Trillionaire Boys' Club: The Clothing Mogul

by Aubrey Parker

  “What?”

  “That we’re an extreme breed. That’s what I was trying to articulate — about how most people can’t comprehend what a billion dollars truly means.”

  “What does that have to do with being extreme? Jesus, Cole — you sound like a Mountain Dew commercial.”

  “Just that the ordinary doesn’t thrill us. Every one of the guys Nathan is looking at for his” — I raise an eyebrow, warning Ben not to say the words — “his club … is a man who’s accomplished what the world deems impossible. Our everyday lives are filled with the unimaginable. The people who truly think about what a billion dollars means? They see it. They see how we’re magical in a way. So far beyond their lives that it’s like we’re another species.”

  “That’s really woo-woo, coming from you.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  We sit for a few quiet moments. Of course he knows what I mean.

  “So … what? Are you finally having your mid-life crisis?”

  This is a good-natured knock on me. I’m 42, and Ben is still in his twenties. But fuck him. I just beat his ass in the ring, and whenever we’re out together, girls come to me more than him. Young guys have a reputation for being spry, but they’re also stupid and immature. More than one woman has told me that there’s nothing quite like the appeal of a hot older guy.

  “I started skydiving when I was your age,” I tell him.

  “Proves nothing.”

  “I ran with the bulls.”

  “Keep going, old man.”

  I roll my eyes. I’m not going to argue, because Ben doesn’t mean it. We’re friends, but I’m also sort of like a mentor to him. He jabs, and I jab back. It’s like we never stop boxing — another hobby I picked up in my early thirties just to take on the challenge.

  “What’s your point, Cole?”

  “That maybe we are another species than the rest of the world.”

  “Don’t say that in front of the press. You’ll sound like Hitler.”

  I punch him in the side. “Stop being a dick. I’m trying to get real with you. Maybe teach your ass something important.”

  “Okay, Obi-Wan. Give me all your wisdom.”

  “Don’t deny what I’m saying. Or try to tell me that you don’t see the world as a game that’s become impossible to lose.”

  “Is that what you’re doing, with all your big-wave surfing and BASE jumping? Is that why you can’t ski from a lift like a normal person, and need a helicopter drop you at the top of the mountain? Are you trying to prove your immortality? Or are you subconsciously trying to find out if there’s a way you can lose it all?”

  “I don’t have a death wish, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  Ben shrugs. Fucking kids. I have a whole string of in my day arguments lined up for him, but I’m not about to use them, lest I sound like some codger yelling at kids to get off his lawn.

  “I’ve achieved the impossible, and now there’s no challenge. I’m looking for something real enough to matter.”

  “Dark. Are you going to start cutting yourself? You know — just to see if you can still feel pain?”

  “Fuck off, Ben.”

  He shifts again, this time seeming slightly more serious. I’m still half-smiling, but maybe he can tell I’m at the end of my tolerance. He takes a sip from his bottle. “Join the Syndicate, like Alyssa keeps telling you. Then you can be part of something real enough to matter.”

  I look over, noticing how he’s carefully avoided that stupid “Boys’ Club” phrase, as if sensing my agitation. The way I understand it, the two groups aren’t the same, even though those of us who know about both use them interchangeably. The Trillionaire Boys’ Club is a group of young, photogenic billionaires with reprehensible personalities whom the press can’t get enough of — but once combined, their net worths still only total one or two hundred billion. It’ll take forming the larger group — the Trillionaire Syndicate — to hit our 13-figure goal.

  Still, Nathan needs the Boys’ Club guys to make the group look like something the Old Guard couldn’t afford to miss out on. We need them, but they’re too old to be “boys” and too stodgy to join “clubs” that don’t serve aged port in the cigar room after dinner. They’re ugly and reprehensible, more “stodgy fucker” than “lovable bad boy.”

  Once the Syndicate is fully formed, Nathan will need to keep those trolls in the shadows.

  “Fair,” I tell Ben.

  “So you’re going to join?”

  I sigh. I can be honest with Ben, even though I’m still being coy with Alyssa, Ashton, Nathan, and the others. “I’m sure I will. I just can’t make it seem too easy to Alyssa.”

  “Why? She works for you.”

  It’s true, of course, but it’s also more complicated than he’s making it sound. Alyssa is Ashton’s publicist, and there’s no question she’s the best in the business — the one least afraid of stepping on toes and breaking rules. Alyssa approaches publicity like a long con. Her style is a brew of marketing, manipulation, and outright lies. That mess Ashton got himself into with the college girl? Somehow, Alyssa turned that around even after the couple was caught duping everyone on the talk show circuit. I still don’t know how she does it; she must have incriminating photos of all the right people.

  Now she wants to work with me, and I guess I’m letting her. But you don’t choose Alyssa as your publicist. She chooses you, and you find yourself complying even if you don’t mean to.

  “I don’t trust her.”

  “Then why are you working with her?”

  “It’s hard to explain.”

  A disapproving look crosses his face. “I’d never work with her. The things people say …”

  “That just means she’s good at her job, Ben.”

  “You just said you didn’t trust her!”

  I’m not sure how to reply. I don’t trust Alyssa. I don’t even really like her. But I do respect her — and, truth be told, I’m just a little afraid of her. Everyone is. She’s 27, and works at The Banner Agency out of Los Angeles, though she lives in Chicago like me. She looks like a model, but radiates an asexual aura that says sure, she’d fuck you … and then bite your head off like a female mantis. Everything about her is wrong somehow. It’s impossible for someone so young to hold such a high-powered, high-prestige position in publicist circles. But as I’ve been telling Ben, “impossible” is a billionaire’s bread and butter.

  “I’m sure I’ll join,” I say. “Anthony’s vision is too compelling to resist. What he has in mind? Hell, you of all people should understand — you and Daniel and Clive.”

  Ben’s eyes flick sideways. A tiny thing, but still it’s like he’s slapped a label on his forehead. I suddenly know that Ben’s been invited to the Syndicate, too — but even more importantly, he’s been talking to Anthony. Or to Daniel. Maybe Clive. There’s another party in the wings I keep hearing about, too — Alexa Mathis, a woman of virtually no reputation. People talk about her with reverence she doesn’t seem to have earned. And I’m suddenly sure that if I pry hard enough, I’ll find that Ben knows something about her. Something about Anthony’s grand plan for our trillion dollars of leverage.

  I don’t push the issue. It’s enough that I know another piece of the puzzle — but like true gamesmen, none of this Syndicate’s puppeteers are letting any one person see the whole thing.

  “We should go,” I tell Ben, standing. “I have a meeting.”

  He mutters assent. We start to gather our gear, and the room’s mood slowly shifts from dead serious to its proper center — to the two of us as friends, busting each other’s balls.

  “I’ll tell you what sounds impossible — what you should do, if you want a challenge.”

  I look at Ben. I can’t tell if there’s a joke coming, or if this is something serious.

  “You could fuck Alyssa.”

  We laugh. Because it’s hilarious. Alyssa is scorching hot, but meeting her crushes desire. She radiates efficiency, not che
mistry. She’s more like a robot than a person — and not a nice one. The kind of robot that accepts humans as necessary evils until the singularity is achieved, then cuts them open as amusing meat puppets to entertain its buddies.

  I don’t answer Ben. He’s fucking with me like always — teasing me for hiring the Dragon Lady of Publicity without even donning a protective suit of armor. I think she can get me the media attention required to make the deals I want. And I think I can survive her.

  I think.

  I wrap my arm around Ben and we leave, dripping and exhausted.

  Mess with Alyssa Galloway?

  Even I’m not that extreme.

  Did you enjoy this sample chapter? Be sure to pick up your copy of Cole’s book — TRILLIONAIRE BOYS’ CLUB: THE PRODUCER — available now!

  SHIT YOU SHOULD KNOW

  I know this is going to show my age, but I remember when Patrick Dempsey wasn’t a heartthrob. In the 1987 movie Can’t Buy Me Love, he was a dork. He was a social misfit who no self-respecting girl would ever be caught dead with … which, obviously, was kind of necessary for the movie to make sense. And because I remember that movie, to this day poor Patrick has been pigeonholed for me. “Why is everyone acting like this guy is hot?” I’ll think. “He’s supposed to be a spaz!”

  (By the way, I do understand that Patrick got handsomer. It’s just a knee-jerk reaction, like when people talk about playing the game “Cornhole” and I wonder why nobody seems to know that’s a butt-sex term.)

  Regardless, I’ve always liked that particular trope: two people pretend to be a couple for one reason or another (in Can’t Buy Me Love, it was to improve Patrick’s shitty social standing by dating a popular girl), but over time they both realize that the farce of love actually means something to them. Sometimes it’s both people who are pretending (like Patrick and Amanda Peterson) and sometimes it’s just one member of the faux-couple who knows the truth (Freddie Prinze Jr. toying with Rachael Leigh Cook in 1999’s She’s All That or the Parker-house favorite of Heath Ledger vs. Julia Stiles in 10 Things I Hate About You), but either way the moviegoer is in for some romance-filled adolescent shenanigans. And it’s not like that’s an uncommon story. Walk into any virtual video store and throw a rock at the “teen movies” section and you’ll hit a flick with a similar plot.

  Anyway: Getting to my point.

  As a writer, you find yourself warring between two desires. The first is to get a lot of people reading your books (which helpfully provides enough money to buy food and other life essentials) and the other is to express yourself artistically. It’s beautiful when those two desires work together — when “what fulfills you artistically” is exactly the same as “what readers want to read” — but that’s not always the case. For me and other writers I know, the two forces often clash like this:

  The artist within a writer sometimes wants to write something totally unique — something the world has never seen before.

  But on the other hand, readers usually don’t want something totally unique. That’s why there are so many “it meant something to me” love stories out there, why the hero is so often an alpha asshole, and why no self-respecting romance ends in anything other than a Happily Ever After. Stories that are totally off-the-rails new and unusual can be fun, but they’re often uncomfortable. You want comfort and deep-down satisfaction as a reader? You’ll only get it with a story that’s at least a little familiar … meaning you’ve seen the same basic ideas in another story before.

  (There’s also Secret Factor #3: The fact that writers are readers and story-lovers too, meaning that we usually want OUR OWN stories to be familiar and comfortable. So on one hand, we want to be totally unique as artists … and on the other and, we tend to enjoy our stories most when they’re NOT totally unique. Talk about a mind fuck!)

  So yes. I and most writers want to be special flowers as artists, creating something new, while also revisiting tried-and-true story tropes: first love, second chances, the bad boy with the secret soft spot for that one special woman … stuff like that.

  Now, if you’ve been reading my books for a while, you know that I err on the side of “unique stories” maybe more than I should. I can’t subdue my artistic side very well, so I end up with complex tales like Trevor’s Harem or the “conspiracy-and-world-domination” plot you’re already seeing in the Trillionaire Boys’ Club series. But I do still try to remember what I want as a reader, and what all of you want deep down, even if you don’t realize it. And that’s familiarity: a story type you’ve seen before, even if the story’s special ingredients are new.

  And that’s how I end up creating stories like the one you just finished reading.

  We met Ashton in the first TBC book, when I was telling Nathan and Alex’s story. I was as curious about Ashton as you probably were, but I only knew a few things at the start: that he was really arrogant and self-centered, that he loved his expensive bespoke suits, that he couldn’t stop being himself for long enough to realize how much his dickhead image was hurting his company’s bottom line. Here was a man who ran a $2.2 billion clothing empire with broad potential … but who couldn’t stop fucking random women and dumping them in public. He did it with pride, not trying to be subtle. And he thought: So what if it made people hate Hurricane Apparel as much as they hated the company’s CEO?

  It seemed to me that someone — some wise PR agent, probably — would need to step in and save Ashton from himself. And what better way (that wise PR agent would think) was there to reform a rake than to have him appear to find true love when the cameras were on?

  And with that, The Clothing Mogul was born.

  I love the way this story turned out. It’s familiar enough to evoke all those delightful feels we get with arcs we’ve seen before, yet shaken-up enough that I doubt you saw every one of the plot twists coming. We all know guys like Ashton and we all know women like Jenna, but even I didn’t know what they were going to do when they clashed. At first, I knew it’d be fine. Ashton likes to screw around and Jenna, who’s afraid of being hurt, has convinced herself that she’s content to be “happy right now,” not “happily ever after.” The problem came when both of them lost their social armor, and realized that it wasn’t quite the farce that Alyssa Galloway had concocted for them.

  And on that note, speaking of Alyssa, her story is coming next in the Trillionaire Boys’ Club series — in The Producer, her book with movie magnate (and, naturally, Syndicate member) Cole Ellison. I think you know Alyssa by now, right? She’s a hell of a tough nut to crack … and even tougher when the man cracking it is as disinterested as they come.

  The Producer is a little spicier than the first two TBC books, treading into some of the same “control and submission” territory as my book Gagged — but without anything heavy or even remotely S&M. It’s a bit of a head game, like most Aubrey Parker books. I just can’t seem to stop overthinking these “simple romances.”

  Oh well.

  If you want to connect with me, I encourage you to do so, and to do it on Facebook. When I first started writing these author’s notes, I said, “Oh, I’m shit at Facebook; join me there if you want to see the nothingness I post.” But since then, I’ve really come to love it. I interact a lot with a core group there (they call themselves “Aubrey’s Harem” after my Trevor’s Harem books — and no, I didn’t pick that name) and I’ll probably start a closed Facebook group soon. So there’s that.

  You can friend or follow me on Facebook here. And while you’re at it, please “like” my page here.

  Facebook is my default way of sharing. It’s where I most faithfully remember to post cover reveals and where funny things tend to happen, like when a reader sometimes guesses what real-life man I had in mind when writing one of my heroes. (That happened recently — and spot-on — with Cole.) But yeah, Facebook is where the party begins.

  BUT, I also know that not everyone is on Facebook, and some stuff isn’t really right for Facebook anyway. That’s why you really n
eed to join my email list by clicking here, too. I send out fun stuff to my insiders on that list all the time, and the mailing list is also where you’ll learn about sales, new releases, and other important Aubrey stuff.

  Thanks so much for reading. I’ve already written a bunch more of the Trillionaire Boys’ Club books that haven’t yet been released, so you just WAIT to see where this crazy story is going!

  - Aubrey