Bad Swipe Bad Swipe (Billionaire's Club #12) - Elise Faber Page 0,3
years old and CEO of a company that was valued at eighteen-and-a-half billion dollars.
He’d never even dreamed something that big was possible.
Not ever.
But it was, and he now had more money than he knew what to do with, money that would grow to an even more ridiculous amount with the IPO.
If only his parents could see him now.
Unfortunately, they were both gone. His dad five years before from a fucking carjacking gone wrong, his mom just the previous year. She’d had cancer, and cancer was a fucking asshole.
So now it was him and his dog—or rather, his mother’s dog. A fluffy Bichon Frise who had typical big-dog-in-a-little-dog’s-body-syndrome and whose name was Sweetheart.
She was not sweet, not in any sense of the name.
She barely tolerated him, and that tolerating meant nipping at his heels if he didn’t feed her fast enough or take her outside often enough or just happened to walk by at the wrong time and she felt like chasing his ass down the hallway.
But Sweetheart was part of his mom, so he tolerated her.
Plus, she was old, and her teeth were worn down.
Not much damage was doled out, even with the fiercest of heel-nipping.
However, the pet sitter he had on retainer wasn’t as convinced, and though she’d been a trooper, he’d received a text the moment his plane had landed telling him that she was sorry, but she could no longer do it.
The evil beast had been fed and watered and pottied that morning.
But she needed a break before she could step back into care mode.
A long break.
Which meant he needed to retrieve the little asshole that morning and would be working with Sweetheart under his feet—the pooch in a crate that was specially designed to fit beneath his desk.
Just what he needed.
Sighing, he swung by his place, bundled up the pup while ignoring her snarling then jammed her into her carrier because there was no way he was allowing the beast to run free at the office, no matter how dull her teeth were.
Twenty minutes later, he was pulling into his space on campus and moving through the floors with the grumbling, unhappy Sweetheart in tow.
Luckily, he didn’t garner any second looks.
Or not any second looks that weren’t the usual ones shot toward the big boss walking past offices. The additional second looks that didn’t come were those associated with him lugging the pink carrier.
News traveled fast at Hunt Inc., and everyone knew they didn’t want to be within fifteen feet of the fluffy white beast who had flunked out of every doggy day care, boarding facility, behaviorist, and trainer, and who’d actually become even worse while on anti-depressants and CBD oil.
Yes, he’d even tried drugging the damned dog.
So, now his life was about his work and trying to mitigate Sweetheart, and no surprise, that was more than enough to keep him very busy.
Maybe once the IPO went through—
Sweetheart went bananas, and he glanced around, trying to figure out what had set her off. Did she see ghosts of doggy boyfriends and enemies past? Was there a person in a thirty-foot radius who’d dared to look at her? Or was she just feeling like her snarling, evil self?
Probably the last.
Likely all three.
Regardless, he managed to get into the elevator, take it up to his floor, and then make the transfer of carrier to crate that finally meant Sweetheart went quiet.
Until he had to take her out to pee.
“For fuck’s sake,” he muttered, straightening, before moving to the large bank of plate glass windows that looked out onto the city of San Francisco.
In the distance.
Because San Francisco real estate prices were ridiculous.
So, he and Hunt Inc. were situated south of the city, not that the prices were significantly better. This was California. This was Silicon Valley.
It seemed like it cost a million dollars just to own the parking spot his sedan was sitting in five stories below, let alone the entire campus that housed the thousands of employees who worked for him.
But it had all been to get to this point.
His crowning achievement, to be one of the big players, to see his company’s name on the stock exchange. A dream, a fantasy . . . and now a reality.
So, why then did he feel so . . . empty?
Nerves because his life was about to change, and it wasn’t a small one, because there would be new responsibilities and more people relying on him.
That was it.
The stocks would go live, and he’d feel normal again.