I was an outsider, a kid from White Plains who’d spent more time being raised by my apartment building neighbors than my mom. Those neighbors hadn’t had a clue about things like proper business attire, appropriate wine pairings, and so many other little details that still separated me from the men and women I’d always aspired to be.
I followed Marcel through the doors and across the large open expanse of the lobby. Marcel had already arranged security passes for us, so we made our way directly to the elevator that rocketed us up to the executive floor of York Capital.
There was a unique kind of quiet in an elevator in the city. Suddenly, there were no horns honking, no people chatting in various languages, no pinging of phone notifications. Marcel tapped softly on his phone screen while I took a deep, centering breath.
This was it. Finally.
I tried not to think of Warren York’s son, the cowardly asshole who’d fucked me over. After setting me up that night in the clubhouse storage room, Ellison had simply walked away as if his fake seduction hadn’t ruined my fucking life.
Even though I wasn’t one to get nervous—at this point I had nerves of steel on acquisition day—part of me wondered what it would be like to shove this takeover in Ellison’s face. I wanted him to see his precious father’s reaction to losing their family business.
I wanted them both to suffer.
Marcel walked ahead of me to the minimalist front desk and spoke softly to the attractive receptionist. The woman glanced up at me with a tiny wrinkle between her eyebrows and responded with a question. The interaction went back and forth for a moment until she picked up the phone, presumably to ask someone higher than her for permission to allow us back to the inner sanctum.
“That won’t be necessary, Nikki,” I said, half remembering and half guessing her name from the Human Resources rolls I’d scoured early that morning. “Just direct us to the largest conference room and call an all-hands meeting of upper management. Thank you.”
Her eyes widened in surprise. “And you are…?”
“Grey Blackwood. The new owner of York Capital,” I said calmly, shooting her a wink. “And your new boss.”
“Uh… let me get Mr. York on the phone,” she said, even though she still held the phone to her ear.
“You do that,” I said, trying to suppress my smug satisfaction and maintain a token amount of professionalism.
I couldn’t wait to see the look on Warren York’s face when he realized I’d stolen his vaunted family empire out from under him, that generations of his ancestors’ hard work and dedication—not to mention the majority of his personal possessions—were now in my control.
I eagerly anticipated the moment when I would give him my carefully-considered one-time offer. If he wanted to keep a roof over his wife’s head, he’d have to force his son to step down as York Capital’s attorney of record and become my personal errand boy.
A little humiliation would serve Ellison right after all he had taken from me.
I remembered my last encounter with Warren York, the shock and horror on the man’s face when he’d witnessed his precious baby boy and heir to the capital investments throne on his knees for another man.
The only thing better than seeing the look on Warren’s face today when he learned he’d lost everything would be seeing the look on his son’s face when he discovered who he now worked for.
The man who’d taken everything from his family.
Ellison
15 Years Earlier
“Ponder and deliberate before you make a move.”
~ Sun Tzu, The Art of War
“… or not.”
~ Ellison York
“Okay, York, here’s the dare.” Kirby Heath’s eyes were a little cloudy from drinking too many shots with dirty names and a little mean from being born into the kind of wealth and privilege most people only dreamed of. “The next server who comes into the room gets the Ellison York treatment in the storage closet. You up for it?”
“Uh… What’s the Ellison York treatment exactly?” I asked, stalling for time.
Already, Drake Lou and Will Dinsmore had taken their turns, bringing back some cute tennis girl’s pink panties and a lipstick kiss in Corinne Knight’s signature red lip color right above his belly button, respectively. And now, apparently, it was time for me to uphold the honor of the York family name by taking mine.
Nothing good ever starts with a drunken dare. I was just sober enough to know that much.
But the final night of the father/son golf tournament at the Crosbie Golf and Country Club in Greenwich, Connecticut, wasn’t known for being a time when intelligent decisions were made. It was known for being a time when fathers passed down their tendency to overdrink, tell blatant lies about conquests on and off the golf course, and salivate over the bar bunnies in the member-only area of the clubhouse.
It also happened to have coincided with my very overdue, very public dumping by my long-term girlfriend, Nessa, who felt that senior year of college meant moving on from relationships that were “outdated” and “not representative of who we were now” or whatever.
“Dude, I should not have to spell this out for you,” Kirby said with an eye roll. “You take this person in the closet, you do a dirty deed, and you bring back proof.”
“Photographic or physical proof,” Drake clarified, lifting his shot of tequila. “We won’t take your word for it.”
The drunken guys around me—men I’d called my friends since elementary school, through our years at Choate, and at Yale, too, for a couple of them—laughed out loud at the very idea of taking someone’s word for something. If there was one thing our fathers taught us at a young age, it was that honor was mostly for the middle class.
I was starting to think Nessa had a point about outgrowing certain relationships, because the pretentious snobbery of the people around me had started getting old years ago.
The familiar clack of the billiard balls punctuated the indrawn breath Drake took when the fiery tequila hit his throat. In the nearby dining room, I could hear the low rumble of voices from our various fathers and grandfathers as they shared drunken recollections of particularly good shots from the day’s golf championship.
“Stop overthinking shit. You should be thanking us,” Will said. “This is a total gimme. Did you see the body on that server with the red hair? Mm. Besides, she’s been eyeing you all night.”
I thought of the server who’d brought our last round of beer. She was gorgeous. Thick red hair pulled back in a braid that nearly hung down to her ass and a figure that totally did it for me. She’d flirted with me in the past when I’d been here with Nessa, so maybe she’d be fine pressing a kiss to my stomach for fun.
Kirby handed me another shot—my fourth Buttery Nipple in an hour—which meant I was well past buzzed and on my way to sloshed, but I slammed it back anyway, repressing a shudder at the butterscotch flavor. It was easier just going along sometimes.
“Never be the man who ruins another man’s good time, son.” My father had told me this on multiple occasions.