Chapter 18: Griffin’s Story
The first time I saw Olivia Johnson again, I nearly dropped my scotch.
Fifteen years, four tech companies, and a billion–dollar empire later, and she still
knocked the wind out of me with a single glance. She stood in the hotel bar, all legs
and sharp edges, scanning the room like she was hunting something—or
someone.
I raised my glass, letting the amber liquid burn a path down my throat. Some
things never change.
People assume when you have money, nothing touches you. That wealth is some kind of emotional insulation. They’re wrong. It just means you have more
comfortable places to be alone.
My penthouse suite at the Waldorf had a view that stretched across the Manhattan
skyline, lights glittering like fallen stars. I leaned against the window, phone pressed to my ear, listening to my CFO drone on about quarterly projections.
“The board wants concrete numbers by Monday,” he said.
“They’ll have them,” I replied, loosening my tie. “Send over the latest R&D reports tonight.”
Work was simple. Straightforward. Unlike the memory of dark eyes and a caustic
wit that had haunted me since high school.
When she knocked on my door that night, I thought I was hallucinating. Olivia Johnson, in the flesh, wearing a dress that made my mouth go dry and a look of pure confusion on her face.
The universe has a twisted sense of humor sometimes.
People wonder how I knew it was her when we met again. The truth? I never stopped keeping tabs on her.
Call it pathetic, call it stalking–I don’t care. After she turned me down senior year of high school, I threw myself into coding, into building something worthy. But every few months, I’d look her up. Just to see if she was happy. Just to make sure she was okay.
I watched from a distance as she graduated college with honors. As she launched her marketing firm. As she got engaged to that prick Dominic Reid.
1/3
11:16 AM Wed 2 Jul
45%
18
I’d come to New York that week specifically because I knew she lived there. Not to approach her–just to be in the same city, breathe the same air. Pathetic? Absolutely. But I’d made peace with that particular weakness years ago. When fate delivered her to my door, I knew better than to question it.
“You don’t remember me at all, do you?” I asked her that first morning, watching her frantically gather her clothes.
The look of complete blankness on her face was both amusing and painful. I’d spent fifteen years carrying her in my mind, and she didn’t even recognize me.
Beverly Hills High, senior year. I was the tech nerd who sat in the back of the class,
who deliberately scuffed up the floor she was cleaning during her monitor duty
just to get her attention. The awkward geek who asked her to prom and got politely, kindly rejected.
“I’m focusing on my scholarship applications,” she’d said then, gentle but firm. “I
can’t afford distractions.”
I respected that. Admired it, even. But I never forgot the way she jabbed me with that meter stick when I tracked mud across her freshly mopped classroom floor.
The night I discovered she’d been cheated on, I wanted to tear Dominic Reid apart
with my bare hands. Not because it gave me a chance with her–though I won’t deny feeling a twisted relief that she’d escaped marrying him–but because I couldn’t stomach the pain in her eyes.
She’d come back to the hotel, soaked from the rain, looking like someone had
reached inside her chest and crushed everything they found there. I recognized
that look. I’d seen it in my own mirror the day my parents told me I was nothing but a disappointment.
“Why are you being so nice to me?” she’d asked, suspicious even through her
tears.
Because I’ve been waiting fifteen years for the chance to make you smile again, But I couldn’t say that.
Instead, I handed her a towel and ordered room service. Sometimes comfort
comes in simple gestures when words would only sound hollow.
2/3
17:16 AM Wed 2 Jul
45%
18
My father called me the day after Olivia moved in with me.
“Griffin, I hear you’ve been making some questionable personal choices,” he said, his voice carrying that perpetual note of disappointment. “The board is
concerned.”
The old man still had his spies. Some things never change.
“Tell the board to focus on our stock price, not my private life,” I replied, watching Olivia sleep through the bedroom doorway, her dark hair spilled across my pillow. “You’re a Hayes. There is no private life,” he reminded me coldly. “Whatever you’re doing with this… marketing consultant, wrap it up before it affects the company.” I hung up without responding. My father never understood that some things were worth risking everything for.
Hayes Enterprises was my legacy, but for the first time in my life, I was prepared to walk away from it all if forced to choose. That realization terrified and liberated me in equal measure.
9
Send Gifts
Add to Library – Read Anytime
