Taking Control (8 page)

I pull her into my lap, wiping my hands on my abandoned suit coat. Thousand-dollar suit serving as a post-coitus serviette? Sounds about right.

“Shh, bunny,” I croon, rocking her a bit as she shakes and shudders in post-orgasmic delight. “Liked that, did you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it was the pre-fingering massage that did it,” she snarks back, gulping in air.

“Maybe,” I say. “Let’s go upstairs now. My cock may break in half if it doesn’t get some attention.”

“We can’t have that.”

I take special care not to overwork her that evening so that I can start the next day off right. This time we share a shower in the morning, and my smug smile sits on my face until I arrive at the office.

“Y
OU
HAVE
AN
UNSCHEDULED
VISITOR
.”
Rose informs me when I arrive. She does not like unscheduled visitors. Her strict adherence to routine is what makes her a great assistant. “He said you’d want to see him.”

She hands me a card. It isn’t a business card but rather a calling card with the name
MITCH HEDDER
in a bold but old-fashioned font. Underneath his name, the lettering reads “purveyor of fine things.”

What a fucking tool. “He’s right,” I answer. “I’ll see him today, but from here on out, he’ll need an appointment.”

She smiles in satisfaction, and I leave the card on her desk to throw away. Rose has placed Mitch in the large conference room down the hall from my office. The table seats thirteen, six on either side, with my chair at the head. Unlike my office, this room is modern with a glass-topped steel table and white leather Herman Miller chairs. One side of the room is paneled in walnut and the other is a bay of windows overlooking the Hudson.

Body language is as important as any words being voiced, and the glass-topped conference table prevents my guests from hiding their reactions under a layer of wood. With the clear table surface, I can view every leg twitch and hand wring.

Mitch Hedder must realize this, because he’s not sitting. Instead, his hands are tucked into the pockets of his tan dress slacks and his back is turned. I can’t read his expression or observe his hands, but I can see the determined set of his shoulders. He’s tense and his legs are slightly braced apart. There’s no question that he’s looking at the door, watching for me.

“Mr. Hedder,” I say, entering. I pull out the seat at the head of the table and sit down. He can stand like a lackey or sit below me. Either way I’m in control, and as a bonus, I don’t have to shake his hand. With a wave, I gesture for him to sit.

He hesitates, no doubt wondering if sitting or standing gives him an advantage. Neither, of course. He’s had to come to me, and therefore he’s already the supplicant. Finally recognizing the futility of standing, he rounds the table so he’s seated with his back to the door but can still look out the windows.

Hedder is fit. His broad shoulders are encased in expensive and expertly tailored double-breasted blue wool. Stick a nautical cap on this guy and he’d look like he stepped off a yacht in Palm Beach. With a full head of multicolored blonde hair, which he no doubt dyed regularly, I can see his appeal to a certain class of older women. Fifteen, twenty years ago, his allure would have been even more potent, and it’s easy to imagine him charming Tiny’s sweet mother off her feet.

“Beautiful view you have here.”

“Thank you.”

“Employ many people?” His question is casual, but I don’t make the mistake of thinking anything he wants to know is just friendly interest.

“Not many. Around one hundred or so.”

He shakes his head in mock disbelief. I don’t for a minute believe that he doesn’t know exactly how many people are employed here. “So few to run such a large enterprise, but I suppose it’s the holding you refer to, rather than your varied and far-flung interests. Don’t you even have business in the Far East?”

“The Far East? I didn’t know that term was used anymore. But if you’re referring to the continent of Asia, I don’t know many who aren’t interested in the Asian market, either for importing or exporting purposes.”

He turns away from the window to face me, hands lying lightly in his lap. “A billion dollar multinational company headed by a man under the age of thirty-five is unheard of if you aren’t a tech genius. Yet here you are. A financial savant. A man known to have never stepped wrong. Whose investment savvy is the stuff of legend.”

“I’ve had losses and mistakes. I suspect they don’t fit with the current narrative,” I respond. His flattery is the gradual build to some great crescendo which he expects will evoke a response. Either I erupt in anger or effusive pleasure. I don’t think he’s decided which way he’ll play it. My nonchalance is making him rethink whatever scheme he arrived with.

Many people might underestimate Hedder, but this man is a predator. I know this because I am too, but my prey are companies and, well, a certain five foot four inch blonde with light green eyes. Lonely women are Hedder’s targets, based on the research I’ve had done on him.

“Yes. Ian Kerr is a golden boy. Everyone wants to touch him, hoping that his brilliance will rub off on them. But no one becomes as successful as you in such a short time without having a few skeletons in his closet.” With this opening salvo, he smiles as if to lessen the sting of his accusations. He is right, of course. I have many skeletons in my closet. The money I used to build my current empire has been washed clean, but it had unsavory origins. I don’t really give a shit unless it bothers Tiny.

I don’t think it would. She, of all people, would understand how desperation can drive one to take measures that could fall outside the laws of state and propriety. If you were starving and someone you love was hurting, you’d do anything. She gets that.

So does Mitch; he’d do anything to keep himself happy.

Because I don’t care what Mitch thinks, I remain silent. We stare at each other—or at least I try to look him in the eye—but he can’t maintain contact for more than a couple seconds before he drops his gaze.

“I know we have plans for dinner this Friday, but I wanted to come and take your measure. For Tiny’s sake.” His eyes flick over me. The dollar signs add up as he calculates the cost of my suit, my watch, and even my pocket square. The perusal ends as quickly as it starts and his attention moves back to the window. He watches himself smooth down the lapel of his jacket. As he stares at his reflection longer, I realize that he’s more interested in looking at himself than watching others.

A narcissist to the core. But I should’ve known that by his history of nonstop pleasure seeking. He needs to be watched carefully because Sophie Corielli, Tiny’s mom, wouldn’t have fallen for him unless he wielded some sort of magic. Sophie was too smart to be taken in by an ordinary man.

“I’m interested in everything to do with Tiny,” I respond. Beyond the yachting gear, I note he’s wearing a gold Rolex. Everything about him says money, from the carefully cut and dyed hair to the upscale clothes and his well-manicured hands. And it makes me want to leap over the table and throttle him.

“Then we have a mutual interest.” He leans forward, tearing his eyes off his reflection and directing them toward me. His expression is set to earnest, but the only thing this man is earnest about is himself. “My son told me that Tiny was settling down, and with her mother gone—God rest her soul—it’s my duty to take up the parental reins. Sophie would have wanted that.”

There’s no question in my mind that the very last thing Sophie would want is Mitch Hedder hanging around her precious daughter. I don’t know why their four year relationship ended, other than Sophie had gotten tired of Mitch’s roving eye. I do know that Mitch has spent the last seven years completely devoid of contact with Tiny and Sophie.

While they were struggling to make ends meet, while they were crushed under crippling medical bills from Sophie’s fight with mantle cell leukemia, while Tiny had to turn to delivering drugs for her stepbrother to make sure that they could afford treatment when Sophie’s cancer came out of remission, while all of that was happening, Mitch Hedder was accumulating enough wealth to deck himself out in designer threads and twenty-thousand-dollar watches. And not once in that time did he reach out to help them.

Strangling him with my own hands would probably be too good an end for him.

“It surprises me that you would say that, given your lack of attention and care toward the Corielli ladies in the last, oh, seven years or so.” I find it a struggle to maintain an even tone, my anger toward him is so great.

He doesn’t notice. With a careful hand, he smoothes down the back of his hair. “I was under strict instruction by Sophie to never darken her doorstep. I wanted to honor that.”

“Even when she had cancer?”

“There was little I could do.” He gives a negligent shrug, one shoulder raised slightly to express…helplessness? Maybe that move works with the ladies down in Florida, but it just pisses me the hell off.

“Your watch could have paid off half their medical bills.”

We both look at the gold-encrusted timepiece. He grimaces. “This old thing?” After a rueful shake of his head, he says, “No, this piece wouldn’t have touched even a tenth of the debt. You should know. I heard you paid it all off and that you’re planning on donating even more in memory of dear Soph.”

My blood boils even hotter. “You knew exactly how much their debt was?”

“Malcolm kept me informed from time to time.” He looks over his shoulder then, perhaps feeling my animosity creep down his spine. “I suppose it’s too early for a whiskey. I’m parched.”

“It’s barely ten in the morning, Mr. Hedder.”

“You know the old saying. It’s five o’clock somewhere.” His smile dies slowly at my stony glare.

“Not only is it barely ten in the morning, but you’ve wasted fifteen minutes of my day. That’s fifteen minutes too many. You have five minutes to state your business, and then I’m walking out of here.”

“Now wait a minute. I’m here to look out for Tiny. If you care about her, as you profess, then you won’t mind my hanging around a bit. I’ve got some things of her mother’s that Tiny might be interested in. Unless you’ve got something to hide, I can’t imagine why I’d be a bother to you.”

“Cut the bullshit, Hedder. I’ll summarize your visit. You show up uninvited to my office. You suggest that I am of questionable character. You challenge my suitability to marry—yes, marry,” I repeat at his look of surprise, “a woman you have ignored for the whole of her adult life, leaving her and her mother to struggle for every penny, to be worn down by worry, to be crushed under a mountain of debt while you act as the pretty appendage for some rich old socialite in Palm Beach or perhaps even San Tropez. You fail to show up for the funeral of this woman’s mother, and yet you believe that we care about your opinion of us?”

I stand up and proceed toward the door, not even waiting to see if Mitch follows.

“For your sake, I hope you are correct and Tiny’s longing for a parent doesn’t overcome her newfound feelings for you,” Mitch mutters.

It’s a warning, but not an effective one. There are things I might lose Tiny to—her infernal sense of pride and need for independence is one—but a man who cheated on and abandoned her mother? Never.

I don’t give him the satisfaction of a response other than allowing the door to close behind me. I stop at Rose’s desk. “Our visitor is still in the conference room. If he isn’t gone in the next five minutes, call security.”

Before I can sit down at my desk Louis is at the door.

“What is it?” I ask impatiently. After enduring Mitch Hedder’s presumptuousness, I find I have little patience to tolerate Louis’s whining.

“I saw you taking a meeting.” His tone is accusatory. “Should I have been in there?”

“If you should have been in the meeting, I would have invited you.” My response is a dismissal, but this is a different Louis than the one I hired, one whose ability to take a hint, read nuance, and interpret a signal is suddenly nonexistent.

“Given that you’re distracted by other things, I should be in these meetings. For the protection of Kerr Inc.,” he says frostily.

He’s overstepped and doesn’t even realize it. “I
am
Kerr Inc. I shouldn’t have to remind you of this.” I reapply myself to the regulatory paperwork on SunCorp and dismiss him. He stands uncertainly at the doorway for a few moments. His suit pants make a whisking sound as he shifts his weight from foot to foot. He wants to retort, to say something, to take some power back, but I am Ian Kerr and Louis is a mere employee. He’s feeling that insignificance and wants me to allay it. It’s not going to happen. He’s done here.

I continue to ignore him and he finally drifts away.

TINY

I
TELL
J
AKE
I
HAVE
to take a long lunch. It’s the fourth long lunch I’ve taken this week. He merely nods and shoos me out. My guess is he thinks I’m having sex with Ian. I’m not, although that would be better than what I actually am doing, which is cabbing it down to midtown and loitering around Richard Howe’s office. So far I’ve followed Howe to four lunches with various clients and have taken several surreptitious pictures with my smartphone.

Howe enjoys eating fish. He orders it almost every time, and he tends to drink a lot. He also stares at the waitresses’ asses nonstop. I report all of this to Sarah.

“Field work is pretty boring,” I tell her.

“More boring than sitting inside at a desk and answering phones?”

“Good point.”

“Who does he have lunch with?”

“No one interesting. A bunch of guys wearing blue suits. You know the uniforms the kids who go to private school wear on the Upper East Side? It’s like these are the same kids wearing the same uniforms, only the kids are taller and the sizes are larger.”

“It looks like that because they are the same kids,” Sarah points out. “Any women in the group?”

“No. The only women they encounter are the waitresses. I’m not getting anything out of this.”