Page 12 of Fifth Avenue Devil

"Can I be candid with you?"

"I couldn't stop you even if I wanted to, apparently."

I smirk. "I am a man who is used to getting what I want. I would like you to agree. But I don't need you to." I stretch out on the couch, taking up space. "What I don't understand is why you wouldn't want to merge companies. I have seen your shabby little office and your unenthusiastic staff. Why would you not agree to a merger where you got much nicer offices, a person to do the heavy lifting for you and cut all of your dead weight, and a lot of money to boot?"

Annalise runs her tongue over her teeth, looking annoyed. "Because, Nate. First off, my father absolutely despises you. My job as his successor is to run things as he would see fit. He would never say yes to a merger. Secondly, I don't like you any more than my father does."

"And what about the undeniable benefits I'm offering?" I glance out her glass door toward the employees. I can see them standing and staring rather than working. "You need a hatchet man. Somebody unafraid to make bold cuts. Those people out there are not loyal to you, Annalise. They aren't driven to work hard for you. Let me be that person. Let me move you into much nicer offices in the ViaLife building. And for god's sake, think of your profits once I start making changes to the company structure."

She narrows her eyes at me. "I think you're missing something, Mr. Fordham."

"Nate," I correct her. "And what would that be?"

Annalise stands up and plucks a key card off her desk. "Let me show you."

Without another word, she leads me out of the office, to a stairwell, and down a floor. We’re headed to the company's lab floor, I bet.

What could be interesting about that, though?

Annalise scans her keycard at the door, then steps back to do a biometric scan. Once the door unlocks, she ushers me into a hallway with a series of same-looking white doors. One is propped open and strange light flickers from the room into the hallway.

"Left! I said left!" a man shouts.

I look at Annalise, arching a brow. She ignores me and hurries into the room with the strange, flickering lights.

I blink a few times as I follow her in; my eyes have to adjust to the darkness.

In the center of the room, a large, three-dimensional map hovers midair. The map is being navigated by a young man working joystick. He presses a button and the map unfolds to reveal several sections of the ground, complete with layers of topsoil, sediment, and rock. The young man sticks out his tongue as he deftly works the joystick, descending through the strata on the map.

An older man lounges in a chair beside him. He stands up when Annalise enters, rubbing his hands together. "Bossy lady!" he says. His accent is reminiscent of the Eastern Bloc. "You come to see us, finally."

"Hi Mikhail." Annalise looks to me. "This is Nate Fordham. Mr. Fordham, meet Dr. Mikhail Popov and Dr. Lev Alexeyev."

"Please, call me Mikhail," the older man says. He elbows his co-worker in the ribs. "This is Lev. We are trying to perfect the mapping software. It has many glitches, still."

"Is this a model that you're working with?" I ask. “Is this a hypothetical project?”

In the next second, the software glitches and the projection vanishes. I hear Lev mutter a curse in what sounds like Croatian or Estonian. Then he walks over to flip on the light switch.

Annalise, in the meantime, answers my question. "It is a model of an actual site in Utah. We have done extensive work with ground-penetrating radar and sonar. Now we just need to debug the software so that we can actually use it."

Lev nods, talking to me slowly, as if I will surely have difficulty comprehending this information.

"If you can see all the ground at one time, you can see patterns. And from there, you can predict and explore where there might be large deposits of any kind."

He leaves it there, but there is an unspoken, "duh" at the end.

The back of my neck heats. I'm not used to being dressed down by anybody, let alone scientists. Annalise glances at me, fidgeting, and chimes in again.

"We are going to be able to find huge shale oil deposits. And any other kind of mineral or gas as well. Our project is mere months away from making us so much money that we don't even know what to do with it. That's why there are so many people upstairs playing solitaire. They are sales or support staff, waiting for the word to start making calls,” Annalise adds.

My eyebrows shoot up. If what she says is true, I could be coming into this merger at the perfect time.

"We need to talk about the best way to roll this technology out." I can see how profitable her technology will be. I can also see how partnering with ViaLife can feed this little two-person department a stream of top-tier computer programmers. What she thinks will takes months could take weeks if it is given the right resources.

Annalise thanks the two scientists and steers me out of the room. She makes certain that we are in the stairwell again before she speaks.

"ViaLife is going to be one of many partners that pay for our services as soon as we are up and running." She starts climbing the stairs ahead of me, forcing me to follow her. I scowl as I look at her fantastic ass in that overly conservative skirt and her sleekly muscled calves in those black high heels.

---