Page 69 of Unbind

She swallows. ‘Okay. Um. So, then, we should probably lead each other astray. What do you suggest?’

I grin. I do have one idea. Any other woman would scoff, but I have a feeling Natalie will bite my hand off. ‘I do actually need to go into the office for an hour or so. But I wondered if you’d like to come with me and check out Omar Vega’s studio?’

If I wasn’t lying on top of her, I think she’d sit bolt upright. ‘Ohmygod. Are you serious? I would kill,like literallykill, to have a snoop around.’

I smirk at the strength of her reaction. ‘I thought so, you devious little angel.’

‘Wouldn’t it be a bit immoral, though?’

‘I don’t see why not. It’s not like I’m showing you his confidential information. It’s good for you to see how a larger brand lays out its workspace—it’ll give you something to visualise. Aim for.’

‘I’d love to. I’d love it so much. When can we go?’

I laugh and move over her so my dick leaves no room for misjudging its intentions. ‘Not so fast, my little corporate spy. First, you’re going to show me your levels. And then, if you don’t need feeding right this second, I have some plans for you.’

42

ADAM

Most London-based fashion brands have their studios in East London, near to where the majority of the factories are located. There are outliers, of course, most notably Victoria Beckham, who chose an enormous Georgian mansion in Hammersmith to house both her offices and studio space.

Omar Vega is another outlier. As Nige drives us over to Victoria, I explain to Nat that when I started up my own tech company, OfficeScape, after leaving Wolff, I based it in Victoria. Since my shift towards investing in luxury, I’ve kept my entire stable of brands under one roof. Hence, Vega and his team hang out in the same building as a variety of my other businesses.

‘What does OfficeScape actually do?’ she asks me, adding hurriedly, ‘explain it like I’m five.’

I laugh. ‘It fits out and furnishes massive office spaces using AI. Say you’re a tech firm and you’re expanding to a new twenty-floor office in Hong Kong. OS will take the floor plans and input best working practices in terms of productivity and wellbeing, and then it will spit out proposals for how to layout various divisions and workers within those divisions. It’ll also come up with interior design schemes, furnishing suppliers, budgets and sustainability metrics. Oh, and it can drive the entire ordering process for fitting the buildings out, too.’

She raises her eyebrows. ‘Holy crap. That’s amazing. I didn’t even know that was a thing.’

I stroke her thigh. ‘More and more. Traditionally, all those roles have been carried out by different people—different firms, even. But for rapidly expanding companies, it’s a godsend. And obviously the technology has come a long way, too. The programming infrastructure I built it on fifteen years ago is nothing like what exists today.’

‘How did you even come up with the idea?’ she asks, looking genuinely fascinated.

‘I think I mentioned that Anton took a chance on me—he gave me a job straight out of prison, didn’t make me go through any of the usual channels. God knows, my CV wouldn’t have got me through the front door.

‘Basically, he brought me in as a very junior member of the Corporate Centre, which is the part that oversees the entire enterprise.’ I blow out a breath. The magnitude of his trust in me, of what he did for me, still affects me today. It’s no understatement to say he took a chance on a fucked-up kid and made the world my oyster.

‘He made me do my Business Studies A Level, which I completed in a year thanks to all the material I’d poured over endlessly while I served my sentence. A part-time MBA followed, funded by a Wolff Holdings bursary and essentially credentialising me for the business world.

‘I got involved in so many different projects, I can’t even tell you,’ I continue. ‘But one of the biggest was helping with the expansion of their Madrid office, which was a newSouthern European headquarters for them. I did a tonne of the budgeting and cost analysis around it, and it gave me a pretty good idea of the overall process—it was a logistical nightmare of epic proportions. But it gave me the idea that surely things could be streamlined, and it kind of went from there.’

I shrug. ‘I knew technology had to lie at the heart of it. I did some homework and pitched it to Anton. He loved it. Told me to go for it. He let me use company resources to test out some of the technology. In the end he invested—he seeded the entire thing.’

I’m silent for a moment. I didn’t just benefit from Anton’s extraordinary generosity, nor his unshakable belief in me or my ideas. I undoubtedly profited from being at the centre of a company that, while massive, was still at its heart so entrepreneurial. Having access to Wolff’s hive mind, tapping into it, was akin to my fledgling company being nurtured by one of Silicon Valley’s finest incubators.

‘Sounds like investing was a smart move on his part,’ Natalie muses, and I grin, because making my mentor even richer after everything he did for me has been one of my greatest privileges.

‘Yeah. Thankfully, it all worked out and he made a pretty hefty return.’

‘Of course he did. And then you pivoted, basically, into luxury goods?’

‘Can you tell I have a soft spot for them?’ I ask in return, and she grins, pawing at my sweater again. Not that she’s stopped since I put it on earlier. I don’t tend to opt for overt designer logos, preferring quiet luxury, so I’m fond of this understated Brunello Cucinelli sweater. It’s cream cashmere, form-fitting, with camel intarsia bands across eachbicep. Simple, but beautifully knitted from the finest cashmere in the world.

Not only could my little fashionista name the brand on sight, but she looked a little shell-shocked when I put it on. She muttered something about how good it looked with my skin tone and then stroked my chest while mumbling about defined pecs.

I think she approves.

Nat—I’m guessing I’m allowed to call her Nat now that she’s allowed me inside her body three times—looks every inch the stunning fashion entrepreneur in the understated outfit I had Clem send over from Selfridges yesterday after securing Nat’s promise that she’d stay the night. She’s in a black cashmere polo-neck, tight jeans and Golden Goose trainers, but her hair is pulled back in its trademark sleek ponytail and her makeup is glowy and perfect.

---