Jonas’s [POV]


    Ten Years Later: Manhattan, New York


    Pushing the blueprint away, I scrubbed my hands down my face. My mind was racing a million miles a second and I couldn’t focus on what could potentially be the newest property for the Cournd Hospitality Group, or CHG as it was known internationally. When my paternal grandfather, William Cournd, died, I inherited the multibillion-dorpany and all of the problems it had. My grandfather, even at the ripe age of seventy-four, gambled heavily and thepany was nearly in shambles at the time of his death. It’d taken me thest seven years to get it back into the ck.


    The time and effort had taken more than just a financial toll on me. My personal life was shot to hell and as I looked at my desk, I could see a key sitting there, the metal gleaming in the strip of sunlighting through the window. I wanted to blow off all of my responsibilities and leave to find a piece of pussy for the night. My thoughts tended to border on vulgarity, and other than money and power, sex was the only other thing I tended to think about.


    “So, everything I’ve heard about you must be true,” myst night’s conquest had told me when I rolled out of her bed around two this morning. I knew women talked, and hell, a lot of men did, too. Now, Anabelle Fordham had joined a long list of females who expected things of me they’d never get. Hell, by now, those women likely had a support group formed and everything.


    I shook my head. Women were the least of my problems. The few times I tried to be something more than a fuck boy, they developed unrealistic expectations which I could never deliver. It’d end bitterly. No rtionship had ever ended worse than the one I’d had with…


    “Mr. Cournd. There’s an Oli-” my secretary started as she stood in the open doorway.


    “Thanks, Edith,” I interrupted.


    I had been expecting the man’s call for thest half hour. It was his fault entirely that I was still here in my office and not sliding a few hundred into a stripper’s G-string. Using this as a much-needed distraction, I picked up the phone and hit the blinking key on the base of it. “Oliver.”


    “I apologize. Myst meeting rante, Jonas. I wanted to check in to let you know that everything is all set on the Manhattan project.”


    CHG Seaport was thetest property for the Cournd Hospitality Group. It was a luxury, waterfront hotel on South Street that would soon open for business. With my busy work schedule in other locations, I wouldn’t have as much time to spend here anymore, so I enlisted help. I had filled all positions over thest several months except one and Oliver was with the consulting group that had been responsible forpiling, potential chefs who’d open and run the hotel’s service restaurant.


    “So you havepiled a list of suitable chefs?” I asked. I had been very specific about qualifications because this was the only CHG property in the Northeast, and our name was synonymous with luxury.


    “Yes, we’ve put together a list of twenty candidates vying for the contract. They’re going to be there…” He paused for a moment which had me looking at my calendar. Lately, most of the weeks seemed to blur together. It was Wednesday, which meant one thing.


    “I have to fly to California to handle something, but I’ll be back on Friday. I’ll put them up for the week, and after getting to know them and sampling their work, I will make my choice.”


    Having to fly to the West Coast, then back to bang elbows with chefs who’d likely do anything tond a contract had its pros and cons. For me, it’d likely be more con than pro, but the sooner I had someone in ce, the sooner I could officially open my newest venture. My eyes moved to the blueprints of the hotel, and I shook my head. I’d deal with CHG Seaport when I returned from Los Angeles.


    “I’ll check in with the teams and make sure everything is set,” Oliver told me, interrupting my thoughts.


    “Great,” I responded, then added, “I’ll see you in two days.”


    After disconnecting the call, I stood up and walked to myrge office window. The Cournd Hospitality Group was in one of the tallest high-rise buildings in Manhattan with ster views of downtown New York City. As a Titan, I was literally on top of the world in more ways than one. I just couldn’t help feelingtely as if something was missing. Cas, Anton, and Mase would tell me it had to do with my bachelor’s ways, but that seemed to be the only thing that distracted me from the stressful hell my job could be at times. While being with a woman, I had no thoughts in my head other than how to make theme, so I could do the same. I was very sessful with dozens of women at my beck and call, so I didn’t know what hade over me recently. Maybe, I’d take a vacation once this hotel officially opened. I lived a great life, as exhausting as it sometimes was, and I shouldn’t be anything other than ecstatic since I had everything I could’ve ever dreamed of in the palm of my hands.


    Power… Money… Sess… An endless supply of women…


    Those were all things I’d dreamed about since I was the star quarterback on my football team. I’d been offered athletic schrships to dozens of different universities across the country. Wanting to get away from Houston for more reasons than one, I settled on Stanford University. During the Summer of my freshman year, I went through the standard testing all other iing recruits did, and that was when those dreams came crashing down around me.This content belongs to N?/velDra/ma.Org .


    Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. I could still remember those fateful words. “Your son has a condition that not only thickens the walls of the heart restricting blood flow to it, but the valves could close leading immediately to cardiac arrest,” the team doctor had exined to my parents when they were called to California to have the news broken to me.


    I was arrogant enough to believe there was a pill or something which could control it, but there wasn’t. There were no surgeries that could help either, causing my dream of ying professional football to end in an instant as the heart condition was an automatic disqualifier.


    After switching my mindset, I poured all of my energy into a triple major. Five yearster, I graduated with a master’s degree in business administration, urban development, and civil engineering. Upon graduation, I went to work with my grandfather, eventually earning the respect and experience needed to take over thepany when he finally passed away. It happened less than three years into my career. Now in that same amount of time, I had brought thepany back to its former glory, and I hadn’t looked back since.


    A knock cut short my reflective moment and I turned toward Edith. “I’ve emailed your flight information to you as well as the list of chefs that’ll be attending the event at CHG Seaport. Is there anything else you need from me before I leave for the day?”


    “There isn’t. Have a good night.”


    The older woman smiled at me, then left my office doorway, leaving me alone once more. The woman was around fifty and reminded me a lot of my mother. She had the same shade of pale blonde hair that Gabrie Cournd did, and both had simr streaks of gray running through them.


    “You and your brother are going to be the death of me one of these days,” she used to tell me and my sibling. It was funny at the time, but as I got older, I could look back and see how much hell we gave her over the years. I’d like to stand there and think I had made amends, but now, she had her sights set on something else I had no intentions of giving her. She wanted grandbabies, a suggestion which I’d shoot down.


    Hell, I hardly ever bedded the same woman twice, so children were out of the question.


    Every time I thought of that preposterous idea, I’d chuckle. Pushing her wishes aside, I forced my thoughts back to the present. It was Wednesday evening and I had ns to meet my best friends at the Vault. I couldn’t stay toote because tomorrow morning, I’d leave for Cali before jetting back to New York City to spend an entire week with various chefs at the new property. If everything went ording to n, I’d be able to find someone suitable within that time. Afterward, I could focus on the ns that had been drawn up for a property in Seattle, close to the Space Needle.


    I rolled down the sleeves of my dress shirt, then picked up the suit jacket andid across a nearby chair. Edith had mentioned emailing everything I needed to me so there was nothing left for me to do here. Grabbing my briefcase and the keys to my F-Type Jaguar, I locked up my office and left to meet my friends.