lots of it, meant that punishments didn’t really apply to me. So sneaking out of the mansion that afternoon felt very strange, very strange indeed. It was an odd sensation to pause at corridor corners and slowly peek around the edge to make sure the coast was clear. It was peculiar to strain my ear for the sound of Benson or a maid or a cook or, worst of all, Delaney coming up the stairs. My navy suede loafers seemed to squeak with every step and my matching navy suit seemed to pulse bright and neon like a beacon in the night as I tiptoed toward the front door. I winced at the creak as I turned the handle.
“Sir?”
I nearly jumped out of my skin. I turned around guiltily and tried to cover myself as if I was a naked lady. Benson was arranging a vase of flowers in the grand foyer and lifted a bewildered eyebrow at me.
“I’m going to fuck a hooker and do lots and lots of drugs,” I blabbered.
Benson remained silent and just stared. My heart was beating terribly in my chest and my palm on the door handle behind me had become suddenly clammy.
Finally Benson nodded. “Very good, sir.”
I turned to leave, but then glanced back at my butler.
“A hooker with giant tits, Benson.”
“As you wish, sir.”
“Like, massive tits.”
Benson blinked slowly at me as I cupped my hands a good six inches away from my chest.
“Massive.”
Benson bowed his head. “You’ve thoroughly conveyed the size of the mademoiselle’s bosom, sir,” he said, and then disappeared down the hallway.
I sighed in relief. “I think he bought that,” I said to myself, nodding contentedly as I swung my car keys around my finger. “Yeah, I think he totally bought that.”
I checked my wristwatch, left the mansion, and drove with fidgeting fingers into town. To tell the truth, I didn’t want anyone to know where I was really going, which wasn’t to fuck a massively titted hooker and do lots and lots of drugs (I know, surprising). It was embarrassing where I was actually going. It was pathetic. It was ridiculous. It was silly, completely and totally silly.
I was going to my own company’s board meeting.
After the afternoon on the yacht, I’d tried to get Delaney’s words out of my head—that I was afraid of failing, that I would never try anything, ever, because of that fear. Seemingly without knowing it, Delaney had given loud voice to the deepest insecurities I hardly dared to whisper to myself. I was left doing anything and everything to try to bury those insecurities back down deep, deep, deep.
I smoked some more weed, I went to The White Room and flirted with an heiress looking to christen a new pair of tits. I drank. And drank. And drank. I did a line of cocaine. And then another. And then, you guessed it. I did another!
And yet I couldn’t forget the image of Delaney, her beautiful, shapely body diving off the yacht. With her generous lips she’d pulled the pin on a grenade and left it to explode there on the top deck in the bright yellow sun. As dawn painted the windows of The White Room gold, I realised I wasn’t going to be able to just tape my broken pieces back together this time.
So because of the infuriating Ms Evans, I was doing something I’d been afraid to do for fear of failing: I was going to act like an actual CEO.
“Goddamn her,” I muttered in the elevator as I apprehensively watched the numbers click higher and higher and higher. My toe was tapping as rapidly as my heart. “Goddamn her, goddamn her, goddamn her.”
As the doors of the elevator slid open, I sucked in a last breath as if I were about to be plunged into ice cold water. The receptionist behind the large dark marble desk did a double take when I stepped out into the lobby.
“Mr O’Hara?” she said, totally failing to keep the surprise from her voice as she sat up straighter in her chair.
“Afternoon,” I said, sweaty hands stuffed into my pockets.
I stepped toward the hall to the boardroom… or at least the hall that I thought led to the boardroom. It had been a while and I couldn’t in good faith say that I was remotely sober the last time I was here.
The receptionist stopped me by leaning across the desk and whispering, “Sally’s out sick today, sir.”
I frowned back at her. “I’m sorry?”
The receptionist checked the hall and then whispered with a pointed look, “Sally.”
I stared at her blankly.
“Sally,” she repeated, glancing at the supply closet down the hall. “The secretary you… know.”
A foggy recognition of red lipstick around my cock amongst falling staplers in a dark room came to my mind and I snapped my fingers.
“Ah, yes,” I said. “Sally. Of course.”
The receptionist smiled and sagged back into her chair as if relieved. My next words seemed to ruin all of that.
“I’m not here for Sally,” I said, pointing down the hall. “I’m here for the board meeting.”
“The board meeting?” the receptionist asked incredulously, tiptoeing hurriedly around the desk to come along beside me. “Sir, are you… sir, are you sure?”
The receptionist nearly went as far as to block my path before I stopped her with a withering gaze. She blushed and ducked her head slightly as I patted my chest with a quizzical look.
“Hmm…” I said. “Did I forget to put my name tag on, love? I guess I did.”
I squeezed the receptionist’s shoulder and she flinched.
“It says CEO.”
“Yes, sir, sorry, sir.”
I patted her cheek and smiled merrily.
“I’m going to go in, eh?”
“Yes, sir, of course, sir.”
I stuffed my hands into my pockets and waltzed to the board room whistling a little tune. But the moment I pulled open the door and stepped inside, my brazen, unearned confidence wilted like a spent dick. At a long table polished to a reflective sheen, twelve heads swivelled as one and assessed me with narrowed eyes behind small, framed glasses.
I no longer felt like a CEO. I felt like a child called to the principal’s office only to find there was not just one principal, but twelve.
Mr Killinger, the company’s CFO and my father’s former right-hand man, pushed himself from his tufted high-backed leather chair at the head of the table and came to me with a low, hushed voice.
“Ronan, son,” he whispered almost embarrassedly as he grabbed my elbow to guide me from the room, “we’re right in the middle of a board meeting and—”
“I know,” I told him, setting my feet as he reached for the door handle. “That’s why I’m here.”
Mr Killinger’s shrewd, pinched face turned to look up at me more closely. I realised that he thought I was high or drunk or both. He must have assumed that that was the only reason I ever would have stumbled unwittingly into a business meeting.
“Okay,” Mr Killinger said, obviously surprised to find me, at worst, a little hungover. “Come on then, lad.”
I moved forward apprehensively as Mr Killinger nodded curtly at the company’s lawyer to his right. An awkward silence fell over the room as one-by-one, the men stood and shifted one seat over to make room for me. Few did me the service of hiding their irritation at the interruption. Mr Killinger patted the back of the head chair, the chair he had been sitting in, and smiled slickly.