The Venture Capitalist Read Free Page A

best thing that he'd fainted, because the body knows exactly how much it can take.
    I looked to the bed again in disbelief where our mother, and the love of my father’s life, lay serenely, the hair of the expensive wig she'd finally settled on a blond cloud on the pillow.

CHAPTER ONE
     
    “There is only so much gratification one can receive from one’s work, Tristan.” My father, Charles Xavier White says definitively. “You should come to dinner with Lydia and me tonight, and bring a date so we can celebrate closing this business deal. Bryce is using the vacation house in Telluride this weekend. It would just be the four of us.”
    I roll my eyes at the mention of Bryce and Telluride in the same sentence, then angle my head toward the speaker phone as if my father can see me and the rare smile few people provoke. “All work and no play—one of the first things you taught me that business schools don’t spend entirely enough time on.”
    “That’s what semi-retired fathers are for,” he says with a hearty chuckle.
    “And closing deals with cutting edge technology companies who are going to revolutionize driving,” I add. My father has intimate friendships with businessmen all over the world. He’s been introducing me to many of them through lucrative deals over the past few years since I’ve built White Enterprises to a billion dollar business on my own. No one will ever be able to say I built what I have using my father’s money.
    “Once the driverless car goes from prototype to working model, we’ll both, as early investors, own one of the inaugural fleet.”
    “Another thing you taught me. Collect first editions.”
    “Today’s novelties become tomorrow’s antiques.”
    Another thing my father has said for years. He was not soft on my brother and me by a long shot when we were growing up. There was always the expectation that we would work hard to claim our place in the business world. Nothing would be given to us. Now, we are all powerful men who desire control in every aspect of our lives. My maternal grandfather’s distillery under my father’s management is now one of the premier makers of wine and spirits in the Midwest. My brother, Nathan has been in the NBA as point guard for the Chicago Buffaloes for ten years and owns a sportswear franchise that is distributed all over the world. And I took the modest trust fund my mother left me upon her death and turned it into a multi-billion dollar venture capitalist firm.
    “Absolutely. My warehouse runneth over. We might become the next reality show. Billionaire Hoarders: Lifestyles of the Rich and Infamous .”
    My father laughs. “You would never sign up for it.”
    “You know me too well.” I guard my privacy like the government guards Fort Knox. Especially since the incident—the painful chapter in my life that my father and brother know not to discuss. I’ve spent a lot of money on therapy to deal with it, and yet, the memory never goes away. Nor will it, as long as the biggest reminder of it still lives in the state of the art rehabilitation center which I gladly pay for.
    A father’s intuition knows no bounds. He moves on from the quiet introspection which can only mean thoughts of one thing—the incident. “Dinner with us tonight, and I’m not taking no for an answer. Dust of that little black book of yours and bring a date.”
    I cringe at the idea of inviting anyone from my short list of former submissives to dinner with my father and the lovely trophy wife who finally replaced my mother. I don’t hold his choice against him, it’s just that she and her classless spawn have somehow managed to snow my father with their pretentious acts, which Nate and I have seen right through for years. We can only hope that my father will wake up to it someday before they take him for everything he’s worth. Oh, let them try. I would enjoy destroying those two cloying hangers-on.
    “There’s no one who comes to mind,” I admit. “Would