Chapter Forty-Five
I text Ben, and he meets me at the airport at one a.m. If Foster McCain wants to meet with me, Ben and I will go together. The big guns.
After we reach cruising altitude for our short flight, Ben and I each have a bourbon.
“You shouldn’t have left Manhattan, bro,” he says to me.
“Tell me something I don’t know.” I take a sip, let the smokiness sit on my tongue, and imagine Skye’s pussy juice instead of the alcohol in my mouth.
“Think you’re ready to admit it?”
I swallow. “That I shouldn’t have left New York? I think I just did.”
“Not that.” Ben takes a sip and swallows. “That you’re falling for this woman.”
“I don’t fall for women, Ben.”
“That’s called denial, bro.” He takes another sip. “You know, there’s a lot better bourbons out there than this stuff.”
“It’s hardly rotgut.”
“Did I say it was? The Blacks can afford the best. Why do you love this stuff so much?”
“Because it’s damned good.”
“I’ll give you the flavor, but it’s a little harsh going down.”
“It reminds me of those days on the construction site when we were in our early twenties. How we worked our asses off and had a Wild Turkey at Clem’s after a long day.”
“Except for that one day,” Ben says, “when we went to a certain party.”
“For fuck’s sake. Why do you insist on bringing that up? You know I don’t talk about it.”
“I know. But I talked to Apple again tonight.”
“Seriously? Is she your new girlfriend? The yin to your yang or whatever?’
“What?”
“Isn’t she into all that Zen shit?”
“Some, I guess. She’s definitely not your typical hotel heiress. But that’s not why I brought her up. She only called to tell me Addie had fired Skye.”
I take another sip. “I figured as much.”
“Skye told you?”
“Not in those words. She just said she was now unemployed. She’s getting some outside work, but Skye isn’t the type to leave a sure thing until she’s got another steady income.”
“Addie’s really pissed off about some cosmetics deal.”
I nod. “I know. Skye’s better off away from Addie and her toxicity.” Addie’s comments on Skye’s post race back into my mind. Just thinking about them gets anger rustling through me.
“I won’t argue with you there,” Ben says. “You ever going to level with her? About Addie?”
“Why should I? It’s in the past.”
“Yeah, but it’s got a lot to—”
“Stop right there,” I say, using my best big-brother voice. It still works sometimes, believe it or not. “I don’t talk about it. I don’t think about it. Some things are better left buried. We worked hard to make sure it would never surface.”
“We did.”
“So I don’t need you spouting off about honesty and trust and all that other bullshit. Skye and I aren’t in a relationship, so those things have no bearing. Case closed.”
The big-brother voice works.
Ben drops it.
But all I can think about during the rest of the flight are my own words.
Skye and I aren’t in a relationship.
They’re certainly true, as far as she knows. I made it clear we could date but there would be no relationship.
In my heart, though?
I want more than Skye’s control.
I want more than Skye’s submission.
I want more than Skye’s humor, brilliance, and beauty.
I want more than Skye’s energy.
I want her love.
…
I got all of an hour of shut-eye before the meeting with Foster McCain, a surly Irishman who actually came to us eight years ago offering to take our initial products into Europe. At that time we had better offers, so we declined, but McCain got a deal with three companies in China to manufacture knockoffs of our goggles, Black, Inc.’s flagship product. We sued—nearly depleting our coffers—and won, but at that point, McCain had made a shit ton of money in bitcoin and didn’t care anyway. Now he’s the Warren Buffet of the UK, and he’s started his own Berkshire Hathaway competitor, McCain Global.
In short, I don’t like him.
Neither does Ben.
Neither does Dimitri.
But we like his money. After we won our lawsuit, McCain took the high road and got out of the knockoff business. He used his bitcoin fortune for good instead of evil, and now McCain Global owns some prime property in the UK that we want to get our hands on. We’re willing to pay top dollar, but we need to get it yesterday.
Dimitri, Ben, and Dimitri’s right-hand woman, Lizzie McCullough—we hope Lizzie’s Irish surname will win us some points—sit in the smallest of our seven conference rooms.
My idea. McCain may come with an assistant, but we have four people at the table. Ben, Dimitri, and I are big guys, and Lizzie’s near six feet herself.
Hence the smallest room.
We want to own it, and the four of us in a smaller room make a more imposing presence than we would in one of the larger spaces.
Plus we’re at the Black, Inc. office. Home-field advantage.
Surprisingly, McCain arrives alone.
We all stand and shake hands, and one of the assistants serves coffee and tea.
Once we sit, Dimitri hands out the prospectus detailing our offer.
McCain pushes it away. “I’m not selling. For any price.”
I stand. “Then I guess you came a long way for nothing, Foster. Greta will see you out.”
Ben and Dimitri stand then.
But McCain doesn’t move.
He’s waiting for us to sweeten the pot. He’ll be waiting a long time.
Finally, he pulls the prospectus back and opens it.
“Does this mean you’ve changed your mind?” Ben asks.
“It means I’ll hear you out.”
Dimitri begins the presentation.
And I sit back, the same satisfied grin on my face that I see on my brother’s.
He’ll sell.