by Shain Rose
Victory: How?
Me: Well, you can see every curve of your ass in it for one. Stevie’s looked at it about 5 times today.
Victory: These are our company messages, Jett!
Me: I own the company, Pix.
Victory: Goodbye.
Me: See you at one.
Thankfully, she’d stopped smiling at Stevie. I’d burst her bubble in the next few hours, which shouldn’t have been a goal of mine. Victory Blakely was interesting, but she was downright mesmerizing without her facade of happiness.
Bob stopped mid-sentence. “Are you okay, Jett?”
“Yes, why?”
Bob’s bushy eyebrows formed a frown as he considered his next words. “You’re smiling, son.”
Bob had been with me for years and his balding head probably reflected the amount of stress I’d put him through. No one called me son except my father, mother, and him. “So what if I’m smiling?”
“You never appear happy when we discuss the Armanellis. Not like that, anyway.”
I cleared my throat. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Bob glanced behind him to where I’d been looking. His bright-blue eyes that always seemed so damn friendly sparkled with recognition. “Ah. I see.”
“You don’t see anything, old man.”
He looked down at his laptop with one side of his mouth quirked up. “She’s whip smart and a beacon of light. I’m enjoying working with her.”
“She’s naive, Bob. We both know it. Not everything is sugar plums and lollipops like she thinks.”
“Sure, but isn’t it nice to have someone around every now and then who thinks it is?”
I looked out at the open office. Vick was flouncing around now. Like always, she shook off her anger faster than I could blink. Josie eyes sparkled at something she said, and Brey laughed when Vick gestured wildly in the air. The long petal-pink sleeves of her dress flared at the edges and Brey picked at one of them as if admiring the fabric. Vick nodded quickly, eyes wide.
No doubt those two were discussing clothing and not business. “It’d be nice, Bob, if everyone worked so we’re prepared for the Armanelli meeting.”
Bob closed his laptop as slow as a sloth would. “We’ll be fine, Jett.”
I sighed and ran my hand through my hair. “Get back to work, old man.”
“Like you say, I’m old. I’ve got to take my time.” He rustled around in his seat for a minute longer.
“You just ran a damn marathon, Bob. Get the hell out of my office.”
He sprang up from his chair, laughing. He might have been pushing seventy but no one would guess it by his upright stance, athletic build, and spry gait. “Get some sleep, son. You’re cranky.”
I straightened a few papers on my desk as he left, not wanting to reply. I wasn’t sleeping well. The only nights I’d gotten sleep had been the ones after a certain woman blew my mind and those were few and far between. I needed to get back to random women and regimented routines. It was the only way I was going to survive taking over this company.
Thirty minutes before the meeting, I made my way to our conference room with the team I’d assigned. Brey followed closely behind me, making an effort to stay professional and not look at her husband. Vick, on the other hand, bounced around near Bob and took a seat near him. Eyeing the projector and technology in the room, I mumbled, “They’ll just want to talk.”
Brey nodded. “I agree. I made the PowerPoints in case, but I don’t believe you’ll need them.”
“Not sure it was worth the time. Your PowerPoints are burned into our brains. We’ll know the stats if needed.”
Brey pursed her lips to hold in a grin. She knew that was as good a compliment as she was going to get from me.
“Brey, your PowerPoints were on point,” Vick chimed in.
Bob nodded, eyes damn near twinkling. “I agree. They really helped me understand the data.”
“Good job, Peaches,” Jax said as he sat down next to me and leaned around me to look into his wife’s eyes. Hers widened and she shook her head once. The woman seemed to think she could control a Stonewood.
“Babe, everyone knows we’re married. I can call you Peaches here.”
Bob and Vick snickered while two other people on my legal team ruffled through their notes, trying to make like they hadn’t heard.
“Let’s focus on preparing for the meeting, Jax,” Brey clipped out.
“Sure.” He nodded. Then looked at everyone else in the room. “Anyone have any questions for Mrs. Stonewood? She made the PowerPoints earlier this week at home. In my bed.”
Brey’s cheeks turned red with anger and embarrassment. Across the room, Vick practically sighed with giddiness before she raised her hand. “I have a question.”
Bob mumbled, “This ought to be good.”
“I’m just wondering if Mrs. Stonewood created the PowerPoints before or after—”
“Victory,” I blurted her name loud and my whole team turned to look at me. I took a breath. No one knew how important this contract was except me. They sat here joking while I reworked the damn numbers in my head and noted the different outcomes. This partnership solidified who was a king or queen in Chicago and who was a pawn. I glared at the woman who thought work was a game. “I don’t think we need to finish that sentence.”
Caden and Sebastian Armanelli strode in with Gloria. “Oh, I would love for Victory to finish her sentence,” Sebastian said, scanning the room, sizing us up, calculating the dynamics. “Victory, seems you’ve made Jett Stonewood a little perturbed. I heard your name through the door. Tell me, was the sentence that bad?”
He looked her up and down, his eyes scanning that bubblegum-pink dress like a damn kid on Christmas morning. He wanted to unwrap the present.
She smiled at his perusal and glanced at me. “I’m never bad.”
I mouthed, I fucking told you.
17
Vick
Jett tried everything he could to rattle me, but I wouldn’t scare that easily. He’d invited me to this meeting just to show me I couldn’t handle it, that my positivity would die here because I was incapable of actual work. Jett didn’t know me though.
I had more drive in my pinkie finger than most people had in their entire body. Doctors had told me to take a year off from high school, that I could sit back a grade. Those days, I remember clinging to my mother’s words like a lifeline. “My daughter is seventeen and at the top of her class. Where she will stay. Because she’s a Blakely. I didn’t raise a daughter who couldn’t handle it.”
Handle it, we did. Even through late nights of throwing up from the chemo and emergency hospital visits and losing my hair along with my friends and my whole damn life, I’d stayed at the top of my class. I’d outdone everyone and gotten into every college I’d applied to.
Then my mother’s words got the best of me the day I’d told her I could go to school in California and conquer the world on my own. “You almost died, Victory. You can’t risk catching something and not being close to home. You have a compromised immune system. Your father and I can’t lose you. Not after we almost lost you before. Stay close, honey. You can live a great life here.”
The words propelled me now in the conference room. I was a Blakely, and I was living my life. Not stuck at home anymore. I finally took the step to leave and I would take another. I could handle this meeting and show I had a right to one of these seats as much as anyone else on the legal team.
I cleared my throat and stood to greet the two beautiful men along with their own legal team. Bastian and Cade had gone swimming in their Italian gene pool and come out soaked in the best of it. Their curled brown hair and dark eyes caught most women’s attention. Bastian wore those curls a bit longer, a tad unruly. Like he wouldn’t conform to the usual standards or rules. Cade followed behind his brother and held himself more rigidly. Rules must have applied to him.
“Just a joke between colleagues, Mr. Armanelli.” I nodded at him and went to shake h
is hand as Jett strode over to welcome them also.
Bastian looked at my hand like it was offensive. “Vick, you partied with me and that little dancer over there,” he gestured toward Brey who smiled wide. “One of the best nights I had in a long time. Don’t revert to professionalism now.”
Truth be told, a long time ago, before I knew they were mobsters, I partied with them because I thought they were celebrities hanging out with Jaydon. We drank way too much and danced way too hard. The memory of the night calmed some of my nerves. He wasn’t The Godfather.
Him referring to our night out could have been awkward. I could have stumbled over my words and looked at my boss in trepidation.
But I didn’t do awkwardness well. I stepped into his open arms. I was scared by the idea of Katie dating him, but I had forgotten how unintimidating Bastian was. The news stories painted darker and darker pictures of these men, and their sweet demeanors got stained with the images depicted.
When I pulled back, Cade stood behind his brother, his eyes bouncing from Jett, to me, to Bastian. He shot his hand out for me to shake like he wanted no part in the prior hug exchange. I nodded at him as I slid my hand in his.
He mumbled something about it being a pleasure to see me again, but his gaze stayed on Jett.
Jett. The formidable man who sucked the life out of the room. The boss of it all.
The man I’d screwed the night before.
The man I could find in a room with my eyes closed because the scent of him lingered with me through the night, mixed with my dreams, and stole away my thoughts.
“So, it seems you’ve all met.” He finally spoke, staring at Bastian like the cards had been laid on the table and they both had an equal winning hand.
Bastian nodded. “Seems the Stonewood men keep marvelous company.”
Jett grunted, and instead of shaking their hands, he spun to go back to his seat. As he made his way there, everyone else followed suit.
Jett maneuvered a few pieces of paper around the table before leaning back in his chair. “Your father isn’t here.”
Cade jumped in no doubt ready to right the ship. “He wanted to be here but thought since your father stepped down, it was best for us to handle it. Sons to sons.”
“This isn’t a family reunion, Cade. I don’t sit at the kid table while the adults talk business. It isn’t son to son. It’s owner to owner. You own the business now?”
Cade’s eyes narrowed just like his brother’s did next to him. Bastian sucked on one of his teeth, making a squeaking noise. It was the only noise in the room as the tension shifted. Both Armanellis scanned their surroundings, and my stomach dropped. Suddenly, these men weren’t as approachable. Suddenly, I wondered if the news story about bodies being hidden was true.
Jax sighed. I glanced at Brey with my eyes wide.
She quickly shook her head, signaling not to look her way. But I needed her reassurance. We were dealing with the mob. Someone needed to let me know I wasn’t dying today.
“I took over the city if that’s what you’re asking.” Bastian folded his hands on the table and pointedly moved a ring around one of his fingers. It matched the one on Cade’s ring finger.
Jett’s eyebrows raised in surprise. “When?”
Bastian laughed, but it felt hollow. “Dear old dad handed it over right before this meeting.”
Reading between the lines of two men who ruled the business and mafia worlds wasn’t my strong suit. I knew there was more to the story as Jett nodded solemnly. “Well, then. Let’s me and you talk business, Sebastian.”
“Our contract stays the same. We don’t have time to negotiate a change in terms.”
“That contract was outdated the day our fathers shook hands.”
“There’s no record of that handshake,” Bastian quipped.
“I don’t have time for this,” Jett sighed, shoulders slumping as if the world’s weight had become too heavy. “You know I’m trying to develop a way of maintaining a clean water supply in third world countries. It’s time sensitive for people who live there. This isn’t as important.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose, and everyone fell silent. His words echoed through the room, shifting the focus from the power struggle between men to the struggle of humanity. A man’s pride should have been measured by what he did for the world, not by who might have been a bigger man in the conference room.
Maybe both Bastian and Jett knew that. Maybe the two saw and fought battles so much larger than the rest of us could fathom that they could put aside whatever differences they had to make their partnership work.
“I’m here to keep working with you, Jett,” Bastian said, his words precise, clear, and starkly honest.
Jett’s blue eyes scanned the room. “We’re all here for that. Let’s make it work. What do you need?”
“I need backing on the pharmaceutical company, Levvetor.”
Sheets of paper ruffled throughout the conference room as our team scrambled to find the relevant information.
“Not even on the table, Bastian,” Jett grated out. “You didn’t send any information on that. It’s a curveball I’m not willing to entertain.”
The air shifted, I saw it before anyone else or they didn't care to see it. Bastian rolled his shoulders once and flicked his gaze to his brother.
“We should do it,” I blurted.
Every single blue eye, green eye, Italian eye, and brown eye swung my way. The attention of the whole room was on me.
And not in a good way.
Maybe a concerning one from Brey and a curious one from Bastian and Cade’s side of the table. Everyone else wanted to kill me, burn me at the stake, shove me out of the conference room and apologize for the idiot. I understood it. I wanted to take back my words as soon as I’d unleashed them.
"She's new," Jett explained and waved away my comment.
"She's also intelligent. Hear her out." Brey sat up tall, head turned to face Bastian. And to avoid Jett, no doubt.
"Anything for you, little dancer," Bastian smiled as he murmured it. Partying with Bastian and Cade one night had ended mostly in Bastian wanting more from Brey than she could give him because her heart already belonged to Jax. Bastian flaunted his soft spot for Brey every time he encountered the couple now.
“Drop the name, Bastian," Jax warned.
Jett cleared his throat. "Let's keep this about business."
I stopped him. “Investing in Levvetor would not only benefit the company from a publicity standpoint, it's also a good company. And if that solidifies the contract we want with you …" I glanced at the Armanelli team and then looked at Jett. His shoulders sat stiff and straight under his suit jacket. He glared at me while he clicked his pen in and out. The sound matched my heart’s beat. Fast. Rapid. Alive. “I think it’s a deal we shouldn’t pass up.”
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Stepping in to take the decision out of a powerful man’s hands so I could give my opinion washed away any feeling of weakness, fragility, or deficiency. Normally, I worried over whether my cells would divide abnormally one day. It took one simple imperfect DNA mutation and I would go back to wondering if I would get to see another day.
I hated that anxiety.
I wanted to keep waking up to the sun, go to work and fight the city sidewalks to get there, sit across from the most beautiful man I’d ever slept with and go head to head with him.
I wanted to feel alive.
I let it creep across my face, the smile that I felt through my whole body.
Jett leaned back in his chair, raised a dark eyebrow and clicked the pen one last time. He searched the room. “Anyone else think it’s a good idea?”
“We need to do some research but it could work,” Jax nodded at me and winked. Brey beamed at him like he had redeemed himself for the conversation minutes ago.
I almost jumped out of my seat when I heard a soft clipped voice from the corner speak up, “Levvetor Pharmaceuticals has outsold competitors for two quar
ters now. They’re gaining attention and relevance as they are pricing their drugs higher than competitors and still selling. It’s a solid investment.”
Jett watched Gloria as she rattled off more statistics about the company. The company I knew all about. I could have rattled off those statistics along with ten others and given a firsthand story of my experience with them. A Levvetor drug saved my life.
Jett interrupted Gloria. “I’m not interested, Gloria,” he ground out loudly. His perfectly sculpted jaw flexed as he stared at her, daring her to continue. When she closed her laptop and snapped her mouth shut, he eyed the rest of his team. Every single person’s head went down, submitting to their king, not willing to argue, share thoughts, build ideas. This wasn’t Stonewood Enterprises, it was Stonewood Autocracy.
“Jett, we must already be watching them with those numbers and—”
“Whether we are or aren’t watching them, Ms. Blakely, has nothing to do with this meeting. We aren’t backing a company that wasn’t even on the table to pacify you, Sebastian.”
“Then the contract stands as is.” He shrugged and closed his folder, ready to leave.
Jett moved to stand as well. The hardened line of his jaw and cold blue eyes glaring out at no one in particular showed me he was just as ready for them to leave.
Blurting out my feelings hadn’t helped. Pushing Jett’s boundaries definitely hadn’t helped. I knew after this meeting the deal would be dead in the water. I’d overstepped my place.
Yet, I was a Blakely. My mother taught me not to fold even when I encountered the impossible.
I stood and smoothed the soft fabric of my dress. “What exactly do you want invested in Levvetor, Bastian?”
He stopped moving and looked at me with curiosity. “Without Stonewood Enterprises, I can only invest sixty percent of what I’d like. It would give me a share but not the voting share needed.”
I took a deep breath and tried to figure out if we could swing it. “If I had another investor …”
“They want Stonewood.”
“I’ll call Harvey. He’ll consider it.”