Interest

"I guess I can count myself lucky that I didn't windup going with you and your drunken buddies on that Alaskan Hunting Safari. The thought of having to hang around you and suck up to you for an entire week makes me still want to vomit to this day. Thank God, David had no qualms to kiss your ass every day.

David automatically lurched towards me eager to physically confront me until he saw the eager anticipation in my eyes. I think he realized that if we got in a fight that I would not stop until one of us was either seriously injured or dead. He wasn't ready to commit to that level. I stared at him for awhile and then gave the insult of dismissing him as a viable threat and continued my dissertation.

"I know fostering Janet on me was your idea, Chuck. But which one of you came up with the idea of sending her to my bed, you or David?"

Neither one owned up to it.

"I guess I'll never find out how that came about. Maybe one of you is to blame; maybe both of you independent of each other hinted to Janet to try to kindle a friendship; or maybe, Janet did that of her own initiative."

"What I do know is how it tore me apart again to remind me of a girl I cared about betraying me. What a brilliant idea to keep me off balance as you plotted to steal my bank from me. Not only would I have to relive the anguish, but I would also suffer the humiliation all over again every day."

"So does it piss you off Chuck? The fact that I get to live to fight another day? That my very existence reminds you of the sins you've committed against my father?"

"Now, normally, pissing you off would be a cause for concern, because even though I've thwarted your plan and kept my bank, I could look to see you regroup and launch another attack. But here is where the genius of having a queen like Janet comes into play," I continued to lecture Buckman as though he was unable to stop hearing about the trainwreck I've engineered for him.

"I know she also told you about the Sorrant Oil Reserves that my bank has relied so heavily on to pull it back into the black. Just imagine, an estimated multi-million barrels oilfield that has yet to be tapped into. Sounds too good to be true, doesn't it Chuck?"

"And, it is too good to be true, Chuck. Once again, I fed you false information through Janet. I created the Sorrant Oil Reserves out of thin air, Chuck. You were so intent in believing everything that Janet told you that you failed to do your due diligence. Why should you? I certainly wasn't devious enough to outwit you. It wasn't like I had exhibited any guile before. And you knew I could not dare take a misstep. So anything I invested in had to be bona fide."

"Because of me you saw the vision of a mythical El Dorado. By investing the seed money of $100,000,000 you would realize profits in the billions. That you would destroy me was only the cherry on top."

"You pored over all the reports submitted on the test fields and engineering reports that promised a sure success. All those reports from my desk that Janet purloined for your benefit. All those reports from strawmen that I created. They only existed in my mind and by my hands. But with enough paperwork created, I kept pushing you closer and closer to the edge until you jumped off the cliff voluntarily."

"In the course of all the international business dealings I've had to engage in I've had ample opportunities to discover enough slightly unethical businessmen that would help me run a scam on you for a percentage. I created a series of off shore dummy corporations with their help. Each time you purchased Sorrant stock, your money was funneled right back to me."

"I created a false bidding war which continued to drive the stock up and made you lose your money that much quicker. All the debt you were incurring was driving the price of Buckman Incorporated stock down. And I bought it up cheap with your own money. Through a syndicate of holding companies and mutual funds I now own a majority of your company, Chuck."

Charles Buckman's complexion had undergone an amazing transition. Instead of the reddened anger he had exhibited, he now had the shocked look of a ghostly pallor as I continued to hammer him.

"Within a month, there will be a new slate of the board of directors of Buckman Incorporated. All of which will be handpicked by me. The first order of business will be to oust you, Chuck on a vote of no confidence. The second will be to vote me in as chairman of the board. The third will be to change the name of the company to Harrison Williams Incorporated in honor of my father."

"I realize that you will still be rich from your holdings, Chuck, but your legacy is gone. And that is what is important to you. The days of you being the benevolent despot of this community are over. That elaborate estate of yours, the Rolls Royces you and your wife drives, the condos you own, the private jet. All of it is in the name of the company for tax purposes will belong to me...I'll let you keep your mistress however."

Charles visibly winched from my revelation that I knew of his secret life. David looked on stunned as his indomitable father-in-law developed feets of clay.

"You will spend the rest of your life complaining about me to the FBI, the Security Exchange Commission, and every other law enforcement agency you can think of and it will not bring your money back to you. I covered myself with countless layers of defenses and I'm still adding layers."

"You will grow old and bitter at your impotency to unravel my dealings. The political influence you once enjoyed will fade away and you will be left all alone shouting into an empty room for your revenge."

I finished the last dregs of the cognac. I leaned forward to Charles Buckman, now gulping air as though he was a fish out of the water. I moved my Queen into the final row.

"You see Chuck, you've been wrong all along about your business/nature analogy; It isn't the big that eats the small. It's the quick that eats the slow."

I reached with one finger and slowly toppled his King.

"Shah Mat," I hissed the etymological Persian term that over centuries had morphed to the term, "checkmate." The King is captured. I walked out of the room without bothering to look at the inhabitants.

The ensuing fallout was dramatic and kept the town busy in gossip for months. I did indeed oust Charles Buckman and David Porter. Once, out of their comfort zone, they turned on each other blaming one another for their downfall. Mrs. Buckman divorced her husband at the public revelation of his latest mistress and proceeded to wrestle millions away from him in the divorce settlement.

As I suspected, Charles tried to get the authorities to investigate me to no avail. With the loss of his wealth so came the loss of his political power since no one truly admired him without his money backing him up.

His mistress left him for greener pastures and he engaged in a series of relationships that continued to create his downward financial spiral. It was pathetic to see him continue to assume the air of a VIP when he was the town's laughingstock.

The town was shocked to wake one morning to hear of his suicide by shooting himself. The funeral was closed for family only. Staci and her sister flew in to attend and flew back out immediately after it was over. She didn't try to contact me. I knew she blamed me for her father's death.

Still, David Porter tried to crash the funeral to convince Staci to stop the divorce proceeding she initiated when she was in California. After his failure, he came out in public with his relationship with Janet Temple. Yeah, my Janet Temple. They left for whereabouts unknown.

*******************

"Power is an aphrodisiac," Henry Kissinger once surmised. I tend to agree with him. Twenty three months after my successful campaign against Charles Buckman I was still the lucky recipient of the attention of many lovely ladies. I harbored no false illusions that somehow I had grown more handsome or became more virile or that my personality had completed a much needed makeover.

No, all I represented was the potential to an unending source of money, security, and prestige. Was I upset about it? Not in the least, I knew what the game was and so did the ladies. We satisfied desires for physical connections and I made damn sure that none of them made any emotional connection. I made sure that any financial obligations by my lovelys pressed upon me were minimal and transitory.

In my shallow world that was enough to allow me to cope. Still sometimes, in the dead of the night, I would leave my slumbering bed partner for the night and spend time just watching out from my third story window on the quiet courtyard of the city.

Still, looking for someone to believe in.

Standing as a sentinel over my moonlit city that was going through a rebirth. With me leading the newly named Harrison Williams Enterprises, I sought out a number of manufacturing companies to relocate to Camden to end its history of being known as a one company town. By offering commercial loans at a very low rate, and persuading state officials to offer various tax breaks; a large number of companies decided to take advantage of the offers. The result was a boom time for the city of Camden.

I initially anticipated that the Buckman's Financial Plaza would soon become reminiscent of what the downtown area once looked like; a deserted concrete ghost town synonymous with the failure of Charles Buckman.

But, I commissioned a study and found that it made viable sense to allow the Buckman Financial Plaza to continue in business and to prosper. People psychologically wanted (and needed) the option of a choice. People like Fred Carter, my classmate running the Ford dealership. Fred would have resented and chafed at having to kowtow to doing his banking business with me at Camden Bank & Trust. But, give him the fiction of doing business with Buckman's Savings and Loans and he was like a duck in water. What did I care what entity got the money as long as it all channeled back to me.

Oh, I still indulged in some ego stroking moments. The Camden Country Club did a never before reversal of a member's ouster and extended a membership to me. I suppose, after word got out that Harrison Williams Enterprises was contemplating placing a landfill adjacent to the golf course that it was felt that my opinion might sway the board of directors at Harrison Williams.

I thought I spotted quite a few looks of hostility and irritations each time I came

back to the country club, but as long as they left me alone, I left them alone.

Still, for the sheer bedevilment of it I made it a point to promote minority membership and convert the study to a daycare facility once it was remodeled. I also took supper each night at the club as a show of my power.

I took advantage of the situation and saw to it that Thomas Clark, the manager of the country club got full autonomy in running the club. He listened to my suggestion that the restaurant be improved to a five star facility. Now, I had somewhere I could take business luncheon partners to have a great meal or a game of golf, or both.

One of my fondest memories was playing a round of golf with the female Chief Operating Officer of a corporation that I wanted to do business with. She sliced her second shot at the par five dogleg at the 13th hole. Somehow, we found ourselves together in the thicket of woods and found a new source of entertainment for the golf course.

At least, I finally got some pleasure out of the game of golf. I could finally understand a little bit of the Zen of golf, albeit, in a different form than what was expected. Hey, you enjoy your type of hole in one and I'll enjoy mine.

In fact, the same COO came back for another visit and lo and behold, sliced her shot right back into the same thicket which required us to disappear into the woods again. We were having a leisurely supper at the club enjoying the risque double entendres about the round of golf when Staci arrived.

To say I was discombobulated would be putting it mildly. I realized the morsel of food poised on my fork had fallen off as I kept the utensil suspended in the air. My companion frowned at the break of conversation and turned to watch as the bewitching woman approached our table as I placed the fork down.

She wasn't the only one. The entire dining area hushed as everyone focused on Staci. Christ, I hadn't seen or heard from her since she left two years ago. And now I had the weight of the fallout of what happened to her father and David to contend with. I mentally prepared for the showdown confrontation. I would try to manage this with what grace I could. I at least owed her that.

Her focus was directed solely at me as she walked toward me. I don't know if her inattention to my dinner companion was intentional or not, but it apparently held no interest in Staci that I was not alone, or that we were in the crowded dining room of the country club.

Now she stood by my chair, towering over me as I prepared for the humiliation that was sure to come.

Then she knelt down by my chair, down on her knee and said, "I made a terrible mistake years ago. I'm here to make up for it, if you'll have me. Troy Williams, will you marry me?"

There was no mistaking the sincerity in her voice, or in her face. Somehow, she was willing to look past how I destroyed her father, her family's fortune, her husband. All that concerned her was that she loved me and she was willing to put it out on the line for me.

In a microsecond, I was pondering, should I...could I be just as forgiving? Could I let go the pain and be with the one woman that I so desperately wanted to be with? Would my ego allow the betrayal of my vengeance to be countered by her public ploy? Did the ghosts of my parents look over my shoulder begging me to let go of my past and join the only woman I could truly love?

I was cognizant of the expectations of the unintended audience. Sitting across me, my dinner companion was waging a gamut of expressions on her face. There was the shocked stunned look as she reacted to Staci's proposal to me. There was an apparent look of jealous hostility of this breach of etiquette that can only be fostered by two beautiful women in direct competition. And there was something hidden in a clinical detachment as she watched the events unfold.

Now, I found myself with the table turned. Now, I caught a glimpse of the pressure that every woman experience by a proposal. This was what it must have felt to Staci when I put her on the spot years ago. How could I experience all the reasons to say yes and no at the same time flood in my brain? I so desperately wanted my heart to say yes and my fears wanted me to say no. And I was being pressured to respond in public. Just as I subjected Staci on that fateful evening so long ago.

"No."

I wasn't sure I actually said it until I saw the calm composure of Staci's face crumble and tears welled in her eyes as she staggered up, maintaining the last vestige of her dignity as she walked out of the dining area with her head held high, ignoring all the gawkers.

I don't think I ever loathed myself more than during that moment.

Excited murmurs erupted throughout the room as I quietly signaled for the manager, Thomas Clark to approach my table.

"Yes, Mr. Williams," he enquired.

"Thomas, I know how impossible it is to keep things quiet during this age of social media. That said, I need you to let everyone know how unhappy I will be if I hear one word of this on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, or any other site that will embarrass Ms. Buckman," I quietly instructed him.

"I understand, Mr. Williams and I will take care of it."

He left the table and went directly toward Fred Carter's table. After less than a minute of conversation, I saw Fred blanch and began furiously deleting something off his smartphone. When he was finished, Fred looked over at me with a worried look on his face. Thomas Clark had already left to go to the next table.

Within minutes, Thomas Clark had gotten the word out that should anyone be so foolish as to publicly discuss the event ran the risk of incurring my wrath. After what I had done to Charles Buckman and David Porter, no one wanted to test me.

I turned my attention back to my dinner companion. She had a strange look of bemusement on her face.

"Well, I never had that happen on a dinner date before," she looked me in the eyes.

"Really?" I finished the last of my wine, "It happens to me all the time," I drily explained hoping the tongue in cheek response would mask the raging emotional boiler inside me as I looked back at her.

She attacked me before we even got to my car. By the time I was in the driver seat, she had me unzipped and was sucking my cock for all it was worth as I started the vehicle. How I arrived back at my place without having a wreck is something I will never understand.

She jumped onto me straddling my body and I carried her up all those steps as she furiously kissed me. When we got to my bed, she ripped off my clothes and began giving me the Fuck Of The Ages. How she managed to keep me erect the entire night was an inspired mix of enthusiasm, experience, and downright debauchery.

As dawn broke, we sat at the kitchen table, bleary eyed and exhausted as we shared cups of coffee.

"I think I'll call a cab to take me back to the airport so I can fly out early to my office."

"What is your rush?" I asked.

"No rush, I just know when it is time to leave. Last night, I was pissed at that woman for disrespecting me and proposing to you in front of me. That is why I took you home and fucked the everloving shit out of you. "

"But three things let me know we could never have that much of a future. One, that woman truly loves you to force herself to do something that publicly. Two, I could never do that for any man so whatever we are it isn't to the point that I would be willing to go that far for you."

I could only nod to her comments as I found agreement with her. She was fun, but we both knew we weren't eternally matched for each other.

"You mentioned three things. What is the third?" I asked.

"Last night everybody in that room could look at her and tell that she was in love with you. I was looking at you the entire time and could tell that you are in love with her. In love or business, you don't set out in something you can't succeed at. I've already lost this fight."

I watched as the taxi drove off carrying her to the airport as I weighed her words and contemplated my next move. I only had to wait less than twenty-four hours. Staci showed up again at the country club as I was dining alone and went to her knee again and publicly proposed to me again.

Once again, I suffered through the turmoil of conflicting emotions as I was being put on the spot once again. Somehow, once again I managed to say no and once again my negative response caused Staci the pain of rejection and she slowly walked away trying to keep her composure as tears streaked down her face.

The room erupted again in a buzz of excitement and I called Thomas Clark over and requested he repeat his service of the night before. I knew it was impossible to keep people from a whisper campaign of the event, but I could still attempt to limit the damage to being only local gossip.

The third night the dining room was jam-packed by people anticipating Staci's arrival. They weren't disappointed as she did show up and propose to me again. Unlike the audience, Staci was disappointed as I once again refused to accept her proposal of marriage. This time it was unnecessary to instruct Thomas Clark to inform the people not to air any of the event they witnessed. He automatically went into damage control mode.

Staci showed the next evening and left disappointed. And again the next night. And the next. And the next.