With nothing left to hunt down, Damien tossed his phone on the bed and returned to his suitcase. It took him almost no time at all to layer his casual clothing over his weaponry, and only a few tense moments doing his best to squash the contents of his suitcase down flat enough that he could zip the thing up. While he struggled with zipper, another text from Nadja arrived.
Btw I called you a taxi. It’ll be there at the same time the alarm on your phone goes off, reminding you to gtfo.
Gritting his teeth, Damien yanked on the zipper. It flew. The sudden movement caught Damien by surprise, and with a yelp, he toppled onto the bag. Thank god Nadja hadn’t been FaceTiming him—he never would have heard the end of it.
When Damien picked himself up, he discovered his efforts had been worth it. The bag was fully shut. With a panted hoot of victory, Damien picked himself up and grabbed his phone just in time for it to start to ring. It wasn’t Nadja, nor was it his alarm—Erik Stendahl, executive chairman of ONY, was on the line, no doubt looking to see if the Goldcorp Group could reduce the wait on the tender offer papers Damien’s legal team was in the process of organizing.
Damien answered the phone without a second thought and tucked it back into his pocket. There was no need to keep it out—the call went directly to his Bluetooth earpiece.
“You’ve reached Bigg of the Goldcorp Group.” Damien tugged his luggage from the bed, extending the retractable handle as he did. Its wheels clicked and jostled as they hit the hardwood, and the luggage veered to one side. Damien winced and course corrected before it toppled over.
“Bigg, it’s Stendahl. I need to know how the progress on the tender offer is going.”
Damien nudged his suitcase with his foot to get it at the right angle, then wheeled it toward the door. On his way, he patted his suit pocket to check for his passport. “We’re waiting on the legal team to get the documents sorted. I pinged the head legal associate this morning to see where they were and have yet to get a response. I’ll follow up now and shoot you an email. It’s usual to have to wait up to a week for progress, but I’ll see if we can’t get that ball rolling sooner so we can officially announce the deal.”
“That’s what I like to hear.”
“Give me an hour, two max, to find out what’s going on and get back in touch. We’re as eager as you are to make this deal public.” Without a glance at what he was leaving behind, Damien locked the door of his New York condo and wheeled his luggage toward the elevator. “Is there anything else I can look into while I’m at it?”
“That’s all.”
“Great.” The elevator doors opened. Damien stepped inside, having to exert extra effort to tug his luggage over the lip of the elevator door. “You’ll hear from me again soon.”
Stendahl terminated the call. Damien rolled his eyes back in his head and trumpeted a sigh of irritation through his nose. Getting in touch with the legal team was thelastthing he wanted to do while on the move, but it looked like Stendahl wasn’t going to give him much of a choice. He could already hear Geller, the head of his legal team, reminding him in a sloth-like monotone that finalizing paperwork took time, and if he wanted the deal to go smoothly for the Goldcorp Group, it was in everyone’s best interestnotto rush the team responsible for combing through the final documents word by word.
Thank god that in less than twenty-four hours, Damien would be a world away, toes in the sand, dividing his time between sipping fruity drinks, watching as his friend Gwynn met his glittery downfall, and only giving about fifty percent of a shit about the dumpster fires he’d inevitably have to put out for his clients from the beach. It was much more palatable than being in New York, shut away in his dark office, where for every fire he put out, ten more roared to life.
The elevator doors opened on the lobby. Damien rolled his suitcase forward, its wheels catching on the gap between the elevator cabin and the lobby. It spun momentarily out of control. He cussed under his breath and twisted the handle around until all the wheels were in proper contact with the ground, but not before it clipped him in the shin. Its attempts to ruin his day were in vain. Little did it know that not even the agony of a scraped shin could get Damien down. A reunion with his best friends awaited, and nothing short of dismemberment was going to harsh his mellow.
It was a short trip across the lobby, where the concierge opened the door for Damien as he approached, letting the sticky August air in.
“You’re the best, Wilson.” Damien winked at him on the way past, but Wilson’s face didn’t change. “See you in a week.”
Wilson said nothing, but it didn’t matter. They were tight. Best buds didn’t need words—Damien felt his camaraderie in the stern lines of Wilson’s face and the distant, assuredly irritated look in his eyes.
Damien’s phone vibrated, then rang. It was Nadja’s second alarm. The notification she’d set made him snort.
GET YOUR ASS IN THE TAXI, BIGG D
A taxi double-parked next to the curb while the alarm was going off, and the driver leaned on the horn. Damien tugged his luggage forward, flung it in the trunk, and settled in the back seat.
“Where to?” the driver asked.
Damien slung his arm over the headrest and opened his mouth to answer when his phone went off a-fucking-gain. It was another alarm.
ASS IN TAXI. I’M SERIOUS.
“JFK.” Damien dismissed the notification. Nadja wasn’t playing games. In a bid to ward off permanent ear damage, Damien accessed his alarm screen to discover three more alarms set to go off over the next three minutes.
DON’T MAKE ME COME OVER THERE.
YOU HAVE SIXTY SECONDS BEFORE ALL IS LOST.
YOU DUN GOOFED. FIND YOUR OWN WAY TO FIJI.
Damien deactivated all of them, craned his neck from side to side, then settled in his seat and checked his email while the driver merged into traffic. No less than three motorists leaned on the horn. Fuck, was it going to be nice to get away from the blaring city serenades. Weird, sure, but nice. The quiet would do his soul good.
Damien’s inbox refreshed, and fifteen new messages populated at the top of his client. Nine of them were flagged as urgent. Damien winced. “Shit.”
