Page 4 of My Possessive Billionaire: Our Fake Marriage

“What do you mean, sir?”

“Come on, Fitz. Don’t sling bullshit with me. I was through with it before you knew what to do with it. Obviously, there’s something you don’t want to tell me, and you’re buttering me up with all of this fluffy good news. If I wanted to know our sales records or our fiscal growth aspects, I would look them up in the ample reports delivered to me daily. Now, tell me.”

Fitz flipped a few pages forward in his ledger.

“Okay, let’s cut to the chase here. The one thing holding this firm back is our CEO.”

I stared at him for a long moment while everyone in the room gasped. I wasn’t offended. I knew that Fitz would never dare to attack me. The little man just had a penchant for the dramaticand he was probably going somewhere with all of it.

“Simply put, Evan Jones is a great cult of personality and is good for our brand overall.” Fitz used the projecting screen to put up a slide he’d prepared. “But take a look at this. Tesla lost stock value after Elon Musk broke up with his wife. Jeff Bezos had an affair and his empire took a hit.”

“I don’t have a girlfriend to break up with, Fitz, so relax. I’m not going to tank our stock.”

Chuckles went around the table, but only Jenna’s was sincere. The rest of them were trying to suck up to me.

“This isn’t about you tanking our stock. It’s about you taking it to an even higher value.”

I did something I rarely do. I rubbed the bridge of my nose and sighed. Normally, I see such things as a sign of weakness. That should tell you how exasperated I truly was.

“Fitz, you had better be going somewhere with this.”

He adjusted his glasses and went at it. He had facts and figures to back him up. At first, I was incredulous, but he sort of started winning me over by the end. I checked Jenna’s facial expression, because she’s a great judge of whether something is bullshit or not, as well as a mathematical whiz.

When I noticed that she seemed hooked on the presentation, it made me all the more intrigued.

“…and so,” Fitz said, wrapping up “Our prediction is that by entering a public relationship you will increase your name brand and personal recognition factor by seventy percent, with a correlational increase in stock value. And if we make it controversial, as I outlined in subsection C of my presentation, then the most modest estimates are one hundred and fifty percent.”

He closed up his pointer and stood there with his hands in his pockets as casually as he could. I knew he was as smug as the catwho ate the canary on the inside, though.

I turned to Jenna.

“Jenna, calculate what this alleged increased stock price will do for my net worth.”

“You’ve got it, boss,” she said, unfolding her ever-present laptop and setting into work. “You want the seventy percent or the controversial one hundred and fifty percent.”

“Indulge me and give me the figures for both.”

She went to work, typing like a fiend and crunching numbers in her head and on the screen.

I turned back to face Fitz.

“All right, Fitz. All those facts and figures and numbers?”

He nodded.

“I want you to transform and compact all of that into a five-minute pitch. Go.”

His eyes widened. Fitz stammered for a few seconds before he took off his glasses and started to speak.

“Mr. Jones, you are very well known through both your business ventures and your carefully curated public life. Both of these aspects contribute to your net worth and give you the power to ruin your competition or start a new venture.”

It was true. Once, I happened to stop at a chain coffee shop because it was conveniently located across the street from the business I was about to purchase. After being pleasantly surprised by the service and the product I received, I wanted to give a shout-out to the hard workers at that location.

My intention was to help them get some recognition and earn some goodwill with their company. The public seized upon my tweet as ‘proof’ I was about to purchase said coffee shop chain.

The stock prices doubled, then quadrupled. I decided not to comment until a reporter finally asked me point-blank if I wasbuying the company. I said no. The baristas I’d tried to help wound up getting in trouble when the stock tanked.

“However,” Fitz continued, “we’ve reached the accretion point where the shotgun blast of publicity is no longer generating growth. And without growth, if we’re not generating it on a regular basis, well, there’s no gain to your net worth, either.”

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