Powerful Men 2: Four More Alphas Who Seize Control by Carla Kane

Executive Disgrace
    Tied Up on the Billionaire’s Yacht
     
     
    The sun was sweltering down on the harbor as Lindsey waited by the yacht. There was still no sign of Dewhurst, but then that was pretty much to be expected. After all, billionaire industrialists had a way of turning up late to things, even when they’d set the time and location themselves.
    Beside her, tied to the long polished wooden harbor, Dewhurst’s huge luxury yacht ebbed gently in the cool blue water. Onboard, the decks buzzed with activity as the maintenance staff and repairmen prepared the vessel for the day’s trip. Most of the workers looked pretty poor and seemed to speak Spanish rather than English whenever they grumbled commands at each other. As she watched them, Lindsey figured this was probably just about as close as they’d ever get to the playground of the over-classes. And as for her? Well maybe if she played her cards right then this would only be the first step.
    Lindsey had spent the last ten years working her way up through the levels of Dewhurst Industries since taking a job at entry-level at the age of nineteen. They’d been a busy ten years; there hadn’t been much room for fun or leisure of any kind in all that time. But that was the nature of her ambition. That was how you had to operate if you wanted to rise all the way to the top.
    Or, if you were lucky, you could be born there – like Leo Dewhurst had been. Leo was the joint controller of Dewhurst Industries, a post he shared with his half-brother in England, Maximilian St. James Dewhurst. That wasn’t to say that Leo wasn’t also an excellent strategist in his own right, (he was widely revered as a brilliant, if somewhat unconventional, thinker), but nobody could deny that he’d had more than a decent head start to begin with.
    Since taking the reins from their father, the two brothers had lifted the company to the very summits of the corporate world and everybody knew that Leo was the real driving force behind that lightning ascension. And now here she was, about to embark on a most intimate meeting with the man himself, onboard his own yacht out on the sparkling blue oceans of the Florida Keys. Was it any wonder she had butterflies in her stomach?
    Leo Dewhurst was well-known as a relentless micro-manager and once an employee reached a certain level within the company it could be taken as a given that Leo, one way or another, had had a say in their assuming that position. But Lindsey was going even further than that. For ten years now she’d been on a lightning ascension of her own, maximizing profits and productivity in every position she’d attained no matter where they’d placed her across the country. So when she requested a personal meeting with Leo she definitely expected that she would be seen by the man himself. What she hadn’t expected, was that he would invite her on a day-long deep sea fishing trip on his own private yacht.
    She looked at her watch again and smiled. Forty-five minutes – not exactly outrageously late, at least not for a committed Master of the Universe. Perhaps she’d have time for a cigarette then, she considered. These days smoking was seen by many as a weakness and it was just those kinds of details that one had to be especially attuned to in this game. Nothing escaped scrutiny when that much power and control were involved, no matter how trivial.
    She reached into her bag and took out a cigarette, lighting it quickly with her zippo. It was her first in hours and she savored that long, smooth first inhalation. Something caught her eye at the end of the dock and she looked up. Damn it, she thought, it was him!
    There he was, dressed in a beige suit and white shirt, unbuttoned liberally halfway down his muscular chest and sans the tie and pocket square . His eyes were hidden behind thick black sunglasses and his handsome mouth was frozen in a stern, rigid frown.   Beside him, trying to keep up with his quick, purposeful stride, was