Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (99 page)

Eventually she rested her head on Red’s
shoulder and closed her eyes and slept most of the way to Berlin.

Any hopes Nicole might have had in seeing
Germany were soon put to rest, as they immediately were picked up by a car
service at the airport, and taken to the Concorde Hotel, a very modern building
that looked more like a museum than a hotel.

As they checked in, Red spoke German
fluently with the staff.
 
Nicole was
shocked, and on their way up the elevator to their suite, she asked him how he
knew German.

“Once I realized I wanted to bring
Jameson International into a global marketplace, I spent the next four or five
years learning German, French and even a tiny bit of Japanese.
 
But I really took to the German language
for some reason.”

“That’s incredible.”

“That’s not incredible,” he said,
grabbing her and pinning her against the wall of the elevator.
 
“You are incredible.
 
Your mind.
 
Your body.”
 
He looked her up and down, his gaze
raking her body with ferocity.
 
“Those tits.”

“Red!”

The elevator dinged and he reluctantly
let her away from the wall.
 
They
walked to their suite, a large, modern set of connecting rooms with brown and
white décor.
 

“I wish we had enough time for me to
throw you down on this bed and show you what the word incredible really means,”
he told her, as they dropped their bags and surveyed the rooms.

“You’re frisky today,” she laughed.
 

“I can’t keep my hands off you,” he said,
grabbing her by the waist, picking her up and kissing her deeply on the mouth.

As usual, she melted into his kiss and
his embrace.
 
And then his cell was
ringing again.
 
“Dammit,” he said,
moving away from her and answering brusquely.

As she watched his expression, a feeling
of dread overcame her.
 
The color
drained from his face as he listened to whoever was talking.
 
“We’ll be right there,” he said, and
then put the phone back in his pocket.

“What’s wrong?” she said.

Red looked at her and his eyes were like
two dark stones.
 
“The dominoes are
falling,” he said.
 
“We’re about to
lose everything.
 
Come on.”

And then they were racing to the
elevator, downstairs to the first available taxi.
 
She was desperately trying to keep up
with Red, as he was in his own world now, walking at such a fast pace that she
practically had to run to stay with him.
 
He glanced at her once and asked if she was all right.
 

“I’m fine, please don’t worry about me
today,” she said.

He nodded as if that’s what he needed to
hear.
 
And then they were in the
taxi, Red speaking German, and the taxi was racing down unfamiliar
streets.
 
The landscape outside the
car windows was beautiful, so different from everything Nicole was used to.
 
She wanted to appreciate the strange
architecture and the amazing buildings of Berlin, but her heart was in her
throat.

She didn’t know exactly what had gone
wrong this morning, but she knew it was bad, and that was enough.
 

They arrived at their destination, a
squat white building with sloping walls that looked like a funhouse version of
a “normal” building.
 
Red kept up
his fast paced walk into the offices and they arrived at the front desk, hosted
by a strange looking woman with tiny glasses and a nasally, high-pitched
voice.
 

“I’m Red Jameson, and I need to see Lucas
Bauer, please.”

She spoke lightly accented English.
 
“Yes, we’re expecting you, Mister
Jameson.
 
So lovely to have you
here.”

He gave Nicole an exasperated look.
 
“Lovely for me, also.
 
Thank you.”

“I will let Mister Bauer know you’ve arrived.”

Red backed away from the front desk and
checked the time on his phone.
 
He
shook his head.

“What’s going on?” Nicole asked.

“You don’t want to know,” he told
her.
 

“Mister Bauer will be down in just a
moment,” the birdlike woman told them.

“Can I just go up?” Red asked.
 

She cocked her head.
 
“Visitors typically are met by an
employee, sir.”

“I’m not a visitor, I own this company.”

She nodded.
 
“He’ll be down in just a moment, I
assure you.”

Red grit his teeth and blew air out
through his nostrils.
 
Nicole could
tell he was a millimeter from blowing up.
 
She wanted to say something to calm him, but this was now a
professional, work setting, so she kept quiet.

Lucas Bauer arrived through a set of
glass doors at the far end of the hall.
 
He was tall, smiling, with a blond head of thick hair and a mustache
that seemed almost fake, it was so bushy and sculpted.
 
Like a movie mustache, Nicole
thought.
 
He greeted them with a
level of politeness that also, like his mustache, seemed phony.

“So wonderful to have you here,” he told
Red.
 
“We are so pleased.”

“Great,” Red replied in a clipped
voice.
 
“Shall we?”

“Of course, right this way,” Lucas
said.
 
As they walked through the
glass doors and into the offices of the ad agency, he kept up a running commentary.
 
He explained that the architect who’d
designed this building was one of the most famous German architects of the
modern era, and how they’d been the top agency in the EU for nearly ten years.
 

Everything was white inside.
 
The hallways, the offices.
 
They walked through a cavernous white
room that had no cubicles, just rows of tables and chairs with computers and
people working away at them, reminding Nicole more of a factory than an ad
agency.

Finally they arrived at a conference
room.

Inside the conference room were two more
employees of the company.
 
A short,
heavyset woman that reminded Nicole of a bulldog.
 
Her name was Helga, which Nicole thought
appropriate.
 
She looked exactly
like Nicole pictured a German woman named Helga should look.
 
And then there was a young, dashing
brown haired man named Alric.

Everyone exchanged greetings and handed
their business cards out to one another (although Nicole had no card so she
just shook hands).

“We have coffee and scones,” Lucas said,
gesturing to the trays at the back of the conference room.
 
Nicole and Red made themselves
coffee.
 
He gave her a quick smile
but she could tell he was very preoccupied.

Nicole grabbed herself a scone, too, and
then she and Red took seats next to one another at the large table occupying
the center of the room.

The German employees sat down and Lucas
took over the meeting.
 
“Once again,
we thank Red Jameson for coming all the way to Berlin on short notice.”
 
He nodded and smiled at Red.
 
“The circumstances are a bit difficult at
the moment, but we are determined to come out stronger and better than ever.”

Red stared at him, and slowly Lucas’s
smile faded.
 

“I heard through my CFO that you’ve had
five executives leave the company since Jameson international acquired you.”

“And a sixth today,” Alric said.
 

“Who?”

“One of our art directors,” Lucas chimed
in.
 
“It’s a big problem.
 
We can’t compete with the salary that
Kane Wright is offering our people.”

“Kane Wright?” Red said, and if his gaze
had been intense before, Nicole thought, it was now burning with the brightness
of a thousand suns.
 
The German ad
agency executives wilted beneath his glare.

“I thought you’d been told,” Lucas
peeped.

“No.
 
I was not.”
 
Red sat back in
his chair and put a hand on his chin, looking down, lost in thought.

“It’s criminal what that man has done to
Aufrührerische Kreativität,” Helga told them.
 
“He’s purposely trying to ruin us, going
after our most important people and offering them ridiculous sums of money to
move to his agency.”

“Why would he do that?” Lucas asked them,
throwing up his hands.
 
His veneer
of happiness and friendliness was gone, and now he just seemed bewildered.
 
“Why would he pay so much just to take
our people?”

Red still hadn’t spoken.
 
The room fell silent as everyone looked
to him for an answer.
 
Finally, he
spoke.

“Kane Wright is trying to destroy me,” he
said.

Nicole watched him.
 
She thought that he looked already as if
he’d lost some enormous battle.

“We will fight back,” Lucas told
him.
 
“We are going to work hard, hire
new people, and we will regain ourselves.
 
I promise you that, Mister Jameson.”

“Who’s Kane Wright?” Nicole asked,
softly.

Everyone turned to her now.
 
They looked at her like she’d just asked
him who Barack Obama was.

Red smiled.
 
“Kane Wright is the European version of
me.
 
Only a little bit older, a lot
richer, and a hell of a lot more ruthless and lacking in ethics.”

“I promise you these maneuvers of his
will come back to haunt him,” Lucas said, pounding the table with his
fist.
 
“He can’t be allowed to get
away with this.”

Red sighed.
 
“I appreciate that, I appreciate your
loyalty also.
 
Have the three of you
also been approached by Mister Wright?”

The three Germans exchanged glances and
then slowly nodded.

Red sighed.
 
“Did any of you accept an offer
yet?
 
Tell me now.
 
If I find out you’ve lied to me today, I
will make it my life’s work to pay you back for this breach of trust.”

Alric, the sharply dressed young man with
the brown hair, uneasily raised his hand.
 
“I’m sorry.
 
I did just
recently accept an offer to work with Kane Wright.”

Helga and Lucas turned and gawked at the
younger man.

“Alric, are you insane?” Lucas
practically yelled.
 
“You’re taking
the blood money from that horrible leach?”

“I’m so sorry.
 
I know I should have told you,” he said
softly.

“And you come in our meeting to spy on
us?” Helga said.
 
“You have no
shame, Alric.”

They began arguing in German.

Red stood up.
 
“Lucas, please call security and make
sure they come and escort this man out of the building immediately.”

Alric started to leave, his head hanging.

“Thank you for being honest with me,” Red
told him as he left.

Alric nodded, but Lucas just kept yelling
at him again in German and ushering him out of the conference room.

“Could you give us a moment of privacy?”
Red asked Helga.

She stood up, sweating and
apologetic.
 
“Of course, of
course.
 
We will wait outside,” she
said.
  

Soon the room was empty.
 
Red walked to where Nicole was sitting
and knelt before her.
 
“I’m sorry
I’ve let you down,” he said.

She put her hands on his face and
smiled.
 
“You could never let me
down.
 
I love you no matter what.”

He kissed her palm, took her hands in his
own.
 
“I screwed up,” he said.
 
“I lost focus and I made crucial
mistakes.”

“Everyone makes mistakes,” she said.
 
“You can’t beat yourself up over it.”

“I think my CFO might have been secretly
angling for a position with Kane Wright the entire time.
 
This whole thing stinks to high heaven.”

He got up and went to the back table and
poured himself a glass of water, continuing to speak.
 
“It’s like a chess match.
 
Kane Wright set me up, knowing that if I
overleveraged myself in order to buy this company, then he would be in a
position to destroy me.”