Holt, Her Ruthless Billionaire

by Theodora Taylor

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see the Mexican photographer Della hired get into position to grab a shot of me hugging my son warmly, like we discussed. I figured telling Wes he can have whatever or whomever he wants will get a more authentic smile out of him than commanding him to pose.

  But I don’t answer Wes. Don’t bend down to hug him. Because I can’t. All I can do is stare at the woman with him. The woman standing on the path between me and the small bungalow where she must live, frozen like a statue.

  Frozen by the past, the same as me.

  “Hello, sir. You must be the father of Wes,” a voice says.

  The Jamaican accent draws my eyes away from the woman and down to a boy who is several inches taller than Wes. He looks like her. Kind of. His features are less soft around the edges and more delicate. He is also several shades lighter.

  “Hey,” I say, taking the hand he offers and giving it a firm shake as I try to reconcile everything Arturo told me. So, this is her son? It’s been ten years, and my son is around the same age. Still…my vision reddens at the edges with a rage unlike any I have experienced at the thought of her with another man. But there is no ring on her finger. Does this mean she and Barron’s father are divorced? Separated? Never together to begin with? All these questions and more go through my head, even as I smile nice for the camera and say, “Holt Calson. Nice to meet you.”

  “Nice to meet you, too,” the boy answers carefully with a tentative smile. “I’m Ender Pinnock.”

  Same last name as Sylvie. I’m guessing whoever knocked her up is no longer in the picture.

  “Ender is his nickname. His real name’s Barron,” Wes explains, mistaking my expression for confusion over the boy’s unusual name. “But no one is allowed to call him that but his mom.”

  His mom…

  I don’t want to look at her again, but my eyes have a will of their own. They take her in as Wes explains, “Ender’s a genius. Like, seriously! He got into CIT, even though he’s just a kid. But he’s really poor, so I want him and his mom to come live with us. But she keeps saying no, because she’s got a—”

  Sylvie suddenly unfreezes, her gaze shifting to my son. “Wes, you will not be talking about me as if I am not standing right here,” she snaps before he can finish his sentence.

  Wes throws her a mutinous look over his shoulder, but then lowers his voice to whisper to me, “Make her come home with us and be my nanny so Ender can go to CIT.”

  I stare at him. Then back at her. Then back at him. Because I am finding all of this hard to believe. That Sylvie is here in Mexico. That ten years later, she has my eight-year-old son begging her to move in—like I did. Back when I was young and stupid—so fucking stupid—over her.

  But as for Sylvie, she no longer seems to be paying any attention to me. “Wes, come here, baby,” she says, beckoning him forward.

  I watch as my son, who has a habit of screaming bloody murder at Melissa for even the smallest of polite requests, stands in front of Vee without having to be asked twice.

  “Wes, my friend…look at me now…” she says before bending down to fix him with a sympathetic look I remember all too well. “I know your heart is feeling some kind of sorrow at the thought of saying goodbye to your friend. I really do.”

  Wes inhales sharply like he has been hit with a truth bomb. “Why can’t you do what I want?” he asks, fat tears appearing in his blue eyes. “Ender says you don’t make much money here, and my dad will pay you whatever it takes. Just say yes. Why don’t you just say yes?”

  Shit, I think, because Wes is escalating. His fists are clenched and his face is red, which means he is only a few seconds away from the kind of nuclear meltdown that got him millions of views on YouTube before my lawyers sent a takedown notice.

  “Wes…” I warn.

  But Sylvie stretches out her arms. “Come give your friend Vee a hug, Wes.”

  Wes shakes his head, once…twice. Only to burst forward, throw his arms around her shoulders, and cry into her neck like a kid half his age.

  “You got so many big feelings going on right now, don’t you?” she says, rubbing Wes’s back. “I bet you wish this week could go on forever.”

  “It could, if you’d just come back with us…”

  “But I cannot do what you ask, baby,” she insists. “I’ve got a contract here, and I keep my promises. I do not quit, and I do not let people down, even when I am offered nice things in return. Barron knows this about me. This is why he will wait to make our big move until I’m done with my contract.”

  She addresses the boy who introduced himself as Ender. “Now Barron, come thank Wes for being such a good friend to you and encouraging you to be even better. Then send him home with his father and I will see you back inside. Okay, you both hearing me now?”

  “Okay,” Barron agrees, sounding miserable.

  “Okay,” Wes says with a loud sniff.

  “Okay,” she says.

  And that’s it. Sylvie turns and goes back down the path, disappearing into the cluster of employee bungalows.

  Without having once acknowledged me.

  And to my surprise, the two boys do exactly as she asked. Mumbling goodbyes and promising to meet up in a multiplayer videogame I only know about because they were in a “stronger than expected” holiday sales report I reviewed on the flight over.

  Proving he is more polite and mature than my son, Ender gives me a nod and says, “It was good to meet you, mon.”

  I say nothing. I can’t. I can barely look at the kid. Sylvie’s son…

  Eventually, he leaves, disappearing into the same cluster of bungalows that swallowed up Sylvie.

  “Bueno, bueno. All’s well that ends well, yes?”

  I glance over to see Arturo smiling up at me in patent relief. Truth be told, I forgot he was there. Just like the photog who’s still hunched over with his camera in the distance.

  Wes throws the kind-faced manager an annoyed look and says, “Ender’s mom said she can’t be my nanny because he’s her boyfriend and they might be moving to Florida.”

  My hard gaze darts back to the other man, and Arturo gives an uncomfortable laugh before saying, “Si, I am very lucky to be dating Vee,” he admits. “But moving together to Florida has not come up, as she is just starting her third short-term contract here and I have not been reassigned yet. Neither of us can be sure what the next six months will bring—” he breaks off to point out to my son, “which is exactly the reason she gave you for not accepting your offer.”

  He then turns back to me before Wes can argue with him any further. “I can give you that tour of the resort now.”

  “No thanks,” I say, my voice as cold as my iced over chest. “We’ve got it from here.”

  “Are you sure?” Arturo asks, “Because your PR person Della told me—”

  “We’ve got it,” I repeat. Then I pin him with an old school Calson “go away” look: granite face, blue eyes set to “or else.”

  It works like it always works. Arturo scurries away. And as soon as he is out of earshot, Wes asks, “Dad, you’re not going to just let them go, right? Like Grandpa always says, Calsons don’t know no, right?”

  What an entitled, manipulative, borderline sociopathic thing to say, I think as I gaze down at my son.

  Then I reply, “No, we don’t know no. We never have, never will.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  SYLVIE

  I am not a coward. I am no longer the scared girl who could barely look Holt Calson in the eye. I’m not…

  But I wait several hours before I leave my bungalow again. Until it is well after the time Wes said his flight was due to take off. And then I wait two more hours after that before I venture back out to the resort. This is no easy feat, mind you. One of the many perks of working at an all-inclusive resort is the staff eats lunch and dinner at the resort’s main restaurants. As a result, I only stock breakfast foods and snacks at the house. It is definitely not the brunch I had planned with Arturo.
And I am starving by the time I decide the coast is clear.

  Of course, Barron is long gone. He disappeared with one of his smaller bioHelmets less than an hour into me waiting out Holt and his son’s departure. No surprise there.

  He is a lot like my sister in that way. Working instead of feeling. I remember how much effort she put into her studies in the months before her pregnancy was revealed. She almost redoubled her work until the truth finally came out. And sure enough, as I walk across the fields that separate the east block of hotel rooms from the main dining room, theater, and bar, I see Barron tapping away at the tablet I got him for Christmas two years ago as one of the resort’s many iguanas walk slowly by, its small head encased in a bioHelmet.

  One of these days, someone will see him doing this and make him stop, I think with a shake of my head. Most kids think he’s strange and, even worse, boring because he spends so much time tracking the emotional state of iguanas with his homemade bioHelmets. But adult guests are often curious about Barron’s experiments on our onsite, highly-protected iguana population. The groundskeepers even text him to report when iguanas are fighting so Barron can record it. He’s always gotten along better with adults than kids his own age. Same as Lydia, until she became an adult. He reminds me so much of her that sometimes it hurts to look at him.

  I wish my sister had lived to see him. She would have been so proud of him for getting into C.I.T. And maybe I wouldn’t feel so guilty about not allowing him to go yet…

  My phone vibrates, pulling my thoughts away from my dead sister. I look at the screen and see a text from Arturo.

  “Need to talk with you,” it says.

  And my stomach twists, because his shift ended an hour ago. He will probably want to have brunch off campus, which would normally be fine. But I doubt I will be much company with the memory of Holt Calson blazing in the back of my mind.

  “Barron is upset about his friend leaving. I’m going to the cafeteria to pick up food for the both of us and I plan to stay in with him today,” I text back in the long and storied tradition of moms throwing their children under a bus to get out of a social obligations.

  No response, and I am worried Arturo’s upset that I’ve cancelled our plans, until he suddenly appears at the top of the path in front of me.

  “Hey,” I say feeling a little alarmed. Arturo came from the direction of the hotel’s back office, not from employee housing. And from the look of him, I am pretty sure he jogged the whole way in the heavy, humid air. “Late day?” I ask with a sympathetic tilt of my head.

  The Holt Calson fiasco must have really taken it out of him because Arturo wears the stricken look he gets when a guest has called corporate to lodge a complaint. Poor baby.

  “Si, very late day,” he answers. “I am so sorry, Vee. But I really must talk to you.”

  “Sure,” I say. “Do you want to walk with me to the cafeteria?”

  Arturo has always been a gracious boyfriend, kind and considerate of the fact that I have to be a mother first, since I am all Barron has now that we live in Mexico. I figure he will appreciate me taking the time to listen to his latest miserable guest story, despite my claim that I need to get back to Barron. But instead, he reacts with a visible cringe, audibly inhaling like I’ve punched him.

  “Arturo, baby, what’s wrong?!” I ask, wondering if Holt decided to be, as Prin would put it, “a true dick” about what happened to Wes. Maybe he skipped calling corporate and instead put in a call to Zahir Zaman.

  Proving nepotism is still alive and booming, Holt’s old friend had recently been name vice chairman of his family’s Tourmaline Group—a conglomerate that includes the Tourmaline hotel chain along with all advertising, banking, and Nakamura Auto rights for Jawhar, the infamously luxurious and oil rich country his royal family ruled over in an absolute monarchy.

  I wait for Arturo to tell me what happened, but he doesn’t answer my question. He shakes his head until I take his hands and say, “Please tell me, baby. Whatever it is, we can get through it together, okay?” My heart pounds with a terrible guilt because it is obvious my ex-boyfriend has decided to make my current boyfriend’s life miserable. Which makes me the worst girlfriend ever for trying to wiggle out of our brunch plans. I wonder if there is any way I can make it up to him—

  “I have to fire you, Vee.”

  Arturo pushes the five words out so abruptly that at first, I am sure I misheard him.

  But then he says, “I am sorry, niña. I am so very sorry. This is the hardest thing I have ever had to do in my entire life. But I must let you go. Effective immediately.”

  I shake my head in disbelief. He cannot be serious.

  “For what?” I demand, because my employee record is spotless. I was recruited to the director role at The Tourmaline Jamaica when I was just 25, and my work was considered so outstanding that Arturo flew out to Jamaica himself to recruit me for The Tourmaline Ixtapa. I have never received so much as a negative comment on a single travel review site. How can he fire me?

  As if in response to my question, Arturo shuffles his feet and says, “It has come to my attention you and your son—who is not officially registered and did not pay to attend our Kinder Club—have become too close with one of our former guests. As you know, fraternization between staff and guests violates Section 105 of our Employee Conduct Policy, as clearly stated in the employee handbook you were given when you began working here—”

  I hold up my hands and cut him off. “Arturo. Are you telling me you have to fire me because my son used Kinder Club resources and became close friends with Wes? So, Holt Calson put you up to this?”

  Arturo looks left, then right before answering, “I am not allowed to name the guest who filed the complaint.”

  Oh, my goodness… “This is complete nonsense, Arturo, and you know it! You yourself said Barron could participate in the Kinder Club activities when you recruited me.”

  Arturo winces before saying, “There is no record of me making such an offer to you. And according to several members of the staff, the guest in question and his bodyguard were frequently seen in your staff quarters. As you know, hosting guests in staff lodgings is also against our rules—”

  “I cannot believe you are letting that horrible man get away with this!” I yell, cutting off his foofool explanation. “Especially when I was called in on my day off to deal with Wes because no one else—including you—could. Was that in the complaint as well, or did you not even bother to defend me?”

  Arturo lowers his chin and blows out a noisy breath. “Of course, I tried to talk corporate out of this,” he hisses back at me. “You are the best Kinder Club director I’ve ever seen in all my years working for this company! And if it were up me, I would sign you on full-time, no questions asked. I am still not sure why this… guest…filed a complaint in the first place. But unfortunately, he is very well connected. This order comes straight from the desk of the vice chairman himself, and though we will provide you with two weeks’ severance, I am afraid I must let you go.”

  A lump gathers in my throat because two weeks’ severance is not nearly enough for two emergency plane tickets home.

  Perhaps sensing my distress, Arturo’s posture becomes less defensive and he says, “Look, niña, I have a little money I can give you.”

  Pride rears up inside me at the thought of taking even a dollar from the man I thought I was forming a close connection with. “I do not want your money. All I need from you is a recommendation before I leave. I don’t have one on file since I’ve only ever worked for The Tourmaline, but I will need a good word from you if I’m going to get another job right away.”

  It is a simple request, but Arturo’s shoulders deflate. “I am so sorry, niña, but I was explicitly forbidden to give you a recommendation…written or verbal.”

  I stare at Arturo, feeling sick to my stomach. I had believed with a few more months of dating, we might get married. I thought he was a good man, a decent man.

  And though I d
o not say any of this aloud, he answers my stare with a defensive, “This is not in my hands. None of this is my fault. And it won’t help you if I lose my job, too.”

  I think of the basketball player. The one who threw money at Lydia to get an abortion when she came to him with news of the baby he put inside her. The one who never returned my calls or text messages after her death.

  Some men are cowards, I decide. Incapable of loyalty or responsibility. In my frustration, I tell him, “I hope no one ever comes for you the way you let corporate come for me.”

  Arturo spreads his hands. “I tried to argue with them. I did. But…” he dips his head and replies in a low voice, “This feels personal. I do not know why this guy has it out for you, but you are right. This is not how these things are usually done here and it gives me no pleasure to let you go.”

  I want to argue more. I want to scream. Instead, I deflate. Because Arturo is right. This is personal. This is a hit job, courtesy of Holt Calson. And though I wish Arturo had stepped up for me, going after him won’t change a thing. I will still be out of a job, no matter what I say or do. Because this is Mexico, not the States. They can fire me at will and for any reason at all without fear of reprisal.

  In the end, I turn and walk away from the man I dated for over six months without another word. Because what else is there to say?

  I am still fuming by the time I make it back to my employee bungalow, but I stop dead in my tracks when I see a couple of hotel security guards in white, black, and gold polos outside my front door.

  “Luis? Fernando?” I say. Then I ask them in Spanish why they are here.

  Fernando looks away guiltily, but Luis answers in halting English, “Sorry, but the Mexican Consulate is calling the office. They say your work visa is taken away, and you cannot live on hotel property unless you are paying to be guest. And right now, there are no rooms.”