04.01.21
Super chatty chapter. Honestly, a little shocked no one made the connection between Acero and Ana's name in the last one.
CHAPTER TWELVE - Acero & Enlight
10 days ago
"What do you have for me gentlemen?" I say the moment Barney and Welch walk into my office.
Barney connects his iPad to the flatscreen in my office and walks me through everything related to José and Gaia's startup. The fuckers named it Acero which is Spanish for steel, yet by the looks of all the information it shows that legally, Ana has no stake in any of this. After pulling Ana's financials for the past two years it's obvious that a large percentage of financial contributions have come from her, in addition to moral support.
"It's a search engine meant to rival the likes of Google, Bing, Yahoo! You name it. Gives users the peace of mind that they're not being tracked. Complete privacy. Investors are interested, I sat in on their pitch meeting with VC's three weeks ago at the Sea-Tech conference during some of the breakout sessions."
"Sir, they received $100,000 from an angel investor, two weeks ago." Welch adds.
"I see, Barney… what's your assessment, you think it has potential?"
"It does but they're bound to get hit with litigation right out the gate. It's like David against Goliath but they have a solid idea of allowing anonymity while searching through encrypted relays making you essentially invisible and they don't store any personal information. It's a double edged sword because from an e-commerce perspective, they rely on the tracking metrics to push their products via advertising and reaching their desired demographic and fucks up algorithms across the board… so yeah, this puts a wrench in all that."
"Fuckers are smart." I mumble, swiping through Barney's notes.
"Their source code is free and hosted under license but the core is proprietary and I'll be honest, I'd love to take a look at it. I think we could possibly integrate it with Project: Whisper after some modifications." He adds.
We've signed a contract with the DOD to outfit their bases in the Middle East with our tech. And if there is something we can definitely pull from Acero then that means, I just got myself a big ass change order with Uncle Sam.
But do I want to give these fuckers a single penny after how they cheated Anastasia?
"Agreed. Let me think about this a little more and I'll give you my final decision."
Barney gives me a curt nod and gets up to leave while Welch stays behind.
"These two cheated someone out of their share. And now, I want this tech, Welch but I don't want to outright steal it or pay an shit ton of money to get it. I want them to lose it to me and I think I have an idea how."
"I'm all ears, sir."
"ANSWER ME." She roars. "You're just using me aren't you?"
"No, Ana I am not. I swear you to, that's not what this is." I reply as calmly as I can. "My head of R&D looked into them and did some research, I'm intrigued. This thing between you and me is completely separate from all that."
"What research?" There's still an edge to her voice and her entire body language is now tense, a complete 180 from a few minutes ago.
"I looked them up after you told me their names and my head of security put together these files on them."
"This is an invasion of their privacy." She starts. "I'm guessing there's one on me too?"
Ah, fuck me! Angry badger is smart and cute. Deadly combination.
I inhale and give a small nod.
"This is fucked up, Christian. You had no right to look into me or them. We are not a threat to you."
"I know, I was just…" I shrug. "Curious?"
"CURIOUS?" She bellows. "That's what you're going to go with? Acero is about privacy, which is a fundamental right and just because you have more money than sense doesn't mean you should go looking into people's personal lives ESPECIALLY when they didn't warrant such an invasion. I mean you could have just asked me."
"Well, I tried." I weakly offer. "But we got sidetracked last night."To be honest, I would not mind getting sidetracked and dickstracting you again.
Keep dreaming, Grey.
"No we didn't get sidetracked, you insisted on being an asshole by trying to manipulate me." She snaps. "I didn't need all the flowers and shit. A simple email or a phone call would have sufficed that hey, I want to talk business. Are you available to meet with me? But no, if this was truly supposed to be a business dinner then you would've taken me some place public but you didn't so last night was all a part of your plan and I was so fucking stupid to fall for it."
Sex just happened to be a surprise addition to the menu last night. Did I want to sleep with her yes but I also knew that given her attitude towards me it would be difficult.
"Okay yes, when I first sent the flowers, I wanted to take you to dinner and get to know you personally before I talked to you about Acero. But you kept rejecting my advances and so the business dinner was an improvisation to get you to agree that day at SIP. Last night was a pleasant surprise, I didn't think it was going to end the way it did. I really did hope we could talk but you shut down completely. Honestly, It's all Elliot's fault. You need to direct your anger at him. If he hadn't opened his mouth, you'd be far more easier to deal with." I give her a panty dropping smile, hoping that it'll sway her but it doesn't do anything to help and her jaw hardens.
"Do you have a deathwish?" She asks through clenched teeth, daring me to be a wiseass again. "You think this is funny because I don't."
"Ana, please go through this information. I suspect there is stuff in there you don't know."
Her eyes remain on me for a few seconds and she finally relents. It takes her a few minutes going through the dossier's Welch created on them, including their financial activity. It is imperative that she knows this before I share what I have in mind for them.
"So they got the $100,000 investment three days before the wedding." She states more for her own understanding. "They never told me."
"You deserve your stake in Acero. Fuck! It's after your last name, you know that right?"
"Of course, I know that." She glares at me. "I've been around the Rodriguez family since I was a child, you don't think I would've picked up on the language? I was there when they came up with the name but it was their idea. They didn't ask me to do anything, I offered."
"I don't care, you have sweat equity and you need to sue their ungrateful asses." I plead with her. "Yes, I want to acquire the tech but what's far more important to me is that you get your share in it too. That is the truth, Ana. I swear."
It's taking everything in me to not lose my cool and fly off the handle. I've done far worse to people who've barely done anything to me. Her complacency in this regard is annoying the fuck out of me.
"I didn't sign anything that guarantees me equity, Christian." She sighs in defeat. "I was helping them because," she shrugs and opens her mouth to say something but slowly shakes her head. "They were my best friends, my family… I would've done anything for them."
"They obviously didn't feel the same way and they need to be taught a lesson."
"By becoming like them? And sharing proprietary information? That's not who I am. They were the brains of all this, I...I..."
"Explain to me in detail everything you've done since they founded Acero. Separate from the tech, what is your involvement or have you signed an NDA?"
She shakes her head. "No NDA signed, not that it matters anyway, it's not like I know coding or the intricacies of all that stuff. I just know the big picture idea."
She tells me everything, the jobs and gigs she took so that they could work on the app. Creating their pitch deck, proofreading, helping them with their pitches, polishing their presentations. She was in fucking COO mode for them while they fucked off and fucked each other. She nursed him back to health when he blew out his fucking knee the first year at WSU which meant he got let go from the team had to actually rely on his brains than physical talent to keep up with school and who helped him with his core class assignments? Who helped Gaia with her assignments or anything else whenever she needed it? Ana.
"Gaia is the face of the app, I suppose José is too but the room responds better to her during presentations and she has a presence, always had one." Ana sighs and sits back on the couch, playing with the ends of her almost dried hair, seemingly lost in thought.
"Look, you wanna acquire them? Go ahead and do it on your own dime and time. Don't expect me to be a part of it. That is not who I am. Karma has their address and I'm sure she'll get to them eventually because if I partake in something for the high of revenge or whatever, it will only last a little while but the guilt of becoming like them will stay with me forever. I am loyal to a fault and I suppose that's my weakness but at least I sleep easy at night."
The silence stretches between us and I see her wipe her eyes.
"Ana, I didn't mean to upset you."
She shrugs and exhales. "You and Kate are on my ass to take out all this anger and shit and make them pay but for now, my heart is just broken and the humiliation is just...I don't want to think about them but you guys keep bringing it up. You have to understand that I've known them since we were kids. And then when I moved back here from Texas we actually became close and that was it, we became inseparable. We used to talk about wanting to get out of Montesano and do something with our lives. Change the world or something." She chuckles wryly. " When they came up with Acero, it made me want to dream too which I did and I was waiting for them to make it or at least get to a point where money wasn't that much of an issue before they could help me with my idea."
"What do you mean?"
"I have this idea for an app-startup whatever but, I don't know it seems really far-fetched now. I'm alone and don't really know much about the nitty gritty stuff. I was hoping to save up and attend some conferences myself and seminars that were catered for female entrepreneurs to help me learn how to raise capital, fundraise and stuff since I'm completely out of my depth…" She shrugs. "I think I just need to take some time and find myself again or something. I also need to find a lawyer and register a trademark and all that stuff and it's overwhelming to think about since it all costs a lot."
"Do you have any literature you can share with me?"
She looks at me but I can tell she's unsure again. "I have a pitch deck that I created but…"
"But?"
She laughs nervously. "I don't know. I've never really had to present it before, public speaking makes me want to throw up."
"You're not in public, you're just talking about your idea. Have you shared this with anyone?"
"Well, no NDA's if that's what you're asking." She looks back at me and I shake my head. We need to fix this but I'll get to that later. "Those two know about it as a half baked idea and I shared this with Kate a few weeks ago. She told me she'd love to be a part of it whenever I am ready to pursue it." An adoring smile forms on her lips and I see how much she values her relationship with Kate—being the only person she trusts in this city after everything. "I have it on my email, if you lend me your laptop I can show you. Maybe you can give me some pointers?"
I smile and get up to retrieve my laptop from my desk. A part of me is actually really looking forward to seeing what she's come up with. Going through her email she opens her presentation and looks at me nervously.
"Well, get to it Miss Steele. Tell me about your idea! Time is money." I smirk and give her wink.
"This is weird. I'm literally sitting in a bathrobe, in your home office and like…" She giggles. I move in closer and cradle her face to kiss her soundly. Feeling her melt into my embrace, it takes everything in me to pull away—she's addictive and I'm hooked. "There you go dickstracting me again."
We both laugh and I keep her close while she walks me through the pitch.
"I got this idea about six months ago while working at Portland Press. Part of my job was typing up rejection letters to authors who sent in their manuscripts and I hated it because there were some really good stories that I thought deserved to be told and these Editors who were deciding what was considered good or bad just seemed so out of touch to me—some of them wouldn't even get read for months on end and eventually get shredded. The last straw was when this Indian-American author from Sacramento, who sent in a beautiful story about her grandmother who sold all her gold jewelry after her husband died three months into their marriage. Those heirloom pieces had been in her family for generations and then she flew out to America to start a life and it basically chronicles her struggle as a single woman trying to make life for herself and how she fell in love with an Indian man who ended up being from the town next to hers back where she was from. They had grown up within ten minutes of each other, not knowing one another at all and didn't meet until they had travelled 8000 miles to another country so many years later… it was just so beautiful and my boss was like, this is boring it won't sell… yada yada."
Rolling her eyes in exasperation she laughs and continues on.
"I hated that reaction and then I also read a lot of fanfiction, which these editors look down on and..."
"Excuse me, what?" I ask, trying not to laugh. Fanfiction? What a nerd.
"HEY! Don't knock it till you read it." She snaps, trying her best not to laugh. "I read stories across a few fandoms and some of the stuff is INCREDIBLE, like worthy of being published as original works and some authors actually do self-publish but their reach is limited and honestly they deserve to be out there, with a million eyes reading and absorbing their stories. I mean some even have facebook groups and they've formed these growing communities—it's awesome and online communities are the next big trend according to Google Trends. My idea is to create a platform that helps authors who want to get published or who lack the know how to move forward with that intention, a chance to do just that." She leans forward and clicks on the next slide.
"That's where Enlight comes in. It's a self-serve platform that centralizes all the moving parts in a way. Connecting authors with independent editors, graphic designers, literary lawyers, imprints, small publishing houses. Everyone can search for people in each field down to their location and hire them for their services and publishers can reach out to authors and vice versa and get the dialogue going. If you're an author with an online presence, you can add your socials and through those metrics publishing houses and imprints can see demographic information and engagement to piggy on that if they want and play up on that established good will and grow it."
"Why the name in Enlight?" I tuck a lock of hair behind her ear.
"After the Enlightenment period" She smiles shyly keeping her eyes on the laptop screen briefly before bringing them back to face mine.
"Sharing of ideas, it's what we do best and how we move forward in life. Women are the lifeline in the world of books with their book clubs, recommendations and dedication to reviews etc. It's a market that's not properly rewarded, I believe. There are so many stories that women and people of color want to tell, generations of ideas from around the world that deserve to be shared and known but they can't get past the elite culture of publishing. I hope to have this platform rival that and give smaller imprints and publishing houses that are open to these ideas a fighting chance and really tap into the grassroots level of this industry."
"And how would it sustain itself?"
"Subscription based. I'm still unsure about it from the author's side of things but definitely independent contractors and publishing houses would pay a yearly rate at different price points of course to have access to authors and their materials, along with graphic artists and photographers etc. I know lots of publishing houses like to do their graphics in house but I swear at Portland Press, I saw some really ugly shit and there are people online who are absolutely amazing and because of all the noise, they don't get noticed. A platform like this could help everyone."
"Who did all the graphics and the logo of your pitch deck?"
"I did." She shrugs. "In my last year of college I had a few electives left over so I took a typography class and two graphic design courses, the rest I learned from trial and error on YouTube."
The pitch deck is graphically engaging, her logo is beautiful with a simple font and a color scheme that plays on the different shades of red and yellow to give the illusion of light shining through a prism. She has an additional prototype of a logo with a tracing of a lighthouse. Another has a clever play on the world enlight featuring a lightbulb.
"I also created the same for Acero. I did all their graphics and well, you get the gist." She smiles ruefully and opens up an email to show me a series of different logos she made for them. "Now that they have the money they'll probably hire a professional to redo everything. I'd do that too. Things have to keep evolving."
"Did they pay you?" I ask, knowing full well what the answer will be.
She laughs. "No. There was no money to pay me. I just did it. I mean it was practice for me too in the end."
I shake my head in confusion and awe. Confusion as to why she didn't demand her share and awe because of her devotion to them and now her own idea.
"Ana, your idea is incredible." And I genuinely mean it. Hearing the passion in her voice, I know this is something she would excel at if only she got the chance to make this a reality.
She gives me an odd look. "You're not just saying that because—I mean this isn't even complete because I need to come up with market projections and the numbers. I'm not good at the business side of things so yeah, I still need to work on it. At the end, who knows it may not even work." I see her hesitate again but she shakes it off. "That's why I was waiting for Acero to take off, they were going to help me on the backend of things and create the platform so we could start beta testing it eventually. I was trying to learn from their mistakes in terms of presenting ideas and what investors wanted."
"Fuck that. The time is now. I'll be your first investor."
"What? Why?"
I laugh at her puzzled expression. "Because I think it's a good idea."
"But…" She bites her lip and looks back at the computer. "That feels weird. Since we you know, slept together, it's wro—"
Oh fuck's sake! I grab her face and kiss her hard, when I pull back it takes her a few seconds to recover and come back to earth. Mission accomplished.
"You need to relax. My wanting to invest in your idea has nothing to do with sex. I'm trying to save money, remember?" She bursts out laughing, thank God, and nods in agreement.
We talk more about particulars and I'm surprised that even though she claims not to know much on an instinctual level she actually does and adds to suggestions while coming up with her own ideas and solutions.
"I'll email my legal team and we'll get you set up with an LLC, filing for a trademark—everything and anything you need. Barney, my head of R&D can help you with creating the platform and we can integrate this with Grey Publishing to see where—"
"WHOA! Hold it there buddy!" She exclaims and takes a deep breath. There's a heaviness in her voice when she speaks again, almost as if she's afraid. "Enlight is mine and I want it to remain mine. No matter what." She straightens her shoulders and clears her throat. "If you invest and this app takes off, I will pay you back."
"Of course." I smile in understanding. "I get that. My grandfather loaned me the money for GEH and as soon as I made a profit, I paid him back. Enlight is yours but I hope you'll allow me to help and as far at Grey Publishing is concerned, I hope we can get a special discount on the sign up?"
"Hmmm, I'll think about it." She winks and smiles. "So that's it? This feels really weird."
"Yeah, as soon as your LLC is set up, I'll wire $500,000 to start with and you get working on this to hold interviews to assemble your team."
"I'm sorry… what? $500,000?" She barks out a laugh in clear disbelief. "You're kidding right? That's IN-SANE. Wow, I'm like a priciest sex you've ever had. I better get an amazing recommendation."
You're the best sex I've ever had. Fuck, recommendations, I'm never going to share you with anyone.
We both laugh at the absurdity of her comment and our situation in general.
"Jokes aside, Christian. I would prefer to hire my own lawyer and set up things on my own."
"Ana, my team can help you and—"
"That's the thing, it's your team." She cuts me off. "After everything, I'm sorry, I just can't… if you can recommend anyone, I'll happily consider them but I don't feel comfortable using your company resources because their first loyalty would always be to GEH. And I need to learn stuff on my own, I can't have it done for me. If you want to be in an advisory role that would be incredible but it's not necessary of course, you're a very busy man."
"That's fair." I say tightly, trying not to sound offended. Of course she wants to do this on her own, it's what I did too when starting GEH but I don't want her to struggle anymore.
"I'm not going to lie, it still bothers me a little that you're giving me half a million based on an incomplete pitch and this thing between us plus, I don't know anything about you at all. The internet has close to nothing about your personal life from the initial search I did." She bites her lip as her eyes briefly scan the room, as if she's searching her next words. "You have a file on me, told someone personal details about me. You expect me to trust you but…" her voice trails off and she takes a deep breath, letting the silence crash in and create a wedge between us again.
And that's where it all comes down to. Trust. I'm expecting her to trust me when I've given her no reason to. My money, influence, who I am—none of it is enough for her to take a leap with me beyond two nights together, sensational sex and some heated exchanges
I'm up against 7 years of friendship, memories, an ex-fiance and a crushing betrayal and all this shit that's happened between us is barely giving me a fighting chance.
Need. To. Murder. Elliot.
But before that, I need to lay all my cards on the table. Time is not on my side. If I let her walk out and have more time to think without all the information, she'll walk away for good, I can feel it. Sex and money won't keep her. She wants more and if I want that too, I need to give her just that.
"Then right now I'll tell you everything about me and you can make a decision." I offer and proceed to do just that. I tell her about the abuse from childhood, getting adopted by the Grey's, I tell her about Mia and she gives me a beaming smile in return, I explain what happened with the BitchTroll, the BDSM that leads into further explanation of the hotel interests and why it meant so much to have her touch not burn or sleep without nightmares.
As I tell her, her features soften from her earlier hardened resolve to that of sadness, similar to how I saw her that night—eyes wide and in pain.
I'm unable to maintain eye contact. I've never had to share this with anyone. With family it was a truth that was old and understood, with therapists well, I was paying them and didn't care what they thought.
This, right here is like walking the thinnest and weakest tightrope and I'm trying not to look down and psyche myself out.
When I'm done speaking, she's silent as she was throughout, looking down at her hands.
"So it burns when someone touches you?" She whispers.
"It feels like that and brings back memories of the fear and panic."
"And your sleep is better when you're with me?"
"Yeah." I reply with a chuckle, smiling at the memory of last night. "You cuddle like a bulldozer though."
But I love it.
She's looking down but her face breaks into a breath-taking smile, with a blush spreading across her cheeks as she tries not to laugh. However, it disappears just as quickly as what I suspect is another thought that comes to mind.
Her eyes meet mine and they look right through me. "And the BDSM is important to you?"
"It was a means to an end." A truth that sounds pathetic but unfortunately there's no other way around it. "It's not important in a scenario like this but there are some elements that are worth exploring."
Like, spanking your lily white ass till it's pink as your flushed cheeks. Cuffing your ankles to a spreader bar so I can devour you and make you cum over and over again till you go blind from seeing stars.
Dream on, Grey. Dream the fuck on.
And tell your goddamn dick to play dead for the remainder of the day.
Her eyes begin to roam around the room and fuck if isn't unnerving, the silence and not knowing what she's thinking is driving me mad. She's shut down. In a panic I make the only play I can think of and it's a risk but anything worth having is a risk. While I'm emotionally, completely out of my depth, I simply cannot dwell on the possibility of her choosing to walk away. I get up and go to my filing cabinet to pull the necessary documents and a few minutes later walk back to take my place on the couch again.
"You have one copy of the NDA we signed. This is my copy along with a check for $500,000. You know everything about me and you can choose to tear the NDA's if you want or keep them as insurance but I have nothing on my end that can stop you from sharing the information I just told you if I ever fuck up or betray your trust again."
I almost lose my breath with this verbal declaration of laying my truths at her feet. She opens her mouth to speak but closes it again and her brows furrow.
"Ana?"
"When I was 15, my mother's third husband tried to rape me when she was out with her friends. I told my mother she said I was being delusional. I threatened to call the cops or tell someone at school if she didn't send me back to my dad, so she did to avoid any issues with her new life. She stayed with that man for another year because he was rich. He finally ditched her but she went and found herself another man. Men and money always meant more to her than me." She bites her lip and sighs looking back at me again. "Now you know everything about me too."
I'm going to fucking kill him. Stephen Morton, just rose to the top of my shit list.
"I thought that him being a bad person was just a blip in my life. Everyone back in Montesano was good. Jose and Gaia were good and I became blind and now I'm not sure about anything—." She murmurs with a heavy voice. "I don't trust my own judgment anymore."
I've never been heartbroken before or humiliated, never let anyone get that close to have that kind of power over me. Shit with Elena didn't ever feel like I was at a disadvantage. So while I can be angry for her, I'm never truly going to understand the depth of what she went through.
I scoot in closer and we share a kiss, the kind that makes all the bad shit just disappear and recalibrate everything. She melts into me, wrapping her arms around and resting her face in the crook of my neck for a few minutes before she suddenly turns to straddle me.
Untying her robe, she lets it fall open and her hands creeps through the band of my sweatpants and pumps me. It doesn't take much to get me hard and ready for her.
"Baby, you're sore… we don't—"
"Shut up, Christian."
Yes ma'am. She needs this just as much as I do and I will not be the one to deny her.
I've never been dominated before and the thrill that runs through me is unexpected and most of all welcome.
She moans and sinks herself on to my cock, biting her lip to stop herself from crying out. Fuck, she feels good. Warm, tight and it feels exquisitely deep like this. We slowly move while she whimpers in my ear in response to everything I do to her. As slow as we are, the build up ends up being quick that she throws her head back and silently cums and fuck if it isn't the sexiest thing to witness. The way her body moves and the intense flush of her skin from the pleasure she's experiencing and taking for herself—her grip on my hair is a little painful and in sync with her pussy clenching around my dick that intensifies everything tenfold.
Her orgasm pulls me in and I join her except I'm not as quiet. It's a cathartic release that leaves me completely immobile for a few minutes as I recover my breathing. We hold each other tight for what seems like an eternity, hands roaming around each other's bodies, kissing and connecting, silent exchanges that speak more than the words we've shared.
Back on neutral ground. We can build from here now.
"Since you don't want to take out your revenge on those fuckers, how about some instant revenge on Elliot?" I suggest, as we get clean up and go towards the kitchen in search of lunch.
Her face lights up and she nods enthusiastically, clapping like a child. "Oh, I have just the idea but we'll need Kate for it too."
I groan, do we have to? "Why her?"
"Kate lives for this kind of shit. It's in her blood. She could get away with the perfect murder, like a true crime Queen." She then tells me how Kate kicked him out without letting him finish his food and I have to say, I have respect for her. Elliot deserved that shit for sure.
"Okay, Kavanagh can be a part of this too." I acquiesce.
"There's another thing I need but I'm going to ask you to not freak out." She gives me a look and tells me in excruciating detail exactly what she has in mind.
Oh fuck, angry badger just decided to go all psycho.
Elliot is a dead man.
Time order some pretty flowers for his funeral.
A/N: Look at these two lovesick and scheming kids! Elliot is in for a surprise, lol!
Do you agree with Ana's decision to not pursue a takedown? CG laying down all his cards and giving Ana all the power? Ana not wanting help from GEH for her app?