Chapter 13: Fiona and Dan Find Their Own Truth

“Cindy, Danny is arriving in about 15 minutes. Did I hear you correctly when you said all the girls were out running errands?”

“Yeah, babe, but they have to get back by four because Kaylani has an early evening date in one of the hotels by the airport. One of her guys had a layover from Chicago to spend time with her for six hours or so and then was going to fly on to Asia. Fiona is here, and I saw her going down to the gym to work out. Matt is supposed to be here soon, but he always accesses the house from the first floor.”

“Oh, okay. I wasn’t ready yet to tell Danny about the girls and your profession, so it’s good that they will either be gone or out of sight when Danny is here, and he will be gone long before they get home. We haven’t talked much in the last few months, mostly because we lead separate lives, and he has been busy living his. I just wanted to let him know slowly, you know?”

“Oh, I get it, babe. Believe me, I get it. Oh, were you going to give Danny the picture you found digging through those boxes when he was a kid, and it was you, his mom, and him when he was nine years old? I’m sure he will appreciate it.”

“Yeah, but I can’t remember where I put it. It’s in storage, either downstairs or outside in the garage.”

The buzzer to the iron gate sounded, and Lennie looked down as he saw Danny’s car waiting. He pushed the button, and the gate started opening up. Danny drove up and around the side of the house to the main door. Before he could knock, Lennie opened the door.

“Danny!”

He didn’t like to be called “Danny,” but it was okay if his father did. “Hi, Dad. Good to see you again.”

“So, how does it feel after landing a nearly a quarter billion dollars a year contract with the biggest coffee company in the world?” Lennie asked as he beamed at his son, who just four days ago negotiated the contract by himself when Lennie was laid up with a virus and a 103-degree fever. Lennie was finally feeling better.

Danny beamed. “It feels good, awesome even. It’s too bad you couldn’t have been there. I still can’t believe I was walking away from a deal that big. I had the conference room door open when their top dog stopped me and asked me if there was anything we could do about the price. Like you taught me, the price wasn’t the issue. It was the terms and conditions. He just agreed to them all, and after that, I only had to give another 4 percent off, and he said yes. A fourteen percent total discount off the list price after giving them only ten percent to get the ball rolling is nothing in the big scheme of things.”

“You asked me if it was too much, and I said no, I would have given twenty percent off the list. However, I was not honest with you, Danny.” Danny looked at his dad. “For a deal that big, I would have given them 40% off if I had to.”

“Really?”

“Sure, as long as ‘Bux pays for all of their hard costs up front and we don’t have any exposure, our company is safe. We would have still netted over eighty million a year after costs. Hell, the company is making double that with your negotiation skills. That cash flow will be steady for the next seven years and a further five years if they renew the contract. Son, that makes us both a point one of a point one of a one-percenter. Hell, Danny, five years ago, I was driving for Uber to pay my bills after all the crap happened with your mom’s cancer death and that bastard ripoff uncle of yours.”

“Yeah, he was sure a piece of shit to me, until he wasn’t,” Danny grumbled.

“You’re right, but that’s in the past now, and life has a funny way of changing when one least expects it. In my wildest dreams, I would have never even dreamed that I, no, we, would be so successful. So, like I said, enjoy your wealth—but make sure you invest well. Do you have a financial planner and a tax attorney yet, like I told you to get?”

“Uhh, no, I still use my CPA. He’s a good guy and knows accounting law really well.”

“Yes, but he doesn’t specialize in estate growth. Look, keep him because you like and trust him. He is a valuable resource, but allow me to introduce you to my team. Get them involved working together for your benefit. You won’t regret it.”

“Okay, thanks, Dad.”

Right then, Cindy walked up behind Lennie and stepped forward, facing Dan and giving him a long, loving hug. Her breasts pushed into the younger man’s chest, although she wasn’t trying to arouse him. It’s just that with big breasts like hers, there was no place for them to go except being smashed in between their bodies. She turned to Lennie and did the same thing. He smiled as he felt her body parts and smelled her intoxicating scent of shampoo and perfume. Her makeup was minimal, and her look was natural. Her brunette hair was pulled back into a practical ponytail, which made Cindy look down-home, naturally incredibly sexy, as opposed to formal dress and jewels, million-dollar-woman sexy.

“Hi, Danny! So good to meet you again! My gosh, you look just like your dad. I saw the resemblance the first time we met, but it’s even more apparent to me this time.” She looked around and didn’t see another person. “Where is Shelby?” she queried.

His smile disappeared.

“Dad, Cindy, Shelby left me, or rather, to be more precise, I dumped her.”

Lennie was surprised and saddened by the news. He looked at Cindy, who was a bit stunned. She asked, “What happened?”

“She ran into her old college boyfriend and slept with him. It wasn’t just once. She has been with him behind my back for over a month now. At first, she lied about it and then finally admitted it. She said she had mixed feelings about both of us and had to, as she said, ‘find her true self.’ She couldn’t decide between him and me who was better for her.”

“So what did you do?”

“I dumped the cheating bitch’s ass; that’s what I did. Dad, you helped me become a multi-millionaire before I was thirty. When Josh retires next year, according to his plans, I will be the CEO of my own multi-million-dollar company. I’m going to hire a VP of Operations and a VP of Sales to handle most of the day-to-day work. Now that the company has a plan, a direction, and a successful track record, any good manager can guide the company into the future after I retire. You know, Dad, I’m increasingly impressed with how you found the niche, which is essentially a monopoly, so we can charge such high margins and not worry about competition. It’s a modern-day gold mine!”

“Yeah, but it was a team effort. Josh was pretty damn creative when he invented that cleaning bottle. And he was smart to get a patent for it right at the start, so no company with money could steal his idea. I was the one to put it together, but it worked only because of the money in your trust fund to finance everything.”

“Yeah, Dad, but that would have been your money if Uncle Pat hadn’t pulled his weaselly moves and stolen it out from under you as Mom was dying of cancer. After all, about three-fourths of my estate was the life insurance policy you paid for. Only the other quarter was stocks she had accumulated from Grandpa over the years.”

“Look, Danny, you’re right, but it all worked out for the best, so leave it in the past. We’re both incredibly successful now.” Danny silently nodded.

“Besides, Danny, the gold mine won’t last forever. A design patent only lasts 15 years after it is granted, and we are already in the third year. So the day it’s up, believe me, ‘Bux or someone else will have a replacement bottle ready to go. The knockoffs will partner up with the three manufacturers of cleaner and undercut our pricing by 90%. It means our margins will crumble to nothing in a year or two. It’s just reality, so the trick is to make hay while the sun shines. Even more importantly, spend it wisely and invest it well. When that happens, you will be 41, and so much of your life will still be ahead of you. I’ll be really old or long gone.” Danny silently nodded again. “Just remember that if you invest it correctly, you can live off the interest and never work another day in your life.”

Cindy had heard enough of their business talk. Over the years, many of her clients—many of them billionaires and captains of industry—always talked business. After all, they spent their lives immersed in it, but it bored her after hearing the Cliff Notes version, no matter how many billions were involved. Neither man knew it, but the man Danny negotiated with, Samuel Jackson Haggarty, ran other businesses with a combined market value of over two trillion. He worked with Danny only because he was on-site for a board of directors meeting and was asked to negotiate the deal.

Haggarty had no idea who Lennie was, who Danny was, or Lennie’s relationship with the whore-soulmate and love of his life, Samantha. In fact, in an earlier discussion with Samantha, he got the heads-up from her that the cleaning bottle was a good business decision for ‘Bux and went easy on the negotiations with Danny, partly as a favor to Samantha.

Normally, he would have dragged out negotiations to get a better price and terms, but he was busy and didn’t have the time. Still, it was a good deal for ‘Bux, so everyone was happy. Jackson had no idea that it was Lennie she had fallen for and would never, for many other reasons, ever marry him, no matter how many times he proposed to her.

And she got bored listening to that client-talk business, too. She skillfully changed the subject.

“So, Danny, that’s sad about Shelby. You two were such a cute couple. What happened, if I may ask?”

Danny was still defensive about the breakup but hadn’t talked about it to anyone outside his very small circle of friends and unloaded on his dad’s girlfriend.

“I may not be the world’s greatest gift to women, but I know I’m a pretty good catch for a woman looking for a decent guy who, oh, by the way, is a self-made multi-millionaire before age 30. I’m not going to put up with getting cheated on and then getting lied to about it. I just don’t know why she did it. After all, we were talking about marriage, and she knows she would have had a luxurious lifestyle. She had to ‘find her true self,’ her words, not mine. So she went and fucked her old boyfriend. Well, she can go to hell.”

“Was it the fact she screwed someone else?” The subject allowed Lennie to delve into Danny’s inner thoughts. He wanted as much information as he could gather before he revealed any information about his girlfriend, or for that matter, any of his girls.

“Kinda, but not really. What pissed me off was how Shelby stabbed me in the back by lying to me. We had even talked about marriage. But now, there is zero trust from my side. She shattered it. I don’t get it.”

Cindy stayed quiet and simply nodded.

“I’m a fucking meal ticket, and I always treated her with respect. I really loved her. I thought that I communicated that pretty well. There was no question where I stood with her, at least in my eyes. She was, in the end, a self-centered cunt. I guess I’ll never understand women.”

He realized the company he was with.

“Oops, sorry, Cindy, I should watch my language.”

Cindy smiled. “No offense taken, Danny.”

Lennie looked at him warmly. “Don’t worry, you’re a guy. Like any guy, try as much as you want—you’ll never completely understand women.”

“Yeah, I figured as much.”

“So it was how she crushed your trust in her?”

“Yeah.” Danny paused for a few seconds, wondering if he should tell his dad such personal details. Anything I know about, he probably lived or knows about, too, he thought, and spoke up, even with Cindy standing there.

“To be honest, Dad, we did some pretty kinky sex stuff. We tried every position imaginable. We would lick each other’s asses. Shelby loved anal, and I loved giving it to her. We would have sex in public, and a couple of times we got caught. We would just finish, laugh, and run away. After a while, things heated up, and we swapped with another couple in the same room a couple of times. But we both knew and agreed to it. We talked about it later. But what she did was different—she went behind my back. It was cheating and lying about it. So, fuck her.”

Lennie was kind of surprised his kid’s sexual adventures were as wild as they were. Still, Lennie could tell his son was sad about the breakup.

For some reason, he thought that Danny was young and naive. He wasn’t dumb, just over his head. And then immediately, he flashed on the face of his beautiful, freckled, redheaded housemate. The same description could describe Fiona. In many ways, they seemed like two peas in a pod.

“You know what, Danny, I haven’t really seen you in months. You’ve been so busy building the company. We seldom talk, and I only get an occasional text from you. I’m not complaining—you’re busy, and I understand that. We are just about ready to go, so have a seat on the sectional while Cindy and I finish getting ready. How about we go to Bob’s and have a burger and a beer? It’s just down the road. Cindy loves those burgers at Bob’s.”

“Yeah, they are scrumptious,” Danny answered. He remembered going to the neighborhood bar and grill once after helping his dad move into his new home.

“That’s great!” Cindy exclaimed. She had always wanted to get to know Lennie’s son better and wondered if Lennie was holding back because he didn’t approve of her or what she did for a living. It was his prerogative, after all. His announcement squelched that thought.

Lennie had found a print of their early family—himself, Mary, and Danny when Danny was nine years old—a few weeks back while sorting through boxes that had been stored for a while. It was the perfect picture and reminded Lennie of better times. He had it copied and framed many months ago and just remembered to give it to Danny when he visited. However, he couldn’t remember where he put it until he found it rummaging in storage boxes one day.

As they moved to the living room, Lennie asked Cindy if she could help him find the picture. While he went out to the garage to check the other location he believed he had stored it, he begged Cindy to look for it in the “catch-all” room downstairs.

“We’ll just be gone for a few minutes. Stay here, Danny, and enjoy the view,” he offered, standing in the middle of the living room.

“It really is an incredible view of the Sound, Dad.”

Lennie followed Cindy down the stairs. Cindy turned to the left into the extra room that everyone had started using as a storage space for useless things that didn’t really fit anywhere else and which nobody knew where to put. Lennie and all of the girls were guilty of tossing things in that room. There was box upon box upon box. Cindy muttered to herself at the mess, but then she remembered that much of the stuff was hers, so she quieted herself as she thought about where the picture could be. Lennie walked outside and to the detached 4-car garage, looking for it as well in the boxes out there.