by Mia Caldwell
The result was a complete one-eighty in not only the quality of the menu selections, but the clientele themselves. In two weeks, the place went from barely scraping by to one of the surprise hits of the winter restaurant season, and the success only started to pile on top.
That, of course, brought along an extravagant, across-the-board rise in prices, firmly placing the esteemed establishment beyond what I could ever comfortably afford.
But that was the old Kiona.
The new Kiona had millions of dollars in a Swiss bank account, a credit card with a fifteen thousand dollar daily limit, and got herself married to a billionaire.
Adlebaum’s was only open for two and a half hours in the mornings, starting at 11 AM. By the time that I walked through the door, that put me less than an hour from closing time, but I was in no rush. After all, I could afford to enjoy myself, both in time and in money.
The hostess, a spry little thing with long, curly hair, seated me at a small two-top table aside the wall. The server, a tired-looking but radiant little Italian girl, appeared almost instantly. I surveyed the menu she took my drink order – just water for now – and I looked over everything.
The lunch selection was to die for, so I eagerly signed up for a cup of signature, creamy potato soup, followed by a grilled chicken Caesar salad with a significant twist – their specialty was still tossed in the signature dressing, but swapped the romaine lettuce for mixed greens with a zest of lemon spritz, added sliced egg and a couple of red onion choppings, and tossed a light, seasoned tossing of toasted bacon bits into the mix. Upon request, my entrée was delivered with a delicious, bubbly mimosa to get my day started just right.
The salad was somewhat simple, but a burst of surprisingly complementing flavors. I completed my meal with a slice of New York style cheesecake with a drizzled, homemade, dark chocolate topping over a few slices of strawberry.
Full of good food and a delicious drink, when the check came I called back onto my two years of struggling as a waitress, and I was in such a better mood with Cole’s card burning a hole in my purse that I left her a tip double the cost of my entire check.
Once I’d stroked Adlebaum’s off my mental bucket list, I moved on to the rest of my day. Unfortunately, it only occurred to me that a clothes shopping spree after a filling meal was perhaps not the best strategy, but I decided to grin and bear it and just suck it up.
It also occurred to me that I had spent so much time focusing on living paycheck to paycheck that I hadn’t really bothered to focus on me. Glancing down at my dress, I thought to myself, Well…that’s just not going to do, now, is it? But I was at somewhat of a loss as to where to go.
A few minutes tapping away on the smartphone later, and I had a few places to start in mind. There were some luxury stores in the area, a few swanky clothing shops here and there – the fancy stuff that was so prohibitively expensive that I could never even dream of walking in the door.
And I knew just where to start.
Empire 208 was a premier retailer in the area that prided itself on exquisite culture and premium service. I’d heard of the place in passing – everybody had at least done that – but I had expected something that was trendy in that hallow, sterile kind of way that you seen in the obnoxiously self-absorbed shops.
This definitely wasn’t that. Empire 208 was wall-to-wall class, built upon foundational interplay between glass and color. The lights shone in various levels of the spectrum, somehow bathing the place in ample light that showed off exactly how the clothes looked while reminding me of a modern art museum. Interestingly, there were also several different pieces of long-form, looped ambiance that overlapped in complementary ways – as if separate sections of the same song, easily combining or shifting apart depending on how one traversed the store. In the exact center, all five pieces crossed over into a phenomenal arrangement that sounded like nothing I’d ever heard.
The attendants, too, were dressed to work well against the otherworldly nature of the store. In crisp, white shoulderless dresses with simple belts and boots, the staff strolled across the store and assisted the customers as if they were royalty, with exaggerated gestures, restraint, and grace.
“Velcome to Empiyuh Two-oh-at,” a charmingly young European girl with extraordinarily pale skin and a short, blond pixie cut greeted me. Her sharp eyes summed me up from head to toe, and she looked back up with veiled amusement – although her strong, strange accent almost pulled the same reaction from me. “How cane I halp?”
With a smile, I squared my shoulders, lifted my chin, and donned an air of class. “Darling, I’m caught out without my proper clothes, and I could so use some refreshment…these rags are such a bother.”
The attendant immediately nodded with large, sympathetic eyes. “Ah yes, tot-tilly understood. Ve shall feex you up, Madame…?”
“Andrews,” I answered.
“Madame Andrews,” she smiled. “I am Svetlana. Come vith me, and ve shall make you ze prize of ze city.”
Thick-accented Svetlana led me along the store, helping me choose some extraordinary products ranging from shawls to boots to blouses and more. The darling little girl couldn’t have been older than eighteen years old, but she carried herself with the elegance and sophistication of a woman easily several times her age. I found myself charmed by the young, slender creature as she led me across the aisles – if you could really call them that – and eagerly grasped at rows upon rows of products.
“Oh, Madame Andrews, you must try zis, and zis, and one of zees…”
After thirty minutes of casually scrutinizing my shape and size between clothing recommendations, Svetlana ushered me towards a fitting room with a stack of clothing. While I tried outfits on, my lithe little attendant gracefully sat nearby on an ottoman, one leg dangled across the other, her thin fingers dancing along the smartphone in her grasp.
“What do you think?” I asked, stepping from the room.
Her eyes lit up as they trailed along the hundreds upon hundreds of dollars gracing my body. With a widening grin, she jumped up from her perch, the smartphone disappearing quickly into a pocket.
“The very peekture of elegance,” she chirped happily, waving me back into the room. “I cannot vait to zee more…”
Half an hour later, I walked out of the store with a massive smile on my face and three thousand dollars of clothing in a pair of premium bags. With my phone pointing me the way, I set my sights towards the next store in my shopping spree.
I could seriously get comfortable being married to a young billionaire.
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Chapter 20
Cole
I knew that it was time to come clean.
Releasing my restraint for just a moment, I furiously punched the console of buttons as the elevator ascended. I threw another punch, snarling this time, then another with my other hand, and finally one last, desperate punch with a guttural, animalistic scream.
Holding my battered knuckles, I backed up, slumping my weight against the glass side of the elevator while I bowed my head in defeat.
My final days were upon me.
I couldn’t pretend anymore. Alphonse Megami would be here in a week. The rate of deterioration told me that, in all likelihood, I would still be in reasonable enough condition to host him…but it was all going to be downhill after that.
Everything hinged on convincing him that Kiona and I were a loving, functioning marital union – one that passed whatever silly test the foolish, sentimental man had concocted. If the two of us could show him what he wanted to see, then he’d buy my company, and I would disseminate the profits down to everyone who had stuck it out with me.
They’d all get their cut.
And Kiona would keep what was left to orchestrate my last little master-stroke. The will had everything laid out in broad strokes. The charitable foundation created in my name would endure and put a bigger mark on this world than I ever did.
Kiona wasn’t going t
o be a billionaire herself. Still a millionaire, of course, after removing operational costs of my foundation, some extra little charitable donations I intended to leave, and then taking care of the rest of the company.
I needed a way to encourage the employees to stay with the corporation during this transition period. Of course, I’d already thought of that. The condition of their payments was that they continue to work for the company either for one year after the sale, until they were terminated, or until suitable replacements were found for their position. That way, the assets wouldn’t be all that the Megami Corporation inherited – it would take my beloved employees and their combined talents. If they wanted to piecemeal themselves together a separate staff, so be it. If Alphonse wanted his people to come in and reorganize everything, firing everybody who worked for me, that would be fine as well, because my people would immediately receive their pieces of the pie.
And what a big pie it was.
I smiled at the thought of what the staff would say when they realized what I’d done. There was a girl down in accounting making minimum wage and struggling to take care of her grand mother as they lived together in a rent controlled apartment on the upper east side. She probably didn’t think I knew she existed, much less empathized with her situation. She’d get the same share that an upper manager would receive. I was going to change the lives of every single employee in that building.
I would even make sure that Coppersmith, for all his faults, would receive his own reward…but perhaps not what he expected.
Coppersmith, I thought to myself as I stepped from the private elevator into my penthouse, though a corridor comprised mostly of glass panes – all the better to see the skyline as I walked and thought to myself. As for the dangerous executive on my staff, I had to find a way to deal with him. The man had me by the balls and he knew it. Kylie’s one colossal fuckup had been allowing the man to have accidental access to my private files, and when he learned about my disease, he obtained the proof he needed to blackmail me.
He was smart enough to not dare and come after me for money. I didn’t know what his endgame was, but he was intent on securing his position in the company. Perhaps he hoped to take over when I died.
Luckily, it was clear that he was oblivious to the buyout. He could have seriously jeopardized everything to maintain his iron grip on his high position, and possibly the company. It had been too risky to poke around and find out how the inheritance would affect things. If I had tried to access the pertinent files, he would know. I’d been so alarmed that I hadn’t even informed my own executive assistant of the impending deal.
Marrying Kiona had the plus side of being a failsafe. If the buyout fell through, at least she could take over for me – but then it would be all-out mutiny. There would be blood on Wall Street.
As soon as I learned that the board was ready to jettison Coppersmith, I had panicked. I’d overplayed my hand. I needed to keep my enemy close for now, while he was too busy stroking his ego and playing King of the Mountain with his executive seat to notice what was going on above his head. No, it was the wrong time, because the moment he was cast out, he’d turn on the entire company and cripple us through the tabloids with evidence of my impending doom. That’s why I had scooped up an engagement ring and performed a last-second proposal to Kiona onstage, diverting attention from him and saving him from exodus.
I was not as good at improvisation as my partner-in-crime was. Maybe in time some of Kiona’s talents would have rubbed off on me… If only I had time.
My stunts had been carefully orchestrated so far, and Alphonse had been instrumental in helping maintain the balance. But he had a vested interest in taking a lucrative company. Soon, he would be taking over a well-oiled machine with a highly competent and incredibly well compensated group of savvy employees.
He was aware of the risks, and accepted his role in all of this.
Of course… Kiona might be up to the task if Alphonse pulled out. I could see her steering the ship in the right direction, and her demands from our first lunch together – that my employees were going to be taken care of through the buyout – had convinced me that she would keep them happy and productive. Besides, my death wouldn’t change the fact that our quarterly numbers reflected our highest profit yet. Sure, there might be a temporary panic, but with a strong and intelligent woman at the helm…
The trouble would be her trying to deal with Coppersmith herself. Having him thrown out without sufficient reason could rip a schism between her and the board, not unless she had a plan already in place by that point. But leaving him in was a liability, too. Then, there was the complication of whether or not the rest of the staff would accept her, especially after my little spiel on stage at the Quarterly Party.
I grimaced angrily at myself as I stepped into the kitchen.
Kiona wasn’t here. I steadily walked across the penthouse, slumping against the wall as I hacked up a small storm. It was as if every suppressed cough came back to fight me in that moment. My vision began to blur as I searched for her, listening for any sign of occupancy.
No, Kiona had departed in a huff, postponing our conversation. It was a shame – as necessary as it was now, I didn’t look forward to telling her that I was a dying man. It brought me no joy to think of revealing to her everything I had held back when I thought I had more time, time to make these decisions without her. But I needed to prepare her now for what was coming.
I realized now that I had been shortsighted and foolish. Too concerned with stopping the board from acting independently of me and casting Coppersmith down to the sharks, not realizing that he could lead those sharks to savagely destroy the company’s future.
And in my rash actions, I had crippled the hand that Kiona would have to play if Alphonse Megami fell through in our established arrangements.
I did not enjoy this house of cards.
I did not enjoy this game.
As my lungs gave out and I collapsed to the floor in a savage coughing fit, my last thought as the swimming blackness took me was that I did not particularly enjoy dying.
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Chapter 21
Kiona
“So, spill the details!” Swaree smiled as we sipped from our cocktails. “You’ve gotta tell me what happened since your wedding…did you go on a honeymoon?”
I felt bad. I realized with that question that I’d been awful at keeping her in the loop on things…and I vowed that that was going to change, effective immediately.
“Oh yeah, we went on a honeymoon alright,” I told her.
“No way! Where’d you go? Was it Venice? You’ve been talking about Venice as a honeymoon destination for as long as I’ve known you…if you were ever going to get married, that was,” she quickly added.
I winced. “No, not Venice…he wanted to stay in the United States, so I chose New Orleans.”
“Whoa, you went to NOLA? How was that?”
“It was pretty great!” I took another sip from my drink.
“Oh, honey,” Swaree told me with mock concern, her hand sliding onto my wrist, “you have got to tell me a little more than pretty great. Spill the details, sister!”
I smiled at her enthusiasm. “We landed in his private jet, a fancy driver took us to our lavish hotel, and we had this fantastic executive suite all lined up.”
“Oh yeah? Tell me more!” She cooed, lifting her glass to her lips again.
“Well…from the get go, there were lots of fantastic food, great music, and a lot of tourist stuff. Swaree, you have got to try some Creole food. It is out of this freaking world.”
“I’ll add it to the agenda,” she grinned. “So…”
“So what?”
“Did you, you know…consummate the business relationship?”
“Consummate the…oh, no we didn’t. Well…”
“Spill it,” she demanded, setting her drink down and staring me in the eyes with a devilish smirk. “Come on.”
“Not
hing happened while we were there.”
Aiswarya burst into giggles. “Oh my god, you two totally fucked! When?”
“Last…last night.”
She gasped. “Oh god. Oh wow. How was he?”
“It was the…most incredible night I’ve ever had.”
“Seriously? Even better than the baseball player?”