The Ruthless Gentleman
Louise Bay
One
Hayden
When faced with an impending crisis, there were two sorts of people in business—those who said they weren’t going down without a fight, and those who didn’t bother to entertain the possibility of failure in the first place. I was firmly in the second category.
I’d built my reputation differently to a lot of businessmen in the City of London. Instead of relying on family connections, drinks with old boarding school mates, and trying to impress, I concentrated on the numbers, obsessed over details and made smart decisions. I liked to make money. A lot of money. I didn’t care to shout about it.
Over the last ten years, I’d taken Wolf Enterprises from spare-room startup on the outskirts of London to one of the biggest companies in Europe. I was responsible for tens of thousands of jobs and a balance sheet of billions. For a decade, I’d known nothing but success after success. But, in the last twelve months, something had shifted. I’d been missing out on important sales, undercut on contracts, and locked out of bids. My empire was wobbling.
I wasn’t about to let it collapse.
I just had to convince my investors over lunch that I could turn things around.
As I arrived at the entrance, I spotted Steven and Gordon across the room. I checked my watch. I’d arrived at the restaurant exactly on time, which meant they were early. A bad sign, as they ordinarily made a habit of keeping people waiting. They meant business.
But so did I.
The hostess showed me to a seat opposite them at a table near the back. These guys did nothing by accident. A public lunch rather than a private meeting. Arriving early. Seating themselves so the dynamic would be two against one—it was all carefully orchestrated, designed to send a message before they’d even spoken a word.
“Gordon, Steven, good to see you,” I said, acknowledging Gordon, the more senior of the two, first. I understood the pecking order. It was the small things that mattered most in business.
“I love this view,” Gordon said, opening with something casual, yet subtly dismissive. He hadn’t even bothered to greet me.
I glanced out the window. The square mile in the East of London, known as “The City,” was one of the oldest parts of the capital and crammed full of the biggest banks, insurers and investment houses in the country. It was the financial hub of Europe, where the suits were sharp, and the minds sharper.
Money ruled these streets, and I’d not been making these men enough.
They wanted me to know it.
As if I could forget.
“You can keep an eye on all your investments up here,” I said, lifting my chin at the view.
Gordon smiled but fixed his gaze on mine. “Quite.”
They thought they’d ambushed me, but I was more than well prepared. “I need to bring you up to speed on a few things.”
“We hear you lost the Lombard deal,” Steven said.
And there it was. No more niceties. Swords had been drawn.
There was no point in asking him how they knew. Part of the reason I’d wanted them as investors was because they were among the most well-connected people in the City.
I sat back in my chair. “I found out late last night that we’d been outbid and they’d signed with another buyer.”
Steven and Gordon stayed silent, waiting for me to fill in the gaps.
“You know who beat you?” Steven asked.
“Cannon Group.” I kept my expression fixed, though my hands twitched in frustration. I wanted to pull them into fists and punch something. Hard. Over and over. Fucking Cannon. The last four companies I’d tried to acquire, I’d lost to them.
“This is the fourth acquisition in a row that you’ve lost,” Steven said. “We think you’re losing your touch.”
It was a justifiable accusation. I’d made my career as a deal maker—spotting small, undervalued companies and buying them, only to triple their value within three to five years and sell. It was what I did. Except that Cannon was beating me to every company I targeted.
“Have you made an enemy over there?” Steven asked. “It seems personal.”
“I don’t believe in conspiracy theories,” I replied. “When you’re on top, you’re a target.” I shrugged even though I knew that where Cannon was concerned, it was indeed personal.
“Be that as it may, you need to figure out what’s going on. We invested in you not just because you could spot a good deal, but because you could close on it. If that’s changed, we need to reconsider our relationship,” Steven said.
“This is as frustrating for me as it is for you—” I started, stepping neatly around Gordon’s attack dog.
“Frustrating? This isn’t just frustrating. It’s plain bad business,” Steven continued. “We’re not in the business of backing losers.”
“And I’m not in the business of losing, which is why I’ve moved on to bigger and better things.”
Gordon cleared his throat. He was as old school as it got, from the monogrammed cuffs on his shirt to the fifth-generation family home in the country. He never raised his voice and certainly didn’t engage in public confrontations. Of the two, he was the one I had to watch.
“We want to know how we can help,” Gordon said. “We think you’re excellent at what you do. We just want to see you back on top.”