Chapter 1
Mason
My father slams the latest copy of Beneto Magazine down on my desk. His face is red, and as he looks down at me where I sit in my leather office chair. The cover is of yet another scandal. It looks like they had taken several pictures of me with Lexi, one of my latest conquests. She’s sitting on my lap, purring sultry words into my ear. The night is a drugged-out blur in my mind, but I vaguely recall pulling the half-naked girl from the general population of clubgoers to spend a night in the VIP lounge before I brought her to my condo downtown. I don’t bring any of the women I sleep with to my home. It’s too risky, and they become far too attached. Besides, the condo is only a block from my office versus the hour it takes me to drive to the rural community where I had my home built.
I look up from the trashy magazine to my father, whose face looks like it might burst with the rage that’s building behind his eyes. I lift my brow and sit back in my office chair. “Yes?”
“What is this?” He seethes, clearly upset with my behaviour, and I almost roll my eyes at him. My publicist and mother walk in, both struggling to tame their breathing from the run they must have had to keep up with him as he stormed through the skyscraper that is the Ashford LLC building.
“Why don’t you fill me in? You are trashing the name I worked so hard to maintain!” My father starts calm but loses his temper easily. He has always lost his temper too easily. He never laid an ill-placed hand on any of us, but he certainly knows how to intimidate with the tone of his voice—too bad for him. I am used to it and know exactly what to say and do to get my way.
“Looks like a fun night out, commemorated by the paparazzi to me,” I state the obvious, but that only eggs him on.
“What happened to Amelia?” He questions, and I sigh.
“She wanted far too much from me, my time, marriage, and a child. Your arrangement between the two of us quickly became less than ideal.” I don’t have to explain myself to him. He has given me thirty percent of the company, he has forty-nine percent, and my mother owns twenty-one percent. I will get full ownership of Ashford LLC when I marry, or they both pass, so I am biding my time. As morbid as that is, that is the only way I will gain the rest of the shares because I am not marrying.
“Son. You are almost thirty-two years old. This behaviour puts a bad name on the company and an even worse name on you. You’re going to take the company down with you if you keep partying and sleeping around like a man whore—”
“Ivan!” My mother scolds his harsh words, but my father doesn’t stop his string of insults and scolding. He continues, and I impatiently tap the glass of my desk, waiting for him to finish. Many of the lines he says are the ones I have heard time and time again.
I need to take this seriously. Which I am, but I am not going to stop indulging in women each night just to own a company.
I need to become a man. I can’t help the huff of bewilderment. I am a man. He is the one who has let a women hold him by his balls.
“You will get married.” My father declares, pushing his finger into the table so hard his nails become white. I huff another laugh. He can’t be serious.
“I will not,” I respond, not one part of me interested in further entertaining the idea.
“Then all of my shares and your mother’s will go public once we pass. Either you marry in the next year or lose everything.” My father threatens me.
“You can’t do that,” I state with enough arrogance that makes my mother physically cringe.
“It has become evident that the man your mother and I have raised has forgotten the roots that made it so he could be where he is today. Family is our main priority. Family is what this business was built on, and either you come back down to Earth with the rest of us, or this business is no longer yours.” My father taps the table before returning to my office's eight-foot-tall, heavy, hallowed metal doors. Before he walks out, he looks back over his shoulder towards me, “Get married, have a family, or you are out. We will host a party at my home within the next week to find your bride. If not, pack your bags. You are out of the CEO position.”
I look towards my mother, who gives me a sad look but nods her head, “We were patient with you, M, but you need to start focusing on what is important in life before all the drugs and partying kill you.”
My mother, in all her dainty elegance, walks out, leaving me with my publicist, who stands before me in her navy pencil skirt and white blouse. She stares up at me with determined dark brown eyes. Her black hair has been pulled back into a tight bun, and I smirk at the memory of bending her over my desk within the first four months of hiring her. Four years later, she has hung her risky nights for a wife and twins.
“I can’t say I disagree with your parents.” As she taps her pen on her notebook, she says, “It would serve you well to find someone who makes your heart skip a beat and gives you something to look forward to at the end of long days and busy weeks.”
I groan at the thought, “You’ve gone soft, Lyla.”
“No, I have found something that is astronomically better than partying every night and having sex with random men and women.” She shrugs her shoulder and winks at me. My face twists in disgust at how lovesick she has become since we first met. “Besides, your mother and father are right. Your personal ratings with the public have plummeted harder than any other socialite or celebrity in the last five decades.”
“Who cares about my public ratings.” I stand from my chair, my six-foot-seven frame towering over her five-foot-five body. But she is used to my height and stares me down, shaking her head in disappointment.
“You should care because this is not only how the public sees you but how they see Ashford LLC, your family, and if they will trust your brand. Our quarterly inflow of clients, sales, and revenue is down fifty percent from the last quarter. People don’t want to support a drugged-up party goer who uses women like toys, they want to support the wholesome family of Ashford LLC. The company may be the best law firm in the USA, and you are one of the best lawyers, but it means nothing when your lawyers walk to competitors like Mayfair LLC, and the only person left is you—the man nobody can trust. You realize how important it is for clients to trust their lawyer, right? So, get your act together before you lose your shares in the company and you take the company down with you.” She chides as she lectures me, tapping my chest with a perfectly manicured finger.
She and I glare at each other before I relent. She is right. As much as I hate to say it, we have lost so many clients and team members to Mayfair in the last year alone. I will die before I let Aiden Mayfair run my company into the ground, and if the people want the façade of a family man and wife, then they can have it, “Find me a wife then.”
“Excellent! Be ready for a ball at your father’s mansion Saturday at the end of the week.” She claps her hands together, balancing her notebook and pen in her hands as she does so, making for a motion that could barely be considered a clap.
“Whatever. We don’t need a ball. Pick someone you like and give them a ring.” I walk past her, done with this horrendous conversation. She laughs, her lilting, hypnotizing laugh that had once made it hard to keep my hands off her but now irritates me.
“C’mon, it will be fun. Go to the ball, be Prince Charming all the ladies are after, and dance until you find your future wife. This ball will be the first of many events to improve your ratings and build a better image for Ashford LLC.” She tells me, and I roll my eyes. She follows me as we walk to the elevator, my secretary and assistant, Penelope, sits near the elevator ready to intervene with any guests before they come to my office.
I raise my brow at her, glaring in her direction. She let my father bombard me in my office, very obviously raging. He may have been CEO for decades, but she’s my secretary, and I am CEO now.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Ashford.” She apologizes, and I growl out an unintelligible response.
“Okay, Mr. Grumpy-Face. Are you going to throw a tantrum? Or are we working today?” Lyla asks, pressing the elevator button so we can plan this ball with my parents.
