The Venture Capitalist (7 page)

“I’d like to take a look at your cash-flow reports for the past few months,” I say. “That would save me a trip over here in the next couple of weeks.”

“Sure,” he says, forever eager to impress the hand that feeds him. He stands and I follow him to the door at the end of the bar closest to us, which leads into the offices.

It seems Ms. Beale is telling guy number three or four to piss off and doesn’t notice when I slip out of the room with Brent. She’ll get another offer soon enough from a celebrity whose music she’s no doubt grown up listening to and if she’s as uncompromisingly heterosexual as I believe she is, that pick up will go over like a lead balloon.

I gave Brent’s paperwork a brief once-over, then checked the markets in several countries before deciding I’d given Darnelle enough rope to hang herself. I leave the sound-proof office area and re-enter the VIP lounge.

Darnelle is pouring champagne for herself, Keisha, and another guy I don’t recognize, but who’s dressed like Danai, so he must be a rapper. His body language indicates he’s interested in Keisha; as in, he wants to fuck her. This woman is like a garden of flora in full bloom and all the bees are interested in her pollen. I’m putting a stop to this shit right now.

“Ms. Beale, fancy seeing you here,” I say, enunciating the syllables distinctly. The new guy frowns when he realizes I’m staking a claim. Keisha looks as if she’s a deer in proverbial headlights, before she relaxes and counters back.

“Yeah, fancy that.” Her response is vaguely familiar, as if she’s borrowed it from somewhere that I can’t recall. If the book or movie doesn’t involve numbers, I probably wouldn’t remember it anyway.

Her posture changes upon my arrival, and as she looks up at me with an emboldened stare, my eyes are drawn to her nipples beading through that goddamn purple dress.

Our eyes duel as they have been wont to do since we met merely a week ago. Rapper guy hands me a glass of champagne, and while it’s not my preferred brand, I take it and have a seat, because I’ll be damned if he’s going to horn in and steal away this woman I’ve been obsessing over for a solid week.

I move to the edge of my chair and address Keisha. “I’d like to have a word with you in private after you finish your drink. I still have something that belongs to you since our early attempts to connect with you to effect its return weren’t successful.”

She fires back shaking her head, “You shouldn’t have gone to any trouble. I’ve replaced all my personal property that matters.” Darnelle and Rapper Guy’s heads swing from Keisha to me as if they’re watching a high-noon duel.

“I didn’t go to any trouble. I can’t say that Darryl wasn’t frustrated a time or two. Apparently you were indisposed each time he tried to contact you.”

“I’m a working girl,” she says, then thinks better of her choice of words, “I mean, a business woman. I’m usually busy.”

“I see that,” I say with a sardonic expression.

She narrows her eyes and takes another sip of her champagne, frowns as if she’s tasted something bitter, then she smiles when Darnelle whispers something to her. Whatever it is they share, causes Keisha to smile and kiss Darnelle’s cheek.

I’m about ready to drag her away from this menagerie when Darryl comes over to deliver a message to me. I stand and point, putting as much dominant alpha male in my demand as I dare, so it won’t have the opposite effect and send her running again. “Stay here until I get back. Don’t make me have to search for you again.”

When she doesn’t recoil or reject my command, and I’m satisfied she will do as I say from the coy little Mona Lisa smile she displays. I follow Darryl back to the quiet of the hallway leading to the offices. “This had better be a life or death situation,” I say to my beleaguered assistant.

“The Hong Kong client wants you to look over the contract language again. They aren’t happy with the financial consequences.”

“Get Mr. Huang on the phone.”

“He may be at lunch,” Darryl says. “It’s 12:30 p.m. there now.”

I level him with a glare, and Darryl dials the client and hands me his Smartphone. The one that White Enterprises provides for him.

I massage the client’s ego and promise concessions that may or may not be in the final contract once I’ve had my legal team to vett it again, and get him off the phone in record time, since he wants to get back to his tempura, and I need to get back to a hot little number that I need to be my submissive in the worst way.

When Darryl and I emerge from the hallway, I see the rapper tossing Keisha over his shoulder. “What the motherfuck!”

I stalk over to them, with Darryl at my heels. “What’s wrong, Mr. White?” he asks, but I ignore my assistant and hone in on intercepting Keisha before she’s lost to me yet again. That rapper bastard is taking her out of this club over my dead body.

“No-o, By-ron,” I hear Keisha whine. “Put me down.”

“I’m just gon’ take you home now,” Byron says as he takes something from Darnelle and turns to leave with Keisha. I’m already into position at the door when he arrives.

“By-ron. I don’t wanna go with you,” Keisha is still protesting.

“Aw, fuck!” Byron says when he sees me blocking his egress.

“I think she’s made her position clear,” I say in the hardest, no nonsense tone I’m used to using with submissives, not guys attempting to take inebriated young women from bars. Keisha peeps around the guy’s body, her mouth forming an “o” as she squints up at me.

Byron puts her down so quickly, she loses her footing and stumbles into me. I take her arms and hold her up and look into her eyes. Just as I thought, her pupils are dilated. She’s had something other than champagne.

“What did you give her?” I ask Captain Asshat.

“I ain’t give her shit.” Byron denies it, but his comportment assures me he’s as guilty as sin. “Talk to that damn dyke. That’s who she was drinking with before I even got here.”

Overhearing the rapper’s  incendiary words, Darnelle snarls at him. “Talk to this dyke about what?”

Keisha twists out of my arms before I can stop her and decks Darnelle with a text-book right hook, then collapses on top of her.

With eyes as big as saucers the Rapper says, “Ain’t that a bitch.”

“What a goddamned cluster fuck,” I mutter, and wave Darryl and Brent over to help me sort this shit out.

CHAPTER FIVE

I knock softly on the door of
my
bedroom where Mrs. Naven and I settled Keisha in last evening. She may be up and around by now and I wouldn’t want to startle her.

“Come in.” I hear a huskier voice than the one I’m accustomed to through the door. Unless she’s changed genders overnight, I’d hazard to guess this is her post-sleep voice.

The bedside lamp illuminates the room, and I take in her form from waist up without sweeping my eyes greedily over her body as any man who appreciates a beautiful woman would. Her hair forms a veritable cloud around her head. In my experience with women, I know that if I react to it, it’ll make her self-conscious.

Besides, who am I to talk? My hair is slick with sweat, and my fencing whites need laundry attention. I should’ve taken a shower before checking in on her, but I couldn’t wait. I don’t recall being this anxious about anything or anyone since my mother was alive. She’d experienced hell on earth, but modern medicine had kept her alive beyond her original prognosis; and in my selfishness, I still wanted her alive despite the agony she endured from the cancer.

Keisha closes her eyes and opens them again as if she needs to be clear who and what she’s actually seeing. I approach her cautiously, but stop midway next to the panel that controls the drapes.

“Good morning, Keisha. How’s your head?”

“Other than it feeling like it was abused savagely while I was sleeping, fine.” I notice she speaks like Darnelle does sometimes when she’s
not
channeling Princess Danai. If find this endearing about both of them—how they can practically erase every trace of their ethnicity from their voices at will.

I press the button to open the drapes and the room is flooded with natural light. So much better to see the fresh-faced ingénue sitting in my bed.

With a gesture toward me, she says, “Did you win your match?”

“Yes, I trounced Nathan.” I grin like an idiot, because obviously I don’t mind this woman seeing me in this light.

“So you had the high ground?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, like in
Star Wars
when Obi-Wan had the higher ground and was able to defeat Anakin Skywalker, the young Darth Vader.”

I laugh and it sounds foreign, even to my own ears. “The high ground is more advantageous in most military tactics. So, you like sci-fi action movies, Ms. Beale?”

“Movies, period. Almost as much as I like music.” She flushes and dons a look of regret, as if maybe she’s said too much.

To put her more at ease, I say, “Good to know.”

When I move closer to the bed, she scoots back against the headboard and clutches the sheets to ensure she is still covered.

Her nascent fear causes me to smile as I sit on the edge of the bed—as close as I dare without sending her catapulting over the other side.

“You weren’t cowering from me last night,” I say, careful to keep my voice soft.

“Say what?” Her offense at my statement sends her back into vernacular. “FYI, black women don’t cower.”

“Oh, but they do love to cuddle while sleeping.” Teasing her gives me a joy I haven’t known in quite some time.

She observes the pillow next to her and the state of the duvet, then she sees the bandage in the crook of her arm.

She groans as her head falls back almost as swiftly as Darnelle’s did last night when Keisha punched her. “Ugh! Did we get busy last night? And who drew blood from my arm?”

“If you mean, did we have sex? No, Keisha. Unlike some assholes, I don’t have to use GHB to get a woman into my bed. I had a doctor friend in the building draw your blood last night for evidence.”

“So, Princess Danai really did slip me roofies?”

Darnelle may be competitive with me, but she would never drug anyone. She gets enough action without going to that extreme. Then I have to remind myself that Keisha doesn’t know Darnelle the way I do. Rather than try to explain this to Keisha and get into my unorthodox friendship with Darnelle and out her as a blue blood, I go for the simple answer. “I didn’t say that.”

“Where am I and how did I get here? Can you answer me that?” She snaps as if she can’t believe I’m not in agreement with her theory.

My longstanding friendship with Darnelle makes me want to jump to her defense, but I’m torn. If she’s absolved too quickly in Ms. Beale’s eyes, I may not be able to sway her to my purposes.

Finally I wrench myself free of my inner turmoil and tell her an intentional albeit slightly edited version of truth.

“You’re in my condo on the north side. I brought you here because I didn’t trust either of the rappers to get you home safely. I’ve instructed my security team to review the security footage to see if we can identify who drugged you.”

“Oh...” She deflates. Her voice grows soft with humility. “Thank you.”

She is grateful, and this can only work in my favor. With a smile, I finally say, “You’re welcome.”

I observe her hair because she looks absolutely adorable with it natural and in the current state of
déshabillé
. I don’t want to become a Caucasoid cliché, but I am compelled to touch it, at any rate.

“I think I like your hair better this way. Why were you wearing that dreadful ponytail wig last week?”

“It wasn’t a wig,” She schools me gently. “It was a weave.”

“A what?”

She shakes her head with a look that says
are we really discussing my hair now
. “Never mind.”

I move on to much more pertinent matters. “How much did you have to drink last night?”

“Why?”

I furrow a hand through my hair, impatiently. “Because I need to know.”

With a muffled sigh she answers without delay, “I had a mixed drink at the bar. Princess Danai bought a bottle of Cristal, and then Byron bought a second bottle.”

“Did you eat anything before you started drinking?”

“No, but I had a lot of nuts at the bar.”

“You were out cold. You could’ve aspirated and died.”

“Well, I didn’t.”

“Only because I kept watch over you.” My jaw tightens, involuntarily. I am appalled by her utter lack of awareness of the danger she was in, and I let her know it. “If you were mine, your ass would be as purple as that dress you were wearing last night.”

“Listen, you didn’t have to do me any favors.” She snaps again, but then her eyes reveal the gamut her brain takes to the realization of the gross faux pas I just uttered.

“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. First of all, last I checked, my daddy died two years ago. Second of all, the last time he tried to whip my ass, I was seventeen and I gave as good as I got. And third of all, I don’t roll like that. My mama took some ass-whippings in her lifetime, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to.”

I’m dismayed that she jumps to that conclusion. “Keisha, I’m not an abuser of women.” I lower my voice with sudden understanding. “Is that why you ran from me?”

Clearly, she has experienced a traumatic experience in her upbringing, something my first cursory background check did not yield. My Security Chief, Carlos Velasquez is going to have to dig a little deeper. I can’t have her freaking out on me at an inopportune moment. If there’s anything to be found, Carlos will find it.

“Tristan…” she says.

I rescue her from her struggle to answer in a truthful less vulnerable way.

“We’ll talk more after you’ve showered and eaten.” I stand freeing up her personal space. “I’ve asked my housekeeper, Mrs. Naven, to make breakfast. I wasn’t sure what you liked, so she’s fixing a variety of things.”

I share a brief map of the layout of my master suite.

“The bathroom is through that door on your right. The closet is next to it. Use anything in there that fits. I’ll shower in the guest room.” He stands to leave.

“Tristan?”

“Yes?”

“Really, thanks for saving my ass.”

“From what I’ve seen of it, I think I’ve grown rather partial.” My smug smirk is impossible to control, because she walked headlong into that one.

My annoyance with myself doubles as soon as I leave Ms. Beale’s presence. I’m quite sure I haven’t felt the desire or necessity to beat off in the shower since I was a teenager, but then again six months without sex...Who am I kidding? My libido has gone haywire since I met the young woman who’s currently ensconced in my bedroom and looking very much like she belongs there.

I hurry through a cold shower, largely because I don’t want to embarrass Mrs. Naven or Ms. Beale with my body’s inability to control itself. My mother, Alyssa Elizabeth White
née
Carrollton did her best to raise gentlemen where my brother and I were concerned, and I still would like to think much of what she taught us remains.

Thinking of her always helps when I’m particularly stressed about something. Even though it doesn’t restrain my irascible disposition toward people in general, I am more prone to stop and think about my actions when a memory of her is evoked by a given situation.

The pain of losing her has waned over the years, but not entirely on its own. Nathan and I both required therapy, which was chief among my mother’s posthumous requests. As identical twins, we developed twin empathy early on, and somehow she knew we collectively would not take her death well. Does any child who adores its mother?

Eventually, BDSM became our coping mechanism, which we were introduced to just before college by one of our father’s consorts. Of course, our father summarily dismissed her upon finding out what she’d done, but Nathan and I feel rather indebted to the woman. The most awkward conversation we ever had with Father, bar none.

Charles Xavier White never showed weakness in the board room, but the afternoon he confronted us about our encounters with his submissive, whom we later learned was a Switch, what might have gone sideways immediately became a teachable moment for us.

“I’ve been informed me that you both spent an inordinate amount of time with Ms. Kirkson while I was away,” he began.

Nathan, as he usually is, was the first to speak, and wholly out of turn. “Maryse was just being nice to us, because we missed you so much, Father.”

“Maryse?” Was his single reply, but it and my father’s unyielding grave visage held many unspoken questions. Such as, so you’re on a first name basis with her now? How did you come to be on such familiar terms? And did your mother not teach you that you are to address all adults using their formal titles?

I tried feebly to rescue Nathan. “Ms. Kirkson insisted we call her by her first name while you were gone, Father.”

“And is that all Ms. Kirkson insisted you do while I was gone?” Such an inane question, but it too had hidden connotations. Up until this point, we’d feigned innocence, thinly veiled though it was. Now the jig was up and this was evident when my father folded his arms where he stood before us.

He’d made us sit when he’d summoned us into his office and now towered before us. Even though we’d out-stripped him in height when we were sixteen, there was a power in his build that we did not yet possess, and we didn’t dare challenge his authority. Ever.

“We’ll not insult your intelligence further, Father—

“Undoubtedly, the servants have apprised you of our activities while you were away—

Nate and I spoke simultaneously, then looked rather nervously at one another. He demanded our respect, yet expected us to speak to him without equivocation on most topics. At seventeen I, the spokesman of our team, decided to come clean and continued. 

“We’re seniors, Dad, and as young adults on the brink of manhood, we’ve been indulging in many rites of passage. Sex has been of primary interest to us, and not just regular sex. Until Ms. Kirkson introduced us to her unusual brand of sex, we were floundering, not at all sure why we weren’t being fulfilled with the girls at the Academy.”

“But you do understand she crossed a line. Don’t you?” He looked from me to Nathan as we nodded in assent. “I’m not as upset with you as I am with her. There should never be a sharing of women between the three of us. Understood?”