"I can't believe that you're here offering your help to me right now," I tell her, eyeing her offer.
On paper, it's not a bad deal. Lorna comes on board in a new role as Chief Counsel to the CEO and advises on all investment matters. But she also invests several hundred million of her own money into new products that we're launching. The presence of some outside capital then goes along and stabilizes the fucking shareholders because they start thinking that the company is now being run and managed by people who don't go around waving their dick around on camera.
The Board of Directors is made comfortable because they can rest easy that Lorna will keep me in check. And clients see a safer company to park their cash and they invest in our products and we all make lots of money.
It's all about inspiring confidence that we know what the fuck we're doing. Confidence from shareholders, the clients, and the employees. Even if we have no fucking clue which way to go, we always have to project that air of confidence. That's the number one rule of Wall Street, Gorgeous. When in doubt, never say you need help or ask for fucking directions. On Wall Street, it makes you less of a fucking man.
"So you get the higher profile and your face in the newspapers out of this deal?" I ask Lorna, eyeing her reaction. "In private I don't have to fucking look at you, right?"
She's holding her emotions in pretty good check, because she doesn't flinch at my obvious hatred.
"Well, I'll have a higher profile, dear, that's for sure," she says. "But I think you'll probably have to see me quite a bit more."
"You can do this role by simply emailing me and talking on the phone, you know," I tell her. "It's just for show basically. You're not really going to be setting any policy at this company."
Don't tell me to calm the fuck down, okay?
You're going to say no need to create all this anger on both sides. Just give her what she wants, take her money, and be done with it, right?
But no, Gorgeous.
I want you to understand just one thing.
There is no way in hell I'm letting my company go the way of what she did to her father's company.
None.
"If you really want to have a say as to whether or not I set any policy here, Mason, then you'll do what I say," Lorna says and I see her fangs come out. "Because otherwise I'll go to the Board and tell them that when I tried to help with this proposal you shot me down. Maybe even made a pass at me. And then you'll really be unfit to lead."
I just stare at her. I'm not fucking surprised at this.
"Fine," I tell her. "You fucking win. We'll do it your way."
Lorna smiles. "There's one last condition that isn't on the contractual paperwork yet, dear," she tells me and I see her eyes twinkle evilly as I look at her.
"What's that?" I ask, wondering if this is what it was all leading up to.
"Sure, my profile will be high enough to get appointed to the Chief Counsel position," she says to me. "But I want just one more title in addition to that."
"What title do you want?" I ask her, rolling my eyes. "Last I checked, Wall Street banks didn't have a title for Chief Bitch Officer."
Lorna smiles at me sweetly and gets up off her chair, walking toward me. "No, silly, that's not the title I want," she says as she walks around my desk to stand inches in front of me. "I want my other title to be Mrs. Mason Kane."
Holy fucking shit.
She can't be serious.
But her eyes tell me she's deadly fucking serious.
"That's right Mason," she says to me. "In order for me to rescue you out of your latest trouble, I'm going to have to be your wife."
Fuck my life.
Actually, Lorna is already doing that. She's fucking me up the ass with a barbed wire dildo.
And there's nothing I can do about it right now.
5
Becca
Ok, listen. I realize that I shouldn't complain about my childhood. On the surface, I had everything—nice gated condo, new luxury cars, a butler, gourmet meals, piano lessons, private school, a math tutor—typical things that kids take for granted when they grow up with money. But before you get all judgmental and think I'm just another spoiled-rotten 21-year-old, you should know that I didn't have it all. There were voids.
I didn't grow up with a father, and my mother, well… let’s just say that she went through men faster than kids go through a bag of Halloween candy. She was actually my stepmother because my biological mother died in childbirth. And then my Dad married her before he apparently left. That left Lorna taking care of me and she had a new flavor of man every year, and sometimes even quicker than that—I think the record was two weeks, and believe me, there have been more flavors than I can count. I stopped keeping score.