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The sound of my office phone ringing has me sitting upright. It's been a long day. I want nothing but to go home right now. I, however, don't make a habit of ignoring calls, no matter how tired I am, so I answer. “Yes?”
“Mr. DeMontez, I have your father on the line,” my secretary, Sarah, says.
I feel a bad taste in the back of my throat in anticipation. Calls with my father never go well. He's a controlling narcissist who's done everything to make me feel less of a man because he thinks he can never be wrong.
He was my mentor—the man upon whose name I built my legacy as the CEO of my tech company. The problem with my father being my former mentor is that the man always thinks he knows best. And while that may have been true ten years ago, times have changed since he last stepped foot in a boardroom, a fact that he has refused to accept.
So, every now and then, he tries to tell me how to run my own company, and when things don't go as he wants, he goes ballistic.
“Put him through.”
“Yes, sir.”
I hold the phone in my hand, waiting for his voice to come through; I don't have to wait long. “You really should learn to pick up calls on your personal line; imagine having to pass through a secretary to reach you whenever I need to. This is unacceptable, Rafael. I will not be happy if it is repeated.”
Every time he calls, he says this. And every time, I ignore him because he knows I don't use my personal phone during work hours. It's a principle I built that's helped me thrive not just as a CEO but as a billionaire, too. I have money I may never spend ‘til I die, and it's because I've dedicated so much of myself to my work.
Sometimes, I wish things could be different, that I could be different, but so far, I've had no one to inspire that change. “Hello to you too, Father. To what do I owe this pleasure?”
“Oh, drop the act, and tell me why you just turned down a multi-billion dollar deal that could have put our company name in the history of technology forever?”
I sigh. I can't say I didn't see this coming, just not this early. I just had Sarah send the rejection email an hour ago, and the news had already reached him.
Now, I'm beyond convinced I made the right call. I knew something was off about the deal from the moment it landed on my desk. All I had to do was have my lawyer look over the terms and have my private investigator look into them for me to realize that the company's CEO was a criminal with corporate holdings.
“I did what was best for the company, Father. Just like I've been doing all these years, you have to trust me.”
“Nonsense, you call back those people now and tell them you made a mistake rejecting them. I want the news of the merger to reach me by tomorrow morning!”
“I'm afraid that can't happen.”
“You would defy me?” he barks, outrage evident in his voice.
Defy him?
This is a company, not a family affair. I never should have let him sink his claws this deep into my business. It's too late to cut him off now. The best I can do is set boundaries.
“No, Father, I will do what's best for the company. If you're so concerned about how the family name is affected by this, then do me a favor and have someone look into these people. If you find nothing, I'll personally send an email to them and apologize to you, too.”
He doesn't say anything for a full minute. I wait, knowing he's processing what I just said. “What did you find out?”
“That they're thieves with big promises but no good record. Five of the ten companies partnered with them in the last decade are sinking, two are down, and three are declaring bankruptcy. I'm not going to say more than that. Have a good night's rest, Father.”
Slamming the phone down, I get out of my seat and pack my things to head out for the day.
He just doesn't get it.
Through the drive home, I try not to focus on how bleak my life has become. Once, I had a dream to build my own company before I was thirty, settle down by thirty-two, and have three kids. At the age of forty-four, I don't even have a girlfriend.
My thoughts of loneliness disperse the moment I pull into my house’s garage and step out of my car. I didn't have to pick Sadie up today; her mother is around. Lord knows she needs to be more available for that girl, but I'm not going to have that conversation with her. She's just going to pick offense.
I open the door to the living room, expecting to find Ivy, but she's nowhere in sight.
“Hello, Daddy's home.” I joke. But I hear no laugh from Ivy.
Flirting with her has become my favorite pastime. She's beautiful and sexy as hell. The moment I saw her, I knew I had to hire her. Not to clean my house but to mess up my dreams.
With beautiful black hair that cascades over her shoulders, she looks irresistible. She has brown eyes that make me wonder what color they turn in the throes of pleasure. She's petite with legs that I want to badly wrap around my waist as I bury myself deep inside her. But unfortunately, she's off limits, and I don't plan to change that. Not really.
