Hardwired(7)

I got dressed and shot off an email to Sid with the news. He wouldn’t be awake for another few hours. In addition to being nocturnal, as many programmers were, he had come down with the flu the day before the meeting. He wasn’t much of a public speaker either, but strength existed in numbers and I could have used his support.

The past few months had been particularly intense, between normal college stressors and drafting an in-depth business plan for today’s meeting. While profitable, the site had a long way to go before it could support all of us in the long run. The business kept Alli, Sid, and me afloat, covering costs and our modest expenses as college students, but there were high expectations for where our Ivy League educations would land us fresh out of school.

    While Sid and Alli had been job hunting like any responsible college senior, I had gone all in on Clozpin, convinced after our initial success that I could turn it into something far better than a nine to five job for all of us. Getting Max to invest might be my last hope before I had to sideline that dream and get a normal job. In the meantime, I had less than a week to move out of the dorms and find a place to live.





* * *

I woke to the smell of coffee quickly followed by a dull throbbing in my head. “Damn the wine.” I rubbed my temples and willed the pain away.

I sat up on the futon, wrapped myself in my comforter, and thanked the gods for the precious gift of coffee as Alli handed me a steaming cup and two ibuprofen on cue.

“Whatever, we had a blast.” She sidled up next to me with her cup of joe. Her long brown hair was pulled up into a messy bun and she looked effortlessly cute in an oversized off shoulder top and black leggings. “I haven’t seen you have so much fun in ages. You deserved a little break.”

“That meeting put me over the edge,” I said, thankful despite the headache that my nerves were no longer as frayed as they were yesterday.

“So tell me more about Max, and when can I meet him? According to drunk Erica, we’re soul mates.”

I laughed as details of the night came back to me. No night of dinner and drinks was complete without girl talk.

“I pretty much only know what Professor Quinlan told me. He’s smart but always ended up digging himself out of some trouble at school. I don’t think he would have graduated without Quinlan’s help, and a degree was one thing his daddy couldn’t buy.” I shrugged, wanting to give Max the benefit of the doubt now that he’d saved me from total humiliation. “I’m sure it’s not easy to fly straight with a billionaire father though. Some people can’t handle that much freedom.”

“Well it just so happens I’m in the market for taming billionaire playboys.” She gave me a sassy smirk over her shoulder.

“I have little doubt you are.” I rolled my eyes.

“So he just does this investing thing now?”

“I’m not really sure what he does now outside of Angelcom. With that much money, he’s probably into all sorts of things.”

“Okay, the Internet search begins.” Alli bounced up and settled back with her laptop, narrating Max’s benign resume of charity associations and Internet investments. “Let’s see what we can dig up about Blake Landon.”

I fisted my hand around the mug handle, vaguely remembering my drunken rant about what an offensive ass Blake had been at the meeting. That he assumed he could derail my presentation and take me out after was unbelievable, but with looks like his, he probably had most women eating out of his palm with very little effort. Unfortunately for him, I wasn’t most women. The seething rage I felt toward the man was tempered only by the unholy way I felt under his gaze.

“Oh, please, I could care less.” Of the warring emotions, I tried to focus on my anger, but in truth, I was secretly curious about what Alli might find. Until yesterday I hadn’t heard of Blake, but judging by the way they let him run the show at Angelcom, he must have some influence. Alli stared intently at the screen, reading with obvious interest. I finally caved. “Well, what does it say?”

“He’s a hacker.”

“What?” She must have had the wrong Blake Landon, though he’d hardly looked like an upstanding corporate citizen this morning.

“Well, he used to be anyway. He has rumored connections to M89, a U.S. based hacker group that compromised over two hundred high-profile bank accounts about fifteen years ago. It doesn’t say anything else about it though. Officially, he’s the founding developer of Banksoft, which was acquired for twelve billion dollars. He’s the executive director of Angelcom and is an active investor in a number of early-stage Internet companies.”