In an office building that was a few miles away from the school sat a tall, thin, but toned man. His large office that held a conference table to the right of the room, two couches and a coffee table near the door, and his own desk and filing cabinets at the back near the windows still seemed almost empty. This was the way that he liked it though. Everything had to be open and simplistic.

Vaughn rubbed his temples as he looked over the latest reports. His black straight hair was long enough that it could get into his eyes if he didn’t style it back. His face was strong and masculine though it always looked like he was angry. He was as universally handsome as he was hated. Rich, power, and the chief strategy officer for his father’s company, he could have any woman that he wanted despite his obvious downfalls.

To him any relationship was worthless and he preferred to spend his time alone or working. There were few people that could come into contact with him and get away still intact, and even most of them were weary. He severely distrusted anyone who came into his presence, as he had dealt with enough gold diggers in his life.

Vaughn had previously been the chief financial officer, but was promoted the year before. Now his job consisted of creating strategies that brought immediate results to the company. He never minded having to make the hard decisions. Everyone in the company knew that one day he would take his father’s place as the CEO. Not even the board of directors wanted to anger him.

His slender blonde assistant stood in front of his desk as he looked over the report. The girl had made the mistake of attempting to flirt with him once, and it had almost cost her the job. Most of his assistants quit within six months, and he didn’t do well with most other employees that had prolonged exposure to him. The only people he treated well were members of the board and those he was certain were not kissing his ass.

Rubbing his chin, he thought over the words he was going to say. “We are going to have to close down a few plants and lay off some employees.” He was thinking out loud and from the tone of his voice, Kristin had learned not to say anything in return. She stood waiting for him to give her directions.

She was beginning to feel nervous as she normally did when she was in his presence this long. Moving back and forth on her feet, she attempted to relieve the pent up anxiety.

“If you move one more time, you won’t have a job tomorrow.” He told her.

Kristin stopped when most of her wait was on her left foot. She didn’t know if he would even allow her to shift back onto both feet. “May I sit down?” She barely spoke the question.

Light blue eyes flashed toward her, “You don’t need to sit down.” He informed her and turned his eyes back to the computer screen as he leaned back in his chair and folded his hands together.

The clock on his desk informed her that she had been standing there for over fifty minutes now. Worst yet, her body weight was mostly on her left foot. Could she shift over to the other foot? Would it result in her losing her job? She had heard some horror stories about the humiliation that he had put people through when firing them.

Her heart raced as she watched him place his hand on the computer mouse and scroll down the page. This was too much. Over the past four months she had been subjected to things that she knew had to warrant a lawsuit, but there had been others before her. None of them had done anything and it had always made her curious as well as more afraid of what the ramifications were.

As she stood there and tried to slowly apply more pressure to her right foot, she told herself that she couldn’t take much more of this. The man was pure evil. He didn’t care about anyone but himself. She had brought her niece in to work one day and her devil boss had made the little girl cry when she had tried to play with his glass chess set.

Every day that ticked by, she told herself that she was going to quit, but could never get up the courage to hand in the two week notice. The letter sat in her desk for a month now and taunted her every time she opened the drawer.

The floor under her made a creaking noise that forced her heart rate to sky rocket. Would he turn to her and know that she had been moving? Would he even care? He was so unpredictable. Some days he wasn’t anything close to friendly, but he was tolerable while other days anything could set him off.

Vaughn’s eyes turned to her, when she slammed the notepad and folders onto his desk.

“I can’t take this! I quit!” She yelled and ran out of the office as fast as she could with heels on.

The handsome man who sat behind his desk raised an eyebrow and wondered what had prompted that. This was one of the many reasons that he never wanted to deal with a woman; they were nuts.

With an angry grunt, he picked up his phone and pushed in a couple numbers. “My assistant just quit.” He told the person on the other line. “I don’t know, find me a new one.”

Annoyed that his business for the day had to be ended early because he had no assistant, Vaughn packed up his briefcase to leave. He mumbled an explicative under his breath, before he headed toward the door.

“Mister Weiss?” A woman knocked on the door and nearly jumped out of her skin when she cracked it to find him standing right in front of her.

“What?” Vaughn hissed the question.

“Your assistant wasn’t answering the phone, so your father asked me to call you up to his office.”

The intensity in his face lessened when he realized that the middle aged woman was his father’s personal assistant. He most certainly didn’t want to upset her. “Very well, I’ll be up shortly.”

When the woman shut the door, annoyance flashed over his face. He absolutely hated going to his father’s office. While he enjoyed being alone and leaving all women out of his life, his father enjoyed being surrounded by them. He wasn’t going to accuse his father of placing attractive women in the positions around him, but he most certainly was surrounded by quite a few, capable or not.

Stepping into the elevator, he noticed a young woman that he recognized from accounting. She had been one of the new hires that occurred once he had left his old position. The girl was tall and lean with auburn hair and a short skirt with matching high heels.

She smiled at him, when he looked over at her out of the corner of his eye. It wasn’t to check her out, but instead to find out if she was acting as most women did. The power and money hungry look in their eyes which was normally followed by some sort of body swaying, and then finally the talking.

“Mister Weiss, I’m Janette…”

“You don’t work directly under me, so I have no need to know who you are.” He informed her and continued to stand straight as the elevator continued to the designated floors.

“Oh.” She giggled.

He felt like he was imprisoned in a large metal coffin with this woman, as he knew that would not be the end of it.

“I went to the same university as you.” She began to tell him. “There is a big picture of you and your father in the…”

“I know. I was there when they revealed it.” He grumbled.

“Oh, I always…”

Vaughn turned the face the woman, “Janette, was it?”

“Yes.” She said somewhat excited that he had even heard when she mentioned her name.

“Listen, Janette. I don’t care what school you went to. I don’t care if you saw my face every day when you were in the library. I don’t care how I may or may not have affected your life. I wouldn’t even care if the moment I stepped out of the elevator if it plunged to the bottom and killed you.” His briefcase was held behind his back as he spoke. “Correction, I would care that the elevator is now out of order. You see, Janette. I am going to walk away from you the moment those doors open and I will forget you forever before they even close. Understand?”

She swallowed, “Yes.”

He turned back around to stare at the doors. It was a long ride for the woman standing beside him, but for Vaughn it was the quietness that he had wanted all along. When the ding that she had been praying for finally occurred, he stepped toward the front of the elevator.

“Forgetting, forgetting.” He repeated as the doors opened, as soon as his foot touched the carpet outside the elevator, he announced. “Gone!”

He grinned to himself as he walked away from the elevator and headed toward his father’s office. Several workers passed him on the way, most knew not to make eye contact with him. Others would offer a brief greeting in hope that he would still become their friends. The closer he got to his father’s office the more attractive the women got, and most of them would offer him smiles.

The assistant motioned him in as he walked up, and he opened the office door to find his father sitting behind a desk. It was eerily how closely their offices resembled each other, except that his dad had a bit more color.

“Oh good, you are here.” His father waved him in. “I need your help. Do you have an hour?”

“How many is that in the last year?” Vera threw back some black hair that had fallen over her shoulder as she picked up her glass of wine.

“Just three.” Vaughn told his sister.

“Just three!” She repeated back with laughter before she took a sip of her red wine.

Vera still lived with their father in the family mansion, though Vaughn had rented himself a nice apartment. He had always hated all the help wandering around all the time and going through his things. When he turned sixteen, he had convinced his father that he was mature enough to live on his own.

They sat in the well lit television room that came complete with a bar and home theater system. Vera had redecorated the room not long ago to more earth tone colors of light browns and greens, plus she used dark woods lightly. His sister had started her own business for interior design years ago, but it didn’t do well and she had returned to working for their father’s company taking his old job of chief financial officer.

Vaughn loved his sister and she was probably the only woman that he could stand. Not that males did much better in his presence either. Everyone seemed to have something to gain when they realized who he was. He hated dealing with people. He was a loner who did his job and enjoyed living in solitude. There were few people that he cared about and that was the way that he enjoyed life. No mourning or wishing that more people liked him. His father had always told him some people were just meant to enjoy solitude and if he did, he shouldn’t apologize for it.

“You are thirty one years old, Vaughn. You need to start acting like it.” Vera told him as she set the wine glass down on the dark wooden surface of the coffee table. She pulled her feet up on the couch and pushed her cold toes under his bottom.

“And how am I not acting like it? Last I checked I wasn’t living with my father still.”

She smirked, “You always jump right to that, don’t you? Being a grown up doesn’t just mean living alone. What I meant was that you should start treating people with respect. I mean look at me. Once I took over finances, there were less errors and complications. People aren’t afraid of me so they don’t feel pressured. Stressed people make mistakes because they are afraid that they will.”

Vaughn snorted in disgust at her suggestion.

“And the last girlfriend you had…” She tapped her finger against her chin, “Who was your last girlfriend?”

“Alicia.”

“Get out!” She pulled her foot from under him and kicked his thigh, “Alicia, the girl that I hired as the assistant interior designer? That one.”

“Yes, that one!” Vaughn snapped and grabbed his sister’s wine glass and downed the entire glass. If he was going to listen to her bitch about him then he wasn’t going to be sober.

“Vaughn, that was…” She began to count on her fingers. “That was almost five years ago and as I recall you terrified her so much that she got a restraining order. Did I beg you to date her?”

He grinded his teeth together as he sat back on the couch and placed his feet on the coffee table. “I didn’t like her anyway. Women in general are trouble, all of them are money grubbing whores. I prefer not to associate myself with them.”

“That’s a nice attitude. I’m glad Saul doesn’t think that way.”

“Saul is the male version of that, you just don’t see it!”

Vera kicked her older brother again, “Don’t talk about my boyfriend and your best friend that way or do I need to remind you that he is one of the few people that you can’t scare away?”

Saul also worked at their father’s company and had been his friend since Vera was nothing more than an annoying sister. Vaughn could still remember Saul helping him toss Vera out into the hallway when she was eight and wanted to listen to music with them. Now, he was planning on getting engaged to that annoying pest that was also his new best friend. It was funny how time turned a sibling from enemy to friend.

“He knows what I think about him.”

She shook her head in disbelief, but after a few moments began to giggle.

“What?” Vaughn stared at her.

“Maybe if you got a girlfriend and… ahem… relieved your pent up…”

“Vera!” Vaughn shouted surprised that his sister would even attempt to talk about sex with him, but his shock soon passed as he smirked. “I said I didn’t have a girlfriend. I never said that I didn’t have a use for girls.”

“You aren’t picking up random girls and taking them home, are you?” She dropped her feet to the ground and stared at him. “Vaughn, in this day and age of disease, you can’t…”

“Hmm.” He stood up and looked down at her with a grin. “Matter of fact, I think I am going to try the lottery again tonight. I might get an STD, I might not. Want to place a wager?”

She slapped his knee, “Don’t sleep around. That’s gross.”

Grabbing a pillow off the couch, he leapt toward his sister and thrust her backward as he shoved the pillow over her face. She wailed around a bit, and when he finally let her up she threw the pillow at him.

“Jerk! I am not twelve! You can’t do that to me anymore!” She screamed as he began to walk out of the room.

“I just did.” He told her as he left.

Vera found as she stared at the door her brother had just walked out of. She hadn’t heard him laugh or seen him smile in years. There was no real reason for it as nothing traumatic happened to him, and their father had told her that some people are just that way. Even if it was still Vaughn’s way she missed seeing him happy. Smiles were just a motion on the outside and never really told the truth of what was on the inside, as she knew her brother was happy with his life, but she still missed seeing the proof.

Vaughn looked at his watch as he got out of his black Lexus convertible and walked around to the other side of the car to let his ‘date’ out. The slender, long legged blonde stepped out of the car and offered him a smile with her bright red lips. They began to walk toward his apartment building as she seemed to be inspecting it.

He knew what she was thinking. This woman was trying to get a feel for how rich he was, because outside the business world his name wasn’t known. Had he informed her of the name of his family’s company, she would have known right away and been all over him. However, he wasn’t looking for a week long girlfriend as he did at times. Tonight, he was just interested in one thing and as soon as it was over the girl was going to find herself on the outside of the building she was inspecting so hard.

Passing his card through the electronic device, the doors made a clicking noise to notify him that it was open. He pulled the door open to allow her to enter first. A young looking doorman, who normally arrived for the night shift around eight, smiled at them as they entered. The kid had been around long enough to know what Vaughn expected. He was to hand him his mail and send him on his way, and that was exactly what he had done.

As he and his date got onto the elevator, he heard the doorman call out to him as if he had forgotten to say or give him something, but Vaughn didn’t care at the time.

“This is a nice place.” The sultry blonde said as she leaned against the back of the elevator.

She was a little more trashy than he liked, but that was what he got for being so picky that evening. He had already forgotten her name, it was useless information. Besides with a girl like this, he could call her anything he wanted and she would be too blinded by the dollar signs in her eyes to notice.

“What is it that you said you do?” She was trying to figure out how far up the ladder he was.

“I didn’t say, but I’m a strategy officer for a local business.” He was understating his duties, but the last thing he needed was for this woman to think she caught the big one.

“Oh, sounds boring.”

“It is.”

She giggled, “Must make you a lot of money.”

The elevator doors opened and they stepped off. Vaughn had chosen not to ask her the last question. He called this type of girl a trash bag as he was meant to toss his waste inside and then throw her out. She didn’t need to know anything about him, nor did she need to feel that he cared about anything she said.

Getting to his apartment door, he unlocked it with the same card and allowed her to enter in first. As he shut the door behind him, he turned on the lights and watched as she began to check over his apartment.

Vaughn was very proud of his apartment, not only for how gorgeous it was, but for the deal that he got on it. Vaulted ceilings added to the open area feel, granite kitchen tops, and a large balcony complete with a garden that someone else took care of were just a few of his favorite things. The building had it’s own maid service that came up twice a week, but always seemed to mess with his things to the point that he had to scold them.

He kept all the furnishings in mostly white and beige, but his sister had come along and thrown in a few pieces of color. His bedroom was about the same size as the large living room that had more space than he knew what to do with. Everything about his apartment was well loved.

“What happened in here?” The woman asked as she stepped into his living room.

Vaughn, curious as to what she was talking about, walked up behind her. His large picture frame window that looked over the street was shattered and glass shards covered the floor. The glass coffee table also have a severe crack in it, but what nearly made his heart stop was the statue that once sat in it’s middle. The little Mayan statue was destroyed and shattered to more pieces than his window. In the center of the living room chaos was a baseball.

The ball had broken through the window causing a blanket of glass to cover his couch and then crashed into the coffee table, most likely hitting the statue first as there was a large splintering effect on the coffee table where the statue had once been.

With his face turning red, Vaughn marched out of the apartment and found his way to the elevator. As soon as the doors opened, the doorman came running around the counter with a piece of paper in his hand.

“Mister Weiss, I wanted to tell you. Someone broke your window and they left their number.” He held out the ripped piece of binder paper.

Vaughn snatched it away from him and looked at the name and number. “Get someone up there now to clean that mess up and put plastic over the window.”

“Uh, that was another item that I was supposed to give you.” He offered him the envelope in his other hand.

It was a letter addressed to Vaughn Weiss from the management. He tore open the letter to read about the multiple complaints and abusing reported of their staff. It was deemed that he would no longer receive maid service in his apartment. Without a word spoken to the doorman, he charged back into the elevator and into his apartment.

“Hey, sweetie, everything alright?” The woman asked him, she was still standing where he had left her.

Grabbing her arm, Vaughn yanked the now screaming woman toward the door and tossed her into the hallway.

“What the fuck?” She snapped as the door was slammed in her face.