Chapter 7: Shutdown

The following chapter includes events previously detailed in my story Tom Billionaire. It is not required reading, but familiarity with that story will enhance your experience reading this chapter. And if you haven’t already read that story, this chapter will of course spoil some of those events.

-- WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2008 --

“They’re calling it ‘The Heist of the Millennium’. In an unprecedented theft, believed to be the largest single monetary robbery in history, top executives at internationally renowned Jonathan Kwong Enterprises have stolen a reported 4.2 billion dollars from the company. CNN reporter Alison Kosik has the story...”

“Good morning! Here on the Today show we’ve been covering one of the greatest monetary scandals in history. Seemingly overnight, he went from ordinary worker on Wall Street to one of the wealthiest and most famous men in America. We’ll tell you the incredible story of Jonathan Kwong’s rise to power, and how it might all come crashing down...”

“But we at Celebrity Sightings have the juicy details. Our sources confirm that Jada Sharpley, the daughter of suspected executive Robert Sharpley, has been employed as a nanny to the family’s children for the past several months. Recently released photos of the Kwongs out about town reveal how intimately involved Miss Sharpley was with the family, for example here as the children played in Central Park and here as Taylor and Ashlyn shopped on Park Avenue with their babies. Our sources also now confirm that Miss Sharpley is one of the missing – and presumed ‘on the run’ – suspects...”

“In a theft that by far has topped the record of one billion dollars removed from the Central Bank of Baghdad, reports indicate that over four billion dollars were liquidated from more than a dozen escrow accounts held in trust by Jonathan Kwong Enterprises. The money was transferred out by top executives of the company and hidden in banks unknown, and the men responsible have disappeared. The FBI is now involved in the hunt...”

“Details on the exact nature of the transaction are still unknown. But with the purchase price reportedly paid to Daniel Hollister, and the assets already sold off, Jonathan Kwong Enterprises is an extremely precarious position, now holding a negative net worth. Dylan Ratigan. MSNBC.”

“Is the Prince of New York a pauper once again? Jonathan Kwong is no stranger to our headlines. He first made waves when he was revealed to be the unknown inheritor of Jonathan Kendall’s estate nearly five years ago. His whirlwind romance with supermodel Taylor Brynn, along with a whole variety of suspected affairs with various other women throughout their courtship, made him front-page fodder for the tabloids. And he threw the entire New York social scene off its axis little more than a year ago, when it was announced that he was both dating and had impregnated another supermodel, Ashlyn Scott, while still married to his current wife. Since then, the Kwong family has operated under the radar. But now, the intense media spotlight of this financial scandal threatens to put Jonathan’s entire lifestyle right back under the microscope. Already there are rumors swirling around Jada Sharpley’s role within the family, including suggestions of an affair between the wealthy billionaire and the young daughter of one of his top executives. Indeed, our sources say that--”

“Okay, okay, enough of that,” I grumbled. “Can we turn it off?”

Penny glanced back over her shoulder to look at me, a deep-set frown on her face. She was hugging herself while holding the TV remote in one hand and thumbed the power button for Dalton’s TV.

“Come back to the table and sit down, Penny,” Dalton muttered without looking up from his screen.

The four of us were in Dalton’s temporary lodgings for the duration of the 4D project, one of many well-furnished apartments owned by JKE within walking distance of the office. This was a 12th-floor unit with a view of nothing more than the next skyscraper building across the narrow street far below, but had enough room for Dalton and Penny to sit at the dining table with their laptops while June and I sat together on the couch with our laptops on the coffee table.

Collectively, we reasoned that executive management would let us into the office again within a day or two. Having everyone work from home for the time being served to (A) allow JKE Internal Audit and FBI investigators to go over the place with a fine-toothed comb in search of evidence that might indicate whether or not Sharpley and Matthews had any co-conspirators working out of our office, and (B) keep the media away. Having some experience with paparazzi, I could well appreciate not having reporters hounding me as I tried to walk into the building.

But for us, at least, the show must go on. Our target companies didn’t know we were pursuing them, after all, so the breaking news about JKE in theory shouldn’t change our timetable. There was of course some question about whether or not we’d ultimately have the funds to execute the project; even if the runaway executives were caught by Thanksgiving, there was no guarantee that all the money could be recovered.

For now, though, we all agreed that we had no choice but to proceed under the assumption that enough money would be found and restored in order to allow us to proceed. Better to be prepped and ready to execute than sit on our butts at home doing nothing.

At least, that was the plan.

It was about 11am when the email was broadcast to everyone in the company:

Stop whatever you’re doing. Log off VPN. Disconnect from the networks. Shut down your machines. Don’t turn them back on for 72 hours.

Well, the email used a lot more words than that, but you get the gist. Apparently the FBI wanted a complete and total lockdown. They didn’t want any of us opening files, moving files, transferring accounts, downloading stuff, etc. Most importantly, they didn’t want anybody DELETING anything or otherwise trying to cover our tracks. And the only way to guarantee nobody could do that was to lock us out completely.

June and I looked at each other, and then we looked over at Dalton. His eyes and mine met, and we simultaneously shook our heads. He then looked down at his computer with a scowl, made a bunch of clicks, and finally slammed the lid shut on his laptop.

“FUCK!!! Pardon my French.”

I chuckled. “You took the words outta my mouth.”

Penny, June, and I likewise shut our laptops down. June had hers in her lap and set it on the coffee table next to mine. She then sat up straight, primly erect in stark contrast to the way I slumped in my seat. With wide-eyes and a clearly nervous expression, she shrugged her shoulders and asked, “Now what?”

I glanced over at Dalton. “I don’t know about you, but I could really use a beer right now.”

Dalton smirked. “Good call.”

“So there I was, literally hanging off the side of a cliff ass-up, my buddy is howling like a fucking orangutan and just as annoying, all while Cathy is shrieking over and over again that she’s gonna die.” Dalton laughed while continuing to mime his predicament, diagramming the situation with his right hand to represent himself and his left hand further below as Cathy, his now ex-girlfriend.

“Then what?” Penny asked breathlessly, clearly enraptured by the story.

“The anchor bolt finally broke free, Cathy died, and Dalton here had to run away to California to avoid getting arrested,” I deadpanned before taking a sip of my cocktail. After burning through the six-pack of Coronas Dalton had in his fridge pretty fast, we’d moved on to hard liquor mixed with soda and currently sat around his coffee table with Dalton and Penny on the couch and me and June seated on two of the dining table chairs.

Penny promptly kicked me in the shin, hard enough to make me flinch and I nearly spilled my drink.

“In some ways, I like Ben’s version better,” Dalton laughed. “Would’ve saved me the next three months of heartache watching her turn into more and more of a bitch every day. I’m glad it’s finally over.”

June frowned. “You didn’t just seriously say you wished your ex-girlfriend had died, did you?”

Dalton snorted. “That’s correct. I did not say that ‘seriously’ at all.”

“You’ll have to forgive June,” Penny cut in. “She has a tendency to take everything literally.”

“I do not,” June muttered defensively. “Like I knew for certain that Ben was joking about the anchor bolt breaking free.”

“Seriously, though,” Penny continued. “How did you save her?”

Dalton shrugged like it was no big deal, ready to just wrap up the story now that we’d gotten off-track. “I got Eddie to lower me down three more feet, upside-down and all. I used the spare cable to clip her harness into mine. And then I got my feet untangled so I could right myself. The harder part, actually, was getting Cathy to start climbing again. She was understandably freaked out and too scared to move for a few minutes. But eventually we all made it to the top, collected our gear, and started the long hike down the back side. All good.”

“Always a good trip when everybody comes home safe and sound,” I agreed, saluting him with my glass.

Dalton raised his glass in return, took a drink, and reclined back in his seat.

“You said you and Cathy broke up?” Penny asked, scrutinizing her drink for a moment.

“Yeah, a few months ago,” Dalton explained. “That’s when I poured myself into work and came up with 4D. I guess you could say I’ve been dating the project ever since.”

“Ah.”

“How about you?” Dalton asked Penny. “You seeing anybody?”

Penny shook her head. “I don’t have the best track record with relationships. Never found a guy who could keep up with me.”

“Never found a project partner who could keep up with you, either,” June drawled.

“I suppose you could say being project partners with someone is quite similar to being in a romantic relationship. There’s a certain level of trust and faith in the other’s abilities required in order to function and I haven’t found someone like that...” Penny’s gaze slid over to Dalton as she added, “ ... yet.”

Dalton grinned rather cockily, but rather than comment directly, he turned to me and June and said, “So in a way, that would make you two as close as any boyfriend/girlfriend couple, right?”

June blinked in surprise. “Um, what?”

“Trust and faith.” Dalton shrugged. “Everyone says you two are the best team in the whole division.”

I raised my chin up. “I’d like to think our track record speaks for itself.”

“What’s the secret to your success?” Dalton asked.

“Frequent brainstorming sessions,” Penny mumbled into her drink.

June shot her a look, and Penny immediately blushed.

“The point is: you two seem pretty compatible,” Dalton continued.

“In the field of finance, sure,” June agreed.

“But personality-wise,” I explained, “we’re total opposites.”

“Yin and Yang,” June added.

“Opposites attract,” Dalton rejoined with a grin.

“Trust and faith in each other’s abilities, yes,” I agreed. “We make good project partners.”

Penny laughed, “Even though she somehow always ends up yelling at you.”

I rolled my eyes. “She’s not afraid of conflict, I’ll give you that.”

“Conflict is a highly-effective way of bringing forth all the best ideas,” June insisted. “People focus on harmony way too much. It’s inefficient.”

“I agree,” Penny concurred.

“Aaand we’re back to why you can’t hold onto a project partner,” I chuckled.

“OR a boyfriend,” June added.

Penny sighed. “Maybe if -I- could find a project partner who could keep me satisfied the way Ben does for June, I could kill two birds with one stone.”

June’s face went white and her eyes got big.

I stared down Penny with a look of disbelief. When she blushed and stared down into her cocktail again, I sighed and shook my head, muttering a disapproving, “Really?”

Dalton leaned forward, clearly interested. “So it’s true? You two are banging?”

I sighed. “Is it obvious?”

Dalton shook his head. “No. I mean, I know people talk, but they ponder the same thing about every mixed-sex team in the whole building. Like, I’m sure people have started wondering the same thing about me and Penny.”

I eyed him carefully. “You’re not?”

Dalton and Penny glanced at each other, and Dalton began rather hesitantly, “We ... uh ... I...”

Penny blushed and averted her gaze, surprisingly quiet.

“You’re both clearly interested in each other,” June drawled plainly. “It’s pretty obvious.”

“Is it?” Dalton winced.

“Well, I thought it was pretty obvious Penny was interested in you,” I admitted. “But I didn’t know if you were into her.”

“He’s into her,” June stated before sharing a rare smile with me. “Visual attention-duration is not itself a definitive gauge, but it’s certainly indicative.”

I laughed, found both Dalton and Penny looking at us, and waved them off. “Inside joke.”

“See that right there.” Dalton pointed at us. “When I see you two like that, I just see project partners who are really comfortable with each other. I don’t see, ‘Oh, they’re banging.’”

“Oh, they’re banging alright,” Penny muttered.

June shot her another look.

“I honestly believed you were ... asexual,” Dalton marveled.

“And I’d like to keep other people believing that, thank you very much.” June glared at him, her lips thin in a hard, straight line.

Dalton immediately held his hands up. “My lips are sealed. But just between us here in the room, how does that work? Being co-workers and all? Doesn’t it get weird?”

June and I glanced at each other. I shrugged and said, “Not really. Neither of us is in a supervisory position over the other. I mean, I have no control over whether or not June gets a raise apart from helping her succeed in her career. She’s already my work-spouse.”

“A work-spouse you’re actually banging.”

“Well, neither of us is in a relationship.”

Dalton frowned. “But don’t you have a son and a baby mama?”

“I do. But my son’s mom and I aren’t on a path to marriage.”

“What about Adrienne?”

“What about her?”

“You’re banging her too, aren’t you?”

I took a deep breath and gave him my canned response. “I don’t comment about my relationship with Adrienne.”

“They’re banging,” Penny offered.

“YOU need to butt out of my personal life,” I scolded her.

Penny went back to staring at her drink, looking chagrined rather than reply with an acerbic comeback.

“You must really be into Dalton,” June commented. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you be this quiet for this long before.”

“I...” Penny began before faltering, blushing, and looking down again.

“Leave her alone,” I cautioned June. “You don’t need to embarrass her.”

Dalton reached over and patted Penny’s knee. “Don’t be embarrassed. I’m flattered.”

Penny brightened as she put her hands on top of Dalton’s and made goo-goo eyes back at him.

“To be clear,” I spoke up, “What June and I do behind closed doors is strictly physical. Pure stress-relief. An actual romantic relationship could get ... messy...”

“Right ... strictly physical ... totally...” Penny agreed with an expression on her face that plainly said her feelings were NOT strictly physical.

Dalton’s expression wasn’t much better, and he sighed. “Especially at a time like this, when the whole world feels like it’s crashing down, you know?”

“I know...” Penny nodded eagerly. “You feel SO wound up and wanna find just what you really need to relax...”

“Totally...” Dalton agreed, breathing hard.

June and I stared back and forth at the two of them, but now that their eyes had met it became clear that the two of us were rapidly becoming invisible to them.

“You know what?” I began, standing up from my dining table chair. The movement made Dalton and Penny stop making goo-goo eyes at each other and they both looked up at me. “I think it’s time June and I got out of here. Thank you very much for the beer and the drinks. I’ll bring you a case the next time I come by.”

“Don’t sweat it,” Dalton replied with a head shake.

“Meantime, I think we need to get some food into our stomachs. I’d suggest the four of us go get lunch together, but...” I winked at Penny. “I think you two will manage just fine on your own.”

“Thanks, Ben,” Penny replied warmly.

“Yeah, thanks guys,” Dalton added.

By now, June had stood with me. I jerked a thumb towards the exit and said, “We’ll just let ourselves out.”

Dalton and Penny weren’t paying attention to us anymore.

So June and I collected our laptops, put them away in our bags, and headed for the door.

Dalton and Penny were already making out before I got the door closed.

June and I were just getting into the elevator when I took a deep breath, shook my head, and muttered, “So Dalton and Penny, huh? Can’t say I’m all that surprised, but still...”

“Hold that thought,” June muttered. She had her phone out and was thumbing out a message of some kind. But a moment later she put the phone back in her purse and looked at me. “You were saying? Oh, Dalton and Penny. Yeah, saw that one coming a mile away. They kept tiptoeing around each other in the office. Dalton was trying to be aloof. I think he recognized that even if he’s not Penny’s manager, they work closely together and he IS in a sort of supervisory role. I didn’t know that he had recently broken up with his last girlfriend though, so that perhaps also played a role.”

I nodded. “And while Penny seemed pretty obviously into him, his lack of response scared her into thinking he wasn’t interested.”

“Agreed.”

“You think they’ll be alright?”

June shrugged. “If they can keep it strictly physical, sure. But Penny does seem a little infatuated. I don’t blame her. He IS quite handsome.”

“Noticed that, did you?”

“I’m well-aware of the physical standards heteronormative society has presently defined as ‘attractive’. Dalton matches those standards.”

“Do you find him attractive?”

June eyed me curiously. “Worried I might leave you for some other guy?”

“What? No. We talked about this.”

“We talked about your fear of losing what you have still holding great influence over your current decision-making.”

“I’m not having this conversation,” I muttered.

“Just like we’re still not having a conversation about what happened between you and Summer Monday night.”

“Correct. We’re not having that conversation either.”

“You can’t bury your head in the sand like an ostrich about this.”

“I’ll pull my head out of the sand and talk to you about it when you’re ready to talk to me about both Eve and Kim.”

Just then, the elevator doors dinged to let us out at the lobby level of Dalton’s apartment building. June took a deep breath, kept her eyes forward, and started walking out of the elevator even before the doors had parted far enough for her to easily pass through. She had to twist her torso sideways so as not to bump into the stainless steel.

I followed after, but June maintained an exceptionally brisk pace. In a public place, I didn’t quite want to start jogging or anything to catch her, but I speed-walked to keep up as she went out the doors, onto the sidewalk, and made an abrupt left turn.

But she couldn’t walk through traffic. I caught up at the next intersection where she and the other pedestrians on the corner waited for the crosswalk light. I stepped alongside her, asking, “Hey, what’s going on?”

“Not here. Not in public.”

“What not in public?”

June shrugged. “Talking. I’ll talk to you about both Eve and Kim, and you’ll talk to me about Summer. That’s what you said, right? The whole bit about pulling your head out of the sand? I’m accepting your offer.”

“I ... I didn’t necessarily mean we’d--”

“No take-backsies.”

I snorted. “Did you just say, ‘No take-backsies’?”

“Indeed I did.” The crosswalk signal turned white, and we started across the street.

I sighed and shrugged. To be honest, I wanted to know more about Eve and Kim, and if talking to June about my feelings for Summer was the price of getting that information, I supposed it would be a fair trade. But... “Where are we going, anyway? You seem to have a particular destination in mind, but I’m still hungry. Do you have some restaurant in mind where we can still have a reasonably private conversation?”

June shook her head. “Not a restaurant.”

I made a face. “I’m hungry.”

“She’ll have food in her fridge. I’m not saying it’ll be gourmet, but you’ll probably still like it better than a Caesar salad.”

“She?”

“Haven’t you figured it out yet?”

I blinked, looked around, and finally recognized the street we were walking on. “Wait, we’re going to the apartment?”

“Adrienne asked me to help keep her in the loop with everything going on in your life. Sasha will be at work, but Adrienne doesn’t have a shoot or anything today. I texted her in the elevator to let her know we’re coming over. My first thought was that the three of us could take advantage of an afternoon with no work, what with the shutdown and all. Watching Dalton and Penny start to hook up made me ... Well ... I wanna feel Adrienne’s tongue in my ass while I’m riding you again, alright? Maybe the vibrating Ben Junior, too. I’m still buzzing off drinking so many cocktails on an empty stomach, and ever since we started with these butt plugs I have been on FIRE.”

I blinked. June’s words and tone of voice said that she was ridiculously horny at this very moment, but the expression on her face out here on a public street was as blank as a department store mannequin.

“Uh, duly noted,” I replied lamely.

“But yeah. Afterwards we can talk. You said I’m not a very good listener when it comes to this stuff, but Adrienne wants to be a better listener for you, she has less stake in the Summer situation than either Dawn or Kim, and likewise I’ll have an easier time talking to her about both Eve and Kim as well.”

“Oh. Umm ... okay...” I suppose that all made sense.

June then turned to face me as we came to a stop at the next intersection. Leaning in close with quiet intensity in her eyes, she finished, “But AFTER you fuck my brains out. Fuck, Ben. I wish I could have your dick in me NOW.”

“Ngh! Ngh! Ngh! Ngh! NNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHAAAAAAAHHHH!!!”

With her eyes closed, June’s entire face went slack as her mouth gaped open from the force of her last orgasmic exhalation. Her bare chest was pressed down on mine, diamond-hard nipples etching my pectorals. My meaty paws gripped her ass to not only grind her clit against my pelvic bone but also spread her cheeks apart to help Adrienne buzz the Chinese girl’s starfish anus with a vibrating Ben Junior.

I pinned June’s body against my bone, undulating my hips to really maximize both the pleasure and pressure while fireworks went off behind her eyes. But eventually the tension fled her body and she collapsed flat on top of me, utterly spent.

I lay beneath her, content to let her recover and in no hurry to get my own ejaculation. Adrienne removed the business end of the blunt object from June’s butthole and thumbed it off. And after another minute or two, June picked her head up, smacked her lips a little as if just waking up from a power nap, and with bleary eyes glanced back at Adrienne.

“He’s all yours,” she muttered rather sleepily, and then with a bit of a grimace she pushed down with her left hand to help herself roll off me and onto her back.

I helped June roll off and smiled when I saw her curl up into a fetal position, looking wiped out but satisfied. I then glanced at the foot of the bed, where a naked Adrienne stood up straight, grabbed the sides of her mammoth mammaries, and squished her big bosoms together, creating a mouthwatering line of cleavage.

“Wanna fuck my tits and then splooge all over my face, Tiger?”

Umm, yes please.

Less than five minutes later I finished my last thrust through the tight tunnel of titflesh surrounding my turgid tool. Adrienne lay beneath me with her arms limply draped to the sides and behind her head, her gorgeous, smiling face cheerfully inviting my imminent shower of spunk.

My forearms strained as I tried to compress her coconuts even closer around my conquering cock, and I cried out in climax as I catapulted cannonballs of creamy cum across my cherished companion’s comely countenance.

“Ooh ... heyyy ... that looks tasty.” June woke up enough to smile sleepily and crawl across the mattress to start licking cum off the blonde’s chiseled cheeks.

I groaned and relaxed, still straddling Adrienne’s chest, smirking to watch such diametrically-different young women swapping my seed between them. We had certainly turned asexual June into quite the cumslut.

But the blissful relief of my exquisite ejaculation couldn’t last forever. Perhaps fifteen minutes later, I found myself wearing my boxers and seated upright against Adrienne’s headboard, almost mindlessly eating leftover Chinese food Adrienne had in the fridge since Sunday night while lost in thought over our myriad moral dilemmas.

Adrienne first returned back to the room having cleaned up her face of all traces of semen and dressed in a silk bathrobe. June followed less than a minute later wearing her panties, bra, and shirt.

“So June said you two needed to talk?” Adrienne began, climbing onto the foot of the bed before folding her long legs into a lotus position.

June pursed her lips and looked rather less comfortable. Rather than join us she paced over to the window, stared out across the San Francisco Bay, and gestured dismissively. “Let Ben go first. He needs to tell you what’s going on with Summer.”

Adrienne looked confused. “Tell me? Not you?”

June shrugged. “I’m not particularly invested in whether or not he gets together with Summer, unless for some reason she decides she doesn’t want him fucking me anymore. But the situation has clearly been bothering him, it’s been impacting his productivity, and I need you to fix him for me.”

I frowned and set the empty carton of leftover beef and broccoli on the nightstand and wiped my mouth with a tissue. “That wasn’t the deal. I said I’d talk to you about Summer IF you talked to me about Eve and Kim. That means YOU go first.”

June turned and frowned at me. “The grammatical conjunction ‘if’ was not a part of the agreement. If I recall, you more precisely stated that you would pull your head out of the sand and talk about Summer ’when’ I was ready to talk about Eve and Kim. Well I’m ready.”

“Good. Then you can go first.”

“No, YOU can go first.”

“Well if you’re not ‘ready’, then there’s no deal.”

“I AM ‘ready’.”

“If you’re ‘ready’, then why aren’t you starting?”

“I can be ‘ready’ and not go first. The two are NOT mutually-exclusive.”

“Then you’re not actually ‘ready’.”

“Children. Please.” Adrienne had extended both arms outward, pointing at me with her right arm and June with her left. “Ben, just go first.”

I sighed and shrugged. “Summer and I went kayaking on Sunday, I told her I wasn’t in any state to start a new relationship, she promised not to pursue me but then after dinner we went for a walk and she started kissing me and we fell in the water and--”

“Yeah-yeah-yeah, I know this part already. What happened Monday night?”

I shrugged. “Haven’t you already talked to Kim about it by now? Thought you were big on keeping tabs on me.”

“She doesn’t know that much about this one yet. She, Dawn, and June went to pick up BJ from Lynne’s place and left you and Summer alone, expecting you to either hash things out and ask her out on a date, or decide you weren’t ready and shut her down completely. I gathered you went for Option 2 because when the girls came back to the apartment, Summer was gone. Apparently Dawn went over to Summer’s place to talk, found out that you two had started making out again, but you stopped things and Summer went crying back home.”

“Yeah. So you’re caught up. Not much to tell.”

“LOTS more to tell,” June insisted.

I rolled my eyes. “Look, she’s attractive. I’m attracted. But nothing’s changed in the last month. Do I need to bring out the tape recorder?”

“No, of course not,” Adrienne sighed.

“It’s messing up his productivity,” June complained. “He stares off into space lost in his own head. He wasn’t doing that a month ago. That’s why I brought him over to your place yesterday at lunchtime.”

“And then promptly found out JKE misplaced four billion dollars. Taylor told me the whole company is shut down?”