Page 5 of Mr. Delicious
Chapter 2
Adam
* * *
“No,” I said again for the fifth time.
“Why are you being such a dick?” Marc winced.
“Me a dick? Well if I’m a dick, you’re a fucking asshole.”
“No need to get testy.”
We’d been on the phone since I left my apartment. Instead of driving like I normally did, I walked.
I walked for the pure reason of wanting to talk it out without the risk of getting so mad I’d end up crashing my car.
Marc might be my older brother, but he was shady as shit and only seemed to get worse as the years went by.
“The offer is too good to refuse.” Marc pointed out, with an exasperated sigh, making it sound like I was being difficult. “A billion dollars for Jordin Estates. That’s more than it’s worth.”
“Money isn’t everything you prick.”
The asshole knew I was well aware of the net worth of Jordin Estates.
He also knew I couldn’t be like him and disregard what selling the place would mean to the people who already lived there.
Jordin Estates had been around since the early days when my great-great-grandfather first set up shop as a property developer. Coming straight from France in the 1920’s, he started out by purchasing a shop he later turned into a supermarket, then he bought some land which he then built houses on. And thus came the start of our empire.
That’s what we did. My family was into real estate and property development all over the world. I’d fallen into it as expected, as did Marc. But, it was me who had all the ideas. “Hot Headed” was what Marc called me. A result of the spontaneously, totally impulsive badass ideas I’d come up with sometimes.
The most recent crazy idea I’d come up with was land swapping. Similar to house swapping, but so much more.
My recent conquest was a ten-acre farm in Ohio for a château in Switzerland. Crazy, but it worked, and we made a substantial profit from it. All depended on what the clients valued.
Jordin Enterprises was a world class company that people knew and loved.
Jordin Estates was part of that. The complex held twenty-two apartments that were all occupied. People had grown up there and lived there all their lives. There was a school nearby, which we owned and a shopping centre, which we also owned.
Two weeks ago, Dad was approached by a tycoon from Texas about the place, who offered us a billion dollars.
My father was the head of Jordin Enterprises, but that complex had been specifically willed to Marc and me from our grandfather, meaning if I didn’t want to sign it wasn’t going to sell.
“Adam, this is crazy. Don’t tell me you’re going to miss an opportunity because of some lowlifes.”
“They aren’t lowlifes. They offered to buy the place from us.” I hated when he talked about people as though he could choose who mattered and who didn’t.
Thoselowlifeshe was talking about were people who paid their rent to our company without fail for decades. They were our tenants. When Marc went behind my back and issued them a notice of intention to sell the other week, they got together, nominated a representative, and came to me with the proposition to buy their homes.
That was more along the lines of the right thing to do.
I stopped by a lamp post.
The coffeehouse was just down the block. I wanted to wrap this up before I got inside. Talking like this, like I really was a prick was not how I wanted to start my morning, and I didn’t want to be one of those people who argued on the phone in public.
Okay that might be a bit contradictory since I was walking down a busy road downtown near the L, and any passersby could hear me.
It was just the coffeehouse I was worried about.
