Nele Neuhaus - Swimming with Sharks

“Okay, then I won’t say another word.”

She smiled and stretched out her hand toward him.

“Does this Park Avenue guy also have a name?”

“Yes. I’m pretty sure that you’ve heard it before. His name is Sergio Vitali.”

“Holy shit!” Oliver suddenly threw back the blanket with a jerk. He fished for his boxers and jumped up. He turned on the light switch and left the bedroom. Confused, Alex squinted into the bright light. She got up and followed him into the kitchen.

“What’s wrong with you?” she asked. Oliver turned around quickly. There was no trace of a smile on his face, and his gray eyes were ice cold.

“It would be better if you got dressed now and left,” he said, opening the refrigerator door. Alex instantly regretted her honesty, because she felt true affection for Oliver. She didn’t understand what had made him so angry.

“Leave!” he repeated, not looking at her. “I’m better off if I forget you as quickly as possible.”

His voice sounded bitter.

“You can’t just throw me out like this,” Alex began timidly. “Just because I—”

It was very important for her to stay in his good graces. She didn’t want to leave now with such hard feelings between them. Oliver slammed the refrigerator door and turned around. Alex was frightened when she saw the angry glint in his eyes. What had set him off?

“You’ve breached my trust,” he snarled.

Alex stared at him without understanding.

“I promised not to mention any of those monstrosities at LMI that I uncovered over the past months and years. I accepted the fact that you didn’t want to know anything detrimental about your employer, hoping that you’d recognize it yourself one day, and preferably before it’s too late. I really started to like you. Not in a million years would I have thought that you could be involved with Vitali !”

Alex was taken aback and swallowed hard.

“I’ve formed a pretty comprehensive opinion about this guy over the past few years because I kept stumbling across his name over and over again during my research. This man has his fingers in almost every criminal business in this city. Among other things, he’s a shareholder of LMI. His entire empire is built upon blood and crime. He’s an unscrupulous and brutal gangster. I just can’t associate with people like that. It’s a cruel twist of fate that I would end up in bed with a woman who lets him fuck her!”

His brutal frankness hit Alex like a slap in the face.

“What a shame, Alex, it’s really a shame.” Oliver let himself sink onto the kitchen chair. He looked at her with a mixture of pity and disgust. “I really thought that you were different. But you’re apparently just another one of those women who close their eyes and ears to reality, driven by pathological ambition.”

She was shocked by the coldness of his words.

“None of this is true,” she responded. “Sergio has nothing to do with LMI.”

“Are you kidding me, or are you really that naive?” Oliver shook his head and burst out laughing, but it wasn’t a happy laugh. “He sits on the board of directors!”

“Yes, I know, but he sits on a dozen boards. I would know if he had something to do with LMI’s business,” Alex whispered, perplexed. “He would have told me!”

“Unbelievable,” said Oliver, more to himself than to Alex. “I’ve banged a gangster’s whore!”

This left Alex speechless for a moment. Gangster’s whore! How outrageous! Hot anger rose within her.

“How dare you!” she screamed, and tears sprang into her eyes. “Who do you think you are to judge other people so harshly?”

“Incidentally, this is a free country, and I can judge whomever I please.”

He stood up and pushed past her.

“I wish you the best of luck,” he said and opened the front door. “Go to your Mafia lover! If you keep on like this, you’ll be on LMI’s board in no time. I hope that it’s worth your investment. Good-bye.”

“Can I get dressed first?”

Oliver didn’t respond. He seemed to have lost all interest in her. Alex’s blood hissed in her ears. She let her tears run freely only after she had closed the apartment door behind her. Oliver’s cold contempt and hurtful words stung like salt in a wound. The sky reddened to the east as she stumbled along the street, blinded by tears and bewilderment. A gangster’s whore! The insult echoed in her ears, and she cried angry tears of desperation and humiliation. Why did she always end up with the wrong men? First Sergio, who stood her up, and now this! The tears stopped, and a paralyzing chill took hold of her. The clicking of her high heels on the pavement echoed in the empty streets, and she felt more miserable with every step. Oliver’s reaction had struck a sore point she preferred not to think about. She had managed to mentally block any speculations about Sergio’s connections to the underworld she saw in the press. She had refused to listen to Oliver’s accusations against LMI. But Alex suddenly realized that she couldn’t ignore these signals any longer. She realized how lonely she was. She had no one to talk to, no one to trust. Her whole world started to crumble before her eyes. Her certainty that what she was doing was right had just vanished.

Three hours later, Alex was at her desk with swollen eyes and a pitch-black cup of coffee. The week ahead promised to be very exciting. A hostile takeover battle involving merger negotiations between the country’s two leading waste management companies was coming to a head. For weeks, United Waste Disposal had been defending itself to the best of its ability against Waste Management’s advances. Alex observed this attentively and called Fred W. Watkins, CEO of A&R Resources, to suggest he step in as a white knight. Watkins, who’d met Alex a couple of months ago through Sergio, was more than excited by this proposal. A&R Resources was a highly specialized company that primarily handled military waste disposal, but Alex found out Watkins was looking to diversify his business in order to expand. Without hesitation, Watkins hired Alex and LMI to work on the acquisition of United Waste Disposal; as a result, she was now involved in this hard-fought takeover battle.

The atmosphere on Wall Street was tense as bankers anticipated a Federal Reserve interest rate hike. Alan Greenspan had hinted at an increase to combat inflation. Investor nerves were on edge waiting to see whether such an interest rate hike would lead to consolidation or plummet to a crash. The noise on the trading floor was deafening as traders tried to placate their clients. The NASDAQ started sliding in the first few minutes after the opening bell. Alex hadn’t even turned on her Mac yet when Marcia entered with a pile of notes.

“The appointment with the A&R lawyers is confirmed for noon,” she announced. “Mr. Watkins and Mr. Levy will be there, Steve Cavanaugh from Schuyler & Partner asked for a call-back, as well as Franklin Mills and Mr. Weinberg. And Mr. Vitali called. I told him that you’re still in a meeting. Was that right?”

Yes. No. Alex rubbed the bridge of her nose with her index finger and thumb. Marcia had been on strict orders to put Sergio off by all possible means for the past three weeks.

“He said that he’ll call again.”

“You can put him through then.” Alex typed in the password on her keyboard and was happy that Marcia hadn’t mentioned her disastrous appearance this morning. By now, last night seemed like a crazy nightmare or a bad movie that she had watched half asleep and could only recall in fragments. She obviously should have talked to Oliver about Sergio a long time ago, but she still felt incredibly humiliated and hurt by his reaction. Alex really liked Oliver, but that made her even angrier. How could he insult her this way without giving her a chance to justify herself?