Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 142866 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142866 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 714(@200wpm)___ 571(@250wpm)___ 476(@300wpm)
Would he choose me over his greatest ambition? His crowning achievement?
In my experience with men, especially powerful men, no.
In my experience with this powerful man… I wish I could say for sure. I steel my voice and brace my heart and finally force out the words.
“Just call me when you get this.”
CHAPTER 50
MAVERICK
There’s an elephant kicking my door down.
If this is Bolt waking me up, his ass is fired.
I mean it this time.
I sit up straight in the hotel suite bedroom to complete darkness, the light blocked by the drawn shades.
“Come in,” I shout, pressing my palms into my eyes. “Shit.”
“I would,” Bolt yells back, “but it’s locked.”
I toss the covers aside and drag my tired body out of bed to yank open the door. He’s standing there holding a cup of coffee like I’m not three seconds away from kicking his ass.
“I distinctly remember saying late last night”—I turn back into the bedroom, leaving him to follow—“emphasis on ‘late’ because we’d been in meetings all day and half the night—that I needed to sleep past eight this morning. Local time, please?”
“It’s seven thirty,” Bolt replies dispassionately. “And you need to check your phone.”
I stride… or try to find my stride… back into the bedroom and grab my phone from the nightstand drawer.
“What’s up? What’d I miss?” I ask around a yawn as Bolt presses the button on the wall to retract the shades covering the giant windows.
“Someone leaked the list of businesses backing CFE’s lawsuit against Aspire,” he says.
All lassitude evaporates and my narrowed eyes snap to his. “Who?”
The one word rolls out low and fierce, and even to my own ears it matches the ferocious rage directed at these people targeting Hendrix.
“The list is extensive.” Bolt walks farther into the room and leans against the wall. “But one name in particular stood out. Andrew Carverson.”
The shock is so great the impact is delayed. The two parts of my life that have consumed the last few months—my relationship with Hendrix and my pursuit of the Vipers—clash like Big Bang meteors, exploding into white-hot rage.
The weight of this conundrum drops on me like a double-wide trailer. When I close this deal, the one I’ve been working on for years and dreaming about half my life, I’ll inadvertently fund the very man trying to dismantle not only Hendrix’s fund, but equity efforts at large.
“I can’t just give up on the team,” I say as much to myself as Bolt. “And I can’t let Andy get away with this.”
“What do you want to do?”
I want to tear Andy and the group of cowards who tried to hide behind the CFE smoke screen apart, to devastate them financially. Figure out a way to take every opportunity from them so they can see how it feels. The most urgent matter at hand, though, is stopping them from destroying Aspire’s grant program.
I grab my phone and dial Andy’s cell.
He never answers on the first ring, or even the second. He likes to make me wait. It’s been one of the few ways he’s still able to exert any control over me.
“Maverick,” he says after the third ring, his voice pleasant and unsuspecting. “How are you?”
“I hear you’re one of the people funding Citizens for Equality in their suit against the Aspire Fund. That true, Andy?”
The line goes quiet, and the longer the silence stretches, the higher the tension builds.
“I’m a concerned American who wants to see our nation’s values restored and true fairness upheld by the law,” he finally replies. “People should work for what they get, and if you’re concerned about unfair advantages, so are we.”
“Unfair advantages?” I scoff. “You, of all people, have the audacity to talk to me about unfair advantages. Are you kidding me?”
“We can agree to disagree, but don’t let that ruin a deal that gives us both what we want. Setting sentiment aside, this is business. I didn’t expect it to have any bearing on our arrangement.”
“It has bearing,” I grit out. “Because you and your bigot friends are trying to dismantle the very laws my ancestors sacrificed for. That’s more than ‘sentiment,’ and if you’re so proud of it, why hide behind a firewall of secrecy? Why don’t you ‘concerned Americans’ want people to know you’re supporting the efforts to restore these values you’re always talking about?”
“I still don’t see—”
“It has bearing because I’m in a relationship with Hendrix Barry.”
“Well, seems you have to decide which is more important to you,” he says, the conciliatory tone he was faking dropping altogether, replaced by the kind of arrogance that comes with true privilege. “It’s either your girlfriend’s little fund or the team your daddy never got to coach. Decisions, decisions.”
I let his taunts needle me, let them burrow under my skin and sting like a scorpion bite. I commit the note of smug self-satisfaction in his voice to memory. I want to recall it perfectly when I destroy him.