Page 11 of The Bourbon Bargain

Hayes

“We’renotheadedtothe airport?” Paige asks, turning in the backseat of the black SUV to look at me as we cross the Williamsburg Bridge into Manhattan.

“I figured you came all the way to New York for a reason and may like to stay another night,” I answer, taking her hand from where it strokes Cerberus’s head that rests on the seatback between us from his spot in the rear of the vehicle. “Would you like to see my apartment?”

Her eyes gleam with curiosity. “Of course you have a place here, too. Penthouse somewhere on the Upper East Side?”

“With a view of the park,” I add, feeling a smile curling up my lips. “But it’s not just mine. The apartment belongs to Olympus and both of my brothers also use it when they are in the city for work.”

“I’m really glad you found me,” Paige says again, her voice soft. “I thought I made the worst mistake walking out when you didn’t come after me.”

I want to erase the pain I see in her face and punch the version of me that was too fucking stubborn to fight for her the night she left me. I know I should have chased her down, kept her with me, and hashed it out right then and there. I should have taken all of her ire and hatred just so she knew that I would never let her go. But I didn’t, and I let her walk out without the fight she needed to see from me. It was the stupidest mistake of my life.

“Angel, I will always come for you.” My phone vibrates, stopping me from going on about what else I would do for her. I pull the phone from my pocket and see Payton is calling. At Paige’s nod, I answer the call. “What?” I snap.

“We’ve got a problem,” he says over the line, and I feel the tension jacking my shoulders up already.

“Fix it,” I reply, keeping my voice low so as not to scare Paige.

“We need you back in Atlanta. One of our mines collapsed and we have to do damage control whether you figured shit out with your girl or not.”

“Which mine?” I bark, thinking of our Georgia metals and the newest acquisitions that have yet to be retrofitted for the operations we want them for.

“South Africa,” Payton answers, sounding distracted. “How soon can you be here?”

My stomach seizes. Of fucking course it’s a new platinum and palladium mine that cost a fortune to acquire. “I’m in New York. I’ll head straight for the plane and be there in a few hours. Pull everyone in. We have to get this covered now before the word gets out.”

“I’m already on it but this is big and there’s not much we can do but be reactive. I’ll see you in a few hours. I’ll email over the initial reports.” Payton hangs up and I’m left with a big mess at my feet.

“I’m sorry, I have to go back to Atlanta. I want to take you with me, but I understand if you prefer to stay here. I can take you to the apartment before going to the airport and you can stay as long as you’d like.” I kiss Paige’s knuckles and hope she will see how much I would rather stay here with her than fly into a shitstorm and have to deal with a worst-case scenario.

“What happened? You asked which mine, was there an accident?” she asks, her big green eyes worried.

“Yes, at a new acquisition, too, meaning we are going to look like the assholes not living up to safety standards and putting peoples’ lives at risk for the sake of profit. No one is going to give a global conglomerate the benefit of the doubt, so we have to both fix the problem and avoid becoming the villain.”

“I don’t want to stay in New York by myself, not when we’ve just reunited.” She grips my hands in hers. “I’m coming back to Atlanta with you. Having a united front for your personal life may help.”

Once the plane lands, I head straight to the Olympus International Tower in downtown Atlanta. I would have loved to have Paige at my side, but I didn’t want to subject her to this mess, so I had a driver take her and Cerberus straight to the house from the airport. The elevator doors open to complete chaos, people hurrying between offices, phones ringing, an air of panic permeating the air.

“What in the fuck is going on,” I say, catching sight of Carina, my assistant, waiting for me.

“Mr. Olsen, can you please come with me? I have your brothers in the boardroom ready to discuss what is happening overseas,” Carina says, gently guiding me by the elbow away from the elevator bank and into the office proper like I’m a shell-shocked child.

“Fucking finally, where have you been? You’re even later than expected and we don’t have time to deal with your shit,” Zander says, chucking a ball of paper at my head with more force than necessary.

I bat the ball away from my face. “I got here as fast as I could. Now, what the fuck is going on,” I repeat, this time to my brothers rather than the general air of disruption that has a hold of the office.

“The Mine we just acquired had a massive casualty. We’re getting reports that twenty-four of the workers have been killed, and it’s looking like safety equipment wasn’t up to standards. We’re trying to get ahead of this, to route the media inquiries and change the narrative so it doesn’t rain a shit ton of bad press and disapproval on Olympus,” Payton says, scrolling through a tablet and putting muted live news reports onto the boardroom televisions.

“Already the finger is being pointed at us for not updating equipment and practices fast enough. They want our heads on a stake,” Zander adds, shuffling through a stack of fresh printouts his assistant just handed him.

I glare around the room as a way to give my growing frustration an outlet. “How can it be our fault? We just bought the mining outfit last month, and we haven’t even had a full rollover of staff or fully vetted the information from the sale. It was fast and dirty; our team still needs to clean up the pieces.”

I run a hand through my hair and take a seat at the table. Adding the overseas mining operations was phase one of our expansion plans for the end of this year, whereas the hospitality takeover was phase two. We went directly from getting the mines to taking over the hotels, with no pause in between. There hasn’t been time to do what we are being called out for now.

This is bullshit. The South African mine is one of five that was acquired, we have a team for each that is integrating everything we can from those companies, but it takes time to fully investigate all of the infrastructure and current practices being used. Our teams have barely had a chance to dig into them, let alone implement the kind of changes that might have prevented this disaster.

“The press and popular opinion won’t care about the timeline, only that our name is on the paperwork when it comes to who is at fault. We need to spin this, somehow,” Payton says, his fingers flying over the screen of his tablet, working his media magic in some form, I’m sure.

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