Chapter 1
Aidan
Partying with Henry Carter used to mean a threesome in his sex club. What a difference a year makes. Now we went out for a civilized meal and dragged fellow businessman, Elias King along with us. I’d been polite while H had shown us ten pictures of his son, Lewis, on his cell phone, but now he and Eli had launched into a full on conversation about having kids and I was bored as fuck.
“Hey. Can we talk about something else now, man? Your son’s the most beautiful thing I ever saw but let’s talk sports or some other shit.”
Eli guffawed. “Oh, Aidan. You have all this to come.”
“I really can’t see it, not for me. I’ve met plenty of women I’ve liked well enough but the big old ‘L’ word, it’s never happened to me.”
Henry fixed me with a look and I knew what he was saying with that intense brooding gaze of his. A while ago we’d been talking about the deaths that had affected our pasts and I’d confessed that my brother had been killed in a motorcycle accident when I was fourteen. Henry had had to put his own tragic past behind him to be able to move forward with his now wife Amelia and I guessed he was hinting that my own past could be affecting my future. Or he could just be saying with that stare that I was a dick.
Elias took a drink of his scotch and then rubbed the spiky ends of his salt and pepper hair. We were quite a trio. Elias was forty-seven, the father of a twenty-four-year old daughter with a nightmare ex-wife who made the Housewives of New York look like sweet little puppies (yes, I’d caught an episode once). Actually, maybe it was that putting me off settling down here in Manhattan? Then there was Henry, who was forty; and me, the baby of the group at twenty-nine. Elias owned several businesses under his surname King’s, including residential properties, nightclubs and a business school. I had the sex club I’d bought from Henry, and my adult movie company, GoDown Productions. Henry had sold everything apart from a house in Manhattan and one in the Hampton’s and continued to work for Elias as a Consultant for his property business. I think the only thing he truly wanted to work on was having more babies with his wife these days.
“Out with it, Eli. When you rub that stubble we know there’s something on your mind, old man.”
He raised his middle finger at me.
“Just the one thing on your mind then?” I winked at him.
“My ex-wife is getting remarried.”
“Hallefuckingluyah.” I responded and Henry clapped.
“Yes, well she’s getting married in January and she’s decided that in the spirit of being amicable around our daughter that I’ve to attend, and bring a plus one.” He rubbed his chin again. “Basically, she wants to show off that she’s met a multi-billionaire who’s better for her than I ever was.”
“Just say you can’t make it.” Henry advised him. “If she’s so madly in love she’ll not even notice you’re there.”
“Brianna is putting the guilt on, ‘Daddy, I never see you. It would be so nice if you and Mommy could finally put your differences aside’. I love my daughter but Christ she takes after her mother. She’ll just want to hit me up for money and then I’ll not hear from her again until her bank account runs dry once more.”
Elias had told us the story of his bad marriage years ago. He’d fallen in love with whom he’d believed to be a sweet, lovely woman, but once the ring was on her finger and she’d gotten pregnant, she’d become a society climbing backstabber, who had to have the best of everything amongst her friends; an unrealistic ambition when some had royal connections. She’d basically made Eli’s life a misery until she divorced him when their daughter was ten. He’d discovered she was having an affair with a Sheikh and had several properties in her portfolio that he’d not put there. It had been an ugly and messy divorce and she’d moved to Los Angeles, creating a distance between Eli and his daughter and making Brianna so spoiled that Eli despaired.
“You’re gonna have to suck it up then and take a date with you. Preferably someone like twenty years younger than Katrina. No amount of plastic surgery is going to let her compete with a nubile young woman.” I said.
Eli’s face flushed. He picked up his scotch again and took a sip.