The Inner Circle Ch. 04

"That's just make it sounds like something the rich and powerful can exploit, Barry," said Jacobi, "Look, I'm not not some white-knight whistleblower, but if somebody suffer from this arrangement, it will make me feel mighty uncomfortable."

"You're talking about the girls, right," said Barry, "You probably have nothing to worry about. They actually have a wait-list for being interns at Wellspring Financials. You might look at their internship to be like a well-disguised escort operation, but the interns themselves look at it to be a way to get a better earnings or better connections and recommendations. Some interns did get sponsored or even married to the rich and powerful in town. The way they do things might not be perfect, but they're trying to keep everybody involved happy for their own interest, too."

"Hell, Barry. I know you're a company man, but I didn't know you work PR for Wellspring Financials, too," said Jacobi jokingly.

"Listen, Jacobi," said Barry, turning more serious at the moment, "you might feel how we do things or how the Park family that run Wellspring Financials do things are unorthodox or even immoral. But, everybody knows the score when they get in, and if they're not happy, they can leave. It keeps everybody decently happy, and the town and the businesses grow. Many towns similar to Wellspring have declined or even turned in to ghost towns because people and business left for better opportunities in bigger cities. Here, we have safe and peaceful environment for kids to grow up and for older folks to live their days which is a great alternative to the bigger but crime-ridden city like Templeton. I don't see anything wrong with people getting their sexual needs and fantasies taken care of if it hurts nobody."

Jacobi knew there's no more arguing with a man who strongly believed in something like Barry did, so he changed the subject, "I was just joking about the PR thing, Barry. But, speaking of family, what about yours?"

Barry now looked a bit pensive before answering, "I never marry or have any kids, Jacobi. I do have some relatives in the west coast that I barely have contacts with. To me, the Crane family is my own family, and they treat me like one, too."

Jacobi remembered the scene of Barry screwing Carmen at the Crane mansion well. Before he said anything, his phone rang out. It was Grace.

Surprised, Jacobi excused himself before answering, "Hi, what's up?"

"Hey, Jacobi, how are you?" said Grace.

"Nothing much. I'm just having dinner and some beer with Barry here. How about yourself?"

"I'm good. Let's cut to the chase. I had a little birdie told me that your new place currently resembles a military housing than a decent home, so I'm bringing people down there this weekend to make it look proper befitting the home of our new Wellspring manager."

Panic and confusion filled Jacobi's face. How does she know? he thought. He didn't have any visitor at his new place beside the one time that a certain mentor of his dropped by in the evening to drop some documents off and Jacobi invited him in for a quick coffee.

Barry gave a knowing smile upon seeing Jacobi's face.

"No, no. You don't have to come do that," said Jacobi, "I was just busy getting up to speed for the job. I'll eventually get around setting up my place later."

"Like you did with your place at Templeton?" shot back Grace, "From what I heard from people there, you didn't get around to setting that place up after how many years?"

Jacobi stammered some more sentences to politely refuse Grace, but what she said was true. Maybe the excuse was that he's busy with work, but the last place he bothered to somewhat decorated to be his home was his dorm room in college. He just didn't bother that much with properly decorating his home after he had a job for some reason.

"Stop now. Remember all that talk about you being part of the family?" said Grace with annoyance in her voice, "this is like a family helping you out. I'm being nice to you here. Just shut up and take it."

Jacobi gave up. The woman could be very stubborn when she wanted to. He meekly accepted the offer and hanged up the phone before turning to Barry.

"You had to tell her about my place?" asked Jacobi.

"Hey, she asked and as you know she can be very pushy," answered Barry, "what'd you know? This sounds like it could be fun and good for you."

Jacobi just shrugged his shoulder. He felt like his peaceful weekend of sleeping in and working out slipping away, but this could be fun like Barry said.