Page 1 of A Dom Vs. Domme Story
Chapter 1
KATHRYN
I’ve been all over this great earth for business and pleasure. This year alone I’ve traveled to… hang on… ten different countries? None of them compare to Japan when it comes to making me feel like an utter fool.
It’s not really the culture shock. I’ve been worldly enough in my life to know to go with the flow and do as I’m told when in another culture. Besides, when you’re worth over a billion dollars, certain cultural matters don’t mean anything anymore – you’re living on a different level from most of the people in the wholeworld.
Unless you’re dealing with other rich assholes in a culture you barely understand.
Let’s say having to take off my Valentino’s to sit down to have a thousand-dollar dinner is not something I will ever get used to. Because what heiress wants to conduct million-dollar businessbarefoot?
I am the only barefoot person at this table. Out of the seven of us – four women, including me – I’m the only one who didn’t think to wear nude socks or pantyhose. Even my boyfriend’s assistant Valerie showed up in classy knee-high socks to wear beneath her dress. She blends so seamlessly into the background at the end of our dinner table, taking notes and doing last minute research for her boss, that I’m starting to feel like the big fool here. It also does not help that I am not good at parsing Asian accents speaking English, no matter how good that English is.
Flawless, really. Let me tell you, I can tell you what any Frenchman or Swede is trying to convey at a dinner discussing politics. I think I’m simply too overwhelmed by the place our business consorts have chosen.
We’re in Ginza, a Tokyo neighborhood that caters to the rich and richer out looking to eat and shop until their bank accounts have taken a sizable hit. (At our level, that’s almost impossible to make happen. Almost. I’ve seen enough price tags here in Ginza to make evenmeswallow before signing tabs with my credit card information.) The restaurant we’re in only has one table. Yeah, that’s right.Onetable. Its size can change as often as necessary to accommodate between two to twenty people, but it’s still the only table currently serviced in this restaurant no one has ever heard of before. They don’t advertise. They don’t have to. They do so much filthy business that they’re probably booked for the next five years. The people we’re dealing with have a standing reservation here. They must, for us to get supper at the last minute.
We can eat whatever we want. Of course, our hosts have ordered us standard Japanese group food, although I’m sure it’s been catered to Western tastes – I’m told these people are highly Westernized as it is. I wouldn’t know. My boyfriend Ian knows them much better than I do. This is my first time meeting them in person.
I am in way over my head here.
What’s the line between a family representing their culture as a whole and simply beingstinking rich assholes?I mean, if you used my family to represent all of American culture, you’d be rightfully laughed out of the building. Although now that I think about it… unhappy marriage? Check. Wife having a mental breakdown and fucking off to God knows where? Check! One child who will be in therapy for the rest of her life? Check-check. Same daughter constantly trying to make amends for the shit her ancestors did when they arrived in the New World? (My ancestors are Swedish. Let me tell you about the shit the Swedes got up to when they showed up a couple hundred years ago…) Er, half-check, depending on who you ask.
The family here goes back as far as our own families. Cumulatively, the Isoyas are worth over a billion dollars, and that doesn’t include every single share and holding in their possession… only the ones we know about. If you looked at the four people sitting before us, you’d think they were the quintessential Japanese family: father, mother, one daughter and one son.
Yeah, right.
These business-oriented families are ruthless. Granted, from what I gather some peoplediedalong the way, and these people are blood related… somehow… but it’s not as simple asDaddy loves Mommy and now they have two little heirs to carry on the family tradition.Nope. The woman whose eyes I’m staring into every few seconds (even though I thought the Japanese hated eye contact?) is the twin sister of the chairman, the man sitting on her left. On the other side ofhimis the heiress of the company, a woman who looks like she can’t be much older than me. I’m still not quite sure who the young man taking the older woman’s notes is. She keeps referring to him as her nephew, even though my own notes say that this woman’s only nephew is married and weighs about fifty more pounds.
“The property is as hot as lightning,” Ian says, referring to the files we’re looking at in our folders. The chairman turns to his heir for an explanation. If we had known that the young woman at the table was the most fluent in English, we would have asked for her to sit closer to the center. Instead, we’re playing this weird game of English and Japanese telephone, because no American here can speak a lick of Japanese beyond the business pleasantries.
Once the chairman is convinced that he knows what we’re talking about, he responds with, “Branding is important to our company and to our customers.” His accent isn’t as thick as his sister’s, and his simpler use of my native tongue gets some getting used to, but if you could see this guy likeIsee him, you’d take him super seriously too. He’s older than Ian and I put together, but he scares me more than my own father. Fuck, he scares me more than anyone in my boyfriend’s family, and there’s a reason anyone with the last name Mathers is a billionaire!
Is his hair still naturally black, or does he dye it? I see some flecks of gray on his scalp… or I would if he didn’t keep staring into my soul like he was debating whether to buy my blond ass. Don’t get me wrong. He’s notleeringat me, but the chairman of this Japanese hotel empire has been sizing me up ever since I arrived. Ian told them that I was coming, right? I may not know Japanese, but I’ve studied enough Japanese business culture to have had the foresight to make Ian’s father add me as an official employee of Mathers & Co. before I touched ground at Narita International Airport this morning. The Japanese really don’t like it when “outsiders” are invited into regular ol’ business meetings. One as delicate as this? They don’t care if I’ve helped the Mathers buy a thousand properties back in America. All they know is that my last name isn’t Mathers and that I’m boning the sole heir. (Boning him for going on two years now, but, you know, boning him on the regular.)
“We absolutely understand.” Ian motions for his assistant Valerie to hand him more folders. “That’s why we want to make it clear that we are willing to share the branding of this location. On top of that, all Japanese literature will have your company’s brand as if it’s the only one, with only a minor footnote regarding Mathers & Co.” He opens the newest folder to show off what he has in mind. The pamphlet mockup is entirely in Japanese, including the golden logo of the Nippon Royal Hotel empire that the Mathers are trying to team up with. I admit, it’s a brand-new venture for them, and one that even shocked Ian when his father brought it up a month ago. The Mathers havenevershared branding like this with any of their investors, but the Isoyas aren’t your usual group of hospitality entrepreneurs. They’re one of the most powerful names in Japan when it comes to hotel living. You’d almost think they dealt exclusively in high-end hotels, but they’ve made a killing appealing to the common businessman and couples on a nice vacation.
Ian’s father is looking to retire soon, although you didn’t hear that from me. One of the last things he wants to do before formally passing the torch on to his son is establish a powerful foreign connection. So happens that the Isoyas are looking to do the same thing from their side of the ocean. They have opened a swanky hotel in Okinawa. Next stop? Brand-sharing in America, apparently.
That’s assuming they can agree on what property to buy together. The Mathers will be doing most of the grunt work, but the Isoyas are ponying up millions of dollars to make it happen. All they want in return (besides their share of the profits, obviously) is to have their brand plastered on everything,especiallyto the Japanese businessmen and tourists they’re referring that way. That way, when they open up their own hotel in America within another ten years, the groundwork has already been laid.
Or so I’m figuring. I can barely understand what I’m having for dinner tonight, let alone what’s going on ten years from now.
The chairman exchanges blank looks with his sister and his heir. The younger woman scribbles something down in Japanese and slides it to her uncle. He nods and says, “We will consider the numbers tonight and give you our answer at tomorrow night’s dinner.”
That means this meeting isdone,and we haven’t even gotten dessert!
I’m glad it’s over, honestly. Weight is lifted from my shoulders. Pent-up breaths shoot through my nostrils. Valerie likewise heaves a sigh of relief that she can now stop typing up notes. Ian and I shake hands with everyone else at the table and awkwardly bow. This is one of those times I really, really wish I had studied Japanese business culture more than I did European business culture. Or that, you know, I had brought my best friend Eva with me. She speaks Mandarin. I’m convinced that would’ve helped me. Somehow.
The chairman is escorted from the restaurant by his silent nephew. Ian and I are about to make our escape when the older woman sighs dramatically, grabs my arm, and announces, “You have thebestroom in my hotel!” Or at least I think that’s what she says.
I turn to both my boyfriend and the younger woman for help.
“It’s my aunt’s favorite room,” she says. “It has a, how do you say… feminine touch?”
“Darn,” Ian says. “I love a feminine touch in my hotel rooms.” I’m guessing this means his has a masculine touch?
That’s right. We’re staying in separate rooms. It was at the insistence of the Isoyas, who now escort my boyfriend and me to their Tokyo hotel. My stomach’s growling and my legs are tired from supporting my body for the past two hours, but who cares? Business isn’t done in Japan until the women finally release you.
