He raises his eyebrows. “You want to sell me a stake in your family company?”
“Voting shares. It’s only five percent, but it gets you a say.”
He uncrosses his arms and rubs his chin while staring at me. It’s unnerving. He’s assessing me, I realize. He doesn’t think I’m serious. “Do you know how much you’re giving away?”
“It’s a genuine offer.”
“Does Nolan know?” He replies.
“Why would I tell him? It’s my money.”
He nods. The box goes even quieter than before. Even the music sounds like it’s lower than before and the voices of the people outside are barely audible. “You want to give me controlling shares in your company because you, what? Like me so much. Come on Poison Ivy, what am I missing?”
I flinch at the moniker. Really? I know what I did to him was awful, but Poison Ivy? I ignore it and press my case. He hasn’t kicked me out and even though he doesn’t believe me; he seems interested. I might as well drop the bomb.
“The shares are in a trust,” I say.
“Ah.”
“A trust with complicated stipulations.Old money bullshit and all of that.”
“What are the stipulations?”
“We have to get married.”
Chapter 2
Damien
Marriage. to Ivy. That was the mostnonsensical proposition I’ve ever heard. Granted, it was only for a couple of months, but I know enough about that family to not trust a word a Hawthorne says. Especially Ivy fucking Hawthorne. I kicked her out after she uttered those words and enjoyed the humiliation she faced at being dragged out of a club. A gossip blog had even written an article about the event.
Even hell doesn’t want her. Desperate, Ivy chucked out of the Devil of Wall Street’s club.
The less than five hundred-word article had little to write about her. Ivy isn’t the most well-known member of the Hawthorne family, but everyone in New York knows the feud between me and her entire clan. Any gossip blogger wouldn’t have resisted writing an article about it.
But even that wasn’t enough for me to feel smug and forget about the entire thing. It’s a week later and I’m still thinking about her proposal. Ivy owns five percent of the company. Which nets her a cool half a billion dollars if she sells it at the current market price. She would be a rich woman, so I completely understand why she would think it worth the risk to come to me, even after all that’s happened between us. But giving me, of all people, even marginal control of their company is inviting a fox into a henhouse. She has to know that her familywould be against it. I shake my head at the thought. But wouldn’t it be fantastic to see their shocked faces when they find out that I own part of their precious company? Would five percent get me a seat? I wonder as I enter Ivy’s apartment building.
I don’t know how I got myself here at all. I was determined to never speak to her again, but the offer was irresistible. My curiosity led me to delve deeper into Ivy and her activities over the past eight years. I found little. She has hidden herself well ever since that fateful night. The Ivy I knew was something of a socialite. Nothing insane, just the regular partying of someone rich and young, like her. But nothing ever since. Not even a wedding announcement in the papers. The only thing my assistant could find was Ivy’s home address.
And it’s in the last neighborhood I would have thought she would live in. The building is old, but clean. There’s no doorman at the door, not that I expected one at a place like this, but there is a concierge. It’s the kind of place one rents when they’re on a middle-class salary. Not an heiress. I had to check with my driver three times if it was the right place as he was driving into the parking lot. Even that didn’t satisfy me, so I checked with my assistant and she too said it’s the right place. But as I approach the concierge, I halfway expect him to say there’s no Ivy Hawthorne living in this building, but nope.
Instead, he says Ivy is not back from work, but if I want to wait for her, I can sit in the lobby. I take a seat on one of the hard steel chairs that remind me of a lobby in a dentist’s office.
What is going on, Ivy?She has enough money to own multiple apartments on the Upper East Side. Or did her family cut her off? That would explain why she was so desperate to contact me. Anyone else would have been intimidated by Nolan and fear his wrath if they went against him. While he’s not as vengeful as his father, he is still just as ruthless when dealing with his enemies.
Half an hour passes by and I take out my phone, intending to call her, but before I even dial her number, the door opens and the most beautiful woman walks in. Eight years later, she’s still beautiful. Even more so now that she’s all round and curvy in the right places. I was too angry to notice her beauty when she ambushed me in my club, but now, in daylight, my god. My groin tightens as I stare blankly, wondering how good it would be to have her under me once again.
She passes by the concierge waving to him, and he says something to her, pointing at me. Everything seems to happen in slow motion as she turns to look at me, frowning at first and then her eyes widening into saucers. “What are you doing here?” She looks just like she did before, if not a little tired. The big gray coat she has on does little to hide her delectable figure. If anything, it makes me want to take it off and…
“No hello or how are you?” I say, standing up.
“Uh?” She shakes her head. “How did you get my address?”
“You left it together with your phone number on one of the many times you visited my office.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“Left half a dozen messages or so.”
