Chapter 305

A mid twenties, almost beautiful woman in jeans, standing beside a little over forty year old woman, with a body that was constructed over a skinny ass frame, made for a depressing comparison. At least if you were the forty year old man made bitch. I swore that I would not hold against Sylvia the fact that she was prettier then me. Hell, almost everyone was prettier than me.

"So Sylvia, how was your meeting with Jennifer?" I asked.

"I have a pad full of notes. Most of them cover what I am supposed to do, if you disappear for days at a time," she said almost seriously.

"Oh now that is interesting, what do you do?" I asked.

"If it is the first day, I am to clean the office and go to a movie. Make only decisions that must be made to prevent a nuclear war." she said.

"That is an exaggeration I hope?" I commented.

"Yes, but not by much, each additional day you are gone I have additional things to do and people to notify," she said.

"I see. Well forget all that. You will know, if I plan to go anywhere. If I haven't told you before hand, or left a message, then call Jen." I laughed.

"Frankly boss, that was my plan," she said.

"Good, the morning's mail is on the end table. Sort out the bills and bring bring them to the dining room table. We can go over them there. I have a feeling we are going to need an office sooner rather than later."

"Yes, it seems Jennifer has a cabinet filled with your papers. She wants to send them over, since you are finally in business for real. Those are her words by the way." Sylvia informed me.

"Yes according to her I never took my finances seriously enough. She is hoping I will become a slave to the dollar, as she and Bob already are. Who knows maybe I will."

"Well the first step is to start going over the bills," Sylvia said.

It took us one minute to sort them. Almost all my bills went to the accountant. He could easily be robbing me blind. Jennifer felt sure that he wasn't, but even she wasn't completely sure.

"Sylvia, if I take you to the accountant. Do you think we can work out a system where you and I can judge which the bills he pays, before he pays them. I want you to double check everything for a while. The bills we get and the bank statements of what is being paid. I want to be sure there is a bill for every payment, as well as a payment for all the bills." I said seriously.

"I'm sure I can do that," she said. Not sounding quite as confident as I would have liked.

"This job isn't going to be as easy as you thought," I suggested with a smile.

"If you pay me, I plan to work. What the work is really doesn't matter very much." I smiled my approval. That conversation pretty much set how thing would go for the first few weeks.

As things happened, we built a new systems to manage them. I made sure that even Sylvia didn't know all there was to know about my finances. I had never considered them a big deal, but I just didn't like the idea of anyone knowing all there was to know about anything.

So Sylvia and I began making the rounds of people she needed to meet. Those meetings and the search for an office site was how we spent the first week.

You guessed it, I loved Ed's old office and wanted one just like it. I sent Sylvia out to look everyday after our meetings with vendors and contract people. Her job was to just ride around and document any building for sale that looked about the size of Lucas's office building. While she was at it, she kept a list of all commercial builds that might be of interest in my redevelopment schemes.

Of course I introduced Sylvia to Lucas and Julie on our first day out. They were getting to be quite the team. I heard from Helen that they were getting pretty serious. I was waiting for just the right time to give Luke the third degree. It didn't come up during out meeting. Luke and Julie fell in love with Sylvia, before we left there were dinner plans which didn't include me. I approved.

Sylvia had been working for me eight days and we were still working on my dining room table. I was serious about moving, but it didn't get really urgent on my list of things to do, until someone tried to break in on me.

Like I have said a hundred times, I don't sleep. Since Eve and I were communicating over our own private link, I especially wasn't sleeping that night. When I head the noise at the back door, I switched on the camera in my head. I should say that I moved the image window from the rear to the front of the stack. As I sat on the second floor looking out the front window, there were two men forcing my rear door. I knew that I should do what any good citizen would do, call the cops and try to avoid a confrontation.

That was obviously what I should have done, but it wasn't what I did. I quietly went down the stairs, so that I was waiting for them when they entered. They might have worked on the rear door five minutes to get it open. I waited for them inside the hallway for the last two of those minutes. I was just inside the storeroom door so that they wouldn't see me until they were inside. I planned to make if very difficult for them to run away untouched.

Sure I could have run them down like a wolf chasing a three legged deer, but I preferred that it look like a run of the mill home invasion gone wrong, not some super hero shit. I was almost ready to open the door for them, when they finally popped the lock. I let the first one get by me so that the second one could get inside the door.

Then I moved out behind them and grabbed the trailing burglar. I simply threw him against the wall. When he turned toward me as he bounced off the wall, I broke his jaw with a blow which I had seen Gus, my marine friend, demonstrate at the police academy. I bent my fingers back until they pointed straight up before I hit the intruder on the chin with a straight shot landing the heel of my hand hard onto the point of his chin. I heard bone crunch and then a gurgle as his gums disintegrated filling his mouth with blood. If I had hit his nose he would be dead.