I delete the message knowing I’m not going to call her back. She’ll have enough to say on Sunday when she comes over with the newest design layout for staging the Flanders property, which is soon to be torn down and built into a luxurious mansion, set to match the rest of the houses on the beach.
Don’t let that statement confuse you. Darlene doesn’t work for me. She didn’t work a single day we were married, and damn if she thought to get a job after we divorced. She gave me some, “What would our son think to see his poor mother suffering in the workforce?” sob story bullshit. I told her he would see a woman earning her keep like everyone else in the fucking world. That also fell on deaf ears. Instead, she spends my money like it’s her fucking job, purchasing anything and everything as if the sky’s the limit. I’m pretty sure I just funded her girlfriend’s new boob job. Luckily for me, part of that spending entails buying shit to furnish and decorate each house I purchase—a task I want nothing to do with.
The first two messages have me pulling out my desk drawer and reaching for my Tums. It’s not even nine in the morning and I’m already calculating the minutes it’s gonna take for these fuckers to dissolve and not fix the stress burn in my stomach. I have a ton of meetings and Eric will be in soon wanting to work the numbers on the new warehouse going up in south Miami.
I decide to avoid the third voicemail and listen to the one that just came through.
“Trevor, Clara Hill. It seems we ran into a bit of a problem with the sale of 1543 Flanders Bay. The owner’s granddaughter is holding the sale ‘til the end of the summer. She refuses, even for a higher bid, to sign off on the contract until then, claiming she’s staying at the residence. Let me know how you want us to proceed.”
“Son of a bitch.” The one call that was supposed to bring some joy to my day. “Fuck!” I’ve been working on the sale of that house for months. The property next door is a shack and in desperate need of a renovation. As in, tear the ugly fucker down and rebuild to match the other houses on the block. When I bought my house, there was nobody living in it. Probably due to the condition of it.
I got the call a few months ago from my realtor saying the woman who owned it was finally ready to sell. My team was pushing for a quick sale, and I was willing to pay way over what it was worth. The shit thing is, she died before I got that damn amendment signed, which left our deal in the hands of her executor of trust—her granddaughter. The end of the summer wasn’t gonna work for me. That woman was signing off on that sale—and now.
I text Clara telling her to handle it and not call back until she has an agreement. I want the closing date to be yesterday. It’s rare anyone tells me no, hence why I have the entire construction set for three days from today. What I don’t need is their little granddaughter trying to work more money out of me and stall my plans.
The anxiety of how this setback will domino effect the rest of the project sends my mind into overdrive. Dropping my phone, I bring my fingers to my temples and press hard enough to bruise. I do as Dr. Winters taught me and begin counting down from one hundred, until the numbers and equations stop swirling around in my head. I need this project to stay on course.
I pick up the phone and hit Eric’s number. I get his voicemail, which doesn’t shock me. He’s been up to no good himself, no doubt putting his dick in someone even younger than the secretary Levi’s after. I leave him a message telling him I need to push back our meeting. I have someone’s granddaughter to threaten.
Chapter Two
Trevor
I pull into the south block of Flanders Bay. My bay. Because I own it all. Except for one ratty old lot. When Eric and I first came up with the concept of Four Fathers, I knew exactly what I was going to do with my cut. For Eric, the money wasn’t even a perk. He was raised with a silver spoon shoved so far up his ass, he probably just wanted the money to say he had it. I’m sure he was spending his earnings lining his toilet paper with gold so he could brag about wiping his ass with money.
When I made my first million, I bought a gigantic house—a place I never had growing up. After a while, it didn’t feel right, so I bought another one. Then another one. Nothing I spent my money on offered me that feeling of home. I was trying to compensate for all the years I lived as a young child on the streets of Florida City, a low-income area near Miami, spending my nights around a bonfire off the beach. When I finally found myself in a place where I had a roof over my head, I expected to feel relief, but all I felt was trapped.
I park my car in the three-car driveway of the luxurious three-story beachfront home I just spent the last month renovating. The house itself is beautiful, but the previous owners were shit for decorators. Walking up to the door, I use my key to enter and look around at the work Darlene’s done. Even though I want to strangle her half the time, she has a good eye for design. I drop the keys on the foyer bar and head to the back kitchen. Each and every house on this block opens up to the beach. At no time while you're in any part of these houses are you unable to get a glimpse of the water—exactly how I designed them. If the house didn’t provide that, I had them reconstructed. Cost wasn’t an issue—the perks of running a multi-billion-dollar freight company.
I pass through the white marble kitchen, appreciating the new stainless-steel appliances Darlene put in. I requested the island be big enough to fit a solid twenty people around it, which she managed to make happen, and it looks fantastic.
To my right sits the exquisite twenty-person-table set ready to dine a royal army. Through the side windows, I notice the shutters to the eye sore next door have been pried open. The girl already seems to be settling in. I need to put a stop to this before she gets any more comfortable. I shoot a text over to Clara telling her I’m going to handle the girl instead.
I walk outside to the gigantic deck overseeing the sand and ocean. The ocean breeze across my face calms me, momentarily stopping the numbers running through my head. It’s why I bought the houses where I did. To feel free at all, I need the ocean. I need the calmness of the waves. The smell of the salt water. The feel of the sand during the day when it's so hot it burns, or the coolness between my toes at night. I could have anything. Any house I want. And I want the openness of the ocean.
Obnoxious music blasts from the balcony next door, cutting through the quietness of the waves. “Jesus, what the hell is she listening to?” Kids these days and their terrible taste in music. I try to keep up with Kaden’s changing tastes, but lord help me with the shit they come out with nowadays.
I pull at the collar of my dress shirt feeling the tightness around my neck. There’s not a chance I’m waiting ‘til the end of the summer to close on this deal. I don’t care that the closing date states the first of August. This girl needs to sign this contract today. I can have a crew here within seventy-two hours. Every day she stalls, it’s a setback. I look at the date on my watch. It’s the first of June. Sixty-one days lost if she doesn’t sign. Forty-three excluding weekends. Four hundred and eighty minutes, twenty-thousand and six hundred and forty—
I pull harder, breaking the top button off my shirt.
“Fuck.”