“Stone, did you get the order I placed a few minutes ago?” Zayn was in his office, repeatedly pressing the cap of the pen in his fingers, with his phone pressed against his ears. He’d just finished with the meetings he had scheduled for the day and wanted to do this before he got into any other engagement.
“Yes, Sir?” the voice on the other end of the call answered. Zayn could hear the pages of a book open before his voice came on again. “A red 2024 BMW i7. Where would you want it to be delivered, Sir?”
“One of my men would be coming to get it,” Zayn said. “And don’t put it on the company tab. Someone’s been snooping around lately, and it’s beginning to get on my nerves.”
“Of course, Sir. Is there any other thing you would want me to add to the order?”
“Make the glasses tinted.”
“Okay, sir.”
Ending the call, Zayn ticked something off his list and smiled to himself. His door pushed open at that minute, and he resisted the urge to stop the visitor right there and order him to return to wherever he was coming from. But the thing was, Zayn didn’t even know if he could call him that a visitor.
“Hello, Zayn!’ Nathan’s obnoxious voice rang through the room. Zayn’s patience and tolerance levels were running thin. His brother pranced in like he owned the place, throwing himself into the chair in front of the desk, that annoying grin plastered on his face. “How have you been?”
“You didn’t come all the way to ask that, did you? So, quit messing around and tell me why you are here. The company doesn’t need your services right now. I told you my secretary would reach out to you the moment we do.”
“Come on, Brother!” Nathan’s eyes shone with mischief. “Can’t I say hello to my baby brother anymore? Especially when he’s not been in the country for quite some time. I missed you.”
There it was the reason he was here. Zayn hadn’t told him about the trip, and it sure as hell wasn’t listed on the fake schedule he made accessible to his older brother.
“Thank you for your kindness. Now, if you don’t have anything else to say, you can head out. I have a lot to do today and your presence isn’t going to make it faster.”
“You don’t have to be so harsh you know.”
Zayn dropped the pen he’d been holding and folded his palms together, looking into Nathan’s eyes. A shadow of fear crossed through his brother’s features. It was gone at a remarkable speed, but Zayn had seen it. And he knew that even though Nathan tried to act like nothing bothered him, he was scared of what Zayn could do to him.
His stupid pride, greed, and the crazy need to prove a point to their parents were the only things that kept him on this track. Zayn would have such a relish in pushing him off it.
But all in due time. He loved to leave nature to take its course, sometimes, steering it in the right direction, just in case nature veered off the path a tad.
“Okay! Okay!” Nathan raised his hands in mock surrender at the imposing look Zayn gave him. “I was only going to ask why you traveled out of the country. You didn’t have to go. You were supposed to close a really important deal back here. I hope what you went for was really worth it.”
Nathan was right. Zayn had a really important deal to close, a deal that was worth millions of dollars. But the only point Nathan got it wrong was the timing. Zayn had closed the deal three weeks before it even got printed on that fake schedule. But Nathan didn’t have to know that.
Zayn shrugged. “I had something more important to do so I put someone else in charge.”
“You what?” Nathan couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You, Zayn Graham of Graham Conglomerate, gave your million-dollar deal to another employee to close. That is totally unbelievable.”
FZayn preferred to handle high-class investors and clients, himself. Since most of them preferred to deal directly with him, and he had almost the same perfection level as them, Zayn knew exactly what to do and say to get them to append their signature on the contracts, parting away with so much money.
And Zayn had never lost a deal. He wanted to keep it that way.
“Yeah,” Zayn murmured. “Do you have a problem with that?”
“I … I am your brother!” Nathan took the bait. “I am family to you, Zayn.”
“And?”
“Why didn’t you tell me that you had a deal to be closed and you needed someone there for you? I would have dropped every single thing I was doing to get it for you. You know that.”
“No, I don’t.” Zayn scoffed. “You would have gone there. Yeah. I don’t doubt that. But it wouldn’t have been for me. Everything you’ve ever done has been for your selfish gain. Do you remember the first and only time I gave you a client? You tried convincing him to invest instead in a company you were trying to start up, a company that was doomed to fail even before you started.”
“You refused to give me your list of clients to pick from!”
“Because you attempted to steal it first!”
“It doesn’t matter.” Nathan pressed down the invisible creases from his suit jacket. “The client still invested in my company anyway. What does that tell you?”
“It just shows how you suck at running a business. Do you think Mr. Carlton didn’t know what was going on? I told him to invest in your business, Nathan. I sent him the money because, for some reason, Dad thought you had finally hacked it.”
The look on Nathan’s face was palpable.
“And guess what? I was right! You ran the business into the ground, and used the capital to live up to some standard you couldn’t maintain.” Zayn pushed his chair back and got up, grabbing his jacket from the hook, and his phone off the table.
“I have somewhere to be. You can see yourself out whenever you want.”