I watch Ellie walk into the stateroom, leaving me alone on the deck.

She said yes. Yes. Not to the engagement quite yet. I really fucked that up, but to the trip to Caribbean. I close my eyes and imagine her naked before me. I want to touch her everywhere. I want to do bad things to her. I want her to scream my name at the top of her lungs.

My phone rings. I look down and immediately regret not turning it off. I shouldn’t answer it, of course. I know that already. But I can’t really stop myself. It’s one of my many attorneys. Neil Goss. He’s going to bill me for this phone call as if it were in person, as if we had met at his office, or had lunch at a rate of $500 per hour. There are no discounts for the fact that he doesn’t have to get off his butt or even be at his desk. He even bills me for the time he spends waiting for the phone to ring and leave a message. I know. I’ve seen one of his bills recently. But I guess I should be thankful for the fact that I’m not also paying for his food and drinks. You see, after I was fired from my job as CEO of Owl, the startup I started, that grew to be the main competitor to Amazon, I have to pay for all of my legal fees myself. Frankly, I’m not even sure if this guy is worth the money, but I can’t really fire him because my situation is quite complicated and I’d have to spend a lot of time explaining to another - new - attorney. Along with all the paperwork that he would inevitably have to read through and analyze, it would cost me at least forty hours of time. At the end of the day, this guy isn’t that bad. I mean, how different are lawyers anyway, right?

“Hello?”

“Aiden, I have some news.”

What I do appreciate about Neil is that because he charges me for every minute of talking, he doesn’t waste a second of it on small talk. I doubt he’s much of a small talk person anyway, but it is a little bit of a perk.

“What is it?”

“The board isn’t happy with the new CEO. The company isn’t doing well.”

“You mean Blake?”

After the Board of Directors fired me, they set up my old friend Blake Garrison as the interim CEO before they got a chance to go through a full list of qualified candidates. On paper, Blake is, of course, as qualified as I am. He has an Ivy League education. Many years at the company working in various upper management positions. He was the guy who brought us all of the original investors. And of course, he’s also the guy who then, conveniently, got rid of those investors after assaulting Ellie on this very yacht. What an asshole.

“Are they getting rid of him?”

“That’s what they’re saying through the grapevine.” The rumors that Neil has access to are usually spot on. He’s the one who first told me that they were thinking of firing me. It gave me a day to prepare for the inevitable and not make a fool out of myself in the boardroom.

“I don’t know if you’ve checked recently, but the stock price is plummeting. From what I hear, the Board thought that getting rid of you would renew confidence in the company, but clearly it hasn’t. So, they’re thinking of getting rid of Blake.”

Whoever Neil has on the inside has access to some deep undercover shit.

“This isn’t exactly bad news,” I point out.

“They aren’t decided yet. They’re having an emergency meeting soon and putting it out to a vote. We’ll just have to see what happens.”

I nod. “I’m glad that they’re considering getting rid of him, but without a solid replacement, it will just make the company seem even more unstable.”

“Unfortunately, I have to agree with you.”

Both Neil, as well as many of the attorneys who work for him, and I are heavily invested in Owl. Even though I got ousted, most of my severance package is tied to Owl’s stock price. So, the fact that it’s plummeting isn’t exactly music to my ears.

“They wouldn’t just replace him with someone else who is not very well known, would they?” I ask. At this point, Owl needs a savior. Someone with vision and ideas. Someone who gets where the company is going and how to help it get there in the most efficient way possible. Someone like me.

“I hope not,” Neil says. He hangs up soon after, saying that he has to get back to work. This is either true or he’s just trying to save me a few bucks. Either way, I’m grateful because with the stock price dropping like a rock and all of my other money being tied up in big real estate projects around town, I need to start being careful with money again.

I look out at the dark ocean and lose myself in the past. It wasn’t too long ago that I was a big shot CEO of one of the fastest growing startups around. But it wasn’t just my job that I loved. It was what I had built, created, with my own hands. Back in college, Owl was just an idea. More like a kernel of an idea. I had an idea for a website where people bought and sold things, pretty much like eBay and Amazon but slightly different. Everything would be cheaper and the shipping would take a bit longer. I believed that despite everyone’s interest in getting things as soon as possible, they also wanted to save money. And the way that they could save a few bucks, or a lot of bucks, is to simply wait a bit longer for the shipping.

Well, as time passed and we started this site with just a few items and no listing fees, it slowly grew into a bigger and bigger marketplace. The first wave of investors helped to make it what it is now, a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange. But the next wave? Well, before they fired me, I was in the middle of investing heavily into advertising. Everyone hates ads, but everyone loves them as well. When ads are targeted properly, you love them because they expose you to products that are perfect just for you. And with the right algorithm, I knew that I could properly match consumers with their ideal sellers and products. Of course, to develop this area, we needed more investment. Blake was in the process of doing that again, until he fucked me. Well, what goes around comes around, right? I had laid out my whole strategy for moving this company over to the next level. All he had to do was follow it. But, of course, he couldn’t. His ego wouldn’t let him follow any of my blueprints. As much as I want to see him fail, I don’t want his failure to fuck up everything that I have worked so hard for my whole adult life. So, I find his downfall kind of bittersweet. He’s going down and he’s taking Owl with him.

Ellie comes outside and approaches me. She wraps her arms around me and gives me a big squeeze.

“This is beautiful,” she whispers, looking up at me. “It’s even more beautiful when it’s just the two of us.”

This yacht is huge for just two people. Well, not just two people, there is the staff. But just two guests.

“It’s quite different than from the last time you were here, isn’t it?” I ask. She nods and puts her head on my shoulder. I lean my head toward hers as well. We stare up at the stars together.

“You’re the most beautiful woman in the world.”

Ellie looks up at me and shakes her head.

“You don’t believe me?”

She shrugs her shoulder in that shy way that makes her even more attractive.

“I’m going to do bad things to you,” I say after a moment. As much as I love her right now, I always crave her. This trip to the Caribbean is going to be so much more than a trip for us to get to know each other. No, I need to blow off some steam. Way too much shit has happened recently to both of us. And we deserve some time to…get to know each other in another way.

“Oh, really?” she asks, her eyes twinkling in the starlight. “Like what?”

“Mr. Black is coming back. With a vengeance.”

Her body quivers, but she doesn’t budge.

I inhale deeply. This is something I’ve been thinking about for quite some time. But other things have come up, gotten in the way. And now, well, the timing couldn’t be better.

“I need you to sign a contract.”

“What kind of contract?”

“A contract that will make you mine for the duration of this trip.”

She looks surprised, appalled even. But then a small smile forms at the corner of her lips.