Mason didn’t have time to move his war-room to the Softli office. Most of his best staff had returned but hadn’t enough time to make a difference. Phone calls after endless phone calls had stopped most of their clients from leaving – but the bean counters were right. Their oldest and most loyal clients didn’t give them a high profit margin. He needed to find new customers before the market punished him.
The stock price had stabilized, which meant the smaller shareholders stopped bleating, but the major investors were still out for his blood.
Two time-consuming shareholder meetings hadn’t persuaded them of his vision. Derek and Susannah had organized one last attempt.
“You need to focus, talk to them in their own language.”
“Dollars and euros instead of zeros and ones?” he tried to joke. “We said we needed 100 days – it’s barely been two weeks.”
“You know the market. They want reassurance and results. Until they get one or see the other, they will still be after your blood.”
“She still won’t talk to me.”
“So you keep saying. Look, get through the next week and then take a few days off – go west, romance the panties off her and bring her back here.”
“When’s this meeting?”
“In an hour. Remember, suit and tie. This isn’t the audience to win over in a t-shirt and shorts.”
This crowd was no more warming to him that the previous two meetings. After an hour of answering the same questions, he pleaded for and when denied, demanded a half hour break to calm down and collect his thoughts. Pushing away his minders and assistants, Mason climbed to the roof. From here, he felt closer to the sky and above all the petty squabbles below.
Maali. He kept ringing Ellin, but it was Maali who had already forgiven him.
The phone almost rang out when a male voice answered, “Yes?”
“It’s Ryan – I mean – Mason. Is Maali there?”
“Hey, Mason. I’ll hand you over to Birrani.”
Mason heard a mumbled conversation while messages bleeped at him. Where was he, when would he be back. People needed to talk to him.
They could wait.
“Mason. This isn’t a good time.”
“Why, what’s wrong?”
“Ellin is being discharged from hospital today – she was hurt in a car accident on her way to the gallery. Gran is in hospital. She had some sort of stroke and is now in a coma – they say she’s not going to make it. Damn it, Mason – Ellin needs you, we need you. Why did you have to be such a dick and lie to us?”
“Birrani, I’m sorry,” fuck, the thought, why did he ever think lying would be a good idea. “Is Ellin okay? Cross that, stupid question. What can I do?”
“We all want to know if your program can help us give gran’s funeral in her own language. You owe us that – you owe her that.”
“Of course. If it doesn’t now, I’ll make sure it will.”
The phone went dead in his hand and his heart sank. Ellin, hurt in an accident. Thousands of kilometers away he couldn’t help but think it was his fault. Now, she would be sitting at the bedside of her beloved ipmenhe watching her die. Alone. Without him. Hating him for betraying her.
His hands clutching the railing, he saw all the people on the roads moving around like tiny ants. Anything dropped from up high could crush them and they would never see it coming.
Just like the phone call.
Money – perhaps his money could do some good.
“Patrick, it’s Mason Winters here. At that golfing day you said you were the country’s leading endocrinologist. I need you to check in on a friend of mine.” He paused, “I’ll text you what I know, it’s important. She’s family.”
As he reached the ground floor atrium where the shareholders were waiting his reappearance, his phone rang. “Mate, I know it’s not what you want to hear. I’ve spoken to her doctors. She was given six months over a year ago. She’s not expected to come out of the coma. They are waiting for the family to come to terms with it and then they will turn off the machines.”
“Can you do anything? Whatever the cost.”
“Mason, I’d love to take your money – but not this time. If it’s any consolation, she isn’t in any pain.”
He stood alone on the podium, forbidding anyone else to join him. “I need to do this alone, trust me,” he told Susannah and Derek.
The angry voices had not quietened during the break and echoed around the open space.
“You need me,” he said quietly over the microphone to no response. “You need me,” he said louder as some of the audience turned to him.
“This company needs me and you need me. Are you ready to listen, now?”
His knuckles whitened around the microphone. He allowed his anger and grief to be unleashed.
“Three months ago, you forced me out – told me you needed a corporate bean counter to take this company forward. I walked away because that’s what you told me was best for this company. This company filled with staff who were family and customers who I considered friends.”
He looked around, too angry to smile at the sheepish faces. “How did that work out for you? I walked away, like you wanted me to, and then woke up to a plummeting share price, customers leaving in droves and the best team of designers, engineers and programmers dismantled.”
“Is that what you wanted?” He shrugged and circled the stage. “Still, I respected your wishes. I stayed away and started a new chapter in my life. Came up with new ideas and a new purpose.”
He stood still, peering across the room, “I was happy. I moved on. You called me – you needed me.”
The thump of his fist against the podium sounded like a clap of thunder across the room. It was enough to get their attention and break through his anger. Ignoring all the training to be strong and stoic, he welcomed the tears in his eyes.
He was allowed to hurt and they were not only entitled but deserved to see what they had done and what he wanted to do.
“I built Softli from an idea in my bedroom to the company that is making us all rich today. I am, or at least, was proud of what my friends and I built together. Yes, I call them friends because they were the ones who joined me rather than another company with a better logo and better career prospects. My friends and I worked days and nights to fix problems before the clients even realized they had them.”
“I left my company, my Softli in the hands of the corporates that you assured me could and would take it to the next level.”
“Now, you wanted me back, have given me two weeks and want to know why it’s taken so long. Well, I’m here to say that if my being here doesn’t please you – then I’m happy to walk away for good this time!”
He didn’t intend the words until they passed through his lips and saw the shock and denial across the room. Now was the time to give them his new direction.
“No one asked what I did on my sabbatical. Well, I found a new direction. I created a program that uses advanced learning techniques to not only learn a new spoken language, but with AI technology, can apply it. It is ground breaking and will help save countless of dying languages – and can be matched with native artwork to turn the language into picture books.”
“Does Softli own the IP?” he heard the question from the back of the room.
“No, I own the technology and the community owns the language program,” he shook his head, “If I come back, it will be to a company that does good – not just creates profit. I want to encourage my graduates to not only become AIMEE mentors – but also build a connection with an indigenous community and ‘save’ a language.”
“What’s in it for Softli?”
“You keep me. You need me, you need my vision and you will need my technology. But you will do it my way. I want this to be a company we can all be proud of. A company that cares for its customers – the high value and the nominal value ones. A company that inspires and rewards staff loyalty. And a company that gives back to the community ev
en when there isn’t a profit to be made.”
“How will it work,” Derek came onto the stage, looking to take over the questioning.
“I will personally fund the AIMEE program. I will establish a foundation to be named in the honor of the woman who inspired all this. All you have to do is decide if you want me to stay or will let me walk.” He handed the microphone to Derek and said softly, “I don’t care what they decide – I need to be with her.”
“Tara, it’s Mason – I’m on my way to the airport. I need a plane to get me to Alice Springs, now.”
Ellin was trapped within the hospital. From the moment the press linked the vision of the girl at the Softli protest to Ellin the model they descended. They were camped outside her home, interviewing anyone who had ever met her. The paintings taken from her car were now on show at the exhibition and featured in media shown all over the world – complete with the slashes from her easel.
What was she to Mason Winters? The question they kept asking, and the question she couldn’t answer. Not even to herself.
Overwhelmed, she never left her grandmother’s side. Not willing to accept her impending loss and already grieving for the woman who all but raised her.
Yet, in the silence and solitude of the hospital room she couldn’t resist reading about Mason, getting to know the man through the media. Trying to reconcile the man she loved to being one of the evil one percenters she despised.
She listened again to his last voicemail, except it wasn’t his voice. His words, but in her grandmother’s language begging her forgiveness and telling her over and over again how much he loves her.
Damn him.
He gave her, her grandmother’s language, why couldn’t he have given her the truth as well?
Love
At least he slept on the flight to Alice Springs. Leaving his team and phone charger in Sydney, he was alone with his thoughts until exhaustion overcame him.
He didn’t know the outcome of the meeting but guessed that the shareholders would be more scared to lose him than to trust him. No matter, the only people he cared about where in a hospital room.
With the last of his battery, he arranged a car to take him from the airport to the hospital.
“I’m sorry, sir. Only family is allowed in,” his first resistance was the front desk nurse.
“I’m sort of family.”
“I’m sorry sir, but how do I know that you aren’t one of the journalists who have been hanging around.”
“Have a look at the papers – I’m the headline. Please, I need to see her.”
“Sir …” he leaned over.
“Please, call her room. Ask Birrani or Coen to see me. I’m Mason Winters.”
Finally, she gave in, calling for one of the grandsons to come out to the desk.
The last time he saw Coen, he held a metal pipe close to his head. The strong young man was now a frightened child, unable to resist Mason’s embrace.
“She can’t die. She just can’t. Do something.”
Mason followed him down the hall in silence. It wasn’t in his heart to give false hope, all he could do was comfort the grieving family and try and support them through the next few days and tough decisions.
Birrani and Ellin were curled up asleep on the spare bed. Ellin’s head still bandaged from her accident and her wrist strapped. He checked Maali, kissing her cool cheek, noticing how grey her thin skin had turned, trying to ignore the machines that signaled the fight to keep her alive.
“Why’d you come?”
“Where else would I want to be? I love both these women and care about you boys, too.”
“Then why did you lie to us for so long?”
“I’d like to know that, too,” Ellin lifted herself gently from the bed, not waking her brother. “You had to know I’d find out eventually.”
“At first, I didn’t want anyone to know my real name. I was sick of fake people judging me on news headlines instead of getting to know the real me.”
“I told you that I loved you.”
“Which made it even harder to tell you the truth.”
“Gran would never forgive you.”
“But, Elli, she did,” Coen interrupted. “Ryan, I mean, Mason came out to tell her the same day as you were at the protest. He explained everything and she forgave him.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Sweetheart, I told her I would never stop loving you, and asked for her blessing to try and make you forgive me.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Then believe me and Birrani. I wanted to smash his head with a pipe, but she stopped me.”
“You what!” for the first time, she really looked at Mason with concern. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Coen was just looking out for his sister. Luckily for me, Maali is still a romantic at heart.”
“Or was,” he couldn’t stand by and watch Ellin start crying again without him, he moved and she didn’t resist as he held her in his arms.
Seeing Coen standing so alone and scared, he reached out, “Come here, mate.”
The noise woke Birrani, “What the hell are you doing here.”
“I couldn’t stay away. Tell me what I can do.”
“The doctors say there’s no hope. They keep talking about letting her go peacefully.”
“That would be the first time she ever did anything peacefully,” Ellin tried to joke through her tears.
“Tell me about her,” Mason asked.
For the next hours until the sun dipped and the room darkened, the four of them sat on the spare bed, as the three grandchildren shared stories about their grandmother.
When Coen started yawning, Mason looked at the time. After midnight. “Where are you boys staying?”
“We hadn’t thought about it, yet.”
Mason walked down the hall and came back, followed by one of the nurses.
“This gorgeous young woman will take you down to the nurses quarters. You’ll need to share a room, but at least you’ll be close by.”
“How?” Birrani started, then realized, “Nice to have money.”
“No, son, it’s nice to be able to use it when you need to. Go ahead, you need to sleep while you can. Don’t worry, I’ll look after your sister and if there is any change in Maali’s condition I’ll come and let you know.”
The easy conversation ceased when her brothers left the room. All the hurt and anger returned, not to mention her pain medication had run out.
“I’m fine,” she pleaded after he noticed her rubbing her head and back.
“I’ll believe your doctor.”
“He’s gone for the night.”
“Then we’ll get one of the nurses.”
“I’m fine!” she snapped, giving up when he called for the nurse who came in and fussed over her in a way she never did before Mason and his wallet arrived.
The pain meds earlier denied to her were now offered with a glass of cool water.
“Is that what it’s like for you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You get to throw your money around and suddenly it is silver service wherever you go.”
“Ellin, you keep telling me how much you hate being judged by the color of your skin. You want to be judged as a person, as an artist. Why don’t you give me the same courtesy?”
“I did but you lied to me and everyone. Even after I told you how I felt about you there was nothing but lies.”
“If I told you the truth – would you have even let me in the front door? Think about it. You judged the person, ‘Mason’, based on a heap of media hype.”
“Maybe,” she relented.
“Ellin, my name is Mason Winters. I’m incredibly lucky to have had the right idea at the right time and turned it into a successful company with the help of some friends. Some other people thought they could run the company better and gave me a heap of money – too much money. I took some time off to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, and n
ow I’ve found her.” He took a chance at sitting next to her, holding her hand in hers the way they used to. “What else do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
He told her all the stories he had told her before, starting the company, his parents, the fundraisers and benefits he had organized with Softli. This time, he took credit where it was due.
“This Mason Winters guy, maybe I misjudged him,” she conceded, trying to curl up in his lap, wincing when the bandages restricted her.
“We’ve got all the time in the world for you to get to know him,” he stroked her hair in time with the beeping machine as she eventually fell asleep in his arms.
Never Dies
With a borrowed phone charger, Mason organized everything. Security to give Ellin and her family and extended community the privacy they needed to mourn. Arrangements to return Maali to country without press or attention.
A shoulder for the boys to lean on, while respecting their role as elders in the ceremonies.
A friend to Ellin.
Only after the funeral did he question why no other whites attended.
“Because you’re the only white-fella who’s family,” Birrani explained. “Gran gave her blessing to you and Ellin, you are family.”
“I aim to live up to that.”
“You’d better – but you know she can’t marry until after twelve months.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Except back to Sydney.”
He needed to go back. The shareholders were thrilled at the press Ellin’s Desert Mob paintings directed towards the language program. Clients were reaching out to sponsor new programs for other communities.
A week after the funeral, he called a family meeting.
“I want Ellin to come back with me.”
“She belongs here.”
“You saw what we did here, what if she came back and set up an AIMEE program for Softli. Find other indigenous kids with a passion and match them up with my best graduates.”
“Then what,” Coen always his strongest critic.
“Then one of the graduate projects will be to come into country and work through AIMEE to either develop a language program or implement it into local schools.”
A Billion Reasons Why_Billionaire romance Page 10