Preston
“See you later, man,” Marcus bid me farewell when we departed from the restaurant. I had dragged him in along with me to help me work on the papers regarding the recent company acquisition. He was a professional banker and it was his expertise that guaranteed we wouldn’t make mistakes. I trusted him more than our company’s bookkeeping department.
I waved him goodbye and pondered for a moment where I could go next. As I sat in my car, I instantly thought about Lyla.
With a weird knot growing in my gut, I decided to just visit the auto mechanic shop. When I got there, I saw that the vehicle was already fixed but it was still there. The owner, Emilio, told me Lyla didn’t even check on her car despite them leaving her a few voice messages.
“Wait, she never came by to even look at it?” I was bewildered and confused.
“Yeah, she won’t even answer our calls,” Emilio answered. “We need to charge her card soon or the bill is going to go up. We only have enough space here, you know, and there are customers coming in everyday.”
That was understandable. “Let me look at her bill,” I suggested and Emilio complied. When I got a hold of the bill I discovered it was well over two thousand dollars. Lyla’s car required a lot of part replacements to get back up in shape.
“I’ll pay it,” I told Emilio as I pulled out my wallet. “You guys prefer cash or credit?”
“Credit,” he said with a smile. “It’s
just easier nowadays.”
Emilio took my card, ran it and came back to me a few minutes later once the payment had been confirmed. I put my card back in my wallet and then told him, “Could you get it delivered back to her?”
“Sure, you know the address?”
I wrote it down and bid him farewell.
9
Lyla
“Who the hell paid for this?” I demanded.
The poor guy who brought my car back from the mechanic shop just looked at me with a broken expression of melancholy, as if I stepped on a kid’s favorite toy. He looked confused too, unsure of what to say.
“Look, just tell me and I won’t let anyone know you did,” I tried to be calm.
“I hope you mean it,” he replied and then pulled up his folder of papers. He looked through for a bit and then said, “It was billed to a Mr. Preston Maxwell… wait – that was Preston Maxwell?”
“You know him?”
He looked at me like I was the idiot this time around. “Everyone knows Mr. Maxwell. He’s one of the richest billionaires this side of the planet. Well, his company really got into the spotlight lately after acquiring Montgomery Universal Banks and now they just acquired Emerald Corner too.”
That was interesting. It was too bad all that money went to waste since Preston was a perverted asshole and a narcissist to boot. If he thought this was a good way of making it up to me, he was dead wrong. The next time I see him I’m just going to flat out and say how dumb he is. I mean, seriously, he just paid for a random woman’s car repairs! Who does something like that?
“Well, thanks for telling me and thanks for bringing in my car,” I told the driver and closed the door.
I sat down on the couch and turned off my television. At least my car was working now. However, repairing my car wasn’t going to pay my dad’s mortgage or my rent. I needed more money. I needed a damn job.
Then it hit me. A light bulb just clicked in my head.
I ran to the bedroom and scoured through the trash on my floor. There were a lot of papers, clothes and junk everywhere but I did manage to find the one piece of paper that I needed: the billionaire auction brochure that Mikaela stuffed into my purse.
With the way things were going, I needed to take desperate measures. I needed to sell my virginity to the highest bidder.
10
Preston
“Good evening, Mr. Maxwell,” the old butler ushered me in.