The Venture Capitalist
Read The Venture Capitalist Online
Authors: LaVie EnRose,L.V. Lewis
THE VENTURE CAPITALIST
Copyright
©
2015 LaVie EnRose and L. V. Lewis
Published by Jungle Fever Press, Georgia
Interior Layout by L.V. Lewis
Cover image design
b
y
© T.m. Franklin
Photo Credits:
Male Image – ©
Sweet Trade Photography
Female Image – © Jazmin La.Shae Photography
Chicago Skyline – © Grzegorz Kieca via Dreamstime.com
Romantic Couple on back
– ©
Suprijono Suharjoto via Dreamstime.com
Vintage Carriage Return
–
©
Editorial via Dreamstime.com
All Rights Reserved. Without limiting the rights except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 reserved below, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the owner and publisher of this book.
This is a work of parody and fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents and events in this book are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used in parody or fictitiously. Any resemblance or similarity to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is coincidental and is not intended by the author.
The Venture Capitalist Volume 1/LaVie EnRose and L.V. Lewis — 1st Ed.
ISBN-10: xxxxxxxxxx
ISBN-13: xxx-xxxxxxxxxx
1. Romance
2. Contemporary
PRAISE FOR FIFTY SHADES OF JUNGLE FEVER
(Keisha’s Point of View)
Tristan introduces Keisha to the world of BDSM where the words “master” and “slave” take on a whole new meaning when a white man is wielding that kind of control over a black woman in America. This changes the whole dynamic of the story it is based on in a very insightful, humorous, and sensitive way.
I think you’ll enjoy the story, no matter your race/ethnicity or gender. It’s well-written and the characters are very likable. L.V. Lewis is one to watch
.~
Regulargal
“No one is more surprised than I am that I loved this book. . . . The title is parody wrapped up in irony cloaked in social commentary with a healthy dollop of humor. So that takes care of the title. So don’t be afraid of it because of that.
”
~
Nia Forrester, Author o
f
Commitment, Unsuitable Men, The Seduction of Dylan Acosta
“I enjoyed
Fifty Shades of Jungle Fever
because it didn’t take itself too seriously. This isn’t a bandwagon book but a true parody, and that’s what makes it outshine the others. . . If I have one recommendation for Ms. Lewis, it’s this: Find a way to give Triple G (Ghetto Good Girl) and Fairy Hoochie Mama their own book! They’re that funny.
”~
The Black, Author of
Passio
n’
s Nectar, The Neighbor, and Elle
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE
DEDICATION
To our families—those who know what we do and those who don’t.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you in advance to the readers who will embrace LaVie EnRose in this book and follow her to book two of Tristan’s POV, Double Switch, and the final book in the Jungle Fever quadrilogy.
Thank you also to the readers who will continue to read non-erotic works by L.V. Lewis
Prologue
The one and only time I’ve ever seen my father break down emotionally was when my mother died. Charles Xavier White never broke down. He broke other men down.
As the owner and CEO of a wine and distillery conglomerate which married the companies of the Whites and Carrolltons, my mother’s inheritance made him even more powerful than he already was. He wielded that power in a way that my brother and I desired to emulate someday, each in our very own way.
At thirteen, we were on the verge of manhood, our pubescent body changes almost complete, yet without a clue how to navigate life without one of our parents. We would find out sooner than anticipated.
School was out for the holidays, but of course,
Basketball was not. Nathan was leading Barrington Hills Academy’s junior varsity team in scoring for the second consecutive year. The next year should’ve been his best year ever, but we didn’t foresee how this yuletide season would end in such utter devastation.
Our mother had been wasting away for years from ovarian cancer, and there was nothing we could do about it. She had rallied just after Christmas and seemed to be doing much better. Confounded by her newfound energy, we took nothing for granted, and we pulled out all the stops for the holiday season. We even had a dinner celebration to precede the tournament she was sure Nathan’s team was going to win by a wide margin. Our gathering at the dining room table was practically normal, although our mother’s seating was a wheelchair.
“Finish your dinner, boys,” my mother said as she continued to push her own minute portions of food around on her plate to give us the impression that she was actually eating. “Nathan needs to be there early, which means you and your father will need to be, too, Tristan.”
With a final dab of his mouth with the napkin, my father tossed it onto his plate and stood. “Your mother is right, boys. Let’s get ready to go. We’re going to an area of town I’m not very familiar with, so it’s best we get there early.”
“Do I have to go?” I asked. I held up the book I was reading. “I’m getting to the good parts.”
“You’ve read that book more times than I have,” my father said. “This is an important game for Nathan.”
“Yeah, Tristan. What gives?” Nathan said with an exaggerated pout. “You’ve got to come to my game.”
“I’d just rather stay here with Mom than watch a bunch of jocks run up and down a basketball court."
Father rounded the table and pressed a kiss on top of my mother’s head. “Don’t tire yourself out, Darling.” The smile he gave her was one of pure unadulterated love. Only I saw the grimace of pain on her face as my father scolded me. “Tristan, would it kill you to give your brother support for the final game of the tournament?”
“I’d like Tristan to stay and play his saxophone for me, Honey,” she pleaded first to my father, then to my twin brother. “Is that okay, Nathan?” My mother hardly ever made requests of us anymore, so I knew with her on my side, I was going to win this argument.
Even Nathan couldn’t deny her this simple thing. “Yeah, sure Mom.”
She stretched her arms out, and Nathan left his chair and practically ran into them. He dwarfed her even at thirteen, but they held on to each other for several beats longer than usual. “Win the game for me. Okay?”
Nathan finally let her go and stood to his full height. “I’ll bring you the game ball,” he promised.
Mrs. Naven came in and began to clear the table and the three of us were alone as Nathan barreled out of the dining room with our father hot on his heels.
“Caroline,” my mother said to Mrs. Naven. “Please leave this for a while. I’ll need you to help me with....” she stopped mid-sentence. “Tristan, go warm up your saxophone and meet me in my room in twenty minutes.”
I didn’t want to leave her, because I could tell she was in some distress, but she didn’t want me to witness her pain. Mrs. Naven left the dishes in her hands stacked on the sideboard and took the handles of the wheelchair and pushed my mother through to her first floor master bedroom, which was practically a hospital room now. My father slept, usually when he was exhausted, on the second floor in a guest room. Many nights the recliner in the master bedroom was his bed.
Twenty minutes became an hour, because my mother slept, as she always did when she took the powerful painkillers. Sometimes she would sleep for days if she required pain meds administered intravenously. Somehow she’d managed to go without the ever-present I.V. for the holidays, but now she was headed towards using it again. I just knew it.
When Mrs. Naven got around to cleaning up in the kitchen, I was reading
the book my parents had given me for Christmas again—a New York Times Bestseller,
The Discipline of Market Leaders
, which was about competitive business strategies. My mother bought a copy for our father in the summer and I’d kept stealing it, so they finally got me one of my own as one of my Christmas presents. Even then I was preparing to rule the world, or my personally hewn-out subsection of it. While most boys my age were still reading comics, or graphic novels, and pop-culture fluff, I was reading books about finance, economics, and marketing.
I’d already made the mistake of trying to help Mrs. Naven in the kitchen and she’d refused my help as she always did.
“Master Tristan,” she said. “Just sit down and keep me company while I finish.” Neither of us knew then she would later graduate to calling
me
Mr. White, paying me the same respect as she did my father now.
Mrs. Naven was wiping down the countertops one last time when my mother buzzed her in the kitchen. “Caroline, you may send Tristan in now.”
“Yes ma’am,” Mrs. Naven answered. Releasing the button on the intercom, she turned to me with a smile. “She’ll want your opinion on her newest hair.”
“Ugh,” I said rolling my eyes as if it was really a big chore, but I had become complicit in my mother’s game of keeping the secret from my brother. Inwardly, I loved that she shared something with me that Nathan didn’t know about.
“Be honest, Tristan,” Mother attempted a smile, but it morphed into a wince. She had probably taken the non-coma inducing painkillers so she could stay awake longer when what she really needed was Demerol or Morphine. “How does this look?”
She was trying on wigs again. Now that I’d discovered her secret when I’d come home early from school one day, she didn’t hide the fact that her hair was gone, and it had been for quite some time.
My intense dislike for wigs to this day has nothing to do with what they are, as much as it had to do with my mother’s disdain for having to wear them when she had no choice. She had gone through several rounds of radiation and chemotherapy while Nathan and I were in elementary school. Those crises had been hidden from us, but as the eldest, I was the first to do most things. It was a clear spring day when I was the first to learn two years before she died, that she was wearing wigs to keep the cancer a secret from my brother and me.
I shifted my saxophone case from one hand to the other and squinted at her image. “You look beautiful, Mom.”
“Oh, thank you sweetheart,” she said. “Do you think your Dad will like it?”
“Yeah, he will, because it looks more like your regular hairstyle.”
“Then it’s settled. I’ll wear this one. Always.”
I looked at the other three strewn over her bed. “Do you want me to put these away?”
“Yes, but let me help you bag them first.”
We replaced them on the foam headstands, slipped the covers over them and I returned them to the shelf in her closet. Mrs. Naven would probably rearrange them before she retired for the night, but at least they were off the bed.
Mom was finger-combing the strands when I emerged from the closet. “Would you pass me that brush on the vanity?”
I held it in my hand when I approached the bed. She looked so tired and frail, and I wanted the burst of energy she had to last longer. “Do you want me to brush it for you?”
“Would you? Thanks so much my darling boy.” She sat as straight as she could, leaning forward so I could brush the back first.
When it was free of tangles, I said. “The back is good now.”
She sank back against the pillows propped along the head of the hospital bed, which was raised to a sitting position. I then brushed the sides, my clumsy fingers sweeping the thickest side of the parted hair across her forehead. I arranged it as perfectly as a thirteen-year-old unaccustomed to styling long hair could.
“All done,” I said. “You wanna see?” Before she could answer, I hurried back to the vanity, dropped the brush and brought a hand mirror over to her. Frowning, I said, “I did the best I could. Hope you like it.”
She made a big show of praising me, even as she smoothed it a bit more with her fingers. “You did a great job. I should get you to style my hair more often. Thanks, Tristan.”
I grinned widely and blushed. Then my eye fell on my saxophone case lying on the foot of the bed. “Are you ready for me to play?”
“In a few minutes. Please put the mirror back?”
“Sure.”
She patted the other side of the bed when I returned. “Come. Just talk to me for a while.”
“Okay.” I climbed onto the hospital bed, which was standard as hospital beds go. She was so tiny there was more than enough room for me.
“I’m so glad you stayed home with me,” she said, her head resting on my shoulder. “I wanted to talk to you without Nathan and your father around.”
“Really, why?” My heart began to race, because I knew she probably wanted to have the mortality talk, something I’d been avoiding. I knew at an early age that people didn’t live forever, and I had done some research at school on ovarian cancer. Prognoses—the forecast of likely outcomes, or the probability of women living with her diagnosis—were vastly bleak. Yet, as a child you hold out hope against hope that the oncologists, the physicians that treat cancer, are wrong.
“You know I spent some time with Nathan just before Christmas when you and your father went shopping, so tonight is your turn.”
“Oh, okay,” I said.
“Nathan is very much like me, so I have a feeling he won’t make his living in the same way you will. He’s going to do something creative, but he won’t go into the family business, and I’m fine with that.”
“I want to be a businessman, like Dad, but I don’t want to sell wine and whiskey to grownups.” I made a face.
“I know you don’t, sweetheart, but even if you don’t do exactly what he does, I have a feeling you’ll be successful at whatever you decide to do. You’re a lot like your father, so I know you’ll want to put your own unique spin on whatever you decide to do.”
“I think I want to help scientists figure out how to get a lot of money, so they can find cures for stuff.”
“That would be awesome,” she said. “But you don’t have to do that because I’m sick, you know.”
“I know, but I want to.” There was nothing I’d like to do more than stop the forward trajectory of the rampant cells in her body dividing out of control. I wanted my mother to see me go on my first date, to graduate high school, to marry Darnelle, the daughter of my father’s best friend and business associate, since Lisa Bonet was now seriously dating, and possibly married to Lenny Kravitz.
I wanted her to see me go to the exorbitantly expensive college they’ve already chosen for me to attend, where I would sow my share of wild oats before settling down with Darnelle, and having the requisite two point five children Americans are so fond of insisting my generation will produce.
“You know I love you very much, don’t you?” She said.
“Yes, Mom, I know.” I should have told her I loved her back, but I thought I would have so much more time to do that.
“Okay, one more thing and then we’ll be done with the serious talk. You know I’ve written down a lot of things I want for you and Nathan when I’m not around.”
“Like a will?” I asked reluctantly.
“Yes, that and some other things I want to say to you just in case I’m not around during the milestones in your life.”
“You’ll be around,” I said stubbornly. “My company is going to make a lot of money to help doctors like yours get rid of cancer for good.”
Her eyes misted, and her voice grew husky with emotion. “I know you will, honey.”