Total pages in book: 125
Estimated words: 120631 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 603(@200wpm)___ 483(@250wpm)___ 402(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120631 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 603(@200wpm)___ 483(@250wpm)___ 402(@300wpm)
Damn. He really needed to get his head in the game. He reminded himself why he was here and what he had to gain.
Hawthorne might lay claim to a fleet of vessels and pride themselves on being able to haul in catches from around the globe, but catching was only part of the fish trade. Moving the product was a whole other animal.
Their harvest meant nothing unless it was delivered cold and whole into every port. That meant contracts, capable shipping vessels, and connections. The Warsaw warehouse and the Poland expansion lived or died on his ability to work out a fair deal with Warren Aldrich. It was a pipeline that would move them into the future and bring about generational wealth his family had never had under Magnus’s leadership.
Warren Aldrich was paramount to his plan. The freighters and the port authorities were already in his pocket. As one of the top shipping magnates, he had deals decades old. His ships were approved to cross borders where other younger shipping companies were not. Those refrigerated routes threaded a tight sinew across half the map, giving Hawthorne Fishery the advantage and access it needed to scale.
Aldrich knew what Soren wanted to achieve. Why not get his own ships into the deal? This wasn’t a one-sided negotiation. Soren needed the access and vessels. Aldrich wanted loyalty—a ten-year contract that eliminated any competition. It was a steep ask, but one that would benefit both families, which was why Soren agreed to offer him an exclusive deal.
Aldrich would gain years of guaranteed high-volume freight, and Hawthorne Fishery would see unsurpassed revenue. All they needed was an agreed-upon number and a majority vote from the board, then the contracts would be signed.
A done deal.
“There he is.” Warren Aldrich carved through the crowd with both hands extended, seizing Soren’s the way a man greets a son returned from war. “The man of the hour. Come, there are people who’ve been dying to meet the new face of Hawthorne Fishery.”
“Warren.” Soren shook his hand, bracing for the schmoosing about to unfold. “Quite a house.”
“My grandfather’s folly.” Warren laughed, clapping Soren’s shoulder and steering him deeper into the throng with a proprietary grip.
He presented Soren to a senator and his young wife draped in Harry Winston, then to a man who controlled half the ports on the Eastern Seaboard and an excellent contact to have. To a knot of investors, brokers, and various connectors in the shipping industry.
Through every introduction, Warren kept a hand on Soren, displaying him, claiming him, and the easy paternal pride should have prickled, but some human part of Soren remained innocent enough to still crave such approval, even if it was past all reason.
Warren was not his father. He was nothing like Magnus. But damn, he couldn’t help but imagine how having such a mentor might heal old wounds his own father carved.
“Ah, gentlemen, you all remember my daughter, Olivia.”
Soren turned and the warmth curdled inside of him. She moved through the crowd like a shark sensing blood in the water. Her ice-blue silk gown rippled from every curve, and her blonde hair, swept off her neck, revealed a string of diamonds at the base of her throat. She was elegance incarnate, and as dangerous and unpredictable as a squall ripping through a cobalt sky.
“Soren.” She laid her hand flat against his chest, over his heart, as if invited to do so. “You certainly clean up well.” Her smile blazed for the room as eavesdroppers chuckled at his expense. Her fingers smoothed his lapel, a wifely little performance staged for her father.
Warren’s eyes tracked the motion and raised his glass in a silent salute, as if offering Soren his blessing. But Soren wasn’t interested.
Taking Olivia’s hand, he lowered it back to her side with a warning squeeze of pressure. She caught his message and laughed, as if to say, we’ll see.
“How long have you two been an item?” a woman in a deep emerald gown asked.
Before he could correct her mistake, Olivia answered for the both of them. “Soren and I have been friends since childhood.” She looped her arm around his, closing her fingers over the hand that had just tried removing her touch. “Remember how we used to play on the docks together whenever my family summered in Hideaway Bay?”
Stunned by her deliberate implication, his eyes narrowed on her smiling face. Such performance and artifice. He wondered if there was anything real there at all. Now, he only saw her with frigid clarity, a woman with a motive and a penchant for always getting her way.
He wondered how he ever misjudged her enough to think her agreeable and pliant. A mistake he wouldn’t make again.
From the soft laugh to her gentle poise, he’d misjudged breeding for warmth. But this was no mild, agreeable creature. This was a piranha, beautiful, even ornamental at first glance, but capable of stripping prey to the bone in seconds flat.