Billion Dollar Mistake by K.C. Crowne
Chapter 2
SAWYER
There wasn’t any place I’d rather have been less than the office of my good friend Dr. Zander Davis.
But I had to be there. It was a matter of life and death – literally.
The place was as stark and sterile as they came, with beige walls and nothing more than a few framed landscape pictures and his degrees from UC Berkley and John Hopkins. They were pictures I’d come to know pretty damn well over the last couple of years, having a standing appointment every three months at half past seven in the morning.
I shifted in my seat. At least the view was nice, the picture windows behind Zander’s desk looking out over downtown Denver, all the way to the mountains in the west.
I had hemophilia – a rare blood condition that meant my blood, unlike that of regular people, didn’t clot. If I got cut, I bled and bled. Not exactly the sort of condition you can let live in the background.
The door opened behind me, and Zander strolled into the office with a big, steaming cup of Starbucks in each hand. He was tall and strapping and clean-cut – the textbook image of a handsome doctor, but he had the same tired expression on his face every time we met.
“Morning, doc,” I said, watching as he dropped into his seat at the desk.
He didn’t say anything at first, instead closing his eyes tight and opening them back up with a quick head shake.
“Morning,” he said, his voice groggy.
“Man, whenever we meet for our little appointments, it kills me to know that you’re cutting into your beauty sleep on my behalf.”
He chuckled. “Oh, I’m sure you’re really broken up about it.”
Zander and I had become good friends over the last few years since he’d become my go-to doctor for my hemophilia treatment. Luckily, I was blessed with the ability to afford the best hematologist in the city – and that was Zander. Aside from our appointments, we were golfing buddies.
“Hey, you’re still single,” I said. “And you need all the beauty sleep you can get with that mug of yours.”
“Man, zingers with my morning coffee,” he said with a smirk. “How I love these little sunrise visits of ours.”
“Gotta keep things interesting, right?”
“Yeah, let’s go with interesting.” He handed me one of the coffees and I didn’t waste a second before taking a sip. “Anyway, let’s get to it. Anything new over the last few months I should know about?”
“Nah. No injuries, no bleeding – nothing like that. I take things slow and careful, as boring as that ends up being.”
“Hey, boring is better than bleeding out by being reckless. How are things going with the clotting agent? You taking it regularly like you’re supposed to?”
“Uh, not entirely.”
Zander sighed and shook his head. “Had a feeling you might say that. How often?”
“Like…when I can remember.”
“So, pretty much never.”
“I mean, I’ve taken it a couple of times. That’s better than never, right?”
“You’re supposed to be taking it weekly – on the same day, if possible. Sawyer, that stuff’s the best on the market right now. Let me tell you, there’re tons of people who are most definitely not billionaires like you who’d love to have access to it.”
“I know, I know. And I’m not a billionaire yet, bud.”
“Fine – billionaire heir. Though I know you pull down a pretty damn good salary working at your dad’s place. But the point is, you’re lucky to have access to the best care money can buy. If you’re not going to use it…then that’s just a damn shame.”
“It’s the needles, Zan – you know I hate those.” I followed this up with another smirk.
He narrowed his eyes slightly, enough for me to know he wasn’t in the mood for my usual smartass-ness.
“I’m serious. If you’re not going to use it, then you might as well give it away to someone who will. What’s the deal, really? I know you’re not scared of a damn thing, so the ‘not liking needles’ joke isn’t going to fly.”
He cocked his head to the side, looking at me suspiciously.
“Wait,” I said. “Not that look.”
“What look?”
“The one where I know that big brain of yours is putting things together. Nothing good comes from that look.”
“I think I know what it is.”
“Oh? You think there’s an ‘it’ to know besides me just being lazy?”
“I think it’s that you are afraid.”
I snorted. “Is that right?”
“Yeah. You’re afraid of being the kind of person who can’t live without medication, and taking your shot is a weekly reminder of that.”
“Now,” I said, glancing at his diplomas on the wall. “Those are some pretty impressive degrees. But unless you’ve got another tucked away in one of those drawers, I’m not seeing one for psychology.”
“I did take a few psych courses during undergrad, as a matter of fact.” He followed this up with a slight smile, letting me know he wasn’t fully pressing the issue. “But that’s not the point. It doesn’t take a psych major to know that there’s something more going on here than just you letting your medication schedule slip.”
“Listen, I’ll get better at taking it. But no psychoanalysis, please.”
“Hey, Sawyer, I’m a doctor – I’m your doctor. And I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t make sure you were on top of this stuff.”
“I get it. I do. Like I said, I’ll take it when I’m supposed to.”
“Good,” he said. “Because this stuff, it’s not going to cure you – nothing will. But it could make the difference between life and death if you were to have an accident and not be someplace near a hospital.”
He was right, but I hated what he had to say. I hated the idea that no matter what I did, I had to keep somewhere in my mind the possibility that I could slip and bump my head and start bleeding, meaning I had to always be within driving distance to a hospital. Not exactly a recipe for a carefree life.
“What else has been going on with you?” he asked, sitting back and putting his feet up on the desk. “Haven’t seen you on the course in a while. Got someone tall and blonde who’s been stealing you away from me?”
“Tall and blonde, huh?” I asked. “You think I’ve got a type like that?”
“I know you’ve got a type. Remember when you were showing me the Instagram pictures of the last few women you’d been seeing? Leggy and blonde and all seemed to spend half their lives in bikinis lounging poolside.”
“Now, that’s not entirely true,” I said. “Some of them like to hang out on beaches. But no, I don’t have a woman in my life these days. Been busy with work and, well, I don’t know. Haven’t really been in the mood for dating.”
Zander arched his eyebrows. “Not in the mood for dating? The great man-whore Sawyer Williams isn’t in the mood for dating? Pretty sure destroyed libido isn’t one of the side effects of the clotting agent.”
“I know, I know, crazy, huh? But like I said, just been busy with work. And man-whore? Last I checked, you get out just as much as I do.”
“Not really. I date here and there, but I’m not doing the kind of bedhopping that you seem to be accustomed to.”
“You call it bedhopping, I call it playing the field. How exactly do you propose I find the right woman if I don’t see who’s out there?”
“And is that what you’re doing? Trying to find the right woman?”
“I mean, eventually, sure. Everything will happen when it needs to happen, right?”
He laughed. “You get psychology from me; I get philosophy from you.”
“Hey, maybe I should be the one charging you an ungodly amount of money for these morning appointments.”
That got another laugh out of him. “Don’t quit your day job.”
I sat up and checked the face of my Rolex Submariner.
“Shit. Speaking of which, I need to get to the office.” I stood up and Zander did the same.
“I’ll see you out.”
We both grabbed our coffees and stepped into the hall, the first few staff members of the clinic showing up for the workday. Among them, I spotted the familiar face and gorgeous body of Cindy, one of Zander’s nurses.
“Cin!” I said, laying eyes on her.
“Oh, boy,” she replied, smiling and rolling her eyes when she saw me.
I approached her and came to a stop. “Can I ask you something?”
“I suppose. As long as the question isn’t ‘what can I do to get that engagement ring off your finger’.” She followed this up with a waggle of her fingers in front of my face, her massive new diamond glittering in front of me.
“Now, what kind of cad do you take me for?”
“The one who only started hitting on me more when I got engaged. Now, your question? I’ve got lots to do this morning.”
“Just wanted to know how it was possible that you managed to look so damn good every time I come in. It’s like, you roll out of bed and look like a damn model.”
She laughed despite herself, Zander letting out an “aw, man.”
“The secret? I don’t hit on people set to be married in a few weeks. Later, Sawyer.” She flashed me one more, ‘nice try’ smirk before sidling past me and heading down the hall. Of course, I took a moment to appreciate how perfect her ass looked in those scrubs.
“You know,” Zander said as we started walking. “When you’ve got hemophilia, it might not be a good idea to lay down game on off-limits women. You get a hard enough slap you might get a nosebleed.”
“’Off-limits’?” I asked as we turned the corner into the reception area. “Engaged isn’t married, you know.”
“Sure. But it’s pretty damn close.”
We stopped in front of the main office doors.
“Let’s hit the links sometime soon, Zan,” I said. “As handsome as you look in that white coat of yours, a nice polo really shows off all that hard work at the gym.”
He let out a good-natured laugh at this one.
“Sure, sure. Let’s plan for this weekend – your country club.”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
We said our goodbyes and I was off, leaving the downtown office building and stepping out onto the busy city street, the city of Denver coming alive for another day. It was early spring, a slight winter chill still lingering in the air, though the sun was bright and warm in the sky. I half-zipped up my suede bomber jacket and started off toward the parking garage where I’d left my Porsche.
Spring meant beautiful women wearing less clothing – despite the tinge of chill in the air. Being one who appreciates beauty, I made sure to give a smile to a few of the gorgeous young women that I passed on the way to my car.
But part of my conversation with Zander remained stuck in my head. Admittedly, he’d had a point when he’d said that I was something of a man-whore. These days, however, I’d felt my interest waning in bedhopping, in being with a new woman every few weeks. Was I getting old? Hell, I was only thirty-five – not exactly the age when a billionaire playboy should think about hanging it up. If anything, I was hitting my prime.
I tossed the question around in my mind all the way to my car. Once behind the wheel of my lava red Porsche, however, I managed to focus on more pertinent matters. One of the nice things about owning a sports car like mine was that it was hard to think about anything other than the roar and power of the engine of that little toy I was so proud of.
I pulled onto the city streets and whipped around the corner, maintaining a steady speed as I headed toward my office. I worked as the Chief Technology Officer at Praetorian Technologies, the cyber security company that my dad had founded when I was a kid. To be fair, I may have been CTO in title, but in reality, I was pretty much the damn acting CEO of that place since my mom passed.
Off in the distance I could see the tall, shimmering tower where Praetorian was located. Sure, I had a hell of a lot of responsibilities these days, but I loved my job, loved being the head of a company staffed by hundreds. With dad more interested in enjoying the fruits of his labor than working anymore, I had a good feeling it was only a matter of time until he officially stepped down and handed the reins over to me.
A phone call cut off the rock music I had blasting through the speakers. My gut tightened when I glanced down at my phone and saw that it was a call from the old man himself. After giving myself a moment, I pressed the green button to accept the call.
“Sawyer!” dad’s gruff voice came through the speakers, blasting at me at all sides in perfect surround-sound clarity. “Where the hell are you?”
“On my way to the office right now, Pops.”
“There a reason why you’re not here at eight?”
“There is, and it’s the reason I made sure to put in my calendar so you could see it and we could avoid the phone call we’re having right now.”
“Don’t be a smartass,” he said.
“I’m not trying to be. You can check the schedule now and see the appointment.”
“Let me look…”
“Great to see that there’s such solid trust between us,” I added, taking a turn on to the highway to avoid the congestion I’d spotted up ahead.
“Oh,” he said, his voice sounding almost chastened. “You have your appointment.”
“You can say it, Dad,” I said. “My hemophilia treatment appointment.”
“Doesn’t matter what it is.”
Dad hadn’t taken the loss of my mom well, to put it mildly. And I didn’t blame him one bit. The two of them had been college sweethearts, marrying as soon as they’d both graduated from UCLA. As far as I knew, they had never dated anyone besides one another.
My hemophilia had been passed down from my mom, a recessive trait that, instead of skipping a generation like it should’ve, went from her to me. Her hemophilia had been the cause of her death. She and my dad had been set to spend a week in Vail for their fortieth anniversary. Their schedules had gotten a little jammed up, so dad took the plane and mom drove.
She never showed up. They found mom’s car a day after she was supposed to arrive. She’d hit some ice and veered off the road. The head wound she sustained in the car accident would’ve been very treatable had it not been for her condition. If it weren’t for the hemophilia, she’d still be with us.
And dad’s way of dealing with this, if you could even call how he was handling it “dealing,” was to ignore it, to act like I didn’t have the same condition that had led to Mom’s death. So, whenever it came up, his go to behavior was to change the subject, to act like I hadn’t said anything at all.
If that’s how he wanted to deal, fine, but I wasn’t about to let him come down hard on me as if I were blowing off my job.
“Yeah, it does,” I said. “I know neither of us want to think about it, but I’ve got a session with my doctor every three months to have this thing monitored. You want to pretend it’s not the case, whatever. But that’s why I’m not in the office this morning.”
“Then you’d better be on your way now.”
“I just told you I’m on my way! I swear, why do you even have me in charge of this company if you’re going to act like I’m not even responsible enough to show up?”
“In charge of the company?” he asked. “Last I checked, you were still the CTO.”
I wanted to retort, say that with him jet-setting across the country whenever he felt like it, I was pretty much the one running the show. But dad was as stubborn as they came.
“Anyway, the reason I called wasn’t to argue with you.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
“I wanted to let you know about the meeting with the CEO of Nubeo Industries at nine. He’s in from Tokyo and I want to make sure you’re ready to blow his mind and convince him why he ought to take us on for his IT security instead of some local Japanese company.”
“It’s on the docket. And don’t worry – I’ve been prepping.”
“Good. I want good news with my lunch. And when you’re done with the meeting, I want you to head to Whitepeak and swing by A-Train Constructions. The owner’s been with us for a year, and I think he’s due for a check in to make sure he’s happy with our services. A-Train is getting huge, looking to be one of the top construction outfits in the state. If they expand like I’m thinking, we’re going to have a major new client on our hands in a few years.”
“Noted.” Whitepeak was the place where I grew up, a small town of about twenty-thousand people twenty miles west of Denver. The idea of going back was enough to make me shift in my seat.
“Then get on it. And Sawyer, I’d better not hear any more about you being late to the office.”
I opened my mouth, wanting to defend myself again, but I let it go. I was dealing with something more than just a dad with a forgetful memory.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Clive!” A woman’s voice in the background cut into the conversation.
“One moment, darling!” Dad spoke to someone on his end. There was something strange about his voice as he said the words. He was…cheerful, a total contrast to his typical gruff, short-tempered tone.
“Darlin’?” I asked. “Who’s over there with you, Pops?” I couldn’t help but grin a bit.
“No one you need to worry about. I’ll be working from the road. Let me know what happened with Nubeo as soon as the meeting’s over with.”
“Working from the road” was dad’s euphemistic way of saying that he’d be still be leaving things to me for the foreseeable future. He’d been “working from the road,” for the last few years.
“I will. And say ‘hi’ to whoever that is for me, would you?”
“Stick to work matters, Sawyer. Look forward to hearing from you.”
The line went dead and that was the end of the end of the conversation. I allowed myself one more smirk as the music turned back on – it was total Dad to get tense and closed off when it came to anything approaching personal matters. The extent of our discussions about our love lives was him scolding me for wasting time chasing women.
More than that, part of me felt…strange at the idea of him being with someone who wasn’t Mom – if that was indeed what was going on. Dad had been totally devoted to Mom and knowing that he was moving on, I didn’t quite know what to make of it. I pushed it all out of my head. Sorting through my feelings, something I’d never been a fan of to begin with, wasn’t exactly the way I wanted to start my workday.
I pulled into the parking garage and slid into the CEO’s reserved spot. I wasn’t technically the CEO, but Dad had been “working from the road” long enough for me to know that if I didn’t use that primo spot, it’d stay empty.
Once parked, I took the executive elevator up to the top floor, its glass walls looking out onto the city and the mountains beyond. The doors opened to the sweeping reception area of the executive offices, revealing an expansive, modern space, with lots of glass, steel accents, and clean lines. The logo for Praetorian Technologies, a minimalist design of a Roman-style warrior, complete with sword, hung over the long reception desk. I made my way through the halls, giving my “good mornings” to the employees I passed.
“Good morning, kid!” called Andrea Weller, my personal assistant since I’d started here after my graduation from Wharton. Mrs. Weller was in her mid-sixties, with a head of silver hair and an outfit of sharp business clothes.
“Gooooodmorning, Andy,” I said as I swooped past her desk.
“Got your coffee in there waiting for you,” she said, flicking her eyes up from her computer long enough to speak. “Itinerary for the week printed out next to it, as per usual for Monday.”
“I swear,” I said, shaking my head and smiling as I passed her. “What would I do without you?”
“Let’s hope you never need to find out.” She winked as I opened the door to my office and entered. “By the way, the CEO of Nubeo is already here. Waiting for you in the conference room.”
“You serious?” I checked my watch, seeing that it was still twenty minutes until nine.
“Guy’s punctual, what can I say? Anyway, I’ll let him know you’re here and just getting ready to head over.”
“Perfect.”
I let out a sigh of relief once I was inside my office, savoring what would likely be the few calm moments of the day I’d be getting.
My office was done up in the same sleek, modern style as the rest of the executive floor, with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the city. Sure enough, my Praetorian-logoed thermos of coffee was on my desk. But I only had enough time to grab a quick sip and check my itinerary to confirm that it would be a hell of a busy week.
Coffee in hand, I headed to the conference room. Outside the door, I straightened my tie, put on my game face, then stepped inside.
