Colleen prepared to take notes with a pen held at the ready above a pad of paper, and his dick swelled as a quick image of tossing her face-down on the table and taking her while these administrators watched crossed his mind.
Yeah, he needed to get that under control.
Tristan began the meeting with, “I submitted the documents you requested, and I’d like to discuss how large of a line of credit I can draw. I’m planning a substantial stock purchase in a particular sector to augment my primary business, and I need financing in place before I make offers. However, I have it on excellent authority from two different sources that GameShack’s main source of revenue is their live streaming of gamers, not retail sales at brick and mortar stores. Their live streaming platform is what we want to strip away,”
Dr. Botha pressed her lips together into a solid, red line. Her gaze darted at her counterpart to her left before she announced, “GrazBank is not currently at liberty to lend you such a sum, but we have business partners who are eager to discuss what terms they can offer you. I will leave you in their capable hands.”
And with that, Dr. Botha’s entire delegation stood and briskly exited the room.
That wasn’t part of the plan.
It must be part of someone else’s plan.
And that was dangerous.
They couldn’t both get out. If Tristan grabbed Colleen’s hand and dragged her out the door behind him, they would be stopped because they—whoever they were—would want both him and Colleen here and under their control.
But he could get Colleen out of the situation.
He leaned over to her and said, “I left something in the car. My coat. Go get it.”
Collen turned to him. “What?”
“I left my coat in the car in the parking garage. Go get it.”
She looked up at him, her eyes wide on her youthful face because she was barely twenty-three. “Mr. Laio took the car to the hotel. He’s not going to be back for at least an hour.”
Tristan dropped his voice into a bass register that he only used at certain times. “I said go. Now.”
She looked startled, as his littles often did when he used that tone with them, but she picked up her notebook and trotted toward the rear door where they’d entered.
Across the room from the other door, four men and one woman entered from where Botha and her crew had exited. The new team was all white people, three of them with the generally heavier Northern Slavic bone structure, most of them with watery blue or gray eyes.
Behind him, Colleen gave a little gasp, and heavier footsteps trod on the carpeting.
A man’s accented voice back there said, “And where you are going?”
Tristan didn’t turn around. Dammit.
One of the larger men in the contingent on the opposite side of the table gestured to Colleen, who still stood behind Tristan, and said in a heavily accented voice, “It is important everyone participate in meeting. Come back and sit down. Have glass of water or cup of coffee.”
When Colleen returned and sat beside Tristan, she didn’t look frightened. She didn’t look anything at all. Her face was as smooth and expressionless as if she had painted it with rigid eggshell paint.
The man who placed himself at the center of the opposite side was paunchy but muscular, a thickness of muscle in his youth run to fat. With a thick Russian accent, he said, “It is nice to meet you, Mr. Tristan King. Our mutual acquaintance said we could make beneficial deal.”
Tristan grinned his wide, Midwestern, easy-going smile, attempting to exude that there was no problem here and everything was going to be just fine because they were only doing normal business. “It’s nice to meet you folks. Any friend of Dr. Botha is a friend of mine. Now, you guys know my name, but I’m at a loss for yours. What can I call you?” Tristan asked.
The guy in the middle waved his hand to fend off Tristan’s question. “My name is not important. You can call me Sergey.”
Tristan knew better than to press. “So, what can I do you for?”
The middle guy, Sergey, said, “You said you want money for investment. We have money that you would like to take for this investment.”
Oh, he would, would he? “Well, we should discuss terms, but I’m sure we can come to an arrangement. What kind of interest and collateral are you folks asking for?”
Even though he already knew their money would have too many strings attached for his taste.
“We have better proposition for you than just loan. We want to buy thing you have.”
