Page 21 of Wicked Dares
Dad has that cool confidence he’s carried with him year after year. It’s the same kind I inherited from him.
It put me on theForbeslist by the time I was twenty-five and listed me as one of the country’s most successful hedge fund analysts.
Around the large mahogany table, I’m sitting with my brothers: Knox and Dorian, the eldest, and Locke, a year younger than me.
I keep my posture straight, my eyes on the graph Dad is pointing to on the projector. I hope like fuck I appear to be listening. This is an important meeting. I need to pay attention. Even to keep up appearances.
If anyone in this room could see inside my head, they’d find a red-haired goddess spread across every thought I shouldn’t be having.
“Everything we do for the ten months will shape the structure I’ll leave you with once I head to England,” Dad says, his face stern but hopeful. He already knows Vale Global will be in safe hands.
My brothers and I are the next line of leadership, but we each come with skills that could take the company to the next level. That’s saying a lot considering the work my father did to establish a global presence.
He’ll be going to England to take care of the London branch, and there he’ll stay until he retires.
New York, the flagship, will be left to us. Knox will be CEO and Dorian the COO. Both will run the company and continue managing the company’s equity division. Locke and I will keep working hedge funds with a view to running the entire division in a year. To say we have major changes ahead is an understatement, but we’re ready for it. We were born ready.
Raised for pressure.
Raised to perform.
Raised towin.
I’m just not on my game today.
And sleep deprivation isn’t the only problem. I’ve negotiated multimillion-dollar deals on less sleep than this.
My actual problem is waking up and realizing I actually cared that my fantasy woman disappeared.
I didn’t go to the club to hook up. Hell, I was only there to sign off on a new hire—senior staff, someone Locke insisted we needed. I was on my way out when I just happened to see the butterfly dancing like no one was watching. In truth, I wasn’t the only one to get pulled into her sphere. I just happened to be the bravest. There was no way I was letting another man in my own club take her.
I took one look at her with all that luscious hair cascading down her bare shoulders and decided she was going to be mine. I just never knew I’d wake up this morning, find that she left, and want more.
Most women leave my bed and become a pleasant memory. But the butterfly flew away and somehow became a problem.
“The equity division has delivered exactly what I expect from this company.” His gaze flicks to Knox and Dorian, and my father beams with the pride of a man who knows he’s done a damn good job raising his heirs.
“Glad to hear that,” Knox replies with a smug grin, glancing at Dorian, who maintains his aloof demeanor.
“The two of you should be proud.” Dad nods. “You’ve worked hard with our clients to get everything to where it is.”
I can’t even be jealous of my brothers. Knox and Dorian worked their asses off to make the equity division what it is. Whether that’s securing high-profile clients who are guaranteed to bring in more millions, or flying out to Europe on a whim to outsource future business. And at thirty-three and thirty-two, they’re the youngest leaders the company has ever seen.
I look at Locke. He’s right next to me. He looks at me and rolls his eyes playfully.
We know we have our work cut out in the hedge fund division, but it’s me who’s in the hot seat. I’m the one currently holding things up.
As if Dad can read my mind, he looks right at me and gives me the sort of grimace he used to reserve for Dorian. Until Dorian got married, he was known as the villain. All that harsh exterior and his abrasive manners used to piss Dad off at every turn.
While Dorian didn’t exactly become a saint, his wife, Elodie, changed him in ways that became more appeasing to our father. Sadly, that meant Dad’s eyes were turned to me—the rebel.
That’s what people call you when you refuse to live like every decision has already been mapped out for you. It’s not.
“I want the same success across every division,Levi,” Dad says, enunciating the syllables in my name. As if there’s another Levi in the room.
He points and taps the empty line item three rows down on the spreadsheet he’s had up on the projector.
That space is for the Lockwood contract, a multimillion-dollar contract entrusted to me. It’s one of the most solid contracts the hedge fund division has seen in years.
