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I was in the lobby bar at the Four Seasons fifteen minutes early for my meeting with Kaito Okada. I was wearing one of the suits Ava had bought for me and all of the accessories, including the designer underwear. I didn’t really know what she meant about designer underwear making you feel different—it just felt like underwear to me. But she’d told me to wear it, so I wore it.
I ran my hand over my newly-shorn hair, which was now cut close to my scalp. It felt weird being without my messy locks, as if the top of my head was naked. It made me look different in the mirror, too. Now, instead of looking like my go-fuck-yourself programmer self, I looked like some rich fuck who was a partner in a big venture capital company. Which, damn it, I was. I just never felt like playing the part of the rich fuck. I had no choice tonight.
As I sat at the bar, waiting, I got looks from a lot of the women in the room. I wasn’t used to it. One of the reasons I dressed the way I usually did was because it made me invisible—I hated attention. Now, wearing an insanely expensive suit and a rich-guy haircut, I felt like I had a target on my chest, and I didn’t like it. The only person I wanted to notice me was Ava, and she’d already left town.
That still fucking hurt. I didn’t want to think about it.
There was a ripple of attention and a small group of Japanese people came into the bar—three women and three men. I recognized Okada immediately from the photos I’d seen. In person he was small and slim, compact. I figured most women would call him handsome. He wore a suit that was even more expensive than mine because it was custom made, but he didn’t wear a tie and the top button of his shirt was casually undone. He wore his hair slightly long, with a lock of it over his forehead. When he saw me he approached me, his team following him like baby geese.
“Mr. Scotland,” he said, giving me a polite Japanese bow. “It’s an honor to meet you at last.”
I slid off my stool and returned the gesture. “Mr. Okada. You’ve come a long way.”
“Not so long, really.” Okada shrugged. “When you have a private jet with a bedroom, the flight isn’t so onerous. You should try it sometime.” He smiled.
So he knew I didn’t own a private jet. I was willing to bet Kaito Okada knew a lot about me—probably more than I knew about him. I tried to think of something pleasant and polite to say. I sucked at small talk. I wished I had Ava standing next to me; I should have at least made her write me a small-talk script. Which I would have had time to do if I hadn’t spent three days fucking her instead of working.
It was worth it.
“Well, I’m glad you’re here,” I managed, trying not to sound grumpy and pissed off. “I spent six weeks teaching myself the Sensei programming language last year.”
He brightened at the mention of the language he’d created. “Did you? Very few people have mastered it.”
“I didn’t master it, exactly.” Actually I had, but Ava had told me that the Japanese found bragging unattractive; apparently they preferred modesty.
Okada looked at me, his expression almost speculative. Then he turned to his team and spoke to them in Japanese. They bowed to me, then bowed more deeply to their boss, and all of them turned and left.
“What are you doing?” I asked Okada.
“That was my executive team,” he explained. “I told them to go to their rooms and get rest, because you and I are going to meet alone.”
I frowned. I’d imagined taking Okada and his team to Nobu, sitting through polite conversation while we ate sushi, just as Ava and I had rehearsed. “Where are we going?”
“Do you know what I like?” Okada motioned to the bartender. “American whiskey. It’s a drink that, in my opinion, is only made properly in your country. Americans are exquisite at making whiskey.” He ordered two glasses, gave me one, and took the other. He held up his glass, and I took the hint and tapped mine to his.
“What are we toasting?” I asked.
“You and me,” Okada said. He took a sip, sighed. “Good. So what do you think, Dane Scotland? Here we are. Enough bullshit. Let’s get drunk.”
At midnight we were in an airplane hangar outside of O’Hare airport, sitting in folding chairs and admiring Kaito’s private jet. We’d both ditched our suit jackets, and I’d ditched my tie. Okada had found an old blanket folded in the corner of the hangar and had thrown it over his shoulders—even though it dwarfed him, he managed to look dignified. Kaito’s driver, a discreet Japanese man, was outside somewhere in Kaito’s Rolls-Royce, waiting for us to finish drinking and tell him to drive our dumb asses back to the hotel.
“It’s so nice,” Kaito said about his jet. He took a sip from his whiskey glass. For a guy who weighed maybe a hundred and twenty, he could drink alcohol like nobody’s business. “It’s a gorgeous jet, don’t you think?”
“Sure,” I said. I was miles behind him in the drinking game, but I was still more drunk than I’d been in years. My brain was foggy, and I kept wanting to open my mouth and say honest shit I wasn’t supposed to say. Like how I didn’t really care how big or expensive his jet was. Kaito was definitely a legit genius—we’d had a few conversations that programmers around the world would give their left nut to hear—but this meeting was giving me a strange feeling, alcohol or not. It felt a little like Kaito was showing off, and not because he was an asshole with a big ego. More like he was showing off because he was trying to sell me something.
But what could Kaito Okada want to sell me? We were supposed to discuss Tower VC investing in his new project, the one that was rumored to have to do with cancer treatment. It would be an investment worth tens of millions, but Kaito didn’t have to sell me on that. Especially not by showing me his private jet. The whole thing was a little weird. It was the middle of the night, we were sitting in an airplane hangar, and I was far off the script. One of the other Tower guys—Aidan for example, or Noah—would know how to handle this. I just wanted to go home and nurse both my hangover and my heartache for Ava.
Now he was telling me how much he’d spent on the jet, and all of the amenities it had. How many people he hired to staff it. Finally the whiskey got to me and I couldn’t take it anymore. I said, “You’re not offering to take me to some underage sex island, are you?”
His only indication of surprise was a single raised eyebrow. “Not in the least. I’m a happily married man. And you, Dane—you’re not that type of man, I think.”
“I’m not,” I grumbled.
“You’re the one-woman type?”
“Apparently.” I emptied the last drops in my glass and put it on the concrete floor next to my folding chair. “Though I don’t think she agrees. She left this afternoon.”
