"One-night stand gone wrong?" I asked, slicing a cucumber into wafer-thin pieces.
"You can say that again," he muttered, tousling unruly chunks of his delicious hair. "Where were we?"
"I believe you were blackmailing me."
"That's right. I was. Friday morning. Suitcase. Clothes. Attitude. On second thought, keep that attitude. I like all that excess energy. You just need a good place to allocate it. I have the perfect place for you." He winked, and as if I needed confirmation, added, "My fucking bed."
WHAT IS TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS?
Is it a lot of money? A reasonable amount of money? So little, it's like no money at all? That depends on who you're asking. To me, twenty thousand dollars was merely pocket change. It had zero effect on my life. Contrary to general belief, it wasn't because my parents padded my bank account. People thought I'm a trust fund baby, and I let them, because frankly, who the fuck cares?
The reality of things was that my parents put me through Harvard University, fronted the money for my initial investment in Fiscal Heights Holdings, the company I have incorporated with three of my best friends, Trent, Jaime, and Vicious, and assisted me mentally and spiritually. A-fucking-lot. But the fact that I was swimming in more money than I could ever spend at the tender age of twenty-nine? That was all me, baby.
Me, and my savvy ways.
Me, and my persuasive nature.
Me, and my talent with numbers.
So, lack of funding certainly wasn't the reason why I found it so goddamn hard to click the Approve Transaction button and wire her twenty thousand bucks.
I didn't want Nina to have it. I didn't want her to be happy. Did I want her to fail? Did I want her to stay poor, lost, and somber? Did I want to get back at her for being such a vile bitch to me?
And if so, did that make me a bad person? I didn't think I was. Screwed up, sure. Would I ever want my future daughter to date someone like me? Hell no. I could smell my kind for miles. But then I couldn't fully commit to the word evil, either. I'd seen evil. Grew up with Vicious-now that's an evil man. I wasn't cut from the same cloth. I helped the elderly cross the road, carried their grocery bags all the way to their Buick Lucernes, even if it meant that I ran late to important meetings. I never misled any of my one-night stands. I was polite-and not only by obligation, but by nature-I voted, always used my blinkers, never, ever offended people on purpose and had been sponsoring an African kid for five years now. We even exchanged letters from time to time. (Kanembiri and I both agreed that Scarlett Johansson was fuck hot and Manchester United FC sucked hairy balls. Because some things were simply an international consensus.)
So, can I wholeheartedly say that I was a bad person? No. I wasn't.
I fucking loved people. And I loved fucking people even more. The most outgoing and social out of each of my friends. Which was why the situation didn't sit right with me.
Me. Staring at my MacBook screen for twenty minutes. My index finger hovering over the pad. Just fucking do it, I pleaded with my inner asshole. What the fuck do you care? You're still rich. She is still poor. She will always be miserable, no matter where she goes.
A soft thump on the door threw me out of my musings. Sue walked in without permission. Technically, she knocked, but that was just cheap semantics on her part. My PA was rude, vindictive, and downright nasty when the opportunity presented itself ever since she caught me fucking another chick against an office desk at the Fiscal Heights Holdings Los Angeles branch. Never mind the fact Sue and I only shared a brief, casual fling. Was it wrong of me to fuck my personal assistant? Probably. Did I tell her, right from the start, that she had better chances converting me to Scientology than getting me to commit to a relationship? Yes, I did, multiple times, before I even slipped the tip in. Did she say she 'totally gets it, and, that she's like, totally in the same place in life'? You bet your ass she did. But none of that mattered when push came to thrust, then a moan, then a wannabe actress from Los Feliz screaming my name so loud, security almost barged into the office to check if she was okay.
It'd been almost a year since Sue "caught" me not-cheating on her, and things had gotten progressively worse with every passing month of my non-existent infidelity. Any other chick would be long gone from my glitzy Manhattan office, but Sue had a special contract I had written myself (no legal background, thanks for asking), in a very particular situation where she deep-throated my cock, so I couldn't fire her. She wouldn't quit either, and I could see why.