Millennium - 75. Chapter 75

April 19, 2000

 

Robbie shut his cell phone and looked at me sadly. “Carson was shot while he was sleeping.”

“That was his mother?” I asked.

“Yeah. She was pretty upset. She wanted to let me know. Guess he didn’t have many friends.”

“I wonder why,” I said sarcastically. He gave me a dirty look. “I’m worried you’ll end up hating me.”

“I’m not going to hate you, and I’m not going to blame you, it just makes me sad.”

“I guess I’m not as good at this as JP. He keeps everything to himself, and even though people suspect what he did, no one knows for sure, so it gives them an excuse not to blame him.” He looked at me blankly. “This is the price we pay for having an honest relationship, with no secrets.”

“I think it’s worth it,” he said. “You’re worried that I’ll hate you, or that’s what you say, but I don’t think that’s what you’re really worried about.”

“Oh? What am I really worried about?”

“You’re worried that you’ll end up hating yourself.” I stared at him and thought about what he said. And I knew that he may just be right.

“I guess I’ll have to learn to live with myself.”

“You did what you had to do,” he said. “I’m not trying to give you a guilt trip.”

“No, you’re just trying to make me look at myself.” I got up and walked to the window and looked out at the rolling landscape of Escorial. Then I turned back to Robbie. “I don’t feel bad that those guys are dead. I think I did the right thing. But you’re right, it is sad.”

“What if they trace all of this back to you?” he asked me nervously.

“They’ll trace it alright, only it won’t lead back to me. Everything will lead to Omega and to Alexandra. The people involved think they were working for her, and they were paid by her. The only people who know the truth are you and Stefan, and probably JP. I’m not worried about getting caught.” I paused and looked at him, wanting him to say the one thing that would make me OK, but knowing that he’d have to say it himself, if he meant it.

He walked up to me and wrapped his arms around me, and gave me the one thing that I wanted, that I needed. “I love you.” I wrapped myself around him, and we cried together. “You better get into the office,” he said, prompting me to get going. We pulled back from each other, and I felt so alone, but I’d been maudlin enough.

“You trying to get rid of me?” I teased.

“Now that I think about it, I think you should stick around for a little bit longer.” He pulled me back in and made love to me, proving with his body what his words said, that he loved me.

Stef had already gone into work, but JP was in the kitchen, looking somber. I steeled myself to deal with him, to deal with another guy just like the one I’d left.

“It was a busy night last night,” he said.

“It was,” I agreed.

“I am hoping that you will not look back at what happened and decide to carry the emotional baggage around as I have. Sometimes there are things we have to do that are unpleasant. The hardest part is living with yourself afterward.”

I nodded and just stood there, frozen, digesting his words. He sensed my vulnerability, and got up and gave me a big hug. There was no doubt which direction the energy was flowing this time: I was getting major strength from him. “Thanks, Dad. That’s good advice.”

It occurred to me that these two men, Robbie and JP, were the people who could have heaped on the guilt, or alternately, they could have given me absolution. They’d done the latter, and it was that, their action, that let me put the past two nights behind me and move on.

I got into the office late, but it didn’t really matter. Everyone else had been watching the news, so by the time I got there, they were able to scythe through all the sensational crap and cut to the bottom line. All of the arrows pointed to Alexandra, all of the evidence was aimed at her, and the police were only too happy to have a cut and dried case. Brian had no one to advocate for him, but Carson had his mother, and she’d railed against Omega, the monster corporation that had taken her son away from her. And she had hired a lawyer.

 

April 20, 2000

“If you pull this contract from Omega, you are damning it to bankruptcy court,” Elliot Pfinster all but bellowed at the Senate Committee. I chuckled to myself as I watched the senators scowl at him. They were unaccustomed to being yelled at, especially by an old, self-important industrialist.

“We are not responsible for Omega’s current situation, and that is not what we plan to base our decision on,” the committee chairman said firmly. “Based on the revelations about Omega, it is perhaps not a bad thing that the company answers for its conduct.”

“It is unfair to condemn a whole company based on idle accusations!” He didn’t have the sense to moderate his tone.

“Idle accusations, Mr. Pfinster? We have clear records documenting tax fraud, money laundering, and possibly even murder. We have key witnesses that have corroborated those records. I’d hardly call that idle. Thank you for your testimony.”

“You can’t...”

The chairman cut him off. “Thank you, Mr. Pfinster.” It only took a few more minutes of deliberation before the senate committee voted to hand the contract solely to Triton.

We walked out of the chamber, Rashid and I, quite satisfied with the way things had turned out. An enraged Elliot Pfinster blocked our path. “You won’t get away with this. I know what you did. I know everything. The truth will come out, and you’ll be in jail, not Alexandra.”

I eyed him coldly, just as JP would have. “Elliot, it is obviously time for you to retire. Clearly dementia is already setting in.” His eyes bulged and his face got red, but I didn’t stay to listen to more of his rants. I just pushed past him and headed off to our next meeting.

This one was in my hotel suite, a venue that was somewhat ironic considering who I was meeting with. I greeted the three men cordially, and then gestured for them to sit down. Cal and Ethan were here with me, and that made it an even three on three. Despite that, the discussion was between two men: Joe Adams and I. Joe Adams was the President of PTL. We shook hands and I thought I saw him cringe a little bit at shaking hands with a fag, and I was sorely tempted to tell him that the very hand he shook had been jammed up my partner’s ass last night.

“I’m kind of surprised by these recent events,” Adams said. “I knew you had been going toe to toe with Omega, but I didn’t realize they’d end up imploding.”

‘Remember that when you decide to fuck with us,’ I thought to myself. “It seems that Omega created their own problems. We are just lucky enough to find ourselves in a position to benefit from them.”

“You want to work together on that?” he asked.

“Based on Elliot Pfinster’s comment in the senate hearing today, and our estimate of their financial strength, we expect Omega to file for bankruptcy protection within the next few days. We have a chance to step in and prevent that by buying off key chunks of their company, or we can wait until they actually end up in bankruptcy and do it then. Either way, we think it makes sense for us to work together to present a united front, and a united proposal.”

“Why not just take it all yourself? You worried that we’ll outbid you, and sneak this sweet deal out from under your nose?”

I laughed. “Hardly. We both know you don’t have those kinds of resources, and even if you did, we know that you don’t have the ability to absorb the entire Omega operation.”

He scowled at me. “What do you propose?”

I nodded to Cal, who gave them a detailed presentation on our proposed partition plan. The other men with Adams seemed to get it at once, but Adams wanted to dicker over prices. I shut that down quickly. “We developed these numbers and didn’t pad them, so there’s no room for negotiations. We really don’t have time for that. If you want to go in on this deal with us, I need to know right now. If not, we’ll go it alone. It’s your call.”

“They won’t let you acquire the whole company. The Feds will say that you’ll have a monopoly,” Adams said smugly.

“We’ve already got that worked out. If you say no, we’ll just spin the parts we don’t want off into a separate company.” My directness seemed to bother him, but his two colleagues seemed to appreciate what I said.

“I want half an hour to talk to my people about this,” he said.

“You can have 15 minutes. The timetable is tight,” I said. He grumbled, but I just smiled and dragged Cal and Ethan into my bedroom.

“I always wondered what it would be like to be in here with you,” Cal said, flirting.

“You couldn’t handle me,” I joked back. Ethan chuckled. We spent the next 15 minutes bullshitting, just enjoying this break in our otherwise tense day. As soon as 15 minutes were up, we walked back into the room where the PTL guys were still discussing the deal.

I walked up to the table and pushed the agreement over to Adams. “You with us or not?” It was easy to read the dividing lines on whether to take the deal. Adams didn’t want to, but his colleagues did.

“I don’t like having this deal shoved down my throat,” Adams said as he glared not at me, but at the other two. 'I’ve got something else I can shove down your throat,' I thought. I looked at Cal and Ethan and they read my mind. We all tried not to laugh. Adams sighed, and signed off on the paper. “I guess it’s a fair deal in the end.”

His double entendres were threatening to make me really lose it, but I kept my inappropriate sense of humor under control. “We aren’t trying to screw you over. My uncle always says that to be successful in business, you have to make sure that deals with others are a win for both sides. This is one of those.”

Now that he’d taken the step, made the decision, Adams was effusive in supporting it. Now we had a tough time getting them to leave. Fortunately his two colleagues were more sensitive, and ushered him out.

“Ready?” Ethan asked.

“Issue the tender offer,” I said. It was ready to go, everything was prepared. It only took 15 minutes for the tender offer to show up on the financial news.

“A consortium of competing companies, led by Triton and PTL, has issued a tender offer to acquire all the shares of Omega Corporation for $3/share. Triton has provided a detailed analysis of Omega’s investments and divisions, and an estimate of the cost of Omega’s latest problems. The Chairman of Triton, Brad Schluter, said in his tender offer statement that he thinks that $3/share represents premium value for Omega shares, based on their analysis, which placed the true value at closer to $1.50/share.”

A camera flashed to Elliot Pfinster, who was blustering. I wondered if he’d stopped blustering since he left the Senate hearing. “This offer is so low, it is insulting. Omega’s shares are currently trading at three times that much.”

“You testified in front of the Senate Committee today that if you were deprived of your participation in the contract under discussion, Omega would be forced to file for bankruptcy,” a reporter said. “You were deprived of that contract. Does that mean that Omega will now seek bankruptcy protection?”

“Absolutely not!” he yelled.

“Then you were not candid with the Senate Committee?” the reporter asked. I laughed so hard I almost puked. Elliot realized he’d been caught, so he just scowled and stormed off. Omega’s stock closed that day at $3.50/share.

“Tomorrow, first thing, we sweeten our deal to $5/share,” I told Cal and Ethan. “Can you two make that happen?”

“Yes sir,” Ethan said, grinning.

I was about to suggest that we go out to dinner and celebrate, when my cell phone vibrated. I thought it would be Robbie, calling to check up on me. He’d gone back to LA when I’d been needed here in DC. I looked at the caller-ID and saw that it was actually Elizabeth Danfield.

I nodded to Cal and Ethan and walked into the bedroom as I answered the phone. “Brad, I heard you were in Washington. It would be wonderful to see you. Would you be willing to come by the house?”

“It would be my pleasure,” I said, smiling. She was so animated and alive. I told the guys to have a great dinner, and then hopped into the limousine for the drive across the river. I called Robbie and Stef to brief them, so by the time I hung up my cell phone, I was pulling into the Danfields’ compound.

Elizabeth greeted me in the foyer. “Thank you so much for coming to visit!”

“It is my pleasure. It is great to see you,” I said sincerely as I kissed her on both cheeks. She led me back to her office.

“This campaign you’ve run against Omega has been masterful. Truly masterful. I’m not sure quite how you got her to have her own stooges murdered, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that.”

“I’m sure you overestimate me,” I said modestly, just to let her know that I wasn’t going to reveal any more about it. That seemed to placate her.

“I actually have a present for you,” she said.

“Indeed?”

She handed me a folder. “You can look through that at your leisure, but allow me to summarize it for you.”

“I’d appreciate that,” I said as I looked at the scads of paper.

“Omega and an Israeli electronics company worked on a joint project a few years ago. During that time, Omega allowed sensitive, classified information to be leaked to the other company. In fact, they did it with their eyes wide open; it was planned that way.”

“They gave away top secret info?” I asked, amazed.

“It was a very profitable transaction,” she said, grinning. “For various reasons, this was tabled.” In other words, Alexandra had blackmailed Senator Danfield into squelching any investigation into the matter.

“I understand. What do you want me to do with it?”

“Alexandra will definitely be doing jail time. Omega will be absorbed, partially by Triton. You don’t really need this now, but just in case she manages to regenerate herself, this is your insurance policy.”

I got it then, what she was giving me. This was my immunization against any future problems, not just from Alexandra, but from her family. “Thank you.”

“It seems I owed you one,” she said.

“Then we’re even,” I replied, absolving her of any obligations.

She smiled. “We are. So now there is no obligation, no payback. Now, we are just friends,” she said.

“Yes we are,” I said, and gave her a hug, a real hug, not one of those fake ones that Washington divas seemed to love.

April 26, 2000

The last few days had been really busy. The Omega story had occupied the news last week, but had been thrust to the back pages after Saturday. That was the day the Feds busted into the house in Miami where Elian Gonzalez was staying with his US relatives. He was the Cuban boy who emigrated to the US with his mother, who died trying to get here. They’d gone in and ripped the boy away from his relatives in what had to be one of the worst public relation moves ever.

Last Friday, Omega’s board had ousted Elliot Pfinster as chairman, and had negotiated with our group to sell us 70% of the assets of the company. That would give them enough cash to move forward and hopefully deal with their liabilities, but it would also transform them into a consumer electronics company. David had not been in any of the meetings we’d had, and didn’t seem to have any leadership role in the company at all. It was as though Omega was shedding itself of Alexandra and her son.

We’d spent Monday in Palo Alto, celebrating Matt’s 20^th birthday. His parents had come out to visit over the weekend and had stayed over. Their transformation would have been the most miraculous I’d seen, if it weren’t for Elizabeth Danfield. Wade was on cloud nine, so happy that his mother was no longer Darth Vader. It seemed that having her on an even keel was helping him deal with his father as well.

Alexandra was out on bail, but was basically under house arrest in her palatial mansion. Having her out made me nervous, but she had her hands full now without worrying about me, and I had the insurance policy that Elizabeth Danfield had given me. That information was the reason I was on the 405, speeding south toward San Diego. I’d taken my Porsche this time. The Ferrari was nice, but I was kind of partial to the Porsche.

I got to the gates and was passed through with no problems. This time Mike knew I was coming and had put my name on the list himself. I had no need to impress anyone on this visit, so I’d dressed casually. It had made the drive much more comfortable, and had made me relaxed and calm.

I strode confidently and directly to his office, where his obnoxious secretary greeted me curtly and only left me waiting a minute before ushering me into his office. Mike stood up and shook my hand, although it was a grudging gesture.

“I see you’ve won your battle. My mother is on her way to jail, and my brother is in the midst of a nervous breakdown,” he said nastily.

“I’d say that’s karma.” My tone was firm, telling him that I wasn’t going to put up with any crap from him. “You know who started this. They made their own problems.”

“To hear their side of the story, you engineered some pretty heinous crimes and pinned them on my mother.”

“Baseless accusations,” I said dismissively. “Ask them to prove it.”

“They can’t, and you know it,” he snapped.

“Then maybe they lie,” I said.

“So did you come down here to gloat? You couldn’t get to them to sneer in their faces, so you came down here to do it in mine?”

I sat down in one of his chairs, pissing him off since he hadn’t invited me to do so, and eyed him calmly. “I’m not that petty.”

“Then why are you here?” He sat back down in his own chair as he asked that.

“To show you something,” I said. I’d gone through the papers Elizabeth Danfield had given me and found a two page document that had summarized the trade Omega had made with their Israeli cohort.

“What is this?” he asked me, shocked. I knew he could read the paper, and he knew damn well what it was, but it was refreshing to see how upset it made him. More than anything else, his reaction was proof that he didn’t know the kind of business dealings his mother was involved in.

“It’s a deal your mother made with an Israeli firm to sell them classified technology.” I paused for effect. “Some would call it treason.”

His eyes bulged. “Treason?”

“What would you call betraying your country for a whole bunch of money?”

“Why are you showing me this? What do you want from me?” He was exasperated, and trapped.

“I could have used this, piled it on to the other charges leveled at your mother. If I would have, this would have ended your career in the Navy.”

He eyed me carefully, as if he wanted to argue, but he knew that I was right. He would be persona non grata as the son of a traitor, or a spy, however it was couched. “You didn’t do that.”

“No, I didn’t. You’d be the biggest victim here, and you’ve given me no cause to hurt you this badly.”

“So now I am in your debt? So you think you can control me, manipulate me until you destroy my psyche?”

I laughed. “Don’t get all self-righteous with me. Your mother has done that before.” I paused so we could both calm down a little bit. “I’m showing you this as a warning. If your mother, your brother, or you, or any member of your family comes after me again, I’ll pull this out so fast your head will spin.”

“Great. You’re holding this over my head.”

“Yes I am. And it could have been much worse, wouldn’t you agree?” He glared at me. “Someone who wasn’t a complete idiot would realize that I was doing him a favor. Someone who wasn’t a complete asshole would be glad that his career wasn’t destroyed.” I’d let my temper go a bit, and it calmed him down.

He got up and walked to his window and gazed out, then turned back to face me. “This whole thing has pissed me off from the beginning to the end, to now. I don’t blame you. They came after you, and you fought back and won. I understand what you’re doing here, and I do appreciate it. If I wasn’t so angry, I might be able to be more gracious.”

I smiled and stood up. “This has been hard on all of us. I don’t want to have to watch my back anymore. This way, I can do something nice for you and solve that problem at the same time.”

He nodded and stood up as well. We shook hands and I strode out of his office, got back in my Porsche, and went home. The war was over, and I’d won. I tried to be more jubilant, but somehow, the carnage of the battle took much of the joy out of the victory.

I was in a pensive mood when I got home. I instinctively headed out onto the deck, where I found Darius smoking a joint. He handed it to me and I inhaled it gratefully.

“Ella got her period,” he said.

“You seem unhappy about that.” He was definitely somber.

“I’m not.” He didn’t sound sincere, but I didn’t say anything, I just waited for him to go on. “I guess part of me wanted her to be pregnant. I really love her, Dad.”

That made me smile. “Does she love you?”

“Of course,” he said, being cocky, and cracking me up.

“It’s better this way,” I told him. “You both have a lot of things to do, at least five years of school left in Ella’s case. Having a kid would complicate that.”

“What if she doesn’t love me after we’re done with college?” he asked, exposing his insecurities to me for probably the first time.

“Then your relationship wouldn’t have worked anyway. Having kids isn’t the solution to staying together. It just makes being apart harder.”

“Yeah, but you and Pop broke up when you were in college.”

“We did, and I was miserable the whole time. But your Aunt Claire and Uncle Jack made it through college and medical school, and they’re together.” Robbie came home and joined us.

“Dad was just telling me how miserable you made him when you dumped him in college,” Darius said, trying to stir up trouble.

Robbie looked at me, horrified. “It was one of the biggest mistakes I ever made.”

“He’s just trying to cause trouble,” I said to him lovingly. “Ella had her period.”

“That’s great news,” Robbie said.

“Yeah, terrific,” Darius said, and stomped back inside.

“What did I say?”

I laughed. “He was slightly disappointed, thinking that if she was pregnant, they’d be able to live happily ever after.”

“Happily ever after takes some work.”

“It does,” I said. “I want to try something after dinner.”

“What?”

“I’ll show you when we’re in our room.” He grinned really big at that. Dinner was nice, but I was anxious to get upstairs. I started off by leading him over to our bed and making out for a long time, getting him really fired up. Then I led him into our love den and guided him to the dungeon room.

“Strip,” I told him. We both pulled our clothes off, and then I made him lie on the bed. He put his hands in the shackles, but I didn’t lock them. “I’m going to need your help for this one.”

“No problem,” he joked.

“I’m going to put this one,” I said, taking one of the e-stim bands and putting lube on it, “around your dick.” He watched, wide-eyed, as I put the electrode on his cock. “I’m going to take this one and put it on mine.” I lubed up the other electrode and put it on the base of my dick. I grabbed the other lube and slathered it all over my dick. “And now I’m going to fuck you.”

I pushed my dick into his ass, into that place that felt like home, and once I was in, I grabbed the box and turned the knob just a bit. “Here, you’re in charge of the charge.” He laughed for only a second, and then he started moaning. I pumped slowly in and out of him, letting the electric charge fly from my dick, through his prostate, and to his dick.

“God, that’s good,” he said, then gave up trying to talk and just moaned. He was leaking pre-cum like crazy. I had to really work to keep myself from blasting, but he was so in tune to me and my body, he was able to do that by adjusting the charge. We went on like that, letting the electricity enhance our pleasure, bringing us to a whole new level of erotic stimulation.

He looked at me, telling me with his face that he needed to cum. I smiled and he turned the knob, turning up the power. The surge made it feel like electricity was flying out of my dick and right into his prostate. He screamed, he actually screamed, and started shooting. I was right behind him, my orgasm enhanced by watching him damn near cover his whole torso with the gallons of cum he shot.

We got up and unhooked ourselves, took a shower, then went back to the bed in our bedroom, grinning the entire time.

“That was pretty kinky,” he said, teasing me.

“I told you that you push my limits, and show me things I never thought possible. I have so much fun with you.”

“Once I figured out that you’d do pretty much anything I wanted to, it made me feel pretty secure. But when you think things up, that’s really exciting, because then I know you’re into it as much as I am.”

“I’m so happy being with you,” I told him honestly.

“I promise I won’t hurt you again,” he said sincerely.

“You’d better not,” I joked. Sort of.