What We Do in the Night (Day to Night #1) - Stylo Fantome Page 0,56

he didn't check his emails, and he allowed himself to be a different version of Aaron Sharapov for those few hours.

Hmmm, sounds like someone else I know. Why the fuck is she still in my brain? The sun is rising – things that happen during the night need to stay in the night.

When he finally got to the office, Ari was surprised to see all three partners there – Donald Sharapov, as well as Carl Heimer and Glen Schimmer. It was seven in the morning on a Saturday, they should've been at home, or at most, playing golf somewhere. What was going on?

“ADM,” his father responded when he asked him.

“Excuse me? The ... food place?” Ari thought quickly as he took off his overcoat and tossed it on a chair.

“Food processing – good memory,” Carl chuckled, and his father nodded.

“Excellent memory, he takes after me,” he said with a proud smile. Ari frowned, then took a seat at the conference table with them.

“So what's going on with ADM?” he asked.

“Rumor has it they're looking for a whole new legal team,” his dad said. Ari was surprised. ADM was one of the largest food processing companies in the entire world, they'd probably been working with the same lawyers for decades.

“Why?”

“Who cares about why,” Donald growled. “What you need to be thinking about is how you're going to woo them over to us.”

“Okay, but why me?” he kept up with the questions. “I'm just a junior partner – it's your names on the side of the building.”

“Yes, yes, that may be,” his dad sighed. “But you're the face of the company.”

“Since when?”

“Since your last case set precedent, son,” Glen Schimmer informed him. He shook his head.

“And doing that took a lot out of me – I told you I wanted a break. I've been busting my ass here since I was twenty-four,” Ari reminded them. “I earned this break.”

“Do you think breaks get you ahead in life?” Don suddenly shouted, pounding his fist on the table. “Do you think any of us got to where we are because we took breaks? No! You're tired, and we get that, but son, now is the time to roll up those sleeves and get to fucking work.”

Ari held himself still while he stared at his father. They'd discussed this at length, the burnout, the long nights, the heavy drinking – all things that had happened during his big case. His father had said he understood completely, and he'd assured him there wouldn't be anything big coming down the line for a while, and that he'd be allowed to take it easy.

Apparently when a big name client was up for grabs, all that went out the window.

“Look,” Carl sighed. “You're young. Your name was just in the papers. You're something different and new, and you're already fresh in their minds. They'll respond well to you, we just know it. We're not asking for anything big, we're not sending you in to slay another dragon. Just maybe ... sweet talk one. Finesse it a little. Shake some hands, do some dinners. Leave the hard work to us.”

He didn't want to. He really, really didn't want to. Ari already didn't like most human beings in general, and most corporate big wigs in specific. He'd just about hated every client he'd worked with so far. The last thing he wanted to do was spend some of his precious nights schmoozing a new one.

But as he glanced around the table, he thought about his future. Right now, the Sharapov on the side of the building stood for his father. Fairly soon, though, it would stand for him. He just had to keep his shit together and let his father be in control for a little while longer, then he'd be the one on the other side of the table.

Then he'd be getting to yell at some underling and make them do the grunt work.

“Fine,” he said through clenched teeth. “I'll take some meetings with them. Do some dinners. But that's it. My work load is heavy enough as it with my regular clients – I don't care if it's ADM, I don't want any new ones right now. I land them, you guys deal with them personally.”

Everyone agreed and there was a lot of back-patting and preemptive congratulating. They hadn't even spoken to ADM yet, and they were already acting like they'd signed with them.

Of course they are, because they're sending me in, because they know that when I'm up