Brave guy, Ryan thought. “There's a first time for everything, Carl. You promised to sell this place to me once it was finished. Now that someone has made you a better offer, you've gone back on your word. That's not nice.” Ryan nodded to one of the men, and he let go of Carl's left leg.
“Jesus,” Carl screamed. He was now hanging by his right leg, and the man holding him was beginning to breathe hard. “Okay, Okay. It's yours. Please pull me up.”
“Pull him in,” Ryan ordered. The two men heaved him back over the rail and threw him into the building. Ryan stood over him and noticed he'd wet himself. “Don't do that again, Carl. I hate heights,” Ryan said.
The building was still very much a shell, and the only way down was the constructor's lift, down the outside of the building. The door was made of mesh, and as they descended the wind whistled around them.
Down on the sidewalk, Ryan felt in his jacket for his cell phone. It seemed like it was the hundredth text he'd received that morning. Cindy again, he said to himself. When would she leave him alone? He'd made it perfectly clear to her he only wanted to fool around, not get into a long-term relationship. Most women understood what he wanted, but not Cindy. She'd just lost her husband to a heart attack, and maybe he shouldn't have taken her to bed while she was in such a fragile state. He'd seen her across the room at an art exhibition given by one of his clients in San Francisco. Her beauty and vulnerability had turned him on. In her state, she hadn't taken much persuading to come to his hotel room. She'd needed a shoulder to cry on, a man to love her and tell her she would feel better soon. But he didn't want her, and she'd have to be told to stop contacting him.
“Where to, boss?” the chauffeur asked. He'd been waiting in the Rolls Royce since dropping Ryan off to do his dirty business with Carl.
“The Towers,” Ryan replied. The Towers referred to Mathewson Towers, a huge office block in LA that Ryan owned. His company occupied the top three floors of the ninety-eight-floor building. The rest was a hotel and offices. “I've got a radio interview at two,” he added.
A bit later, once Ryan was up in the Towers, his sixty-year-old secretary entered his office.
“Hi, Mr. Jacobson. Kelly Cruz is here. I put her in the boardroom,” Steffi said.
“Thanks, Steffi. Do I look okay?” he asked.
“As handsome as ever,” she said.
“You're a great liar,” he added. Steffi was his backbone, the woman who organized his days, looked after all his correspondence, and made sure his thousand-dollar suits came back from the dry cleaners on time. But disaster had struck: she'd decided to retire. She was the one employee he knew he couldn't do without. He'd offered her a huge increase in salary, even offered to pay off the tiny bit of mortgage she and her husband still had on their detached house. But tired after years in the stressful environment Ryan adored, she wasn't to be swayed.
Why the hell he'd agreed to do an interview for a radio show he had no idea; it wasn't his thing. He hated the media. He was a real estate guy, a developer, someone who had to make unpopular decisions in the name of making money. The media was always on his case. He knew what he was; he didn't need telling every day.
The boardroom was the most luxurious room in the whole building. When Ryan entered the room, he was pleasantly surprised. Kelly looked just like her photos. When she'd sent an e-mail requesting an interview, Steffi had shown him a photo of her on the Capital Radio website, and he'd immediately said yes to her request.
“Kelly, hi. Nice to meet you.” He shook her hand.
“Mr. Jacobson, thanks for agreeing to the interview.”
“You're the first ever.”
“Interview?”
“Yes. I don't like the media much.”
“Well, I hope you like us,” she said with a smile.
She was Ryan's type: a glitzy blonde dressed in a business suit and heels. “I'm sure I will.”
“Shall we just start? If you want to stop at any time, just hold up your hand and I'll halt the recording.”
“Sure. Go right ahead,” he said, taking a looking at her breasts as she reached behind her to pick up the microphone. She put it on the highly polished table and cleared her throat.
“Today we're in downtown LA with real estate mogul Ryan Jacobson. Thank you for agreeing to see us, Mr. Jacobson.”
“My pleasure, Kelly.” He took a look down at her bronzed legs and wondered how she got them so smooth looking.
“A lot of people know you as the secretive billionaire businessman. Perhaps you would tell us how you got started.”
“Sure. Well, I went to construction college and learned how to build, and then I worked for a real tough guy called Jake Inchmore as a young apprentice. He clipped my ears a few times, I can tell you. I learned a lot from him.”
“And when did you start your own business?”
“As soon as I knew what I was doing. I was very grateful to Jake for teaching me all he knew. You know, the day I told him I was leaving to set up my own company, I was terrified of what he'd do to me, but he was really supportive and pleased I had some entrepreneurial spirit.”
“You certainly do.”