Staying in the Family 1 (Patreon)

Nathan sat his glass down, the ice gently clinking as it slid around the bottom of the glass. He smiled painfully as he swallowed the scotch. Three suits and their secretary sat across from him at his bar in his empty restaurant.  His empty, open, restaurant on a Friday night. Of course that was why they were here. His restaurant had failed and they wanted to buy it so they could tear it all down. “Mr.Stone.” A man with slicked back hair, a thin black mustache, and a solid black suit spoke, hiding his frustration that Nathan had stopped his pitch five times already so he could throw back a glass of scotch like a shot, “If we could continue.”

“Sure Gomez. You wanted a slippery nipple, right?”

“No.” The man, who introduced himself as Declan, sighed, “I was explaining the more than generous payment my client is ready to offer if you sell today.”

Nathan poured the man a drink anyway,

“You want to buy me out, and do what with it? Build one of those pretentious little hipster vape shops?” He waved his hand like those types of places were everywhere.

“What my client chooses to do after the sale is, frankly, none of your concern.” Declan kept his voice an even monotone. Ignoring the man’s attempts to provoke him.

“Your neighbors have already sold and are eager to start their early retirement.” A man sitting beside Declan, who introduced himself as Kirkland spoke. But all Nathan could think about was how Kirkland was just a blonde Gomez minus the mustache.

“Yeah, they told me.” Nate grumbled as he poured himself another glass. His bar had been successful and fun, it was the culmination of a decade long dream he and a buddy of his had since Jr.High. They struggled the first two years, they were two kids who took what their parents had saved for their college education and leveraged that into the bar. Neither knew much about business, and everyone waited for them to inevitably fail. Somehow they managed to keep their head above water just enough that they were able to survive long enough to become successful five years later. When the suits came calling, offering them an obscene amount of money, they saw it as their reward for all the blood, sweat, and hours they had put into the bar. They were young and stupid and only saw dollar signs so they jumped at the chance. His friend Xander had taken his money and moved to Hawaii where he was soaking up the sun with some beautiful babes. Nathan loved his hometown of Chicago and didn’t want to leave, but build something, make his name synonymous with the city itself somehow. So he took his money and sunk every dime of it into building his restaurant.

Running a restaurant was a different beast than running a bar. The first year was difficult, but he expected that. More experienced servers and cooks tried to warn him about the obstacles that lay ahead and he simply wrote them off. He had done this all before. Going into his third year at his restaurant he was finally seeing a profit. But then the suits came calling, they bought out the dance studio next door. And like a cancerous cell one store after another fell, sold out to the beasts in front of him. His was the last hold out.

“Mr.Stone?” The third man asked, gently. He had introduced himself as Burroughs. “Like the author.” he had said, Nate simply nodded, he wasn’t much of a reader. “I understand this can be difficult for you,” He said gently, “to sell something you clearly care so much about for money? That’s a hard thing to ask of anyone. But the choice we offer isn’t between a large sum of money or a dream, it’s between a fresh start and losing that dream for good.”

Burroughs looked at Nate’s soft blue eyes and baby face. Burroughs’ was supposedly the same age as Nathan but due to his soft features and gentle tone neither looked like a man approaching his thirties. He knew the pain Nathan felt. No one took him seriously, or saw his dreams as something childish because of his physical traits. He had to work twice as hard in school to be taken half as seriously as a lawyer, and he could sense the same struggle within the man behind the bar who kept posturing to his much larger and more masculine colleagues who clearly intimidated him.

What Burroughs may have lacked in physical stature he more than made up for in skill. He had sat silently for the last hour, watching Nathan pour himself one drink after another, getting angrier as his colleagues tried their aggressive approach until finally he saw the moment in Nate’s eye to reach out and offer the drowning man a helping hand.

Nathan nodded and took a sip of his drink before taking the offered contract. He skimmed it, pretending any of the legalease wasn’t just gibberish to him. He knew he was getting much more than the restaurant was worth at present, but definitely less than what he had put into it over the years. Of course, he knew that was more than he could hope for at this point. If he did his math right he would have just enough money to pay off his debts and have enough left over for a hot dog.

Nate looked at the secretary, her head still buried in her laptop. She was taking minutes of the meeting, or something, he assumed. She was dressed professionally, her hair in a tight bun, a white top and a black skirt that came just below her knees. Every so often she would push her glasses back on her face as she typed. She put him in mind of a sexy librarian with her ample chest barely contained underneath her blouse. “Okay. But two conditions.” He smirked, throwing back his scotch. He might as well go down swinging, “Double your offer, I’ll sell to you, and I want your hot secretary.”

“Excuse me.” She glared at Nate, the first time she spoke or looked up from her laptop. “I am not a prostitute! Or a secretary!”

“Then how about we get married.” He smiled, taking her hand in his and kissing her fingers lightly. In his own mind he was a smooth talker.

She snatched her hand away quickly, “Mr.Stone-”

“Call me Nate, baby.”

“...Mr.Stone. This is highly inappropriate. I am not a bargaining chip you can just barter with.” Sarah slammed her laptop shut and stormed out of the restaurant.

“Mr.Stone,” Declan interjected, “Can you give me a moment to speak with my colleagues in private?”

“Sure thing, Gomez.” Nate picked up the now empty bottle of scotch, throwing it into the trash and picking up a bottle of rum and walking back into the kitchen in search of food. He would cook up something quick for everyone. No one would ever call him a bad host, he thought, as he opened up his fridge to grab some of the lamb and cheese ravioli he made the previous day.

Outside Sarah pulled her hair from her tight bun, letting her long wavy hair fall as she paced in front of the building. The click, clack of her heels sounded on the concrete as she tried to workout the fuming rage inside of her. She was considering calling a cab rather than staying here for the rest of this and taking a ride home with the others. She was a forensic accountant, the person to do the deep dives on the books, not a secretary. The nerve of the man to ask for her like a possession.

“Hey, you okay?” Declan said, stepping out of the building, immediately reaching into his coat pocket for a cigarette. He didn’t bother offering her one as he lit his and took a puff.

“Everything is fine, I was just considering my options for going back to the office.”

“Deal isn’t closed yet, take a few breaths and then let's go back in and finish this thing. This time next week you will never have to think of Mr. Stone again.”

“Closing the deal isn’t my job, Declan.”

“True, but we are a team, and a team helps one another out. It may not be something that is accepted to talk about, but girls from the office will go out to dinner with clients if it helps close a deal all the time. Just the way of the world.”

“I'm not one of the pieces of arm candy you men like to keep around at the office. You know damned well I have worked hard to get to where I am.” Declan took a long drag from his cigarette before tossing it on the sidewalk, not bothering to stomp it out.

“Did you wonder why we scouted Kenneth before he finished his degree?”

Sarah looked at Kenneth Burroughs through the window as he read over the contract one more time. “Because he’s brilliant.”

Declan chuckled and pulled out his box of cigarettes, considering having another before putting the box back into his pocket, “He is brilliant. And people underestimate him. Or, in the case of Mr.Stone, they sympathize. He is clearly aware of it and turns that into his advantage. He is smart enough to use that when he needs to. If we didn’t bring him into the fold he would be using that to help a number of our rivals. But hey, I understand. Figured you would want to play hero on this instead of us having to say it fell through so we would have to go the more expensive way.” As he turned to leave an idea struck her.

“With what we are planning MegaCorp will want this buttoned up sooner rather than later. Mr Stone can have his date so long as I become fully vested.” Sarah stopped pacing about, running the tip of her tongue across her bottom lip just once thinking about how she could turn this encounter into a boon for herself.  It was going to take another five years for her stock options to become fully vested. She didn’t need the money from the stocks after what her ex left her when he passed, but she didn’t like people or in this case a corporation holding something over her.

“We close this deal today and I will make a few calls to make that happen.”

She smiled at him like a shark might at a minnow. “How about you make a few phone calls and then I will close this deal for you.” Declan chuffed a little. She was making his job harder but he had to respect someone who could play hardball.