Tom Billionaire Ch. 03

"Johnny, please. You owe Taylor for not showing up last night."

I shook my head. "I'm not leaving until this is done."

Ashlyn exhaled and rolled her eyes. Realizing she was talking to a brick wall, she just shook her head and stormed out the door.

I scowled at her retreating back. You'd have thought she'd be more appreciative of how hard I was working to make sure she could continue living this extravagant lifestyle.

"Can I do anything else for you, sir?"

I turned back to the desk. Olivia, a very _attractive_ young blonde, stood at attention in her black and white maid's outfit. Like a lot of our staff, maids were extra eye-candy around the house. I often stared at her and some of the other girls, as I was wont to do with any pretty girl in my house. But I wasn't going to do anything about it.

After the Brittany incident, Cassandra had been going out of her way to find eye-candy that wouldn't fool around. The world was full of pretty girls that weren't the flirty-types, who had boyfriends or otherwise were just smart enough not to mess up a high-paying job by trying to compete for attention from a billionaire with a supermodel wife and girlfriend. Since instituting the new policy, not one of the maids had hit on me, and Olivia was no exception. She was pretty, but that was just a line we wouldn't be crossing.

So I simply shook my head. "No, that will be all."

Olivia bowed her head respectfully. But just before leaving, she approached me, touched my arm, and said warmly, "You'll figure it out, I know you will. Everything will be fine." And then nodding assuredly, the maid turned and left.

I mused on that for a moment, for some reason actually feeling better because of Olivia's vote of confidence. I needed it, after Ashlyn's skepticism.

Alone once again, I sat down at the desk and lifted the lid covering the tray. A steaming plate of french toast, eggs, and hash browns greeted me, along with juice and coffee. I took a sip of the coffee. And as I picked up a fork, I also lifted the clamshell lid of the notebook computer. Soon enough, the login screen arrived, and I started typing in my password with my left hand. But I got it wrong on the first try, so setting the fork back down, I re-typed my password with both hands.

And that was as close as I got to eating breakfast.

****

I did eventually eat something. Even though I didn't really want to break from working, my stomach was just grumbling too loudly for me to ignore. I don't even remember what I ate. It's not important. The french toast got tossed out and something made its way into my belly so that I could keep working.

Cassandra came back after getting off the phone with Agent Farnsworth. She briefed me on the progress, which was that there was no progress. And then she took her spot opposite me to continue tracking down leads as well.

I finally gave up just after 9pm. Taylor arrived with maids holding pillows and blankets behind her. My wife was fully ready to sleep on the couch with me if that's what it took. Instead, I caved and shut down the computer.

I let her lead me upstairs and shove me into the shower. I really needed it, as I hadn't taken one in the past two days. And Taylor welcomed me into bed with open arms and a slinky negligee.

But I was way too tired for sex. I told her this, but my wife seemed determined. She tried blowing me for almost twenty minutes, but every time I got a semi-hard, I would soften after ten seconds outside of her mouth. I believe Taylor whined and complained after that, but I was already fading into unconsciousness.

Just another day.

****

Cassandra stood politely when Edward escorted the two gentlemen in black suits into the living room. I, on the other hand, was exhausted from my restless night; so I remained seated on the sofa.

After shaking hands with Cassandra, they came to me anyways. Special Agent Farnsworth re-introduced himself. I told him I remembered him from his first visit. Same with his associate, Agent Reddick.

Olivia stopped by with a tray of coffee. The maid smiled encouragingly at me, and for a moment, I felt buoyed from the dragging weight of the past several days by her innocent smile. But then it was back to business.

"So what brings you here, Barry?" Cassandra asked in a friendly voice that momentarily drew my attention.

I arched an eyebrow at my assistant and asked with my eyes, 'Barry'? Since when was she on a first-name basis with the agent?

Agent Farnsworth merely sighed, "I thought I needed to come say this in person. I'm sorry, Miss Cooper. I promised you both I'd have answers within 72 hours. Well that time has now passed, and we're no closer to tracking the suspects than we were three days ago."

My heart sank. Cassandra, the JKE analysts, and I had run into nothing but dead ends ourselves. I had been hoping the FBI would have significantly better luck than us.

Farnsworth then spread out a dossier, and even upside-down, I quickly read off the numbers of JKE's liquidated escrow accounts. The Agent proceeded to give us a brief rundown of his team's efforts to trace the money. Unlike us, the FBI had access to many of the banks' asset records, making them better able to analyze and eliminate potential transfer points. But that advantage had not gotten them any better results.

"It's the best wire job I've ever even heard of, let alone seen," he finished with a tone of regret.

I sighed. "I hired the best." And the best had betrayed me.

"So where do we go from here?" Cassandra asked pointedly. "Surely the FBI isn't just going to give up."

"Of course not. Four billion dollars has left the U.S. Economy, and I can assure you the government is not happy about it."

"Then what is your plan?"

Farnsworth took a deep breath. "We don't seem to have expertise enough to track the wire transfers. The suspects have simply covered themselves too well. I'm now directing our agents to focus on locating the fugitives themselves. We'll be in touch with family, friends, and other known associates. Hopefully, once we find them, they'll lead us to the money."

Cassandra nodded, but then I sat up straight. "We'll let you guys do that," I conceded. "But why don't you let *us* track the wire transfers."

Farnsworth furrowed his eyebrows. "As I understood it, you and your analysts were already doing that."

"Through commercial means." I pointed at the dossier. "You just explained the way *your* guys were tracing them, using some decidedly more effective tools."

Agent Reddick blanched. "You want us to give you FBI access?"

I nodded. "Like you guys said, you don't have the expertise to uncover Sharpley's and Matthews' tracks. *We* do. My analysts worked side-by-side with those two men for _years_. I hired the best. But we don't have access to bank private records. We don't have the Federal Reserve's tracking algorithms. Give us those, and my guys will find the money."

"Absolutely not," Reddick stated flatly. "There is a reason that kind of access is restricted. For Jonathan Kwong Enterprises to have it would be a *major* SEC violation. It would be a *completely* unfair business advantage."

"There won't BE a Jonathan Kwong Enterprises if this money isn't found. And my team wouldn't be using your access to gain a competitive advantage."

"Yeah, right," Reddick spat skeptically.

"Not intentionally, of course," Cassandra interrupted. "But we understand the risk."

"Surely there is SOME way we could make this work," I argued. "Somebody we can talk to at the SEC?"

"Perhaps..." Farnsworth mused quietly. His eyebrows were furrowed again, and he was staring off at nothing. We all went quiet, letting him think for a moment. And then he looked up at me. "But you're not going to like it."

I regarded the agent evenly. "Try me. Can't be any worse than having four *billion* dollars go missing."

He sighed. "One-year sanction for JKE. That's the penalty for hacking into the internal system as it stands. We'll give you access, but then you can't do business in the United States for one year. That way, even if you gain a competitive advantage, you can't do anything about it anyways."

Cassandra gasped, covering her mouth.

I just shrugged. "Done."

"Jonathan!" Cassandra looked at me in alarm. Shutting down the company for a whole year?

"We need to find the money. Otherwise the company'll go belly up anyways."

"But Jonathan! A year's sanction? That would mean laying off a lot of your employees."

I shook my head. "Some, maybe. We wouldn't even *have* to. The sanctions would only apply to the U.S. We still can do a lot internationally. Freeze everyone's salary for a year, and we'll weather the storm. Re-allocate everyone to work on other projects. No layoffs. We can make it work."

"But that same U.S.-limitation applies to the FBI access. We'll only get American banks. Any transactions to Switzerland or the Caymans would be just a blind as we are now."

I shook my head and stared at Farnsworth. "OFAC access."

Cassandra arched her eyebrow. "Seriously?"

"Office of Foreign Assets Control, right? Their JOB is freezing assets. They do it every day, uncovering Al Qaida and shutting down terrorist bank accounts. Let our analysts use their systems."

"I don't know that I can authorize that."

"All we need to find is *one* stashed account, and that can help lead us to the rest."

Farnsworth scowled. "You're agreeing to a year's sanction?"

I nodded immediately. Cassandra grimaced, but after thinking about it for another few seconds, she nodded her head.

The FBI agents looked at each other, and Farnsworth finally looked back at me. "I'll still have to clear this with my superiors."

I shrugged, feeling like a man with nothing more to lose. "Make it happen."

****

It was an agonizing 24 hours after the FBI agents left. Something deep inside me knew, just _knew_, that if we didn't get the FBI/OFAC access to the banking records, we'd never be able to find the patterns that would lead us to Sharpley's and Matthews' hidden accounts. And if we didn't find those accounts, I would be completely ruined.

I stayed in the home office for the rest of the day, doing my best to manage without OFAC access. Twice, my loved ones tried to get me to come out and think of something other than this current crisis, or at least eat something. Both times, I'd sent them away.

Taylor was first, insisting that she was there to help me relax. She pressed me in her typically insistent way until she got my pants open and knelt underneath the desk in front of me. At first, I was going to let her give me a quick blowjob to release the pressure and then go back to work. But despite this plan, I couldn't get my mind away from the next wire transfer to analyze, and wouldn't you know it, I couldn't maintain a stiffy.

Taylor felt insulted and stormed away. It was the second time she'd used her expert fellating skills on me in recent days, and the second time she'd failed to arouse me. It was like a Pro Bowl kicker shanking consecutive extra points. That sort of thing just didn't happen. But rather than muse on it after she'd left, I'd simply re-buried myself in my work.

Ashlyn played upon my other temptations. With Evelyn tagging along, she brought Joey and JJ into the office to play around. But even my kids couldn't really distract me. I romped around with them for all of ten minutes before returning to the computer. And nothing was going to dislodge me again.

Late that night, when I got upstairs to my bedroom, I found it empty. There was a note from Taylor, telling me that she was sleeping with Ashlyn again. If I wanted the company of some very beautiful women, whether for sex or even just to cuddle, all I had to do was walk across the hallway to Ashlyn's room. Topping things off, Taylor had left her bra underneath the note.

But I didn't walk across the hallway. I just flopped onto the bed fully dressed, closed my eyes, and let unconsciousness take me.

Thankfully, the next morning it all worked out. Farnsworth's superiors expectedly balked at the notion of letting private citizens like the JKE analysts have FBI access to the American banking system and OFAC access to foreign assets. On the other hand, the SEC was only too happy to sanction us for a full year. I had to give up something, and the idea of shutting me down for 12 months was just the carrot some government bigwigs needed to push it through. I was going to get my international banking access.

Still, the FBI wanted some assurances that my team wasn't just going to start surfing through the network, using our access as a jumping off point to start hacking into other sensitive areas.

So the next day, Cassandra and I helicoptered out to my building on Wall Street. We set up a big conference room within which the OFAC and FBI data streams would be restricted. The Bureau then sent over two beefy agents to stand guard. Besides us, only our six hand-picked analysts would be allowed into the room to use the FBI access point. And the guards would ensure that that tracing the missing money was the *only* thing our analysts would be doing.

After an hour of working with my team to get the ball rolling, Cassandra more or less ordered me out of the conference room.

"What?" I complained. "I need to see this through."

"You hired the best; you said it yourself," she reminded me. "But they *can't* be at their best when their *boss* is looking over their shoulders. You have to go, Jonathan. Go home. Spend some time with your family."

"But-"

"This is not open to debate," she stated flatly. "You've got to get out of here and let your people do their jobs, okay?"

Though clearly unhappy with the situation, I had to admit that Cassandra was right. "Fine... fine..." I threw up my hands. "You'll keep me posted?"

"Of course, sir." Cassandra stood at attention, nodding confidently. "Get some rest."

****

Cassandra had told me to get some rest. As soon as I walked in the door, the stairs up to my bedroom beckoned to me.

She'd also told me to spend some time with my family. JJ and Joey would be up and playing by now. All I would have to do was walk down the short hallway to see them.

But no, I went straight to my office. Even if I couldn't be there with the team poring through bank records, there were still other things I could do to track Sharpley and Matthews down, however remote the possibilities.

Just as I sat down, the office door opened up behind me. Both Taylor and Ashlyn came into the room.

I looked up at them while simultaneously opening up the notebook computer with my left hand. "Hey. How're the kids?"

"Evelyn and Charlotte are watching them in the family room," Ashlyn informed me.

Taylor merely folded her arms across her chest. "What are you doing?" she asked accusingly.

I frowned at her tone and waved at the computer. "Same thing I've been doing every day since we got back: getting us out of this mess."

"No, what are you doing in *here*?" Taylor stomped forward and slammed the lid to my computer shut.

"Hey!"

"Cassandra called. She explained what's going on. Your analysts are handling it, and the only FBI access point is over at JKE. So what are you doing in here?" Taylor asked more insistently.

"There are other things I could be doing, other ways of tracking down Sharpley. C'mon, it's not like I'm in here looking at porn."

"I'd rather you were!"

"Huh?"

Taylor's eyes canted to the sides as she went from angry to worried in half a heartbeat. "Johnny, you haven't had sex in almost *five days*. Tell me that isn't the longest period you've gone without since we got together."

I arched an eyebrow. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Don't you think that's odd? Just a little?"

"I've been busy. In case you hadn't noticed, I've got a lot of other things on my plate."

"No, you've got ONE thing on your plate: finding the money. It's consuming you. You're not eating. You're barely sleeping. And you're not having SEX!"

"You make it sound like being abstinent is unhealthier than not eating and sleeping," I chuckled.

"For you, in this house, it is," Taylor hugged herself. "We've had other problems, Johnny. There was the whole deal with Martin Dean. And you've had other deals go sour. But you never stopped coming to bed with me. You never stopped flirting with the girls. Not until this crisis."

"You're overreacting to nothing-"

"I'm not!" she interrupted. "Seriously, Johnny. For you to be like this... how bad *is* it? Are we really out of money?"

"We're _fine_."

"You keep saying that," Ashlyn interjected. "That's all we hear from you: 'We're fine. We're fine.' I want to believe it, but... when you're acting like this, it's hard to believe."

"Ash, we're making progress."

"Not according to Agent Farnsworth, you're not. Or wasn't that what he came over to tell you the other day?"

"You're eavesdropping now?"

Taylor rolled her eyes. "You were in the *living room*. Charlotte was passing by and overheard."

"Well we are now. Cassandra just told you about the FBI Access Point."

"Uh-huh. And she told us JKE won't be able to do business in the *United States of America* for a whole year because of it."

"As long as we find the money, it won't matter."

"That's a big 'if'," Ashlyn commented. "The TV shows are right, aren't they? If you don't recover the money, you're bankrupt, aren't you?"

"Is that true?" Taylor added.

I stared at the closed notebook. "We're fine," I stated, without conviction.

"It's true, isn't it?" My wife's face was ashen. "If this fails... we're done, aren't we?"

'We're done'. They were two simple words, but layered with so much subtext. In her voice I heard the obvious, that we'd be bankrupt and our lives as we'd known them would be over.

But the cynical part of my brain heard even more. Not only would this magical ride that had begun when I'd inherited billions be over, but so would my relationship with Taylor. After all, when I was just another ordinary Joe, she'd been an off-and-on fuck buddy, but not a serious girlfriend. If I lost my money, if I went back to being an ordinary man, would she leave me?

'We're done.' Our relationship would be done? I wouldn't be worth staying married to, was that it?

This family would be done. Bankrupt, I wouldn't be able to keep paying Cassandra. She'd have to leave me to find another job. Ashlyn wouldn't stick around. She was only 26, a hot babe with many other prospects. Surely some new sugar daddy would swoop in to take care of her and her daughter.

The Montauk mansion? Gone. JKE? Folded. Failure. Absolute failure. I'd lose *everything*.

When I looked up, I realized that I was alone in the room. Taylor had asked me a question, but though I hadn't verbally responded, I was sure my physical response had been answer enough.

"Yes," I said aloud to the empty room. "If this fails... we're done."

Hunching over the desk, I put my face in my hands. And I started to cry.

****

I kept a bottle of Glenlivet 1964 Cellar Collection in the office for the few times I had an executive over to the house. I wasn't ordinarily a scotch drinker, but these weren't ordinary times.

One glass became two. Two became... four... or so. I wasn't really keeping count. The point was: I sat there in the semi-darkness of my empty home office, wondering where everything had gone wrong.

Everything had been so perfect. My wife adored me more than anyone in the world, and she treated me that way. We'd had some initial problems having a baby together, and despite the significant likelihood she would never again be able to get pregnant, we at least had the baby boy she'd always dreamed of. Jonathan Junior carried my name, and my legacy, and that was all Taylor really needed.

Cassandra and I had found a perfect balance. We loved without restraint, and inhabited the roles that made us comfortable. She loved her life with me, and I loved having her by my side. Even though there was nothing formal between us save for an employment contract, our hearts knew what we meant to each other.