Page 2 of The Billionaire's Bad News Baby

There was more coughing this time, louder and unending, and Elio tried to power through and finish his speech.

“So, I, yes, I hope you enjoy the rest of the?—”

But he couldn’t even finish the sentence as there was a collective gasp from the crowd, clearing a space in the center of the room as everyone moved back like a school of fish swimming in sync. In the middle was the coughing man, bending over and clutching at his throat and chest, tears in his eyes from the effort, his face as red as the wine in the glass that fell from his hand and shattered on the ground. Now it was fairly obvious that the man wasn’t coughing; he was choking. Elio felt his whole body turn cold and still as he watched, unable to move, unable to do anything at all.

One of the wait staff leapt into action from the side of the room, grasping the choking man from behind, who was grappling at his throat like something out of a horror movie, and gave him the Heimlich maneuver. After a few good thunks to the stomach, the man seemed to swallow whatever it was that had been stuck. He sucked in a whoosh of air and then promptly fainted, collapsing in the waiter’s arms, who looked on in horror, not wanting to place him down on the floor covered in spilled wine, and instead the man hung limply from his arms.

Now that the man who had choked was quiet, hanging there unconscious, and even though his face was still beet red, Elio recognized who he was: Noel Preston, owner and CEO of Southern Valley Wines and also Elio’s biggest competitor on the market. Elio’s stomach sank through the floor.

It was all a bit of a blur after that. An ambulance was called, by whom Elio never found out, probably another member of the waitstaff, and paramedics wheeled the tuxedoed man away from the scene, his chest heaving with a noisy rasp with every breath he took. People watched on in fascination, horror, or a mix of both. Elio noticed a few people shamelessly taking photos of the spectacle or recording on their phones. After the ambulance left, other guests started trickling away as well. The atmosphere had no hope of recovering, the whole room full of whispers and the feeling of something scandalous hanging over them.

Elio was one of the first to leave, slipping out a side door when no one was looking, unable to take another second of being trapped inside.

* * *

Sleep came to Elio in fits and starts that night. The only reason he had been able to snatch any sleep at all, he figured, was because of plain old exhaustion. Then his mind would prod him awake with thoughts of partygoers choking, ambulance lights flashing through glass windows, and red wine spilling from glasses and staining carpets and cocktail dresses. He wouldn’t call them nightmares; he was thirty-five and far too old to be having nightmares… but they set him on edge, his jaw aching from grinding his teeth when he woke up.

So when Marc appeared at his penthouse apartment at the frankly unforgivable hour of eight a.m., Elio didn’t feel like engaging in polite small talk as they sat opposite each other in the dining area. He chased painkillers with orange juice, trying to clear the searing headache that was stabbing at his temples, while Marc made himself comfortable.

“So?” Elio asked, prodding at his lawyer, who looked up from his phone with a frown of concentration.

“So? So what?” Marc asked, and Elio’s headache immediately got worse because this was not his jovial colleague and friend who was as irreverent as possible in any given situation. This was Marc Esposito, lawyer extraordinaire, in full flight. So something wasn’t looking good, and Elio would rather know about it sooner than later.

“So…” Elio said, holding the cold glass of juice to his temple. “Why are you here so early and why do you look like you’re going into battle?”

“Because going into battle is a pretty good summary of what’s happening.”

“So some gossip rags will sink their teeth into someone choking at the launch party. Why is that battle worthy?”

“Not just someone,” said Marc sternly, not deigning to look up from his phone. “Your biggest competitor.”

“Well, I’m not the one that shoved something down his throat.”

“No, but someone as volatile as Noel Preston is probably going to make it seem that way.”

Elio sighed and desperately wished that he was still in bed. “You think he’s really going to drag my name through the mud?”

“I think he’s going to drag your name through the courts.”

That made Elio sit up a bit straighter. “You think he’s going to sue me?”

“I’d bet money on it.”

“Let him try. It was a freak accident.”

“It doesn’t matter what it was. It matters what it looks like. And what it looks like is your biggest competitor, on the night of you launching your biggest product yet, nearly choked to death. If people get even a whiff of the word suspicious, then you are royally screwed, my friend.”

“God, why does it always come back to how things look?” Elio groaned, rubbing his hands down his face.

“You making a secretive little getaway didn’t help optics,” Marc said.

“It was either leave or go back to standing in the corner,” Elio said tightly.

Marc shrugged as if neither option was great, but what was Elio supposed to have done? Fallen to his hands and knees and sobbed at the tragedy of Noel Preston choking? Comfort other guests who had been looking on with glee as if this was the best show of their lives? The whole thing had felt like an out-of-body experience and the thought to stick around for optics had, for once, never crossed his mind.

“I’ll just tell everyone you were investigating what might have gone wrong…” Marc muttered, more to himself than Elio, tapping notes into his phone with deft fingers.

“He didn’t chew his food. That’s what went wrong.”

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