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Chapter Five

Zach turned off the remote-control app for the plug with a grin. He hadn’t expected Carson to actually last the whole day, but what he had expected was for him to take it out, not fall apart in the bathroom at work like that.

His earpiece beeped softly at him, and he sighed as he tapped the button with a glance at the screen of his phone.

“Mister Nelson, what can I do for you today?” he asked, trying to sound as normal as possible while he wiped the cum from his stomach. He half-listened to his accountant as he went on about the costs of the employee housing he insisted on keeping, and a million other things they’d discussed a million other times, even though Zach’s answers never changed.

“I’m asking these people to uproot their lives, sign away a ton of rights, submit to an extensive background check, and uphold a level of secrecy that rivals any government agency. I am obligated to and can fucking afford to compensate them for that.”

“You just bought—”

“And I can afford that, too. What the fuck am I paying you for if I have to worry about a few million dollars? Why do I have all this money if I can’t do something good with it? The housing stays. Bailing out the shelter by paying off the mortgage and setting up a trust for the taxes on it stays. The scholarships all stay. All employee benefits stay. My house made, what, a ten million-dollar dent in the bank account all together? If I can’t survive that in an account that’s got more zeroes on it than that, there’s a problem. So unless you’re calling to tell me that my stock has crashed and my company is now worth pennies on the dollar, I have other things to do.”

Good mood, officially ruined.

“I’m just trying to save you some money, Zig.”

Zach closed his eyes and sighed.

“I know, buddy. And I’m just trying to spend it. So unless my net worth drops under, say, a few hundred million, I’m pretty sure I can continue all the funding we’ve already established, my mother’s care, and my standard of living.”

“You are my most frustrating client, you know that?”

“And I pay you the most of them all, too, but I don’t hear you complaining about that, now do I?”

A soft chuckle was his only answer.

“Okay, you win. I’ll call you in a couple months when I have to authorize more payments.”

“You could save yourself the time and the yelling if you just emailed me.”

“I could. Maybe I like the abuse.”

Zach laughed.

“Yeah, you do. See you at the hospital benefit in a few weeks?”

“Yeah, I’ll be there.”

He ended the call and stared at the phone. The text screen was still open, the picture of Carson’s cock front and center on the display. Not for the first time, he wondered what he was doing with this kid. Nothing good could come of entertaining this distraction, of pursuing this fling with Carson. He liked the man too much, and it wasn’t fair to give Carson false hope of something more when Zach didn’t have that kind of time. Then again, what exactly am I doing right now? he thought as he finished putting himself back together in the bathroom. I’m doing just that—making time to interact with Carson. I let him distract me, when that never was an issue before.

“You’re a bad idea, kid,” he said fondly, as he saved the image anyway on his way back to his desk. With a heavy sigh he returned his attention to the new project he was starting on Monday. Most of the team members he wanted he’d worked with before and he gave a short perusal of their more recent work to see where they were. Meg and Matt were nearly complete with their current projects, and at the rate Jack was working, he’d be done over the weekend—Zach made a note to double check how many hours Jack had logged this week to make sure he wouldn’t be worn out on Monday. That left the new guy.

Vladislav. He’d only been with the company for a few months, but that was long enough for Meg and a few other managers to have taken notice. Apparently, he was everyone’s new favorite person, very friendly and fit right in with the office dynamic, which was good. Zach wasn’t interested in the man’s personality, though that was important to overall morale. Zach was far more interested in someone who’d mastered his coding and AI system in barely a month’s time, to the point that Meg had already given him one of the smaller projects to co-head and from the looks of it, Sam’s name was a rubber stamp on the project.

“All right, Vladislav. Unfortunate name or not, you’ve got my attention. Let’s see who you are,” he said, pulling up the report Sharon had prepared for him. V. Carson—and fuck if that wouldn’t make keeping his focus difficult, he thought with a slight frown. “Full ride to M.I.T, damn, top of the class, worked for Marshall, and Potts, and Rollins … shit,” he breathed out. “You’ve been jumping up the ladder, not climbing. What have you got to prove, huh?” Zach dug a little deeper, brought up the background search.

“Huh,” he said, sitting back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest. Absently he rubbed at the bruise on his left pec from Carson’s bite the night before. Zach scanned the list of addresses and files and … police reports? Ah, okay, petty juvenile stuff… Sounds an awful lot like me. Next of kin is noted as power of attorney? He clicked the names, and it brought up an address in Pennsylvania, with a notation of “foster parents”.

“So that’s what you’ve got to prove,” he murmured. “Don’t need anyone but yourself. Damn, son, you might as well be my clone. This should get interesting indeed.” While he’d never been in foster care, he’d grown up poor, in and out of shelters and group homes as his mother did her best to raise him by herself with not even a high school education of her own and jobs that paid squat. He looked at his phone again and tapped a button to call her. Her aide answered, informing him that she was sleeping.

“It’s nothing important. Just wanted to say hi. Let her sleep. If she feels up to it later, she can call me back.” He glanced at his schedule. “Tell her I’ll come visit again next weekend, okay?”

Zach pulled the earpiece out and buried his head in his hands. Don’t need anyone but yourself, but it sure is fucking lonely. Don’t end up like me, Vladislav. After a minute of wallowing in self-pity, he sighed heavily and ran his hands through his hair a few times, as if the act would settle him and put him back together. He sent off a quick message to Carson, asking if he had any food allergies, and then sat back with a bottle of water to return his attention to his screen.

He skimmed the rest of the report and then turned to inspect Vladislav’s work, enlarging it to project on the wall behind him. The configurations Vladislav used were breathtaking in their ingenuity, and he stared open-mouthed at the display as he read the code and flipped between screens.

“Holy shit,” he gasped. “Looks like I’ve got some competition up and coming. No wonder they’re all talking about you. All right, how do I keep you happy and working for me, instead of taking over my company some day?” He made another mental note to check on his salary while he was checking Jack’s hours.