by Claire Adams
But I had to try. I couldn’t let him push me out of the company as he had my brothers. I wasn’t really good at anything else. I had to make it work with my father.
All four of my brothers had business degrees and other passions they wanted to pursue. I didn’t have anything else I wanted to do. I loved working at my father’s company. I just needed to fix things and bring him into the future. The constraint of showing up to the office day to day wasn’t really my thing, either. I liked it much more when he sent me off to check on our vendors or factories. But, I also needed to build up my persona so people actually took me seriously. I couldn’t make any changes if everyone just thought I was my father’s fuck-up of a son.
I jumped up and ran after my dad.
“Dad, don’t leave like this. Let’s sit down and talk about this. Stay. Have some breakfast.”
He paused at my front door and looked at me as if he was going to just leave.
“Make me some eggs and we can talk. But I’m not changing my mind. You need to show some kind of stability, or I can’t give you the company. Stockholders need someone they can trust, and they aren’t about to trust you after all the publicity I’ve seen about you and your women lately.”
“I know, Dad.”
“What happened? You used to be so invested in the company. Is it all the women?”
I had to laugh. My father talking about me and my women was pretty damn funny. He was the king of affairs and secret rendezvous. Admittedly, that was all in his past. It was still hard for me to talk about leading a moral and upstanding life, with a man who had cheated on my mother at least a dozen times while I was young.
My memory wasn’t all that good, but I could still remember a few of the women I had seen him with. My mother used to drive me past his office at lunchtime, and she would check to see who he was going to lunch with. Most of the time, it was a young blonde or brunette from the office. Sometimes, he would meet the women at a local restaurant, and other times, they left work with him.
I still remembered how he’d grab onto them and kiss them with so much passion that my mother would burst into tears. As a young boy, I vowed never to do such a thing to a woman as long as I lived. That was why one-night stands worked better for me.
The few times I had been in relationships, fidelity was something I could always assure my girlfriend of. I absolutely refused to ever cheat on a girl. Although, if they chose to cheat on their men, that didn’t seem to bother me as much. One-night stands were the best solution I could come up with. I met them, enjoyed them, and moved on. There wasn’t any of that emotional stuff to bog down my life with.
Women often didn’t even bother to hide the fact that they had a boyfriend or husband from me. They seemed justified in their betrayal and often told me of all the affairs their man had already had, and that they were in search of getting even with him.
I suspected that the baseball player’s wife I had traveled with probably made sure the paparazzi knew where we were. She was angry with her husband and desperate to get back at him, after he had an affair with a famous actress.
It seemed a sad existence to stay in a relationship where both people just wanted to have affairs and hurt the other person. That certainly wasn’t something I ever wanted to deal with. If I ever did find a woman to settle down with, I figured I would know she was the right one because I wouldn’t want to let her go after just one night.
“Here are your eggs,” I said as I joined my father at my kitchen table.
“Chase, I know it seems like I'm hard on you, but you have to get your life together. Meet a nice girl or something. Find a hobby other than sex and alcohol. You need to start finding your way in life.”
“I know, Dad,” I said.
The truth was I had thought about living a calmer lifestyle, but I just hadn’t been motivated enough. Spending my nights at clubs and parties was an easy way to keep busy all the time. I didn’t have to worry about the silence of being home alone or the loneliness of not having people in my life that cared about me.
Gambling had also recently become a fun hobby of mine. I enjoyed dabbling in some underground poker tournaments and betting on sports games. It was a surprising advantage when you knew the quarterback of a team was going through personal problems with his wife. Or when the head pitcher had just cheated, and his wife kept him up all night yelling at him.
I did have my family and my two best friends, Mathew and Carlos. But everyone else had their own lives and didn’t have time for me very much. My brothers were all busy. They just had too much going on for me to bother them. My best friend Carlos got married – it was a sad day when he got married to Maria. He had been my last hold out on the party scene, and when he settled down, I had to start going out alone. Mathew had a steady girlfriend and never spent much time away from her at all.
“Here’s the deal, Chase. You still have your job. Start showing up, and you’ll get a paycheck. It’s plenty enough for you to live on, if you stop buying rounds of drinks at clubs and throwing your money around like you have a money tree.”
“How can I show you I’m responsible enough to take over?”
“I don’t know. You’ll just need to start making some major changes, and we can talk about it. Certainly not seeing your face on the front of any newspapers for a while would help your case.”
“Dad, I’m going to make you proud.”
“I hope you will.”
We hugged it out, and my father finally left. I was left standing in my million-dollar house, hoping I would be able to figure out some way to get my bills paid. The good news was that if I showed up to work and waited for my paycheck, I took home over $20,000 a month. The bad news was that wasn’t enough money.
I had been borrowing money from Jose Escabar lately, and I didn’t really want to get behind on those payments. He was tougher than any bank would ever be. I had heard horror stories about what he does to people when they don’t pay him back on time. And I definitely didn’t want to be one of those people.
My gut told me I should have told my father about my hard money loans with Escabar, but I decided he certainly wouldn’t think I was being responsible if he knew about them. Unfortunately, I needed to get the money together quickly to make a payment to Escabar.
I clicked through my bank accounts on my phone and quickly realized I needed to get dressed and show up for work. Escabar expected a $10,000 payment by the end of the month, and that only covered a portion of what I owed him.
Panic started to set in at the thought of not being about to pay him back. I needed to figure out a new plan to get him his money.
It wasn’t an option. Paying Escabar back had to be my top priority. Nothing else mattered as much as getting him his money. I had to get my shit together. I had to figure out a way to make my father trust me and quickly, before I ended up having my legs broken.
I walked into my closet and pulled out one of my custom suits. If I had to head into work, I was going to be dressed for the part. Work wasn’t that hard for me. The problem was more in dealing with my expectations. I always wanted everyone to be happy that I was there. It was such a letdown to see people look at me as if I shouldn’t be in the office. I understood what my father was saying, though, and I would have to show up to work more often if I wanted the people in the company to believe in my ideas.
If my father wanted to see that I could lead the company, then that was exactly what he would see. I put my tailored suit on, with my Hermes shoes, and called our car service to come take me to work.
“Mr. Foster, I’m sorry, but you are no longer an authorized user of this account,” the operator at Select Cars said.
“What? How am I supposed to get to work?”
“I’m sorry, sir. Your father removed you from the account.”
“Fuck!”
I hung up the phone and paced around my house. I had a car in the garage, but I hadn’t driven it in ages. I couldn’t even remember where my keys were. I was about to
give up, but then, I remembered how Escabar had treated the last man that didn’t pay him back.
I had watched him tear off the guy’s fingernails, when he didn’t have enough money to pay back his loan. I wasn’t about to have any of my fingernails, or any other body part, removed. I needed to get things together so my father would give me his company, and I could have my financial stability back. Otherwise, I was going to be in big trouble with Escabar.
I needed to get my ass to work.
Why would my father take away the car service? It was how I always got to and from work. It was ridiculous. But, I wasn’t about to let that stop me.
I dug through the stacks of bills on my table and found the keys to my BMW underneath everything. My father was going to have to work harder if he was going to prevent me from proving that I deserved to be in charge of the company.
After a couple wrong turns, I finally arrived at work around ten o’clock, ready to take on my job and show my father just how responsible I was. It wasn’t the morning I had planned, but I was ready to kick some ass at work.
Chapter 4
Jordan
“Ana, I just don’t like the idea of you traveling to America when you haven’t even met this guy. It is how women get murdered.”
“Jordan, I’ve met him online. I’ve looked into his eyes and talked to him for thousands of hours. I know him. I just haven’t physically touched him.”
“Does he want to get married? Is that why he was on that website?”
“Yes, he does. He’s thirty-two years old. He’s got a great career and really wants to settle down and start having a family,” she said with stars in her eyes.
“You want to have kids?” I asked surprised.
Ana had never once mentioned to me that she wanted to have children. In fact, she had told me about a year ago that she didn’t know if she was ever going to want to have children. She had gone on and on about how they would tie her down and prevent her from living the life she wanted to live.
“I’m warming up to the idea. I really like Gordon, and I’m open to the idea of getting married and starting a family.”
“I think it’s all crazy.”
“Have you even signed into the website since we uploaded your profile?” she asked as she grabbed my phone from me.
“Ana, there is no reason to look at it. I’m not going to respond to any of those fake guys. They all seem way too perfect to be real.”
“Oh, so you did log in?” she said with a smile.
“Yes, but none of them seem realistic. They all want a wife, or a mother to their children, and they haven’t even met me yet. It’s creepy. The ones who aren’t creepy all seem to be rich and handsome, and I can’t see why they would want to date a woman from around the world. There have to be plenty of eligible women closer to them.”
“What about this one? Tall, blond hair, financial advisor, wants a thin model type to have his children.”
Ana cringed as she got to the last part of his profile.
“See! Why do you need a model type of a girlfriend if you just want to knock her up and make her fat with babies?”
“Well, I’m sure there are better choices. You just need to look through them. Maybe look at the profiles and respond to some of the people who aren’t sending out messages. Shy guys aren’t going to message you first. You’re way too pretty. They probably think you’re fake.”
“Me? Why would they think I’m fake?”
“Jordan, come on! You’re tall. You have the type of hair women spend thousands trying to get. Your skin is flawless. And your figure is insane. You are easily the sexiest nurse I know. Those guys would be stupid not to message you, or they are too shy and think you’re out of their league.”
I had to blush at her comments. She always told me I should have gone into professional modeling. But in Liechtenstein, model scouts always picked girls up and took them overseas, and then we never heard from them. Many of their families would get worried that something bad happened to them, and a couple had even found out that their daughters had been sold into prostitution. I wasn’t about to have something horrible like that happen to me.
In fact, the whole situation with Ana and Gordon made me think that something bad was going to happen to her. I genuinely wanted to be happy for her, but deep down, I felt like it was some sort of scam.
“You make sure and call me the second you arrive in Miami. No excuses! I don’t care if Gordon is the man of your dreams and you want to jump his bones right there in the airport. You stop long enough to call me. Do you understand?”
They had called for boarding of Ana’s flight, and I was freaking out. I didn’t want her to leave. The combination of having my mother get married and head off on her honeymoon and having Ana leaving was overwhelming. I wasn’t a super dependent person, but I did value my relationships with both my mother and Ana. It was going to be really hard to be alone and without them as they moved on with their lives.
“I promise, I’ll call you. Here’s a copy of Gordon’s information he sent me, so you know you can get in touch with me if you need to.”
We hugged each other, and, of course, we both started to cry. It was a new life for the two of us, and I felt like I was getting left behind. We had done everything together for the last few years. Having her go off on her own certainly hadn’t been part of our plans. I really did need to get over to the United States so we could at least see each other again. Plus, I had always wanted to visit America. And at least after Ana went there, I would have a good reason to go visit.
I watched as she got into the line, and I realized there were an awful lot of young single women heading to Miami on that flight. Every horrible thought about sex trafficking started to rush through my head, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the possibility that Ana was being purchased by this guy in Miami.
“Ana!” I yelled out and ran over to her. “Are you one hundred percent sure about this?”
“Yes, Jordan. It’s going to be all right. Get on OK Love and find yourself a man in America, and we can see each other again soon.”
We hugged each other one last time, and she boarded her plane. I watched with tears in my eyes as she walked down the corridor. I didn’t know if I felt so extremely sad just because Ana was leaving, or if the combination of Ana and my mother both leaving was just too much for me. The transition into being an independent adult seemed inevitable for me now.
I cried. Not like a sweet, cute cry that happens to normal people. I cried like a baby as I stood there and looked at the empty corridor. My life felt so empty. In that one moment, I felt lonelier than I could ever remember feeling. It wasn’t as if I didn’t feel comfortable being alone, I actually really enjoyed my time alone. But I always knew that Ana and my mother were close by. Now, they would both be far away, and I would be officially alone, like a real adult.
I sat and watched as the other people got onto the plane. I counted at least a dozen girls that were around our age who were going to Miami with Ana. I really hoped they weren’t all going to the same guy. I couldn’t help but wonder if I had just sent my best friend off to some sort of international prostitution ring.
“Was that your sister you were saying goodbye to?” an older woman asked me.
She also had tears in her eyes and a look of concern, when she saw just how badly I was crying. I probably didn’t look like I was fit to drive, and I didn’t intend to leave the airport anytime soon. My chest was beating hard, and my vision still blurry from the tears. I had to sit tight in the airport near Liechtenstein for a while.
“My best friend. Were you saying goodbye to someone?”
“Yes, my daughter. She met a man in the United States, and he paid for a ticket for her to come and visit him.”
My stomach sank as I thought all my fears might be coming true right at that moment. I didn’t want to make the poor woman nervous, though. I really didn’t have any distinct information, only a lot of suspicions. It just seemed very suspic
ious to me that all these young, beautiful women were taking the flight to Miami together.
“Where was she going?” I asked as I held my breath a little and waited for her response.
“Seattle. He is a nice man and has plenty of money to support her. I just don’t have enough to feed her and her five siblings. I’m happy for her, but sad that she is leaving us.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I thought her daughter and my best friend might be on their way to America because of some sort of sinister agenda. There was no actual proof, and I wasn’t about to put that kind of fear into a mother without knowing for sure. For all I knew, there really were rich men in America that wanted women from overseas to come and marry them. I didn’t know all that much about American men. Perhaps Liechtenstein women were just what they were looking for.
It was entirely possible that our little country just happened to be where men looked for their online brides. We were a novelty country, and I could see men might click on our profiles to just see what we looked like. Then, of course, the gorgeous women of Liechtenstein would win the men over.
“Is she staying for long?” I asked.
“Well, she is planning on a couple weeks, but she said she might just stay if things are going well.”
“I hope things work out for her,” I said as I walked toward the glass window and watched Ana’s plane pull out of the gate.
“Your friend, too,” said the woman as she turned and left the gate area.
My stomach churned at the possibility that she wasn’t actually going to meet a nice, new boyfriend. I hoped I was wrong, and I couldn’t wait the eight hours it was going to take for her to land and call me. My brain swirled with all the ideas of what might happen when Ana and the other girls landed in the United States.
I sat down in the chairs and watched until I saw her plane take off, and I couldn’t see it in the air any longer. Sadness filled my heart completely. It was the kind of sadness you felt when you were really happy for someone, like when a friend got married. I knew that I wasn’t going to get to see Ana as much, and I had fears about what might be going on when she arrived in America. But deep down, I was also sad because she had a happy future that she was moving on to, and I didn’t feel like I had any of that going on.