the lights in all the offices on the eighteenth floor went out. From where he sat, Blake could see the long corridor become progressively darker as afternoon turned into evening. Four o’clock passed. Five came and went. He heated up leftover Chinese food and remained at his desk.
“Sir?” Linda knocked on his door a little before six. “I’ll be leaving in a few minutes. Is there anything I can get you before I do?”
“Since you kept my father away from me today, I think you’ve done enough. Thank you.”
Again that trace of a laugh in her eyes, though it didn’t reach her mouth. “All right. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Another pause. “Remember you have the DeVeau Ball next weekend.”
Damn. He hadn’t remembered. In fact, he’d forgotten all about the annual charity event held every year at the Hotel Victoria on Boston’s waterfront. Eastefire had been a platinum-level sponsor for years, and Blake was probably listed on the program, scheduled to give some kind of remarks. He couldn’t remember what the ball was benefitting this year. The homeless? A local animal shelter? He pressed his fingers to both temples.
“It’s for the veterans’ hospital,” Linda added, reading his mind. “Your father’s delivering the opening remarks.”
“Thank you.” At least he wouldn’t have to get up and speak. “Is my tux dry-cleaned?”
“It’s at the cleaner’s now. I’ll have it in your closet as soon as it gets back.” She paused. “Don’t stay too late tonight.”
“I won’t.”
He didn’t have anything or anyone to go home to, though, so what difference did it make if he did stay late? He stretched and stood as Linda left. For most of the afternoon, he’d been consumed with meetings and paperwork and phone calls. A new app they wanted to launch next month. Pitches from a Silicon Valley start-up that wanted to move to Boston. And the roll-out of their involvement with Misterion and Drake Isle, of course. His legs sent up flares of pain as he paced around his office. One beginner yoga class and he was practically an invalid. To his surprise, it had been harder than he’d expected. What had happened to him since college? At Misterion he could run the fifty-yard dash in under ten seconds. He could bench almost three hundred pounds and survive on three hours’ sleep for days in a row. Now look at him.
He ran one hand over his hair and strode down the hall, glancing into empty offices. Eastefire had celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary just last month. Parties and speeches, caviar and free-flowing champagne for everyone employed by the company Blake’s grandfather had started shortly before the Second World War. The company first specialized in large-scale record-keeping but then expanded into computers and artificial intelligence. After the turn of the century, Blake’s father had hired some of the brightest talents coming out of Silicon Valley, and Eastefire leapt into the forefront of virtual reality and software development. Today it was worth just shy of ten billion dollars, and Blake ran it. Hell, he’d been given the key to the city by Boston’s mayor last year in an over-the-top ceremony at the Museum of Fine Arts. I should be happy. I should be on top of the world.
His job was to manage the executives beneath him, to hire the visionaries Eastefire needed before anyone else did. He was good at what he did, intuitive and multilingual and blessed with a mind that could juggle a litany of tasks and keep every one of them straight. He didn’t usually deal with the details of building acquisition. That was basic stuff, the worries of people on the ladder far below him. But Warren Carter had tossed the Drake Isle task to Blake like a softball, and if he couldn’t close on a piece of real estate, his father would remind him in no uncertain terms that he’d failed yet again. He’d spent the last decade trying to atone for what had happened at Misterion College, for how he’d ruined both the Carter name and the Delta Eta Chi charter. Maybe not openly. Maybe they never talked about it. But a shrink didn’t have to tell Blake that every deal he successfully brokered, every signature he put on a dotted line, was a way of apologizing to his father for what had happened.
He walked into the break room and opened the refrigerator. A few cans of club soda sat on the top shelf next to a plastic container of leftovers. He closed it again. A sound from down the hall startled him, and he stuck his head outside.
“Hello?”
Silence. But then a door closed with a quiet click. Blake scanned the hall. No light anywhere except the one coming from his own office. Strange. Everyone else should have left hours ago. Then he saw a shadow that wasn’t quite black. He walked down the hall and stopped outside the small board room. He raised his hand to knock and then let it fall. Someone was inside. More than one person, from the sounds of it. He heard hushed voices, then the squeak of a chair moving across the floor. A giggle. Another laugh, followed by more hushed conversation.
Blake opened the door and stepped inside.
Nikolas, his pants around his ankles, stood behind the redheaded intern, who wore nothing but a black bra and stilettos. Blake could see even from where he stood that every inch of her was waxed smooth. “What the fuck, man?” Nikolas growled. “Don’t you knock?” His dick stood at half-mast, but he shoved it back inside his boxers and yanked his pants up. The intern squeaked and turned bright pink.
“Really?” Blake asked. He didn’t say anything else; he wasn’t that big a hypocrite. He’d done his own share of banging interns up against polished boardroom tables. But he’d never gotten caught.
“Listen,” Nikolas began. The intern fled to the adjoining bathroom, her clothes in her hands. “Can we not tell anyone about this?”
“No problem. Just don’t let it happen again.” Blake turned to go and then saw a smear of white on the table’s surface. “Cocaine? Seriously?” Now he was pissed. He might have spent a night or two getting jacked off in this very room, but he’d never mixed drugs with sex.
“Not my idea,” Nikolas began, but Blake grabbed him by the shirtfront and yanked him close. His pants flapped open, the fly still unzipped, the belt hanging low.
“Never drugs in this office. You fucking understand me? Don’t let me ever catch you bringing more than a fucking aspirin into this place. You want to work for Eastefire, fine. I’ll let this go, this one time, outta respect for your uncle. But this isn’t a goddamn back alley start-up where you can get high or bang a whore every time you feel like it.” He almost added, Don’t destroy Eastefire’s reputation, you asshole, but that sounded too much like his father inside his head.
“Yeah, no, I won’t do it again.” Nikolas squirmed away and finished zipping up.
“No, you won’t.” Blake let his words rest in the air before returning to his office. Unbelievable. His hands turned to fists. He hadn’t liked Nikolas to begin with, and he sure as hell didn’t trust him now. He knew more than one Fortune 500 company hit by drugs. They caused a goddamn mess, internal chaos and an embarrassment to stockholders when the news got out – and it always got out.
Perfect chance to get rid of him, Blake thought. He sat down at his desk, started an email to HR, then deleted it. Shit. He wasn’t any kind of prince himself. If his father found out he’d gotten Nikolas fired without so much as a warning, he’d make Blake’s life miserable. No, he’d have to wait it out, find a few more reasons to fire the asshole and document it all for HR in the meantime. Damn paperwork and political correctness tied everyone’s hands these days.
He shoved the keyboard away and yanked at his loose tie. His gaze fell on a small envelope Linda had left on his desk. The DeVeau Ball. Fantastic. He opened the envelope to see two gaudy, glittery tickets inside. The last three years, he’d brought Hailey to the event, so the socializing and dancing had been bearable. But this year? He couldn’t imagine stomaching it alone. Still, he couldn’t very well skip it either.
He pulled up the event website and scanned first the menu and then the list of speakers and entertainment. The DeVeau Ball always featured big names, from politicians seeking re-election to up-and-coming artists looking for a breakout. This year it looked like the guests would be subject to speeches by the governor, the founder of a human rights group, and a local comedian, along with the city’s best-known jazz band and –
“Wait a minute.” Blake leaned closer to the screen.
“Opening the evening’s social portion will be newcomers to the Boston music scene, alternative rock band Crakked Edgez...”
This was a change. Usually the stuffed shirts who planned the DeVeau Ball brought in the same white-haired orchestra that had provided entertainment for the last decade. Someone must have been charged with mixing it up this year. He studied the screen. This new rock band didn’t have a link or a website, just a very small promo picture with a three guys on instruments and a female singer. Something flipped inside his chest. Emmy had said her ex was in a band with that name, right? He enlarged the picture and examined each of the guys. The bastardized spelling made it hard to know for sure if it was the same band, but the names listed included a Bryan. Only two looked young enough to possibly date Emmy. So this creep was either tall with long hair that flopped into his eyes, or stocky and tattooed.
He closed the website and sat there for a few minutes, thinking. Then he pulled up Drake Isle’s official website and looked for a link to Inner Sanctum. Nothing. He looked around a bit more but couldn’t find any mention of Emmy’s business. If she had a website, it wasn’t marketed well enough to come up in Internet searches. He returned to Drake Isle’s home page, which announced the upcoming Memorial Day Weekend festivities. A picture of the annual parade, with classic cars lined up next to fire engines and Boy Scouts, advertised the event as the island’s “second most patriotic event of the year.”
Again that tugging in his heart. Again the memories of his years on the island, the simplicity of it, the beauty, the freedom. Blake rolled a pen across his desk, over and back, its rhythmic clicking the only sound in the silence. Go. Stay. Go. Stay.
Before he could overthink it, he’d made the decision: a trip back to Drake Isle to see about other properties for sale, the foreclosures he knew sat near the old campus. If his father questioned him, he’d simply say it was better to scout out locations in person. While he was there, he’d take in the sights and sounds of the Memorial Day Weekend festivities. The islanders always did know how to celebrate, and while he and the other Delta brothers had made fun of the local traditions, deep down Blake thought there was nothing wrong with a fishing derby and a scavenger hunt and fireworks over the water as the sun went down.
“What was the name of that new place?” he muttered aloud. That bed and breakfast run by the Drake woman, the nice place with the expansive gardens? He searched online and found it easily. Drake’s Heart Inn. Had a nice ring to it. He hoped she still had a room available. If not, he’d offer to sleep outside on the porch. But he lucked out. One phone call, and he’d booked a room for the whole weekend. Maybe he’d stay that long and maybe he wouldn’t, but it never hurt to be prepared.
Blake leaned back in his chair and laced his hands behind his head. Speaking of preparation, maybe he’d throw in a pair of shorts and a t-shirt and try another yoga class. If Emmy let him in the door.