Page 8 of Roots of the Wicked

I stopped myself from calling her several times after I had stalked her company’s website. New Generation was a boutique IT company, set up around businesses needing specialized IT support. Jax had launched the company six years ago. Despite her company being small, she and her engineers handled an impressive client list. It was a list I wasn’t supposed to have, but when you are worth billions, you could get almost anything you wanted.

As I scrolled through her website once again, I noted she was the only one without a posted picture. I had snooped enough to discover that she didn’t have any social media pages, which was an anomaly in this day and age.

How long was it going to be before I saw her again? A simple computer issue didn’t guarantee she would be the one to handle the problem. For her to show up, the problem needed to be a substantial one. One our in-house team wasn’t equipped to handle.

I regretted that I hadn’t taken a more aggressive interest in her and her company until now. Unfortunately, it had not been necessary as she usually met with my assistant. Her name and company logo were on multiple documents that had come across my desk, but it never occurred to me to request a face-to-face with her.

Had she stirred a spark of romance within me? The notion of it was a foreign entity that threw my thought pattern into disarray. Why else would I have such an urgent need to see her again when I could handpick whoever I wanted?

I was forced to go through the process of conducting pre-screenings of the women I dated and having them sign non-disclosure agreements, before we could even have a cup of coffee together. This process took the fun out of dating, but as someone with the amount of wealth I had built, I wasn’t left with many other dating options.

Before employing necessary measures to protect myself from gossip, women had no problem leaking my personal business to the media for money. In those instances, I was forced to fork over handsome sums of money to media outlets. Even paying to have them delete scandalous photos of me. A couple of my one-night stands had also made outrageous attempts to steal my used condoms.

It didn’t matter how powerful I was in business, I was no match for a woman on a quest to snag a rich husband. I had quickly learned the lessons of the world where wealth, power, and sex collided.

Jax was the one woman, a diamond among dust, who made me want to try my hand at traditional dating again. She made me want to know her—everything. Snooping into her background, I learned she valued her privacy as much as I coveted mine, but she wasn’t totally unavailable. The New Wave Annual Technology Convention was coming up, and I was determined to attend this year, as I learned Jax attended every year. I phoned my secretary.

“I’ll set it up for you right away,” Kim, replied to the request I had been contemplating all day. “I’ll have to reschedule your golf game with Mr. Timberlake.”

“That will be fine, Kim.”

“Yes, sir.” She replied before hanging up.

Now that the convention was being booked, the torturous two-week wait to see Jax again was underway.

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