HOLT - Her Ruthless Billionaire

Chapter 1

Chapter One

SYLVIEGood girls…perfect daughters…do not attend parties in skyscrapers.

I am not sure how I know this, but I can sense the truth of it as I walk through the revolving door of Holt Calson’s towering building.

The bottom floor is fancier than anyplace I have ever been with its shiny checkered floors, sleek ivory columns, and elegant black marble walls inlaid with gold.

This lobby is, like, stupid lux and the only thing that stops me from ogling the place is my best friend Prin’s thick Jersey accent hissing, “Girl, stop looking so impressed! We belong here, so we gotta act like it.”

I glance sideways at Prin. Maybe she belongs here. But as for me, well…I cast another look around the lobby with its spotless everything overlaid with the crisp smell of “nothing even remotely ethnic has ever been cooked here.”

I am not supposed to be here. Like, at all. And I’m feeling less and less comfortable within myself by the second—especially when I think about how my parents would react if they knew where I really was. Not at Yale, listening to a lecture, but in some rich boy’s skyscraper.

“Are you sure you can’t meet him somewhere else?” I ask Prin, keeping my voice low because I can tell this lobby will echo and bounce any spoken word off the walls like a basketball. “Maybe someplace that isn’t technically a graveyard?”

“It’s not a graveyard,” Prin insists, rolling her eyes. “That was, like, a million years ago!”

No, not a million years, I think to myself. Prin hasn’t lived in Connecticut as long as I have. I was only a child, newly arrived from Jamaica, when Christina Worthing-Calson jumped from her penthouse balcony. But I remember how the story dominated the local paper for a long time after her death, and a shiver runs down my back at the mere thought of going to a party in the very same penthouse where she died. There is no doubt about it, I am really, really not supposed to be here.

Yet, here I am wearing a borrowed party dress and way too small kitten heels, trying to act as if Asir Zaman didn’t just throw me a plus one to seal the deal with Prin.

And Prin must sense how I am feeling because she suddenly stops and says, “C’mon, Sylvie, don’t chicken out on me, girl!”

“I’m not,” I answer, but even I can hear how unconvincing my voice sounds.

“Sylvie, this is Asir Zaman.” Prin grabs my hand and repeats, “Asir Zaman,” pronouncing each syllable of his name as if it can be found in the Bible. “I mean, look at us!”

I do, and this only makes the, “Nah, girl, you ain’t got nunna the business being here” feeling way worse. Because yesterday, Prin was a nerd, like me. But today, she looks like one of those 90s makeover montages come to life.

Turns out, all Prin needed to go from slumming to stunning was a couple of YouTube makeup tutorials and a vintage outfit from her dead mother’s closet. Her sequined jumpsuit shows off her long legs and arms, and her face has been bronzed, highlighted, and contoured to such perfection that Prin finally looks like who she is: the grown-up daughter of a hip-hop mogul.

But as for me…? I am basically the anti-She’s All That. I don’t have a small chest and slender everything like Prin. So, instead of elegantly hanging off my body like it should, the beaded midi-dress Prin loaned me clings to my overly abundant curves as if it is holding on for dear life. There has been no glittery face transformation for me because even M.A.C doesn’t carry a foundation dark enough to work on my ebony skin. And though Prin did the best she could with my hair, a jeweled comb isn’t going to make the crown braids my mother puts in every Sunday before church look fashionable.

Let’s not even discuss my Costco glasses. Sure, glasses are on trend, but mine do not exactly scream hipster. More like, “Check out the poor Jamaican girl in the borrowed dress! Look how hard she’s trying—and failing—to look cool!”

I don’t belong here, I think to myself. Not like Prin does. Unlike me, she didn’t attend Beaumont on super-reduced tuition, because her dad used to be one of the groundskeepers at the prestigious private school. She lived in the dorms with the other rich kids, while I took the bus home to our two-bedroom rental in Blue Hills every afternoon that I didn’t have a babysitting job or an extra shift at the school’s onsite childcare center. Prin was one of the privileged few, while I was just a few steps up from staff. And as far as I’m concerned, nothing illustrates that point more than the way we look tonight.

But Prin continues to plead with me, “You know I can’t do this without you, so please, please, just be cool and come on.”

Actually, Prin could easily do this without me and that is the only reason I agreed to come with her. I want to keep her from doing something idiotic with the handsome lacrosse player who invited her to this graveyard party in the sky. I already lost my sister to the kind of stupidity star athletes inspire in otherwise smart girls. I don’t want to lose my best friend, too.

I will not lose Prin.

With that thought, I’m able to re-find my nerve. “Okay, c’mon,” I say, reversing the hold on our hands and tugging her forward. But not for the reasons Prin thinks. I did not lie to my parents about what we would be doing tonight so my best friend could finally hook up with the boy she’s been crushing on since freshman year.

I’m here because I don’t want Prin to end up like my sister. And if I have to go to some crazy party in the penthouse where the host’s mother killed herself, then that’s what I will do. Because Prin is a true sister-friend. She’s rich, but unlike the other kids at Beaumont, she never made me feel like I was nothing more than dirt beneath her three-figure sneakers. So, for her, I will do this. For her, I must do this.

However, all my new-found bravery goes sliding right out of me when we spot a huge black guy dressed in a suit on the other side of the lobby. He is standing beside a very old-fashioned open elevator paneled in dark wood and rich velvet, and he does not look like he is in the mood to let just anyone in.

Oh wow...this party has a guard standing at the door?? I slow my forward progress but Prin charges right ahead, leaving me to hover in the background as she tells the guard, “We’re here for the Holt Calson event,” in a confident voice.

The guard eyes her up and down. He does not seem nearly as impressed with Prin’s makeover as I am. “You on the list?” he asks, his voice aggressive like he only needs the smallest of excuses to toss us right out of Holt Calson’s skyscraper.

Honestly, I do not know where Prin finds the saliva to answer him, because my throat has gone completely dry.

“Prin Love,” she answers haughtily, like she is slapping him in the face with her name glove. “Asir Zaman put me on the list.”

The guard hits Prin with a hard look, then picks up a clipboard from the stool directly behind him and scans it with a pen held sideways.

“Princess Love,” he reads. “That you?”

A little c***k appears in Prin’s tough Jersey girl façade. She hates her full name to the point that she used to email her teachers before the start of each new school year, warning them not to use it. Honestly, if not for her father’s Wikipedia page entry, I might not even have known her legal name before we leveled up to best friends during our first year at Beaumont.

“Yes,” she answers in a thin voice as if she is sacrificing a good portion of her dignity to get herself into this party.

“And you’re the plus one?” He barely glances over Prin’s shoulder at me.

“Yes, I am,” I answer, feeling like a liar and a fraud even though my answer is completely true.

He hits us with another hard look as if checking to see if we will break beneath it. We don’t. Prin raises her chin, and I hunker down behind her until, with an irritated sigh, the guard steps aside and waves us into the elevator.

An elevator that will go directly to the top floor of this very tall building.

Before tonight, my life experiences were limited to three places: Jamaica, the Blue Hills neighborhood of Hartford, and Beaumont Academy. And even Beaumont, the prestigious boarding school Prin and I just graduated from, doesn’t remotely compare to this.

Yeah, Beaumont had impossibly rich boys—a few who came to school with bodyguards. But I cannot imagine any of those guys posting a bodyguard outside a party with a guest list. Or even having a guest list to begin with.

This might be why I feel like I am being caged in when the guard pulls an old-fashioned brass accordion door across the open elevator door. Dread pools inside my stomach but I try not show it. Instead, I fake a smile for Prin who looks so beautiful and delighted to be in this cage with me.

With an angry buzz and a jerk, the elevator slowly begins to ferry us up to the graveyard party in the sky. From what I understand, this place used to be the headquarters of Worthing Electric. The Worthing family lived above their many floors of offices until the company was acquired by an energy conglomerate in the early eighties. I vaguely remember a news story about how Christina’s father gifted her the building as a wedding present when she married Jack Calson, son of Hank Calson, the founder of Cal-Mart. She and Jack only had one son, which I guess is how Holt Calson ended up with his very own skyscraper before he was even old enough to drink.

The elevator stops on a long hallway lined with intricate gold foil wallpaper. It is completely empty of people, but dense with the heavy bass of American rap music--the kind I am not allowed to listen to but vaguely recognize from the times I’ve heard it pouring out of the open windows of neighborhood drug dealers’ cars. I swallow hard before following Prin out of the elevator.

“Is the plan to find Asir and talk to him for just a little while, before we leave to get me home on time?” I ask Prin as we walk down the golden hallway, me trailing slightly behind her. I am asking as a reminder to my best friend, but also to calm my own nerves.

“Yep,” Prin answers. “One hour and we’re out of here. Your mom won’t suspect a thing.”

Guilt rolls over me twofold. I love Prin, but I do not like how she acts as if lying to my parents is just fun and games. Or the way she only refers to my mother. My father is not dead. Yet.

“And the way Daddy looked at me. He can’t talk, but Sylvie it felt like he was screaming at me as loud as Mommy.”

My sister’s sob-filled words float into my mind as we walk down the hallway. Guilt hangs over me, heavy and uncomfortable as a wet dish rag. I told Lydia it would be okay because I believed our happy family could withstand anything without falling apart. But it wasn’t okay. My parents—not just my mother—sent her away. Now Lydia is back in Jamaica while I am here trying to prevent my best friend from making the same mistake she did.

We stop in front of a double set of black doors overlaid with a geometric design etched in gold foil. Small knobs are embedded smack in the middle of each door. I wince, surprised to find them closed. Because if the music is this loud in the hallway, I can only imagine what it is going to sound like inside.

I tense with anxious hesitation, but Prin pulls open the door with the boldness of hip-hop royalty. It is as obvious as the sequins on her dress that she is ready to live up to the potential of her full name and get her happy ending with the charming Arabian prince who finally noticed she was alive a week ago.

The music is as bad as I suspected it would be. It hits my ears with an aggressive blast, and for a moment, everything is drowned out: my guilt, my hidden mission, and all sense of equilibrium.

“One hour, I swear!” Prin’s voice yells directly into my right ear.

And then she’s pulling away. Leaving, I realize a second too late. “Prin, wait, hold up!” I call after her.

But of course, she can’t hear me over the music. She disappears into the thick crowd before I can stop her, leaving me with no choice but to follow her retreating back into the den of iniquity.

And it’s a literal den. I discover this when my eyes adjust to the dim lighting. The front room is a sunken square filled with beautiful people highlighted by swirling purple and blue lights. It is dark, but I can see this is not the kind of party I am normally invited to by family members and church friends.

Music plays, but nobody is dancing. Several men and women laugh uproariously like they can actually hear one another, but none of them look truly happy. Everyone is dressed beautifully, but they don’t seem to notice anyone but themselves. And absolutely no one else is wearing a borrowed sparkle dress from the early nineties.

I am half afraid someone will take it upon themselves to throw me out because I so obviously do not belong here. But nobody seems to pay me any attention as I push my way through the thick crowd, head bobbing and eyes straining as I look for Prin. I feel silly for dressing up at all and I wonder if Prin will even find her Arabian prince in this chaotic mess of people.

When I still cannot find Prin anywhere, I follow a set of steps up to a hallway lined with doors. Without thinking, I open the first door and call out, “Prin?”

It is much brighter in this room, and my eyes need a few seconds to adjust. This turns out to be a few seconds too long because when I stop blinking, I see a guy with dark hair perched on the edge of the bed. He is wearing a polo and khakis, and I might have thought he was fully clothed if not for the naked girl bouncing up and down on his lap.

“Yeah, Luca, f**k me. Just like that! Just like that!” Naked Girl says, her voice grateful even though from where I stand, it looks like she is the one doing all the work.

The boy she is bouncing on looks up at me. And despite the crude tableau, I cannot help but notice how gorgeous he is. Dark hair, olive skin, pale blue eyes. He regards me with a lazy smile over the bouncing girl’s shoulder.

“Heya, what’s what?” he says as if I’ve walked in on him sharing a glass of tea with a friend. He has an accent, American but like the men who come into my aunt’s beauty salon once a month to collect a white envelope with “protection” money inside.

“You watching or joining?” he asks me with hooded eyes.

The girl pauses and looks over her shoulder at me. Instead of screaming in shame, she giggles and says, “Oh, yay! I’ve never done it with a black girl before.”

Like I am a new and exciting flavor of ice cream.

There is no question now. I must find Prin. I back out of the room and yank the door shut behind me.

I try the next room and find two girls in cut-out dresses leaning over a mirror. Another door slam.

More doors open and shut after glimpses into rooms filled with examples of what my mother would definitely call, “them indecent behaviors.”

Which is why it is such a relief when I try the very last door at the end of the hall and open it to find a large but otherwise empty room. At least I am relieved until a blast of cool spring air hits me and my eyes follow it to its source: to the balcony’s open French doors. My heart stops…

A person with long blond hair stands on the wrong side of the balcony’s wrought iron railing with both hands gripping the banister. Like she’s about to jump.

At first I think I am hallucinating because Christina Worthing-Calson is already dead. She fell from this very balcony, if the room’s large size is any indication. Is this her ghost? My mother’s ghost-demon stories knock around in the back of my head.

But no, that’s not it…I walk further into the room, my eyes squinting as I try to figure out who or what I’m looking at. I am beginning to think the figure on the wrong side of the balcony is not a woman at all. He or she is lean and tall with long hair, but the proportions are all wrong for a woman; not willowy like Christina Worthing-Calson in the wedding photo that ran with her obituary. A gust of wind tears across the balcony as I reach the open door, whipping the person’s long hair to the side to reveal a shirtless back covered in wiry muscle. I can see the thin ligament lines in his forearm as they work overtime to keep his hands wrapped tightly around the banister.

No…definitely not Christina. It is her son, Holt! The host of this party. I briefly recall his visit to the school last year for opening day of the new gym and auditorium complex his family donated. All eyes, including mine, were on him but aside from his participating in the ribbon cutting ceremony, he seemed to be someplace else, his gaze directed into the distance as if the students and staff weren’t even there.

Holt Calson had struck me as privileged and aloof—you know, standard Beaumont boy issue. But right now, he looks all too fragile as he leans forward into the void. My heart catches.

“No, don’t!” Without thinking, I drop the purse Prin loaned me and close the distance between us. “No, don’t jump!” I call out to him, wrapping both hands around the Cal-Mart scion’s arm.