Page 72 of Take Her
“Rhaim,” Samson said with a wolfish smile as he walked in, as I stood to shake his hand. He walked big, talked big, and was Nero’s mirror in almost every way, except for the fact that he’d never had to scrape out blood from underneath his fingernails. The only things that’d left any residue on him had been either ivy or ivory. That fact made him no less shallow or venomous, however—in fact, if you asked most of these guys how hard their lives had been, their answer would’ve been very. I had learned, through numerous intentional conversations during which I’d been sober, letting drunken or high scions of industry chat me up and spill their guts, that it was very difficult to get through life when your rich father expects good grades and doesn’t beat you every night.
“How long has it been?” he said—a thing which we both very well knew, because I had most definitely made eye contact with him when he’d been balls deep in a sex worker a few NIRI conferences ago. And no shade onto him, I’d had two on my arms, and we’d been looking for a third, because I’d placed a bet.
Only at that conference I’d been looking for industries for Corvo to invest into...to be the fucker rather than the potential fuckee.
“Too long,” I said, rather than go into our shared history.
“I honestly couldn’t believe it when you reached out.” I’d been nebulous about the reason I wanted to catch up on purpose, hoping it would intrigue him enough to not damn me. “I just want you to know, whatever you’re asking, the answer is yes.”
My eyebrows rose. One of my skills was being quiet for long enough to let other people fill me in on what they were thinking.
“I don’t say yes to just anyone, Rhaim. But I will double whatever that leathery asshole is paying you.”
I let out a low chuckle.
“You’ve got a boat?” he went on, “I’ll make it a yacht. You’ve got a yacht? I’ll fill it with supermodels. On leashes. Everyone knows you’re into that,” he said with a wicked gleam in his eye.
It was also entirely okay to have vices on Wall Street, as long as you had the wherewithal to never let anyone else knowing about them get to you.
“I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong idea, Nick—but please know, I take your offer as a compliment.”
He took a glance around the rest of the place. “Should I be worried about my personal safety, then?” he asked, smart enough to pick up on the fact that I’d made half of this restaurant’s lunch invitations, paying thousands of dollars to ensure that no one was near our table to hear a goddamned thing.
“No, that shit’s well behind me,” I said. But not quite far back enough. “I’m afraid my actual reason for inviting you out is far more prosaic,” I said. “I’ve got a business opportunity coming up, and I need to know which analysts over at NYSE I can trust, as determined by whoever you already have enough dirt on to make my job easy.”
His eyelids lowered and he sucked his wide bottom lip. I hoped for his sake he never played poker, because that was an awful tell. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
I leaned forward. “That really depends on the outcome of this conversation.” Because if I couldn’t find an analyst willing to lie about the state of Corvo’s books going far enough back, we would never get listed.
It was a shit system, because honestly Samson and all the other men like him didn’t give a fuck about my shell game, or where any of our startup cash had originally come from. We could’ve said it was from “the Old Country” and they would’ve toasted us with champagne and looked the other way. But to get publicly listed I had to be willing to let my books get reamed—to let me possibly get reamed, to be frank—so whoever I had on the inside of the New York Stock Exchange giving us permission to go public needed to be so deep in my pocket his lungs were worsted wool.
“And what are you offering?”
“A seat on the board, and forty percent of a hundred million shares at twenty.” This was also the first step in my plan to rescue Lia—if I packed the upcoming board with people who owed me, I felt certain I could make them vote my way.
Or else.
Samson sat for a moment, drumming his fingers on the table in thought. “Hmm, Rhaim—just how far back is your alternative occupation?”
I stared at him blankly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Would you like to pat me down for a wire?”
“We both know you can afford to get groped by the best.”
He laughed at that, then said, “Seriously, Rhaim.”
I’d done plenty of research through my personal network prior to scheduling this meeting, and nothing about Samson wanting to off someone had come up, plus he’d always struck me as even-tempered. He was an asshole—we all were—but he never pushed it to excess.
But I didn’t want to freelance. Not because I was suddenly uninterested in violence, but because I had a girl I needed to keep whole. I imagined being someone’s Daddy in jail had an entirely different connotation.
Then again, if I wanted Samson to owe me—truly owe me—there was no surer route.
“That’s quite a long pause,” he said.
“What are you prepared to offer?”
“The yacht and the supermodels, of course,” he said, knowing that wouldn’t actually tempt me—if it did, I’d already have them.