Find a quiet spot, turn the page, and let’s see what this story has been hiding 🌙
✦
A party was underway at the Hawthorne house in Beverly Hills.
That was not exactly rare in the neighborhood.
There were enough celebrities, athletes, producers, heirs, and people trying to become all of the above that several parties happened somewhere in Beverly Hills every night.
Inside, the living room was loaded with drinks and food.
Out back, Joshua had set up the grill on the lawn.
It was late May, the weather was getting warm, and cold beer with barbecue was hard to argue with.
Everyone crowded around Ethan, cheering his recovery and making far more noise than a man fresh out of the hospital probably needed.
Joshua sidled up with a grin.
“Not bad, right?
I told you, parties are my profession.
Shame about the lack of serious eye candy, though.
Mom’s too conservative.
Makes me miss the cheerleaders.”
“Ethan, I’m telling you,” he continued, “you need to come up to San Francisco sometime.
I can introduce you to Billie Whitman.
She’d fall all over you.
F-cups, man.”
Ethan raised an eyebrow at his brother’s commitment to corruption.
“Joshua, if Mom ever woke up and found Dad in bed with two women, the first thing she’d do is skin him alive.”
He was not exaggerating by much.
In Beverly Hills, finding beautiful company was easy.
Aspiring models, fringe actresses, and women orbiting the industry were everywhere, and some of them had no problem putting a price on their company.
But plenty of them were not there just for a night’s fee.
They knew where they were.
They knew who Charles Hawthorne was.
The CEO of MGM was not just a rich man; he was access.
For a certain kind of Hollywood climber, access mattered more than money.
Pretty faces were everywhere in this city.
Doors were rarer.
“Speaking of people,” Ethan said, “did the ones I asked for show up?”
“They did.
Your boys are eager.
One of them came all the way from New Jersey.
Heard you were awake, got on a plane last night.”
“Of course they did.
They’re my people.”
After making the rounds and surviving more jokes than he deserved, Ethan slipped out to the backyard.
Young people were scattered across the lawn, flirting, laughing, and pairing off into conversations.
Only one man sat alone in the corner, focused entirely on the barbecue in front of him.
Ethan sat beside him.
The man looked up, swallowed a mouthful of meat, and punched Ethan lightly in the chest.
“Ethan Hawthorne, you son of a bitch.
I knew you weren’t dead.”
Ethan laughed and clasped his hand.
“Warren.
Haven’t seen you in a few weeks, and somehow you look fatter.”
Warren stared at the barbecue as if Ethan had personally insulted it.
“Impossible.
I’ve been dieting for weeks.
I weighed myself yesterday.
I’m down five pounds.
If this weren’t your recovery party, I would never touch this high-calorie garbage.”
“Really?
Then the starting number must have been worse than I thought.
You need to drop at least fifty.”
Before Warren could defend himself, two men and one woman came over.
Warren immediately put on a wounded expression.
“Well, well.
Look who remembered friendship exists.
You ditched me to chase women.
So much for brotherhood.
You’re all dead to me.”
His contempt had no effect.
The woman flexed one arm.
Warren shut up.
These were Ethan’s closest friends from college: Warren, Bordeaux “Bo” Gies, Billy Gies, and Judy Newhouse.
The five of them had rented a house off campus during school.
Warren was from Los Angeles and came from a normal middle-class family, which in their circle might as well have meant broke.
The Gies brothers came from a large Texas ranching family.
Judy was from New York, though she had deep issues with her family and hated discussing them.
As for why one woman had lived with four young men without any messy romantic drama, the answer was simple.
Judy liked women.
More specifically, Judy liked women, liked control, and carried herself like someone who expected the room to make way.
Her abs weren’t just for show, either.
If a fight broke out, none of the four men liked their chances against her.
Upstairs, in Ethan’s room, the party noise softened behind the door.
“All right,” Warren said.
The goofball from the backyard was gone.
Behind his glasses, his eyes were sharp.
“You dragged us all here.
What’s the plan?”
Bordeaux, Billy, and Judy watched Ethan with the same focus.
They were too smart to believe this was only a recovery party.
If all Ethan wanted was a welcome-home barbecue, he would not have pulled all four of them in from different corners of the country.
“I have a plan,” Ethan said, “and I need your help.”
“What kind of plan?” Judy asked, sprawled across his bed like she owned it.
“Right now, I have ten million dollars.
My goal is to turn that into one billion within a month.”
For a second, all four of them forgot to breathe.
They had studied finance.
They had picked apart case studies of rich men building companies.
They had seen numbers in the tens and hundreds of billions printed in textbooks.
But textbook money was abstract.
None of them had personally handled ten million dollars.
Most of them had never handled a hundred thousand.
“Oh my God,” Warren said, taking a step back.
“You’re serious?”
“Do you think I called you here as a joke?”
The Gies brothers came from money, but that money belonged to their parents.
They could wait a few decades to inherit, assuming the family was worth as much as people assumed.
Ten million dollars in cash was still enough to make both of them stare.
Only Judy looked calm, lying on the bed with a lollipop in her mouth.
“Where did you get ten million dollars?” Bordeaux asked.
Ethan pointed toward the door.
“My dad.
Unless you think I robbed a bank.”
Billy let out a reverent breath.
“Powerful and generous.
If someone gave me ten million, hell, even one million, I’d lick his shoes clean.”
That was Billy.
Crude, but not entirely wrong.
For anyone with ambition, a lack of starting capital was its own kind of torture.
Judy made a disgusted sound.
“Pathetic.
All of you.” She turned her eyes back to Ethan.
“Explain the plan.
I can’t think of a legal industry that turns ten million into a billion in one month.
I can’t think of many illegal ones either.”
She had a point.
Even something as profitable as cocaine would not magically multiply money a hundred times unless Ethan already had armed territory, supply, processing, distribution, protection, and no law enforcement problem.
Once middlemen entered the picture, margins shrank fast.
That kind of fantasy belonged in movies.
Ethan picked up the remote and turned on the television.
The screen came alive on a sports channel, where a promo for the upcoming Korea-Japan World Cup was already running.
“This,” he said, “is the plan.”
The others turned toward the screen.
Ethan smiled.
“Sports betting.”
✦
✦
✦
Ready for more?
I hope this chapter drew you further into the story.
Stick around, because there’s still a lot waiting just ahead.