Five Minutes Late: A Billionaire Romance (27 page)

Hearing my guy’s first name used by this asshole was like sandpaper on my nerves – I didn’t care how much genetic material they might share, Head Shouty Guy wasn’t fit to use that name, not by a long shot.

Devon didn’t turn a hair, didn’t flinch, didn’t do a thing but amp up the charm and flash those perfect teeth of his in an ever wider smile. “My apologies, I thought my actions were quite clear – I’ve bought back the shares I sold you people, all those many years ago in the halcyon days of my youth. I might have imagined you’d be pleased at reaping such a considerable profit over what you paid for them back then, but it seems that something about the matter is troubling you – tell me, how can I help?”

The baby-eyed innocence of his smile was about as genuine as a three-dollar bill dipped in cyanide, and it sent Head Asshole steaming right past anger and straight into outrage.

“You can call off this farce, because we have zero interest in selling Killane Industries to an ungrateful snot-nosed brat like you!” The guy stepped back, fisted his hands on his hips, and glared at my guy as if waiting for him to admit that he’d lost the argument.

Devon dialed his smile down to ‘explaining two plus two to an idiot child’ level. “Oh, but I quite understand that you don’t want to sell a controlling interest in the family business – you see, that is why this sort of thing is referred to as a ‘hostile takeover.’ I offer my humble apologies if I somehow gave you the impression that you have any choice whatsoever in this matter.”

That smile could have dropped a bull elephant in its tracks.

From somewhere behind Head Asshole, one of the supporting assholes spat out, “You can’t DO this to us! Goddammit, what is wrong with you that you’d do something like this to your own fucking blood?”

A twenty-or-so fuckwad standing at the back of the group rolled his eyes and muttered, “You could write a book about everything that’s wrong with that freak.” He then turned to glare out the window, plainly tired of having to hang around for whatever the hell was going on.

Devon beamed at Head Asshole. “I’m afraid the gentleman who spoke a moment ago is quite mistaken – I can do this to you, I am doing it to you, and in point of fact, it’s all over but the shouting. You seem to be quite good at that part, so I’ll leave you to it.” 

Another guy – let’s call him Pretentious Asshole – separated himself from the group and not so subtly shouldered his way in front of Head Asshole. This new guy was maybe in his late fifties and definitely saw himself as the voice of Asshole Reason, speaking down to the boss like a prince shooing away a dirty street kid who was getting on his nerves.

“Devon, I’m sure someone like you finds this all very amusing, but at the end of the day, what have you really accomplished? Even with a majority share of the company’s stock in your hands, the family can manage quite comfortably on the dividends generated by the minority of shares we still hold – so if your goal was petty revenge for imagined wrongs, I’m afraid this entire nonsensical scheme was for nothing. We’ve gotten along quite well without you and the Killane Corporate Holdings juggernaut for years, and we’ll continue in fine form despite all this posturing on your part – Killane Industries, after all, is still a major player in the manufacturing sector, and even a minority of its profits represents a sizeable cash flow.”

“What profits?”

Pretentious Asshole had just turned to aim a confident smirk at his buddies, and he glanced back at Devon with the weary patience of someone who thought they’d gotten rid of a persistent panhandler. “The profits generated by our manufacturing operations in Canada, not to mention subsidiaries in –”

The boss smiled like a cat closing in on a fat, doomed canary. “Oh, you mean the manufacturing operations that I had shut down as soon as I signed the paperwork on this deal? Honestly, for people who’ve been so foolish as to become dependent on the proceeds from a single company, I should think you’d pay more careful attention to the status and whereabouts of that company’s assets.”

Silence fell. Absolute, black, impenetrable silence. You could have heard a pin drop on Mars in that silence.

The junior asshole who’d been glaring out the window while sighing with boredom suddenly registered that this situation might affect him personally. He looked at Devon with the expression of someone who’d just kicked an elderly Chihuahua only to see it transform into a rabid pit bull with a taste for human flesh. “Wait – how can you shut down our manufacturing operations, just like that?”

“You mean
my
manufacturing operations? As it happens, it’s a simple matter of bestowing generous severance packages on everyone from the plant managers down to the janitors, stripping the factory floors of all machinery, disposing of said machinery, razing the buildings, and donating the land to the Nature Conservancy. Would you like to see?”

He leaned forward and spun around the first laptop to face his guests. They stared at the view of the cargo ship with slack-jawed horror, and it took Pretentious Asshole a minute or so to pull himself together and ask, “So what the hell are we looking at here?”

“We are seeing a live webcam feed from a Killane Corporate Holdings cargo ship currently located three hundred miles off the Newfoundland coast. Do you notice those cargo containers stacked on every available inch of deck space? By an amazing coincidence, they happen to hold all of the manufacturing machinery from the Killane Industries factory in Canada – and as you can see, the crew is now in the process of dumping said shipping containers over the side. I rather doubt you’ll be seeing any further profits from equipment which will shortly be at the bottom of the North Atlantic.”

Pretentious Shouty Guy wasn’t convinced. “But that can’t possibly be legal!”

“You’d be surprised what’s legal in international waters, particularly since it’s my property to dispose of as I see fit. As for the site itself, the factory is being leveled by a controlled demolition operation later today, and as previously noted, the real estate has already been turned over to the Nature Conservancy – I understand they intend to return it to its previous status as a breeding habitat for endangered seabirds, or some such thing.”

“But what about the subsidiaries in –”

“I assure you that similar operations are at this moment taking place at the Killane Industries subsidiary locations in Russia, Mexico, and the Philippines – equipment is being destroyed or dumped, factories demolished, and the land given away. I’m told the Russian location will be used as an auxiliary site for disposal of radioactive waste from Chernobyl, so even there, we’re all doing our part for the environment. Aren’t you proud?”

Pretentious Asshole wasn’t so much proud as shocked into silence, staring at the boss in much the same way someone stuck in their car on the railroad tracks might stare at the oncoming locomotive that was about to squash them flat. Behind him, Head Asshole managed to get his jaw working, but no words came out. The rest of The Shouty Bunch stared at each other, and then stared at their surroundings as if unsure of just what planet they might be on.

The first one to remember how words worked was Keiran Asshole, the twenty-something son, I assumed, of Head Asshole. The kid bulled his way to the front of the group and glared at Devon with all the self-righteous fury of an entitled moron.

“You can’t DO that – you can’t just blow off a five billion dollar investment as if it were nothing!” He added a jabbing finger to emphasize his point before getting up the nerve to plant his hands on the front edge of Devon’s desk and lean forward to glare at the boss from close range.

Devon blithely ignored the brat and leaned to one side, raising an eyebrow at Head Asshole. “My, just imagine it – if only you’d thought to wear a condom on a certain occasion twenty or so years ago, you wouldn’t have to be dealing with this pathetic creature today. It’s truly sad how momentary lapses in judgment can have consequences that echo far into the future – don’t you agree?”

Without waiting to hear Head Asshole’s opinion on the matter, Devon turned back to Keiran the Twat – and he stared, just stared without saying a word, until something in his icy smile and his blue-violet eyes made the kid step back.

Just as Keiran “I’ve Made a Horrible Mistake” Asshole tried to ease further away and merge back into the asshole herd, my guy spoke up, and his voice pinned the kid in place like a mounted butterfly speared by a pin.

“As for you, little boy, I must point out that to me, five billion dollars
is
nothing. You see, while idle snot-nosed children like you were burning through their trust funds and contributing nothing more than random sprays of semen to the world, some of us bettered ourselves.

“To use myself as a random example, I embarked upon the unlikely adventure of building a business empire from scratch. I began with little more than my wits and a determination to make worthwhile use of my time, and today, after years of hard work, the end result is far more money than any unemployed wastrel sponging off the paltry dividends generated by Killane Industries could possibly imagine. In short, since my current net worth is closing in on sixty billion dollars, a mere five billion means about as much to me as respect and common decency mean to you.”

The kid shrank away from the desk and retreated to the fringes of the asshole herd. Meanwhile, Pretentious Asshole found his voice and aimed it at the flock of Killane Corporate Holdings senior executives.

“Look, I can’t believe any of you are advising him to just flush five billion dollars down the toilet – can’t you people do something to stop this?”

One of the suits peered at his iPad, tapped an icon or two, and announced in a casual tone, “To be precise, the exact amount that’s being flushed away is 5.3 billion dollars, at current exchange rates and given the stock prices as of yesterday’s market close.”

A fellow suit standing next to him observed, “Of course, the prices for Killane Industries shares will crash right into the basement once the market reopens on Monday – there’s no stopping that now.”

A female executive in a grey business ensemble so sharp it could have cut glass added, “Not that anyone here would have any interest in stopping it – I believe you’ll find Mr. Killane’s employees are very loyal to him and to his perceived business goals.”

All the Killane suits nodded agreement and beamed pleasant, relaxed, fuck-you smiles at Team Shouty Guys.

In that same moment, the door from the outer office snicked open and Mr. Ferrum stepped into the room. He was followed by the head of Devon’s personal security detail and another guy I recognized as Brian Something, one of my newer bodyguards.

 “Mr. Killane, is everything all right here?”

Ferrum’s killing stare fastened onto the pack of shouty dudes, and something in those eyes and his tone made it clear he would really like for his boss to say that things were not in fact all right, so that the visitors could then be terminated with extreme prejudice.

“Oh, everything’s quite all right, Mr. Ferrum – although our charming guests will be leaving shortly, so if you might care to stay and escort them down to the lobby once we’re done here, that would be delightful.”

“Yes, sir.” Ferrum clasped his hands behind his back, spread his feet into a wide, ready-for-action stance, and with his eyes dared Assholes-R-Us to try anything. Devon’s personal security guy took up a flanking position on the other side of the suddenly-not-so-shouty guys, and Brian stood directly behind them, looming in the shadows like a giant guard dog that might break its chain and attack at any second.

Pretentious Asshole glared at the security guys and the executives, then jerked his head toward Devon and announced, “You’re all as crazy as he is!”

Then another of the assholes spoke up, a thirty-ish guy who hadn’t said a word until now. He stepped out of the group to one side, and he locked eyes with Uncle Sheridan. I went on the alert – nobody was messing with the coolest Jedi master in the Empire, not on my watch – and the security guys drifted just a bit closer.

New Asshole pretended he didn’t notice the increased attention he was getting, and addressed Uncle Sheridan.

“Look, we all know you’re the only one he’s ever listened to, the only person who can talk him out of these weird moods he gets into – can’t you get him to drop this? It would be in the best interests of the Killane family as a whole if you could just –”

Head Asshole snapped, “What would he care about that? That senile old man isn’t a real Killane, any more than this crazy fuck.” He glared at the boss, then looked around at his fellow assholes for confirmation of how very un-Killane the two of them were.

It was more than past time that I gave these clowns a sharply worded opinion or two – but just as I took a step forward, Uncle Sheridan gave me the tiniest shake of his head. I held position at Devon’s side, my hand still resting on his shoulder, but it wasn’t easy to resist the temptation to spill some asshole blood onto the floor.

For his part, the big guy still sat smiling in his chair like the relaxed lord and master of all he surveyed, but tension crackled through his shoulder like an electric charge.

Meanwhile, Uncle Sheridan set down his espresso and looked at the Real Killanes with the sad patience of someone who’d just caught a slow-witted puppy messing on the rug for the umpteenth time.

“What you gentlemen fail to understand is that my nephew’s actions today are not the result of a ‘weird mood,’ but in fact are part of a carefully prepared business plan, one that has been years in the making. He has analyzed and dissected every aspect of the operations of Killane Industries, he knows the company far better than you do, he has determined the swiftest and most efficient way to disassemble said company and destroy its value, and he has acted to bring this goal to life in an entirely rational manner.

“You might question the goal, but you cannot in any logical universe question that Devon knows exactly what he is doing. He has my full support for this course of action, and I certainly have no intention of asking him to drop anything.”