Chapter 2
Jax
“Jax! Hey, Jax, you in there?”
I looked up from my desk and sighed. I knew who was banging on my office door, and while I loved him—he had been my best friend since we were twelve years old—I was busy and didn't want to be disturbed. However, knowing Pete as well as I knew him, I was certain that he wasn't going to go away any time soon, or accept the “I'm really busy with work” excuse. And he was only following orders—my own.
“Yeah, I'm here man, just chill for a minute, there's some code I'm working on that—”
“Dude, it's past ten thirty. It's ten forty now. I've been waiting for you for ten minutes, and we agreed on this. You agreed to do this. So, come on man, get your ass out here!”
I glanced again at my trio of 4K 56-inch monitors, arranged to the front, left, and right of me, my brain furiously calculating and analyzing the endless lines of code. I was in the zone, and it was flowing beautifully from my brain through my fingertips to the screens. I wanted to keep going, because the state of flow was so electric, so stimulating, so intense . . . But I didn't want to let Pete down, and I didn't want to break my own rules.
I sighed, saved my work, got up, and then walked over to the door and opened it. Pete was already dressed in his white Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Gi—the thick, strong karate-style suits we wore while practicing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, or BJJ. I was still in my work suit, having gotten so caught up in my coding that I had lost track of time.
Pete, the same height as me—six feet two inches, but with a slightly stockier build—weighed in around two hundred and twenty-five pounds, while I was two hundred and five. He had the usual goofy grin on his broad, soft-featured face. Even though he was the same age as me, Pete had more of a baby face that made him look like an awkward teenager instead of a thirty-two-year-old man. This, combined with his very light blond hair and thin dusting of facial hair—which meant he couldn't grow much of a beard—still lead to him regularly being asked for ID whenever we went out to bars and clubs. I, on the other hand, hadn't been carded since I was actually underage. My dark hair, harder features, and profuse growth of stubble across the length and breadth of my squared jawline made it easy to tell my age.
“Jeez, bud, I guess you were really getting stuck into that coding, huh?” he quipped. “You haven't even got your damn Gi on! Come on, I'm not gonna roll with you in a business suit. And hell, why are you coding in that damn suit, anyway? What happened to the casual dress code we agreed on?”
I chuckled. “I told you man, I've got a meeting with Sara later.”
He grinned mischievously.
“A meeting . . . or a date?” he asked.
“Come on, dude, you know I'm not into her.”
“Well, everyone can see pretty damn clearly that she's very into you,” he countered.
I shrugged. “She's just . . . she's not my type.”
“I can't believe you can even say that. She's smokin' hot man! And she was a swimsuit model for a while, wasn't she? Mmm, man, if it were me she was into, I would have been in there long ago. I dunno what's wrong with you, bud.”
I sighed. “And that, Pete, is why I'm the CEO and you're not. And you and I both know that,” I joked, but it was the truth.
I didn't mean it as an insult, and Pete knew that as well as I did. We had started this software company together, and while we did have equal shares, Pete's short attention span and his impulsive nature, compared to my level-headed, strategic way of thinking and my ability to be calm and rational through moments of crisis, meant that we both agreed that I would head the business side of things, while he would focus more on software development, even though we both still personally wrote a lot of the code for the apps we developed.
“I know, I know, buddy, I'm just pulling your chain. I know that as hot as Sara is, she's probably crazy or psycho or something.”
“It's not just that that makes me wary of her,” I said. “I think there's more to it than just being, as you put it . . . crazy.”
“Like what? You think that she's got some sort of nasty scheme that she's cooking up or something?”
I shrugged and shook my head.
“I'm not sure, man, I'm really not sure. Maybe. And that's why I agreed to this meeting.”
“I know for sure that she wants a piece—a big piece—of this company if she can get her hands on it. And to be honest, I'm not sure that would be such a bad thing. She has a serious knack for investing and getting share prices to explode, especially when companies first go public. We could make a lot if we allow her to work some of her magic,” Pete said.
I nodded. “I'll see what she has to say. But like I said, I'm suspicious of her intentions. And then I have another meeting after that.”
“With your great-aunt, what's her name again?”
“Aunt Cara. Cara Smoot.”
My great-aunt Cara was eighty-four years old, but sharp as a tack. She was a self-made millionaire, and I'm talking many, many millions here. Even at eighty-four, she still had a hand in running the company she had started as a young woman.
“She really is keen to mentor you, isn't she?” Pete said.
I nodded. “She has taken a very strong interest in me and this company ever since she first heard that we were planning to go public.”
“Well, it's a huge move for us,” Pete said. “And all thanks to Quickchat, huh?”
“You did most of the coding on it, Pete,” I said. “Don't forget that.”
“It was your idea, your brainchild. I just helped bring it to life. And you did plenty of coding for it too, Jax.”
“It's weird, isn't it?” I mused. “This little app we made to compete with Snapchat, how it just took off. We knew it would be good, and we thought a few people would get into it, but I had no idea that it would blow Snapchat right out of the water the way it has.”
“How could people not go nuts for it? Twice the resolution of Snapchat's max, you simply have to say the name of a product or talk about an article and it'll come up with clickable links simply from what you say? We made something revolutionary here, Jax, we really did. It's about the best thing I've ever done.”
“Me too, Pete, me too. And I couldn't have done it without you. I really couldn't have.”
He smiled at me again with that big, broad, goofy grin.
“Thanks, man. I appreciate that, I really do. But enough chatter, come on! We're wasting time. You and I both agreed to forty-five minutes every morning and every afternoon. A good workout does wonders for the mind. We'll both be coding like beasts after a good rolling session. So, come on, get your damn Gi on and let's get to the gym and the mats and get rolling!”
I grinned. “Right on, man, right on. I'll see you down there in three minutes, okay? I just gotta get changed.”
“Three minutes buddy, and then you're getting your ass kicked all the way back to New York.”
“Hahaha, you can try man. But I've been working on my armbars and my joint locks. We'll soon see who taps out first!”
Pete grinned and then turned and jogged down the stairs, heading down to the gym we had built in the basement of our building. I closed the door and then got my blue BJJ Gi out of the closet and started to get changed, looking forward to a nice break and some good old grappling, takedowns, and wrestling.
* * * * *
“You look a little sweaty,” remarked Sara. The subtle smile on her full, glossy red lips told me that this was a compliment rather than an observation of distaste. The follow-up question confirmed this suspicion. “Have you been working out?”
I nodded, sipping on my sparkling water.
“Pete and I were doing some BJJ in the gym at the office. It was a pretty intense workout; he's a strong guy.”
She nodded, maintaining intense eye contact with me as she slowly licked her lips.
“I bet,” she said, with more than a mere hint of seductiveness in her voice. “But I'm sure you're stronger. It excites me, the thought of two powerful men fighting tooth and nail . . . like a pair of gladiators.”
I chuckled and looked away, purposefully breaking eye contact with her. I knew quite well the type of game she was trying to play with me, and I wasn't going to let her do it.
“Anyway,” I said, sipping on my water and staring out at the busy street beside our cafe table. “Let's get back to the subject of this meeting.”
“Of course,” she said, flicking her long, silky black hair over her slim shoulder and running her fingers through it as she did. “So, what do you think? I'm not asking for much, all things considered. And I promise you, I can help you guys get those share prices sky-high when your company goes public—and they'll stay there. You guys will be worth billions, and I'll get my cut, which will just be a few crumbs of the pie compared to what you and Pete will make.”
I nodded.
“I do appreciate your offer, and believe me, I know about your success stories. And I do think that you could help us get to the top.”
She stared intently at me and smiled—a strange smile, half flirting, half accusatory.
“There's a 'but' coming, isn't there?”
I laughed softly and nodded.
“There's a 'but' coming, yes.”
“Go on then Jax, spit it out.”
“But I still have a few other options to consider.”
“Like what? Like who?”
“Haha. Come on now, Sara, I'm not just going to spell everything out for you, and I'm not going to just give you all the details just like that.”
She smiled.
“Fair enough, Jax. But I'm not going to keep my offer open forever. Just tell me, is there something specific in it that you don't like? Maybe something we could discuss in a more . . . intimate setting? Perhaps with a bottle of wine, some soft lighting . . .” She smiled, batting her mascara-darkened eyelashes at me. I simply chuckled and shook my head.
“No, Sara, I don't think we could resolve anything like that. In fact, I think it'd just cause trouble.”
“And what fun is life without a little trouble now and then, Jax?”
“I prefer my life free of clutter . . . and free of complications.”
I was smiling, but the tone of my voice was steely with resolution, and she could see that she wasn't going to get any further with me. The expression on her picture-perfect face hardened. She closed her folder and slipped it back into her briefcase.
“Well, I suppose that means that we're done here, doesn't it?” she said curtly.
“I'll get the bill,” I said. “I'll talk to you soon about your offer.”
She stood up, every inch of her perfect figure revealed by her skin-tight, black designer dress. Despite her physical beauty, though, I wasn't about to let her have any kind of a hold over me. Not even a loose one. Things would have been different if she had talked to Pete. She would have seduced him long ago and gotten him to agree to pretty much anything she proposed, but I wasn't Pete, and I didn't let anyone manipulate me.
“Like I said, it won't be on the table for too long,” she snapped. “Goodbye, Jax.”
She stormed off, her heels, ridiculously high, clacking loudly on the tiles. As she disappeared into a cab, my attention was pulled to the street where a long black limousine had pulled up right by me. The rear window rolled down with a quiet, electronic whir, and staring at me through it was the small, familiar face of my great-aunt Cara wearing a stylish hat and perfectly applied makeup on her age-lined face. The smile I wore upon recognizing her was not reflected back at me, however. Instead, I got a cold, judgmental frown.
“Get in the limo, Ernest,” she said to me, using my given name rather than my nickname. “And hurry up! You're wasting my time!”
When I didn’t move fast enough, she snapped, “What are you doing?” Then she began muttering, “Wasting time, wasting time, you're always wasting time. Time is money, boy, time is money! Now if you want to learn something from me, that's the first lesson: time is money. So, stop wasting time—and with it, money—and get in the car.”
I hurried over to the limo. “Nice to see you too, Aunt Cara,” I said.
She rolled her eyes. “Spare me the empty pleasantries, Ernest. Now, do you want to learn something from me or not?”
I did, so without another word I climbed into the limo, and we were whisked away.