Chapter 3
Logan
“What is it Kris?”
Logan Brower looked up from his desk at his assistant Kris Rubens who had entered without even bothering to knock for the third time that week and it was only Tuesday. Entering someone’s office without even knocking even if it was “important” was the height of ill manners and one of Logan’s long standing pet peeves that drove him crazy.
Kris seemed hesitant. His tone had obviously reminded her of her intrusion and the fact he’d had two conversations with her about this already.
“I’m waiting!” Logan bellowed a bit louder than he even intended to. He was having a very bad day and his incompetent staff was just hell bent to make it twice as hard, weren’t they?
“Um, Tony Dowler is on line two,” Kris said. “He sounded urgent.”
Logan grabbed his phone to check his calendar as a brief moment of panic gripped him when he thought that he’d forgotten the time or the day of his upcoming lunch meeting with Tony. He breathed easily when he saw the meeting was scheduled for today as he thought it was.
“Ok,” Logan replied. “Knock next time or you can start looking for a new job.”
Kris looked horrified and stood there gawking as if she was searching for the right apologetic nerves that Logan didn’t have time for.
He quickly waved his hand at her. “Leave,” he growled.
Kris quickly left the office closing the door behind her softly.
Logan sighed for a moment before picking up the phone. He did not want to answer this phone call angrily. It was far too important.
He wasn’t sure why he was so angry lately. He’d always been a bit hot tempered. In fact, his aggressive nature was part of the reason for his success he’d always thought. He took no crap from anyone, he didn’t back down from something he wanted, and this echoed off his demeanor in waves that instantly told others where they stood. He was the alpha dog and if they were lucky they might catch some table scraps when he was done.
“Tony, how’s it going?” Logan answered cheerfully.
“I’ve got no complaints,” Tony said in his typical jovial fashion. Tony was a high-end investor who was almost as rich as Logan. He had a knack for knowing what companies to invest in and what companies to shy away from. The guy had a sixth sense when it came to making the right deals.
Logan was looking at building a new wealthy real estate development just outside the city. It was going to be a huge venture which required a lot of capital up front to get the ball rolling. He could have fronted the money himself, but any good businessman knew that you never gambled with your own money. Even though Logan was the best gambler around. And really that’s all the real estate business was. And that was why he loved it. Logan had always been drawn to risky ventures. If there was no risk then there was no reward. As far as he was concerned making money was easy and those green pieces of paper were really only good for keeping track when you were at his level.
“So, what’s up?” Logan asked.
He pulled a small bottle of whiskey out of his cabinet drawer and refilled his glass with roughly two shots worth. It was only ten in the morning but on days like today he needed a bit of social lubricant.
“I was just wondering if you’d given any more thought to that shopping center idea I was throwing at you.”
“Oh, yeah. Well, I think it’s a great idea and I’d definitely love to get the wagon greased up for it ASAP. I’ve already talked to contractors and I’m getting the wheels in motion.”
Tony laughed. “That’s awesome. I’m glad to hear it. Are we still on for lunch at one?”
“You know it,” Logan replied. “Make sure you don’t get drunk before then!”
Tony howled with laughter. Tony was one of those guys who laughed as if they were going to die doing it.
“Alright,” Logan replied. “I’ll see you then.”
The call ended and Logan quickly finished off his drink. He had a few hours before the lunch and he was already starting to feel a bit stressed out, but work had to continue. Logan grabbed his briefcase and left the office.
The hallway was quiet, almost as if it were a ghost town or a dead planet where everyone had just disappeared without explanation. Which would have been just fine with him. People tended to irritate the hell out of Logan. It seemed like everyone in the world wanted something from him.
As he neared the elevators at the end of the hallway he could hear the faint rustling of folders and the tapping of a computer keyboard being worked on.
He rounded the corner to see the only two employees he permitted to work on the same floor as him. Logan loved his quiet and his solitude. He also felt it was important to keep a safe distance between himself and his employees; it somehow worked to make him even more of an enigma and gave him more power and fear over his employees. He wasn’t a sadist who liked to scare people, but he felt that scared employees were obedient and diligent employees. It had always seemed to work for him.
“Any messages before I leave?” Logan asked Jessica Mills, his executive office manager.
She jumped up from her keyboard as if a spider had just landed in her lap.
“Um, no sir. Nothing new to report.”
“Ok,” He replied giving a nod to Kris who was still acting jumpy from the encounter with him earlier.
He stepped on the elevator and pressed the button to close the door. As the door closed he took another look at his two beautiful office staffers. He had hired them not just because of their beauty but because they were the best at what they did. And he paid them both very handsomely. But them being beautiful was definitely the icing on the cake. Not that he had ever initiated anything with either of them. That was just a stupid lawsuit waiting to happen and he wasn’t about to dip his pen in the company ink.
He made his way to the limo where his driver was waiting for him and gave him the itinerary of the properties they were visiting that day. There were several large houses that he was interested in flipping. He had a few meetings lined up that would place him close to Bagoda’s Restaurant for his lunch meeting with Tony. It was going to be cutting it close but Logan was fast enough at evaluating a property’s potential value as a money machine that he would make it work.
The first property he stopped was an interesting property in a rapidly developing high end neighborhood. He was greeted by a beautiful tall, blonde realtor with a perfect smile. The moment she laid eyes on him she began to get “the look”. Logan was very familiar with the look. He happened to be the most eligible bachelor in the city. He was worth over four billion at last count, not even mentioning a lot of his nontaxable income and assets. He was blessed with rugged good looks as well. He had been told several times in his life that he resembles a taller, more buff version of Mathew McConaughey and he had noticed the resemblance himself a time or two, especially with the deep dimples in his smile.
“It is a pleasure to meet you,” the realtor said. “I’m Angela Myers.”
“Logan,” he replied.
“Oh, yes. I’m very familiar with who you are,” she flirted back.
Logan smiled briefly and began walking towards the house. He could feel the realtor’s eyes traveling over his body, admiring with a healthy dose of lust the striations of his body through his custom fitted Armani suit.
He wondered if it would be as admirable if she knew he spent three hours a day in the gym. Nothing great comes easily in this world. He lived his entire life based on that principle.
The realtor showed him through each story of the house giving him the typical realtor speech to make each property sound better than it was. Logan was mostly tuning her out to pay attention to the structure of the place, trying to envision what a talented architect and contractor could accomplish to double the value of the home with the least amount of work possible.
It was probably going to cost about two hundred thousand dollars to bring the property up to his specifications, but he would increase the value of the house about six hundred thousand dollars and pocket a nice little profit. It was as easy as pie.
“So, what do you think?” Angela said when the tour was through. They had ended up in the kitchen where a bottle of wine and a couple glasses were waiting. Logan thought this was strange at eleven in the morning but he did not bat an eye when Angela handed the wine to him.
Wine was good anytime.
She was standing very close to him now, flirting hardcore.
“I’ll take it,” Logan said. He finished the wine and stepped back. He smiled at Angela who seemed confused. She was no doubt not used to being rejected by men. The woman looked like a supermodel in a business suit. It always made Logan laugh to reject a beautiful woman. And it only made them want him that much more.
“Just send all the paperwork to my office,” Logan said walking towards the car. “I’ll have everything taken care of and back in your hands by the end of the day.”
“Um, ok… I will… “Angela said trying to keep up with him.
“Thanks,” Logan said stepping into the back of the limo.
“It was a pleasure to meet you…”
The door cut her off mid-sentence. Logan did not even glance her way. The driver got in and soon they were on their way to the next location.
Logan smiled as he they drove off. Angela was a smoking hot and he would have loved to give her a good heave or two, but not now. Not since the last woman he was really involved with.
He hated thinking about it but it seemed that every woman out there was determined to force him to dwell on the aftermath of what had happened with Rachel. It was a thorn in his side that no matter how hard he tried it just would not budge. It was wedged tightly deep within him and it was nonstop bleeding profusely.
Six months ago, Rachel Billings had taken advantage of Logan and almost ripped him off for almost fifty million dollars. She might have actually gotten away with it, if he was not so paranoid about such a thing happening that he had several different private investigators working for him alongside accountants who went over his books constantly for strange activity.
Rachel was a realtor he had fallen pretty hard for, which was rare. Logan had been with too many women to count in his life, but he had only fallen in love with one of them. That was Rachel. She was like the culmination of every single thing he’d ever admired out of all of the most special relationships he’d had. All of those qualities had been put together and sat inside of the beautiful package that was Rachel Billings.
The two of them met on a scouting trip for new properties and just hit it off right away. They dated for almost six months. Everything was going great until one of the accountants noticed a payment that had been made to an unrecognized entity and deposited in an offshore account. They investigated further and found that it was an account set up by Rachel Billings.
Logan ended everything with her. He would have pressed charges but that sort of negative press was something he did not need. And there would be press, no matter how had he tried to keep such a thing under wraps. Things like that always got leaked, especially with the information age upon us.
He’d never felt such a sense of betrayal and total confusion before. Logan knew that he was deeply in love with Rachel and to have someone he cared about so much do this to him was just devastating beyond words. He couldn’t even describe how he felt, even after all these months of dwelling on it in the back of his mind.
And he’d changed. His staff saw it. They all knew that he was growing more reclusive and becoming more disillusioned with humanity. He was just so angry all the time and he didn’t know why. Even when he wasn’t thinking about Rachel he felt the betrayal, saw it in everything that was before him. It was bleeding over into every area of his life. He had to find a way to get back to who he was before all of this.
He was even starting to lose business because of it. Word had gotten around about a few of his epic meltdowns in business meetings. Several lawsuits had come at him recently that he quietly settled out of court against now former employees who accused him of threats and of creating a hostile work environment.
It had to stop, but he couldn’t stop it. It was like he saw red all the time and this blind rage just overtook him to the point of insanity. After an outburst, he would come back to earth and realize how insane he’d just behaved. He would want to apologize but somehow could not bring himself to do it. He was starting to frighten himself and had considered therapy, but he couldn’t very well be seen or heard of doing such a thing. As a billionaire businessman, he was somehow held up to a higher moral compass than other people and if he showed the world he was indeed flawed then his business would truly suffer.
He just had to find a way to get a grip on it all. It had been six months but it still felt like yesterday. He was still so heartbroken over it all. Even after what she did he found himself really wishing he could hold Rachel and tell her how much he still loved her, how much he still missed her.
And then he would snap out of the daydream and want to strangle himself for such stupidity. She had betrayed him, and that was something she could never come back from.
She was a true piece of work that one.
Logan closed his eyes and focused on deep breathing to relax himself as they approached the restaurant. He just needed a nice leisurely lunch with one of his best clients to go well. They both stood to make millions on this deal.
He took a deep breath and stepped out of the car putting a sweet smile on his face as he entered the restaurant.
It was show time