Oasis: The China War: Book One of the Oasis Series by James Kiehle

Author:James Kiehle [Kiehle, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-01-18T22:00:00+00:00

22. Clarity

Reclusive billionaire Leo Tabor stared into space, ignoring the overlapping voices in his penthouse office jabbering around and at him —Mr. Tabor, Mr. Tabor—while arguing with each other. Leo found his brain drifting back in time while looking at a picture on his wall, the one with Lucia and their three children taken at the Windows on the World restaurant in the World Trade Center. They were on vacation, September 10, 2001, a day he would always remember, of course. The next morning that building and its twin vanished after an act of war, though Leo was miles from it, in a midtown hotel, crying for himself.

The tenth was the day his wife left him. After lunch, very secretively and with very bad timing, Lucia announced she was splitting. Leo had no warning that there was even a real problem; she just scooted off to Miami to raise the kids with the help of her family, wealthy sugar importers from Curacao who thought Leo was a bad husband and unfit as a father—at least, he couldn’t afford to raise kids in the style they deserved. And Leo was not after all, ‘of the blood,’ unlike Doctor Raul, the adulterer Lucia remarried after their divorce went through. Good family. Mannered. Rich, not like the ‘derelict’ Leo, squeaking by on only 800k a year then as a mostly-hit, seldom-miss, investor.

The picture reminded Leo of how lucky he was to be rid of his ex but also of her deceit and treachery. He kept the picture up for that reason, to keep him on his toes, a visual mantra that reiterated how few should be trusted, but also, conscientiously, in case Elizabeth, Jocelyn or Dick stopped by, which happened infrequently. His children were grown adults, had their own lives involving school and parties and travel and probably drugs, so Leo didn’t expect miracles. Even now, with all that was going on, not so much as a phone call.

Shaking his head, Leo returned to the meeting and sipped some water after downing a pill.

“Hang on there. Hold your horses.” Leo held up his hand for silence. “For all this bickering, people, I still don’t know what you are advising,” Tabor told the lawyers and vice-presidents and department heads who all fell silent. “Sell? Don’t sell? Give it to charity? Just what would you have me do now that the market is in freefall?”

“I say sell it,” a VP said. “We have three cash offers that seem fair. Cash out and move on.”

“There will be nothing to move on to,” someone else said. “In case you haven’t noticed, this is quite literally the end of the world.”

There were dissenters to the liquidation path. “We have to keep going as is, sir. Stay the course. At the very least, the company will make money through war-related products,” a female lawyer said. She was leading the stay-the-course pack as two or three sides fought for turf, deciding on the future of the businesses Tabor controlled, which was plenty.

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