Page 3 of Voyeur

CHAPTERTWO

Emery

These fucking meetings are mind numbing. Suzanne goes on and on about figures and market polls. Sales quotas, sensitivity polls, and advertising quotas. It seems like I’ve been sitting here listening to her for hours. And upon checking my watch, I see that it has, in fact, been hours.

I signal for her to wrap it up, and she nods, reluctantly.

When she finally packs her boards and easel up, I turn and look out the floor-to-ceiling windows that surround the long table in the conference room.

“Was it me, or was her voice monotone the entire time she spoke?” Conner asks.

I smirk, my eyes finding those of my best friend and colleague, moving away from the city skyline. “Charlie Brown’s teacher type monotone.”

He hits me with a finger gun. “Yes, that’s the one!”

I laugh.

“So, I know you’re burnt out. We all are after that, but you promised you’d interview for the Ad Editor position,” he says.

I roll my eyes but remember I had, in fact, agreed.

“How many interviews have you lined up?” I ask.

He puts one solitary finger up, and I quirk a brow. I’d never known him to not line up multiple interviews for a position.

“Only one?”

He smirks. “I think I have the perfect girl for the position.”

“Ahh. What’s she look like?”

Conner and I have been best friends since high school, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out his hiring tactics. Any person with eyesight can walk through any portion of this building from the first floor to the top and see his hand in recruiting. Curvaceous women litter Stanner Enterprises.

Father had run this company my entire life, and his father before him. He groomed Conner and me to take over pretty much our entire lives. At least, as long as I can recall. He died two years back, leaving us in charge, causing both of us to damn near shit our pants. I’m thirty-five, I can do it. But not having Father to run shit past made life a lot simpler. If not, more efficient.

“It’s not like that...” he says, breaking me out of my thoughts. “This time, she was the only one who applied. Of course, you don’t have to hire her. But she’s all the hope we have at filling the position.”

I rub over my face once, feeling the slight scar over my upper lip from the night I try to forget. I look back at him. “Fine, but she can’t know she’s the only candidate. Don’t tell her shit before you get her to my office.”

He nods. “She’s here already.”

I groan, standing and buttoning my suit jacket and tugging the wrinkles out from sitting too long.

“Rein Suzanne in, would you? Her meetings are getting to be too fucking much. Simplify it, or find someone who can,” I tell him as I meet the door with my hand.

“Will do, boss.”

He laughs because he knows I’ve rolled my eyes even though my back’s turned. He’s given me shit about being his boss since I’d become it. Before Father passed, we both were on the same level in this company. But in one fell swoop, one phone call, I’d become more. He’s not my brother, but he’s close enough.

I love my job. But, sometimes, I want to go home at night when the rest of them leave. I wonder if Father ever felt this way. He wasn’t the father who spent much time with us when we were in our formidable years. No, he stepped in once he knew he could groom and mold us into men whom he could leave his legacy to. Which ended up being only me.

I’m one of three boys, but I’m the only one who survived being a Stanner. Jace has been six feet down for years, and David is in the wind, most likely high on something under a bridge somewhere.

Conner—my best friend—is more like a brother to me than David ever could be. Even though he doesn’t share familial blood with me. We’ve been friends since elementary school. When Conner’s parents died in a car crash, Father took him in, never treating him any differently than he did me. He was my best friend, and he was alone, without other family to claim him. It was probably one of his single most shining moments as my father. One that I’ll carry with me always. Sometimes, I think Father groomed him to become my right hand because his other two sons didn’t meet the expectations I did. He wanted his three boys to take over his empire. Instead, he got Conner and me.

David only shows up every now and again when he needs money. Father had frozen his accounts soon after he found him strung out in the streets, begging for change. I, however, had unfrozen them since taking over. Thoughts of him plagued me until I did so.

Maybe freezing them was Father’s way of seeing him. Because since releasing funds to David, I haven’t laid eyes on him.

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