“I have an hour, let’s get started.”
We moved to the conference table and I spread out the papers and computer printouts. I gave her the background of her adversaries and what we believed they wanted. That part was easy. When I laid out the plan she listened for about twenty five minutes. It was radical, but it was the only way. I watched her face get tighter. Her hands clenched. She finally stood up. She towered over me. As she spoke she hit the table for emphasis.
“NO! I will NOT do this! You’re going to cost my people their jobs, your going to strip me of my power to run this company and it will fail! You’re a damn child and you have no idea what it’s like to run a company!”
Now I stood, slowly. I’m just barely taller than her and I can look nearly level into her eyes. I spoke in a deferential tone.
“Mother, you need to do this because it is the only way to save your first child.”
She was still mad.
“Which my second child is tying to the railroad tracks and hoping the train derails first!”
I sat down, which calmed her and she followed. I continued in the same respectful tone. But under it was a streak of confidence.
“Mother, this plan is in phases. We’ll know if it is working fairly early. Please agree to implement the first phase and be patient. Remember, Warren and Calder signed off on this, they will be watching.”
My mother leaned back and sighed. She reached up and tucked a stray dark amber lock of her hair out of her eyes.
“I agree, but only because they are watching. Grown-ups need to be in charge of things like this.”
I left her office and headed home. I’d never stood up to her. Even that tiny little bit. You just didn’t. I didn’t Jackie, my sister, would never have thought of doing it and certainly not my father.
CHAPTER 2
Dad and mom have a very interesting dynamic. He’s a golf pro. He did a few years on the PGA circuit, won a few mid-level tournaments and leveraged that into a nice spot at the most prestigious country club in the county. It is from him I got my charm; he has it in spades and uses it liberally. He’s no dope. He reads voraciously and knows a lot about what’s going on in the world. He just has no ambition. But mom uses him. When she meets power couples, it’s his job to keep the wife busy so mom can get the deal done. He behaves, with them.
But when I was eighteen and working in the club for the summer I found out his hobby. Fucking MILF’s.
I found out, by sneaking through the back door to a storeroom behind my dad’s office that dad had three wives he was banging on an occasional basis. Once I’d seen the act on all three I got bored. I was getting laid by Becky Henderson and she left me exhausted. Plus, a year before I had lost my virginity to mom’s best friend and she still called, she was worse so watching sex just didn’t have that allure. Till one night, by accident, I discovered a huge secret.
It was my third year in college. I had actually worked late in the repair shed at the back of the course. I was returning the cart back to the clubhouse. I saw dad’s car and the shadow of another. I was in that kind of mood so I thought I’d sneak in and see which of his toys was on deck tonight.