Alpha Billionaire Series

CHRISTOPHER

I really didn't care that the weather was nice, as long as it didn't get in the way of me and my morning shot of caffeine. Okay, So maybe it wasn't morning, but I needed the caffeine. I needed it hot, intense, and preferably injected straight into my veins.

At some point I would learn that drinking into the early morning hours was not something my body was able to shrug off anymore. Today was not that day. And frankly, it didn't look like tomorrow was going to be the day either.

My phone buzzed, and I felt like a hydraulic jackhammer against the back of my skull. Who the fuck was calling me at this ungodly early hour?

Ifished my phone out of the pocket of my shorts, glaring at the lock screen. My eyes read one-twenty in the afternoon, but my brain, and my hangover called bullshit. It couldn't be any later than eleven. Could it?

Without registering who had been texting me incessantly, I pressed the button that powered off my phone, and slipped it back into the pocket. I really needed a shot of espresso before I could even pretend to care about whatever I was supposed to be doing today. It was the weekend.

I walked the long block from my condo to the strip mall with the coffee shop.

“Double shot, two caramel pumps,” I ordered when I reached the cashier.

Normally, I would have driven, but my car was fucking noisy. Too loud and rumbling for me to want anything to do with it at the moment. Later, when I wasn't in pain, I'd be cocky and preening behind the wheel.

It was a gorgeous vehicle. Slick and red, and the type of women it attracted were the kind that I liked. They wanted to get off on the hood of my car. I had no problems helping them live out that fantasy. It got me laid with no questions, barely a name and certainly without a commitment.

Which was good. Because I didn't make any commitments.

They called my name, which should not have echoed through my skull the way it had. I grabbed my coffee and left.

The warm weather was good, the sun was not. It was entirely too bright. I shoved my sunglasses back on my nose and bitched that there were never any clouds when they were needed.

“Jesus, Hayes, I've been looking all over for you."

I glared over the tops of my sunglasses as a dark red convertible screeched to a halt next to the sidewalk.

“You can't park there." I pointed to a fire hydrant as the guy jumped out of his car.

I'supposed I knew who he was, but at the moment, I didn't care. I hadn't finished my coffee, and it was presumptuous of him to even speak to me before that.

I held up my finger to him and drained the cup of hot liquid. It burned going down, and not in the same pleasant way that a good whiskey did. Something about the pain in my oesophagus helped to settle the rattling pain in my head.

I had to blink to adjust my eyes to the glaring afternoon light. I pinched the bridge of my nose. Not that it helped with my memory. This guy was from the office. It was the weekend, why the fuck was he here?

“It's the weekend, Freddie. Why are you bothering me?” I started walking again.Content © NôvelDrama.Org.

“Fred, just Fred. And it's not the weekend. The weekend hasn't started, it's Thursday. You were expected at the office today." “Well, I'm not there, Just Fred” I waved my hand to make him go away like a fly that was irritating me.

“I'm aware of that. I have been sent to bring you in."

I wanted to laugh, but the sharp action and jerky movements would be a nightmare to my brain. I had only just now gotten i to settle down somewhat. He sounded like some official CIA agent or something, bring me in.

“Not today. I have one fucking headache too many. I don't think rll be adding the office to my agenda.”

Freddie let out one aggravated sigh. He didn't know how aggravated I was. He wasn't being harassed by some office flunky demanding he go into a pointless office. My presence wasn't going to make a difference. It never did. The managers and board of directors ran things. If they needed anything done, no one asked my opinion. They went straight to my—

“Your mother sent me to bring you back. Now, you can walk your own ass over and get into my car, or I can throw in the back I don't care much either way."

“You're funny Freddie. You think you can take me?” Didn't he know that I worked out. I was jacked.

I gave him a once over. He didn't look like he could wrestle a Chihuahua.

“I'm pretty sure a kindergartener could take you. You are in no shape. Maybe if you were sober”

“I am sober, asshole."

He grunted. I was sober. Only I had taken a very definite beating last night. I touched my face. Had I been in an actual fight? Nothing felt bruised. No, the only beating I had taken had come at the bottom of a tequila bottle.

I had to accept that maybe I wasn't sober when Freddie's shoulder hit my solar plexus and I was hauled over his shoulder and unceremoniously dumped in the back of his car. I struggled to get up and decided that maybe laying still with the heat of the afternoon sun pounding down on me wasn't as bad as continuing our conversation would have been. I had a good twenty minutes to let the espresso take effect before he pulled into the parking lot at the office.

I was more stable, mentally and physically, by the time he parked the car and opened the door for me to climb out. I was capable of doing that under my own power.

I brushed down the front of my shirt. Who the fuck had dressed me? The garish print sported macaws and jaguars hidden among bright green leaves. It was too much color for my throbbing head.

“You have...” I pointed at my head.

Fred popped open the trunk of his car and pulled out a bottle of water. It was warm, but it was wet, and it washed down the pills he gave me just fine.

“So, my mother is waiting?”

“I assume she is still here. And you should be prepared, she was spitting daggers when I left”

Fred stopped walking and gestured as if he were presenting me with my office when we reached my assistant’s desk in front of the double oak doors to my office.

I pushed through and found a collection of faces all glaring at me with varying degrees of disappointment.

“Where have you been?” my mother snapped.

I stepped up to her and went to place a kiss on her cheek. “You look glamorous, Mother”

She flinched away from me. “Christopher, you reek.”

“Sorry, I hadn't finished getting ready for the day when your man Freddie kidnapped me. I was on my way home to shower” “You smell like you showered in booze."

She probably wasn't wrong.

I crossed my office and sat in the swivel chair behind my desk. My assistant Valerie stood there like a statue. Technically, she was my assistant, but she really did more for my mother and other managers at Hayes Imaging Solutions than she did helping me.

She helped by covering my a*s more times than I cared to admit.

I propped my arms behind my head. Everyone looked so grim. “What's up? You all look like you just came back from a funeral. Or is this an intervention?”

I put my hands on my desk and pressed up. I shook my hands out. I had been in the office for less than ten minutes and I already felt trapped.

“Christopher, when you took over as CEO after your father, rest his soul, .. blah blah blah."

I stopped listening to her. It was always the same thing, “your father would be so disappointed; or “your father didn't do it that way! I really didn't care which way the old man did or didn't do things. I wasn't exactly allowed to proceed and run the company on my own, so why bother? She was so invested in it, she could do the damned work.

“_are you listening to me?”

I paced toward the windows and turned. “I'm not running things to your approval. It's the same thing every time, Mother." “Christopher Jameson Hayes, either you are in here running this business properly from tomorrow or you're out. The board has had enough of your apathy, and personally, I have had enough of this attitude of yours. Your father built this business from the ground up. I will not witness as you let it rot and fall back into nothingness”

Hayes Imaging Solutions was in no danger of disintegrating into oblivion. She was so dramatic. My father had built this company to be a leader in the industry. However, when it had fallen into my hands at his death, I hadn't been trusted to tie my own shoes, let alone do the job he had raised me to do.

I opened my mouth to protest.

“You will not only lose your position as CEO, but I will also see to it that you lose access to your inheritance.” My Mother stood up and her collection of flunkies, the rest of the board, all followed suit.

“Straighten up, Christopher. I will send Fredrick to check on you tomorrow. I had better see a change in you in twenty-four hours.”

She brushed out the door. I watched as she left with her threat. I glanced over at Valerie. She looked back at me, wide eyed. “I guess that gives me twenty hours of drinking left” I shoved my hands in my pockets and strolled out the door behind my mother and her entourage.