Page 8 of Theirs to Treasure

Part one of my new life is underway.

I need to get laid.

And when I do, I vow that Edward—bless his miserable lying heart—will never know what he missed.

CHAPTERTHREE

Forrest

“Holy fuckballs,”my brother, Zev, exclaims. “That went better than we expected.”

“Even with our egotistical goals.” After a long, successful day, I lift my very pricey celebratory Bonds whiskey and tip my glass in Zev’s direction.

Zev, younger by three years, is filled with visionary genius. His ideas are so forward-thinking that it might take years to bring them to fruition, if results are even possible. Mining asteroids, I’m still not convinced about.

Right now, he’s wearing the biggest grin I’ve ever seen.

And rightly so.

Four years ago, he’d brought me a new idea from IntelliChain Dynamics. The start up with its brash, ballsy CEO planned to develop a fully integrated supply chain management system that was enhanced with cutting-edge financial technology solutions.

At first, I was skeptical.

The idea was brilliant—even I could see that. But execution would be difficult at best.

In addition to requiring a shitpile of seed money, they needed a lot of help from us to set up the business, hire a capable team, and source components from overseas—something our staff excels at.

Zev’s intuition had been correct, and this was his first big win.

Today’s demo, to some of the world’s biggest tech venture capitalists, had gone off with only minimal glitches.

Afterward, we’d spent hours answering questions and talking strategy. We didn’t need to sell anyone on the potential. This was the kind of innovative, disruptive technology we all get a hard-on for.

Before today’s event, our family’s firm—InnovateFirst Capital—set a lofty funding target of ten to twelve million dollars.

When the last person walked away, we were at fifteen.

“Not fucking bad for a day’s work,” Zev said.

Or, rather, the culmination of forty-eight months of planning, strategy, calculations, crunching numbers, small successes, adjustments, spectacular failures, more adjustments, and finally, triumph.

Scaling a business is always a time-consuming challenge. “We still have a long way to go.”

“For Christ’s sake, Forrest, take the win.”

Zev tends toward optimism, while I…don’t. Which was probably why—before his death—our father had created the position of Vice President of Innovation especially for Zev. Dad knew how essential that was to the first evolving and remaining relevant.

As CEO, I do my best to ensure we bring in more money than we send out.

The partnership works because we view life through different lenses.

After clinking our glasses, we each take a sip.

Damn.Such a fine whiskey with a smoky finish.

“How are we going to celebrate this one?”

We have all night.

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