Stryker (2 page)

I woke early the next day, way too early to be up and about
even for me. A glance at the clock showed that I had at least another hour
before I needed to move. I rested back against my pillow and called to mind the
first time I’d met my wife. I’d been dragged off to some benefit dinner or
other. Ten thousand dollars a plate and if it was anything like the ones I’d
been to before, I knew the fare would be cardboard chicken and rubbery vegetables
or something equally distasteful. If it had been up to me I would’ve preferred
to cut a check for double the amount if it would mean foregoing the unwanted
outing; but my Admin had grumped about my anti- social behavior and insisted
that as one of the city’s leading businessmen, I needed to be seen at such
things. Since I held genuine affection for the old tyrant, I’d given in much to
her pleasure and had accepted the invite. It was true that I no longer needed
to wine and dine the city’s elite. I had my feet planted solidly in the
business world as the CEO of my own brokerage firm. I was in high demand from
most of the moneyed families of the country and even some European houses as
well. But I guess there was no harm in keeping my hands in. I’d started out
small with just a handful of clients, but one of those clients had been an old
pal from M.I.T. Who happened to be one of the hottest new commodities in the
entertainment world. It was believed that everything he touched was golden and
when word got around that I was his money handler, everyone wanted in. I’d had
to make some changes to my five-year plan as I knocked that shit out the box in
the first two years. Pretty soon I was fielding calls from some of the biggest
names in the industry. People were leaving some of the leading houses that had
been in business for over a century to hop on board. That hadn’t gained me any
friends among the other players in my field of expertise, but I wasn’t looking
to make friends. I’d had to hire more people than I’d ever thought I would need
when I first started out but I oversaw everything. The name Gabe Stryker was on
every one’s lips. I was known as the man to get things done. Coming from humble
beginnings, I took all that shit in stride. I knew how easy it was to be toppled
from that pedestal. A scholarship to M.I.T. had gotten me out of the Bronx
where I was headed for one of two things: a life of crime or the army. But I
hated the idea of prison and I was too hungry for the army. I wanted out of
poverty the fastest way I knew how so I applied myself at school. It only took
one teacher in the fifth grade to praise my prowess with numbers and it stuck.
By the time I was thirteen, I was following the NYSE and I never looked back. I
set my sights on the goal and I didn’t let anything stand in my way. I never
even went back home on breaks, choosing instead to find work as an intern on
break the first year while bunking with some guys off campus until school
started back again. By the following year I was hired part time at a brokerage
house that had heard about what I could do. It was all part of my learning
experience but I had no plans on working for someone else. I’d be fucked if I
were going to let someone else get rich off my back, no fucking way. I never
once thought I couldn’t do it. I’d fought off gang members from the age of
fourteen, men who wanted me to work as a runner to peddle their shit to school-
kids on the playgrounds. I’d suffered beatings and threats until I’d signed up
at the Y for some self defense classes and trained to be a mean- as- fuck
little bastard. At least that’s what they whispered about me behind my back in
the old neighborhood. I’d taken it a little farther and at sixteen when I got
my first little job at a fast food joint, I’d put most of it into Krav Maga
lessons.

Now at thirty-two I’m a killing machine, no one was going
to get the drop on me.

I fought my way out of that neighborhood with brains and
brawn until I became a force to be reckoned with in the financial arena. But
unlike
many
who had come before me, I was hungry but I
wasn’t greedy. I had no need for flashy cars and the high life; that will all
come later. The first thing I did was to buy my mother a nice little starter
home in Long Island and pay it off in full. She never had to worry about
dodging bullets every time she walked out the door. She kept her job as a
teller at the bank in Manhattan where she’d worked for the last fifteen years.
She had her eyes on her benefits and her pension: smart woman. I stayed in my
little apartment in Brooklyn for the meantime. I knew my day would come. The
only luxury I accorded myself was my Harley and a membership to the local crew.
I still had some street in me after all and I had to release some of that pent
up energy somehow. Riding my chopper with the guys on the weekends was a great
stress reliever. I knew the stigma that came with being part of the crew, but
that didn’t matter to me. It was my only escape. It did garner me a lot of
pussy though. For some reason women love the bad boy tattooed bike rider image.
With me they got the best of both worlds. I’d made myself a force to be
reckoned with in both arenas.
The high profile business
tycoon and the biker.
The papers had had a field day with that shit.
Five years after I opened my doors I was a millionaire ten times over. I could
do what I want when the fuck I wanted but still I was satisfied with what I
had. I had no wife and kids at twenty-nine so I didn’t see the need for more.
That would all change a year later when I would meet the most beautiful woman
in the world who stole my heart with a smile.

I’d waited to the last minute possible to show up,
intending to be fashionably late as opposed to being rude. I’d learned proper
etiquette by watching others. Like the many trust fund babies I’d met in my
days as a college kid. Not that most of those guys followed proper protocol.
No, it was when I’d been invited into their homes that I’d seen first hand the
way things were done. The way their parents wished they’d learned to do things.
What I hadn’t learned there I’d researched until I knew all the intricacies of
fine dining. It didn’t hold much appeal for me. I was never going to be that
person but it paid to know these things. There were still some left who thought
the young nobody from the streets of New York had no place among them. I gave
less than a fuck what they thought. I let my money and my success speak for me
but this was my way of showing them up. Of showing them that although I
might’ve had a rough start they were no better than I because they knew which
fork to eat a fucking salad with. The higher I went the more I realized how
fickle life really was. The things people put stock in was almost comical when
you though about it. As long as I had a roof over my head and food on the table
that was enough. There was only so much you could do with money after all. But
for some that green paper was master of all. Not me, I went after it to serve a
purpose but it would never rule me.

I was led to my place setting at the head table where other
couples that I’d dined with before at other formal events in the past were
already seated. Pleasantries were exchanged and small talk ensued before the
show began. Tonight’s entertainment was a fashion show to raise funds for a new
wing at the burn center here in the city. It was a worthy cause or I wouldn’t
be here and I settled in to be bored. These things were usually set up for the
foolishly rich to spend exorbitant fees on their wives and girlfriends or
mistresses, sometimes all the above for some. Models would parade on the stage
in the latest that some top designer had to offer. Usually fashion that had not
been exposed to the public as yet; all so some society maven could boast that
she owned an original whatever the name happened to be at the time. I had no
one to buy such things for, not on this particular night at least. I’d broken
things off with my latest bed partner when she started hearing wedding bells
and I started hearing the lock click into place on the chain she was trying so
valiantly to put around my neck. Not even close, I had no interest in marrying
the beautiful Sabrina. The spoilt daughter of a wealthy Greek tycoon who
thought she could use daddy’s money to get whatever she wanted, including me.
When I’d broken things off the sweet and biddable debutante had turned into a
she cat from hell. Who’d vowed to make me pay for spurning her. I hadn’t seen
or heard from her in two months, and since then the bad taste she’d left in my
mouth had lingered for so long that I hadn’t had any interest in seeking out a
replacement. She had been the last in a long line of many who had thought to
trap me with what they held between their thighs, but no such luck. When the
time came; if the time ever came I would be the hunter not the prey. I’ve always
been fascinated by the women I chose to take to my bed. A good observer would
say it was very telling. Only the crème de la crème for the bad boy from the
tough streets of the Bronx. It could be that I liked that look of delightful
surprise when they saw me unclothed for the first time. When that thin veneer
of civility was stripped away and the beast that dwelt beneath the five
thousand dollar suits was revealed. Tattoos do strange things to women of a
certain class. I don’t know what it is about them, but of the twenty or so
women I’ve fucked since college every last one of them would juice like a ripe
peach at just the sight of my ink. It wasn’t something I advertised; they never
knew it was there until my shirt came off around about the second date. Which
is about as long as it took me to decide if we were going to fuck. Why waste
time? I savored the quick intake of breath, the hunger that would flash in
their eyes and I could almost say what they were thinking out loud. Most
everyone who knew me knew my life story. I did not hide it or shy away from my
roots. I am what came from that place; it’s something to be lauded not swept
under the rug like some dirty little secret. However women as soon as they saw
the tattoos, I could see the wheels spinning. Street kid, tattoos, must be a
wild man in bed. And that’s before I got them under me to prove to them just
how much of a wild man I really am.

“So Stryker I hear you made a killing on the Thompson
deal.” Old man Marley was an astute businessman who was one of the last
holdouts on the board of a firm that I was vying to take over. That was my
little hobby, though I don’t think the people I’d taken over from in the past
two years would appreciate knowing that that’s how I saw it. I like to buy
companies, revamp them and either sell them for a profit or run them myself
with a team that I had set up. Having a head for business gave me the
opportunity to have my fingers in many pies so apart from investing I bought
and sold. Businesses, homes, land, you name it if there was a price tag on it I
could turn a profit.

“Really Samuel must you discuss business?”

I smiled indulgently at his wife who scolded him from her
seat next to him. There was no one on either side of me and I wondered if my
tablemates were running late or a no show.

“That’s quite alright Mrs. Marley, to answer your question
sir I did, now you see what I can do for your company.”

“Listen young man that company has been around long before you
were born and I venture to say it will be long after you and I are gone…”

“It’s dying sir, you know it and I know it.”

He huffed at me and was gearing up I’m sure to blast me to
kingdom come, but his wife intervened once more. The others at the table were
busy with their own conversations and had missed the impending fireworks. I
heard her laugh and cringed I hadn’t heard that sound in two months, and
would’ve been happy to never have heard it again in my life. She was standing
across the room on the arm of some poor sod thank heavens. That meant she
wouldn’t make a scene when she realized I was here. I hate scenes, she’s
another reason I’d been avoiding public appearances truth be told. Not that I
was hiding from her heaven forbid, but I found confrontations trying and time
consuming. When something was over it was over.

It seemed tonight was to be my unlucky night because no
sooner had the lights started to dim heralding the beginning of the show, than
none other then Sabrina was seated to my right with her date next to her on the
other side of her. She didn’t seem too surprised to see me and I wondered if
she’d had something to do with the seating arrangements. There was no time to
change and I wouldn’t have even if there were. Fuck her that would be the day
when I ran from a woman. If she’d meant to strike up a conversation she was
waylaid by the emcee announcing the start of the show.

 
I turned my
attention to the stage and blocked all thoughts of the unwelcomed presence
beside me. As was to be expected the fashion was geared towards the women in
the crowd. I paid scant attention to the show, as there was nothing of interest
for me. Mom wasn’t into such things, though she had a closet full of designer
wear that I buy her whenever I’m away on one of my travels to Europe. Other
than her I had no one to shop for. The lingerie was first up, tastefully made
and presented of course. I don’t know too much about such things I like my
women naked. The dressing is nice to look at of course but I much prefer what’s
underneath. She was the third to come on stage, tall statuesque and a total
knockout. I have to admit to being blindsided. She had the kind of beauty
rarely seen anywhere except an airbrushed magazine. But this was no superficial
mannequin this was raw beauty in the flesh. My first thought was that I wanted
to kill every man in the room that had eyes on her and there were plenty. Old,
young, married single I was sure they were all gazing at the beauty who stood
so tall and proud as she stopped at the end of the stage before turning to make
her way back. I didn’t even see what she’d been wearing all I’d seen was her. I
sat through the rest of the show numb. As anyone would be who had just been
struck by a lightning bolt. When the light came up I released the breath I’d
been holding. It was then I caught the glare from the woman sitting next to me.
She knew, how could she not? She’d shared my bed for a few months not too long
ago. I’d venture to say she knew my look of hunger very well. But she’d never
been at the end of one quite so ravenous before, not from me at any rate. It
didn’t matter nothing else really did in that moment. I wanted to leave the
table right away and go backstage to find her but etiquette would not allow.
There were other ways of finding out who she was, and before the night was over
I vowed to have that information. Not since my days on the streets had I felt
such hunger, such need. I had no interest in the conversations going on around
me. Women were cooing over their bids as their husbands looked on dotingly. I
heard none of it, my mind completely occupied by thoughts of my plan of action.

It was time for dinner but I had no taste for it. I wanted
gone from here as soon as possible so I could find her. She would be from one
of the fashion houses of course so that is how I would find her. Or so I
thought until I heard a soft voice address the table before the seat next to me
was pulled back and the vision sat next to me.

“Sorry I’m late everyone it was a madhouse back there.”

“No apologies needed Nadia you were magnificent as usual.”
The lady two seats down and across from me smiled at her. Nadia.