4 The Billionaire's Seduction All That He Requires (7 page)

“So what did you do?”

“I took the deal.”

“What happened?”

“I crashed and burned spectacularly,” he grinned.

“You lost ten million dollars?” I gasped. “In three years?”

“No – in nine months. I gambled recklessly on several enterprises, all of which tanked.”

“You?! But you’re, like, a business genius! How did
that
happen?!”

“Well, I was
trying
to lose the money.”

“WHAT?!”

“It was my form of adolescent rebellion. Anyway, that’s what my mother’s shrink told me at a Christmas party one year.”

“What did you do?!”

“I told him to stick to analyzing my mother and leave me out of it.”

“No, I mean – ”

“I know what you meant. I went back to my father and told him I’d lost the money.

“He said, ‘Well, now you’re going back to Harvard.’

“And I said, ‘No I’m not.’

“And he said, ‘We had an agreement!’

“And I said, ‘Do you have it in writing?’”

My mouth fell open. “Did he?!”

Connor burst out laughing. “No, he didn’t. I think it was the only time in his entire life he didn’t sign a contract – because he totally underestimated me. He thought I’d never learned a thing from him. You should have seen his face. Especially when I said, ‘And since you don’t, how are you going to enforce the agreement?’”

I laughed in spite of myself. “Did he know what you were referring to? The Monopoly games, I mean?”

“Oh, of
course
he knew. My father has a memory that’s a cross between a computer and a steel trap. He just didn’t think
I
remembered – or had enough balls to cross him.”

“What did he do?”

“He ranted and roared about suing me in court, then he threatened to disown me. I flipped him off and left the house.”

“Oh my God,” I whispered.

“It was pretty stupid, but – hey – I was twenty years old at the time. And it felt
great.
”

“But…. what happened after that?”

“Well, one thing I’d done with that ten million dollars was make a lot of contacts in the industries I targeted. And I had the family name backing me up, not to mention dozens of college and boarding school friends with rich fathers who had millions of dollars to invest. I secured a hundred million in seed money – with far,
far
better terms than my father had offered me, I might add. I buckled down and actually tried to make it work… and the rest is just boring details in a bank account ledger.”

He toasted me ironically with his glass of wine.

“You got people to give you a
hundred million dollars
right after you blew ten million?!”

“First off, you’ve got to remember, we’re talking about people worth hundreds of millions of dollars apiece. Some of them worth billions. A couple of million for an investment – especially backing a
Templeton
– ”

He said his family name in a hoity-toity, self-mocking way.

“ – was a no-brainer to them. Some of them wanted to get closer to my father. Those guys, I let them have the impression that I was still in the old man’s good graces. And the ones who hated my father, well, I let them know exactly what I’d done. They usually roared with laughter and then asked how big a check I needed. They figured I had inherited my father’s business sense, and they could stick it to my dad by helping me succeed.”

“Did your father find out?”

“Oh yeah. That was part of the fun – especially when my initial investors made back 300% within two years.”

“So… it was all just a… a ‘screw you’ to your dad?”

“Well, that, and getting rich in the process.”

“But… your father… you still
talk
to him, right?”

“Now we do. We didn’t for a couple years afterward.”

“Not even at
Christmas?”

“Oh, when he threatened to disinherit me, he wasn’t joking. And my mother went right along with it. I was ‘disinvited’ to all family functions for awhile. In fact, I didn’t see or talk to either of them for almost three years.”

“But – but Mexico – ”

“Yeah, well… that’s a bit more complicated.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what percentage of my actions was real fear for his life… and what percentage was feelings of responsibility to him, as a son for his father… and what percentage was just the ultimate ‘fuck you’?”

I stared at him blankly. I couldn’t think of anything to say. This conversation had gone
that
far beyond my realm of what constitutes ‘normal.’

“Nobody else would do it,” he continued. “Vincent sure as hell wouldn’t. In the end, my brother is only out for himself. Mom wanted to hire a professional go-between, a mercenary, to deliver the money. But I went to the dropoff without either of them knowing. Paid the ransom myself, just so I could stand there and look him in the eye. Kind of like, ‘I’m the son you hated, and yet here I am. Asshole.’”

Connor shrugged.

“In the end, I guess I still felt like I owed him that ten million… so… I had to repay him somehow. That, combined with all the other things I mentioned. Like I said, it’s complicated.”

“What did he say when you got him out?”

Connor grinned. “‘What took you so long?’”

“You’re joking.”

“No, I’m not. In that instant, I showed him up, utterly and completely… and the bastard didn’t have the graciousness to admit it. But that’s my father for you. On the other hand, I got invited back to family gatherings after that. They kind of had to.”

“You still care about him, though, right? I mean… you risked your life…”

“
That
is a question for another therapy session.” Connor took a sip of his wine, then gave me a lopsided, sarcastic smile. “Now aren’t you glad you asked about my childhood?”

“…I’m not really sure…”

“It was supposed to be a funny question. Nobody in their right mind would say ‘yes.’”

“Well… I mean… I want to know more about you… so I guess I’m glad I asked… I’m just so sad that you had to go through everything you did growing up…”

“Save all that sympathy for kids with unhappy childhoods who didn’t turn out to be billionaires,” he said lightheartedly.

“Hopefully they got to play a few games of Monopoly with their parents and didn’t have to worry about a knife in their back,” I muttered.

Connor laughed, then settled back in his chair. “But I learned a lot from those games.”

“What, how to rip people’s throats out?”

“
Businesses’
throats out,
businesses’
throats. Figuratively speaking, of course. But I learned something else, too.”

“What was that?”

“What I wanted to do when I grew up.”

“I thought you wanted to be a futures trader.”

“That was when I was five. Before the Monopoly games taught me what I really wanted.”

“…which was…?”

Connor gave me a chilling smile.

“To destroy my father’s empire… just to watch it burn.”

Things got less dark after that.

Although it took me awhile to recover.

Connor knew he’d frightened me a little, and so he spent the rest of the time regaling me with stories about playing pranks on schoolmates at boarding school… and bizarre tales of business deals gone wrong… and funny bits about how much Sebastian hated Connor’s family, and all the snide remarks he would make when he talked to them.

Eventually the wine took over and put everything into a nice, soft haze… and the food overwhelmed me with the sheer sensual delight of it all. And I forgot about the creepy family history.

For a while, anyway.

We finished dinner – all sixteen courses – around 11PM. I swear I almost asked the restaurant staff to cart me out in a wheelbarrow.

As we walked out into the lobby, Connor did the worst thing he could have possibly done under the circumstances.

“So… want to go back to the hotel and have crazy sex?” he whispered in my ear.

“UGH. NO,” I said, not wanting to admit that I felt about as sexy as a stuffed pig. “You paid too much for it to all come back up.”

He roared with laughter. “That’s gross… and yet, somehow endearing.”

“I’m so glad to entertain you,” I said sarcastically. “By the way… how much
was
that dinner?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“That’s what I was afraid of…”

Once we were back in the Bentley, I snuggled up next to Connor. “What are we doing now?”

“Are you tired?”

“No, I had a couple of nice naps earlier,” I said, then followed up impishly with, “Followed by some nice exercise.”

He smiled. “Yes it was. But since we’ve got to wait an hour before we go back in the water – ”

“You know that’s an old wives’ tale, right?”

“You’re aware I was using a metaphor, right?”

“Very funny, smartass.”

“As I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted: if we’ve got to take a break from… ‘exercise’… is there anything you want to do?”

I thought about gambling… but it didn’t really sound appealing. And I didn’t think there were any shows this time of night. “No, not really. You?”

“I have an idea.”

“What?”

“Remember when you asked why I was here on business?”

“Yeah.”

“Want to go see what it is?”

I edged backwards so I could look at him. “Now?”

“Well… not
right
now… but soon.”

I frowned at him, intrigued. “What are you talking about?”

He gave me a mysterious smile. “You’ll see.”

And that’s all he would tell me until we got back to the hotel.

When we walked into the penthouse, Connor strolled over in front of the twenty-foot-high windows and gazed out at the glowing lights of Vegas.

Johnny headed for his room on the opposite side of the suite – then paused and looked back. “We good for the night?”

“We’re good,” Connor nodded. “See you tomorrow.”

I looked at Connor questioningly, but he didn’t look back at me.

“Okay. Goodnight, Lily.”

“Goodnight, Johnny,” I said, though I felt guilty about it… because I was pretty sure I was participating in a lie.

Once Johnny was gone, I whispered, “I thought you said we were going to go see something.”

“We are. Just give him a little while to go to sleep.”

“He’s not driving us?!”

“Keep your voice down. No, this is secret. Just you and me.”

“But – ”

“Stop worrying.”

“You don’t worry
enough.
”

“Then we can stay here, if that’s what you want. But if we go, it has to be just the two of us, alone under the stars.” He looked into my eyes. “What do you want to do?”

Secrets, intrigue, and a line like
it has to be just the two of us, alone under the stars.

What girl could resist that?

We waited almost an hour, then left the penthouse in silence. Connor seemed preoccupied; I was just terrified Johnny would come out of his bedroom and start yelling at us.

But we made it down to the valet’s desk, and within two minutes we were in the Lamborghini. I thought at first that he was taking me to a casino, or an office building, or someplace else in the city – but then I realized we were heading out of town.

Waaaay
out of town.

Into the desert.

Connor was quiet the entire way. I reached out and took his hand for assurance; he held mine in his, smiled briefly, then stared out at the road ahead as though lost in thought.

After thirty minutes on the highway, far past all the suburbs, Connor exited onto an empty side road and drove through the darkness. The lights of the city receded into a dim glow on the horizon, and the stars began to shine brighter above us.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been out beyond the reach of light pollution from cities and towns, but it’s astounding when you finally go to a place where there’s no other light around for miles. I had lived in suburbs and metropolitan areas my entire life – first in Charlotte, then in Athens, Georgia during college, then in Los Angeles. I had never been outside the glow of a thousand streetlights.

Until now.

As we drove further into the desert, the stars began to assert themselves. First a few hundred, then a thousand, then ten thousand, multiplying with every mile we traveled.

I’ve read somewhere that only 20% of all humanity has ever seen the Milky Way in its full glory. Most of us live too close to ‘civilization’ to see the millions of lights that make up our galaxy.

This was the first time for me.

I opened the window and just stared as the Lamborghini raced through the darkness. I lost track of time as the clouds of starlight became brighter and brighter.

Then the Lamborghini slowed and made a turn onto a dirt road.

“Where are you going?” I asked, startled.

“That’s part of the surprise.”

The wheels ground their way over the dirt road – two minutes, five minutes, ten minutes. I began to get worried –
what if we break down out here?
– and then I just forgot about the circumstances as the stars glowed even more beautifully overhead.

Finally we stopped.

Connor turned off the headlights, got out of the car, walked around and opened my door. Once I was out and he closed it behind me, there was nothing but darkness for miles around. That, and starlight for millions of miles overhead.

There was no sound, either, except for the
tick tick tick
of the Lamborghini’s engine cooling down. Not even the wind was blowing, though the air had taken a decided turn towards the chilly. I pulled my black wrap over my shoulders and looked around.

“So… this is what you wanted to show me?”

“Yes. This is it,” Connor said as he stared out into the darkness. His voice sounded excited… almost giddy.

“Um… okay…”

“What do you see?” he asked me.

I looked up at the sky. “Millions and millions of stars.”

He followed my gaze. “It really
is
beautiful, isn’t it? But that’s not what I’m talking about.”

“What do you mean?”

“Around us. Here, where we’re standing. What do you see?”

Vast plains of sand and scrub brush and low-lying plants, barely visible in the darkness.

“Uh… desert. Lots and lots of desert.”

“I see the opportunity of a lifetime.”

I looked around again. And still all I saw were miles and miles of nothing.

“I guess that’s why you’re a billionaire and I’m not,” I joked.

Connor walked about twenty feet way, then turned back to face me. “I see the equivalent of all the oil in Saudi Arabia, times a million.”

I frowned, then peered out into the darkness, wondering if maybe I had missed a couple of oil derricks.

Nope.

“You think there’s oil out here?” I asked as I edged closer to the hood of the Lamborghini. In the cold night air, the heat radiating off the hood was deliciously warm.

“Better than that. I think there’s a resource that’s virtually limitless – at least for a couple of billion years – and one that’s cleaner than any other energy resource we’ve got.”

“Solar,” I realized.

“Exactly. Did you know that all of the United States’ electricity could be supplied by a parcel of land 100 miles long by 100 miles wide?”

I looked out at the dark. “Is that what I’m looking at? Uh… 10,000 square miles?”

“Good multiplication skills.”

“I try,” I said sarcastically. Knowing his head for numbers, it felt a little like Wynton Marsalis telling you that you sure could play that kazoo.

But Connor chose to ignore the snark. “It’s close to 10,000 square miles. And that’s less than 10% of the entire surface area of the state.”

“But I thought there were tons of problems with solar. Um… do you mind?” I asked as I lowered my rear end slowly, signifying I wanted to sit on the hood of the car. “It’s warm, and the air’s kind of cold.”

“What? Oh, go ahead, I don’t care.”

I planted my booty gingerly on the metal, waiting for the horrible sound of metal
dinging
under my weight. None came.

Ahhhhhhhhh.

Shivers of warmth spread through my entire body.

“There are tons of problems with
every
technology,” Connor continued. “Especially before it hits the tipping point and really takes off.”

“Yeah, but – I thought there were problems with how to store it. I mean, you can’t get solar at night, and there aren’t any battery systems that can overcome that.”

Now that my eyes had adjusted, I could see his grin as well as hear it. “That’s why I’m working with a couple of scientists from UCLA on graphene supercapacitors.”

My nerd spider-sense started tingling. “Whoa – what?”

As he continued talking, he got more and more excited. “Graphene is a form of carbon – one of the strongest materials known, and it’s completely flexible. The guys who discovered it got the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010. Now two scientists at UCLA have not only devised a way to manufacture it cheaply and in huge volumes, but they figured out that it can take on an immense electrical charge, and slowly release that charge over time. You can power a small light bulb for five minutes off a one-inch square piece of graphene less than a millimeter thick. Imagine an array of millions of sheets of graphene, able to take on huge amounts of electricity generated from solar – and then release it slowly over time.”

I was starting to get excited, too. “That could totally solve – ”

“ – the storage problem! Not to mention revolutionize the transfer of it, too!” he interrupted me, his voice bursting with excitement. He was like a five-year-old boy hopped up on birthday cake.

“You mentioned supercapacitors. I’ve heard of them, but…”

“Okay, you’ve got batteries, which are basically just storage devices for energy. They can be anything from the double A’s that go in your TV remote control, to car batteries, to giant industrial batteries they use now for storing solar energy. But they charge slowly, and they discharge slowly. Capacitors have high output, but horrible storage capabilities – like a flash on a camera. Big burst of energy, but that’s it. A supercapacitor combines the best of both worlds. It has high energy storage, and fast charge and discharge. That’s what these UCLA guys have created. Theoretically, you could put graphene batteries in cars that would allow you to go 200 miles on a single charge, and you could refill it in 60 seconds at a charging station. Or you could have a cell phone battery that fully charges in five seconds. Or massive electrical storage at solar power stations, using nothing but carbon to do it.”

“But I’ve read there are lots of poisons involved in solar panel construction.”

“It’s not perfect,” Connor said impatiently. “But when you average out the detrimental effects versus the life of the energy source, solar beats everything else hands down. Coal only seems like a cheap source of energy when you don’t factor in the costs of pollution, climate change, coalminers’ lives, and mercury exposure from the mining and processing.”

I looked out at the vast expanse of desert. “So… what are you planning to do, create a giant solar farm?”

“Exactly.”

“Who owns the land?”

“The federal government and the state of Nevada.”

“Are you going to
buy
it from them?!”

“No. They wouldn’t sell. But I can
rent
it from them… which is what I’m in town to negotiate over the next couple of days. I’m meeting with the governor and key state representatives. I’ve already sealed the deal in D.C. with Nevada’s senators and representatives from the congressional districts. In exchange for a 99-year lease, my companies will provide free energy for the entire state of Nevada, an estimated 10,000 jobs, and a cut of all profits as we provide cheap, clean energy for California, Arizona, Idaho, Oregon, and Utah.”

“Holy crap,” I whispered.

“Yep,” he said proudly.

I paused, thinking through the ramifications.

“Wait – I thought you said this amount of land could provide all the energy for the whole U.S.”

“It can… theoretically. But we need to start off small. People get freaked out when you say you’re going to change the world. Sometimes you need to hold their hand and change their backyard first.”

“They’ll let you do that? Rent the land, and all that other stuff you mentioned?”

“Yes. They will.”

“How do you know?”

Connor smiled. “I’ve figured out what they all want… and I’m prepared to give it to them.”

“But – if you do what you say you’re going to do… aren’t you going to totally screw all the coal plants?”

“Not just coal. Imagine a world where electricity costs less than a tenth of what it does now – not to mention it’s clean. Imagine you can pull your electric car into a charging station and fill up your car in under a minute, and for less money than a single gallon of gas.
That’s
what we’re talking about – and it’s only five, maybe ten years down the road.”

I stared at him. “You’d put Exxon and every other oil company out of business.”

“If they don’t adapt.”

“Holy
shit,
Connor! Can you actually
do
that?!”

“Yes. All the pieces are assembled. I have controlling blocks of stock in the major public utilities I need, plus a major automobile company that wants to dominate in the electric car market. I have a chain of gas stations ready to install all the necessary equipment for charging the cars, as long as I put up the seed money. I’ve assembled the funding necessary for the first five years. All I need now is the bureaucratic machinery behind me to make it legal.”

The realization hit me all at once: “They’re not going to let you do it,” I murmured.

“They’re not going to have a choice.”

“But – all the companies who make millions and
billions
of dollars off the way things are now – ”

“Will have to join in or get crushed.”

“But those companies pay huge amounts of money to politicians to make them vote the way they do!”

“I’ve taken care of that, too.”

“How?!”

“I shouldn’t say anything more, because I wouldn’t want you to ever have to testify in court… but let’s just say I’ve taken care of the situation.”

I sat there, mouth open, and tried to take it all in. It was a little much to absorb. After all, I’d been struggling to make rent last week, and now I was talking with a billionaire who was planning on changing the entire world. And who was entirely serious about doing it.

And who might just have a shot at it.

Then I remembered a conversation from earlier in the evening.

“Connor… your dad… does he have a lot of energy stocks?”

“That’s an understatement. I’d say over 40% of his net worth is in companies involved in fossil fuels and related industries, like the energy sector and automotive companies.”

“OH MY GOD!” I cried out as I jumped to my feet. “You’re doing this to screw over your dad?!”

He laughed. “No, that’s just a nice by-product.”

I started pacing back and forth.

I hadn’t exactly grasped what he meant earlier when he said he wanted to destroy his father’s empire, just to watch it burn.

Now I did.

And it was frightening me.

He walked over, stopped me from pacing, and put his hands on my shoulders. “What’s wrong?”

“If your dad is as big an asshole as you say he is, there’s no
way
he’s going to let you get away with this!”

“I told you, all the pieces are already in place. It’s just a matter of tipping over the first domino now.”

He sounded supremely self-confident.

“But the fact that you want to do this just to screw over your dad? That’s messed up! You should really talk to somebody about this – like a psychiatrist!”

Connor looked at me a long moment… and then he asked, “Lily, do you know who Nikola Tesla was?”

If you’re a nerd girl, you
must
know who Nikola Tesla was. It’s like knowing who James Tiberius Kirk is, or who Anakin Skywalker became.

“Serbian-American inventor in the early 20th century,” I said. “Total genius. What’s he got to do with anything?”

“Tesla was quite possibly the greatest unsung inventor in the history of science. He was hired by Thomas Edison to fix his direct current electrical generators – and then Edison stiffed him out of his fee. Tesla turned around and basically invented alternating current – and Edison tried every dirty trick in the book to stop him. When Marconi invented radio, he was using over a dozen patents first registered by Tesla. He came up with the idea for radar in 1917, but Edison was the head of R&D for the U.S. Navy, and he nixed it because he hated Tesla. So it didn’t actually get invented until 1935 by someone else. And he devised things we still don’t understand to this day, and still can’t duplicate – like transmitting electricity wirelessly, or pulling it out of the atmosphere. An investor had him build a tower near New York City to do just that – pull electricity out of thin air. Tesla was going to give it away free to the entire planet, but when the investor realized he wouldn’t be able to control it or charge people for it, he had the tower torn down.”