The Gallery (Contemporary Reverse Harem 4)

Speaking of which, I dialed Devon again. No answer. He was probably at the party already, wandering around, looking for me.

He just couldn’t hear his phone ringing.

Right?

Chapter 2

SUMNER

“Yo, Sum,” my business partners called from across the crazy-big lawn of one of the most crazy-big homes in the Hamptons. The party was an extravagant one, as they tended to be in those parts. A birthday party for someone whose name I couldn’t remember. It wasn’t going to be any kind of crazy blowout or go late into the night, but it was the kind of party you wanted to both be invited to and show up to. Everyone was there.

“Smith, Ash, how you assholes doing?” I said to the guys. We’d all been together since our college days when we were broke and hungry, along with Chase and Gio who hadn’t yet arrived. All that we’d accomplished since was nothing short of miraculous. ‘Course, the people at the party who thought they knew me didn’t know the half of it. Which was fine.

“Dude, I have some Macallan coming our way with that hot-as-shit waitress over yonder. We’ve got some stuff to celebrate, boys,” Smith said, pointing at a lovely young lady with a bouncy ponytail.

“Cheers to that,” I said, grabbing one of the scotches off the pretty waitress’s tray. I followed her ass, packed into some tight black pants, as she walked away.

An elbow collided with my ribs. “Hey, hey. Earth to Sumner.”

“Sorry, guys. Just enjoying the…scenery.”

They laughed.

I looked around the party. These Hamptons scenes always reminded me of something out of The Great Gatsby. Beautiful homes, beautiful people, beautiful views. Tragedy lurking in every secret. But I had to admit, I’d live here if it wasn’t so fucking far from Manhattan.

“Okay, guys.” Ash, our finance guy, cleared his throat and held up a glass to toast.

Smith and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes.

I glanced at my watch. “Ash, you have exactly thirty seconds to make your speech.”

He dropped his arm in frustration and sloshed half of his expensive drink onto the grass. “Fuck you, Sum. And fuck you, too,” he said, looking at Smith.

“Sorry, Ash. It’s just that we know how you go on, and on, and on…” I said.

“…and on, and on, and on,” Smith added.

Ash furrowed his brow, his dark brown cheeks exhibiting a momentary pink hue.

“Ash, dude. Relax. We’re just giving you a hard time,” I said. “Hey, there’s Chase and Gio,” I said, waving across the lawn at our fourth and fifth business associates.

Ash rolled his eyes and waited for the other guys to join us before he raised his glass back into the air.

“I just want to say that, boys, we nailed it again. Another perfect acquisition for Roman, Edwards, Singh, Larlaith, and Rosselli. Cheers.”

Yeah, it was a long-ass company name, so we usually went by our acronym RESLR which, when you said it out loud, sounded like wrestler. I thought it was idiotic to arrange our names to achieve that effect, but the other guys thought it was badass.

I took a deep draw on my scotch. Goddamn, the Macallan was amazing.

“We are gonna make some money off this baby,” Smith added.

“Yup, we will at that,” I said. Although, I pretty much already had more money than I could ever hope to spend. But that wasn’t why we did it, deals like this. It was for the thrill of it. Search and destroy, we joked.

“It is kind of a bummer about the airline mechanics who’ll be losing their jobs,” I said.

Ash looked down and shook his head. “Yeah, that part blows,” he agreed. “Hopefully they’ll get new ones.”

I wasn’t convinced. We’d bought a firm that contracted airplane maintenance to the airlines and with our new model and the contracts we’d designed, we had eliminated fifty percent of the workforce. Good for the company—not so much for the workers. I hated that part of our business. We all did, actually.