Werewolf CEO 2, page 6
While my enhanced sense of smell might not have been the best thing to have right now given how dank the air was, I was thankful for my enhanced eyesight again, because it allowed me to see the full expanse of the room before we’d even stepped foot inside.
When we did, Dean coughed as the dust in the air hit him like a ton of bricks, and his face went bright red as he braced himself on his knees.
“You alright, bud?” I asked as I clapped his back.
“Mhmm.” He nodded and put a weak thumbs up as he tried to control his wheezing. “God, you’re gonna need to open a few windows if you buy this place.”
“Yeah, I think you’re right,” I chuckled as I looked around at the wide room.
It was illuminated by half-moon windows that lined the high brick wall facing the street. The shafts of light shone down onto the old fighting ring in the center of the room that looked like it had seen better days, but it appeared to still be functional.
A mottled couch was pressed up against one of the walls facing the ring, and there was an old wooden table next to it that looked like it was some kind of water station due to the shattered tubs that were sprinkled across the rotting wood.
I could see the potential. Like the renovations we could do were forming right in front of me. We’d repaint the walls, which were a dirty, washed-out magnolia color. Maybe something more appealing like red or just plain white?
There were two closed doors leading to god knows what, but this room alone was already more than big enough. We could use this main room for training, and then whatever lay behind the other doors could be the living quarters.
“Think it stinks of meat?” Dean asked as he stood to his full height and wiped his chin with the back of his hand.
I took a deep sniff of the air. Apart from the dust and dank, thankfully there was no stench of rotten meat that lingered in the air.
“Nope,” I said.
“That’s definitely a perk,” Mia commented with a smirk as she looked around the room.
No doubt the same vision was flashing before her eyes, too. I had a feeling Mia had a good eye for things like this, and I knew I’d be needing her help to really sort this place out.
“Like I said, she’s a fixer-upper,” Dean joked as he started to head for the door on the left. “In here, you got your kitchen area. Simple, but I suppose that’s all you need for a kitchen.”
The bartender pushed open the door, and it swung open on a loose hinge. The kitchen was fairly large, with cream counters lining the wall and a small island in the middle. The decor was outdated and looked like we fell in a timewarp back to the nineteen-sixties, but it was fine.
Surprisingly, there was a window pouring in light, even if the view was just another brick wall, and we could see the dust that had settled on the counters and the trash still left on the floor.
Man, we’d have our work cut out for us. Dean wasn’t kidding.
“Moving on,” he said as he walked back out of the room and made his way over to the other door.
When he opened it, it revealed a spiral staircase that went to another level that took up only half of the building, and beside that was another door.
“One bathroom here, then you got your shower rooms upstairs,” Dean explained as he pointed to the door and started to climb up the stairs. “You said something about having five people here, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “With the potential for more.”
“So, what is it for, if you don’t mind me asking?” Dean turned his head to look at me with intrigue in his eyes. “I know you said a personal project, but…”
“I’m trying to be a philanthropist,” I quickly lied. “So I’m helping rehome some people off the street who need help getting back on their feet.”
“Oh,” Dean said in surprise, and he paused on the stairs. “That’s… that’s great, Josh. Like really great, actually. I thought you might be doing somethin’ weird with all that money.”
“Like what?” I snorted.
“Ehh, you don’t wanna know,” the bartender said with a quick wave of his hand, and Mia and I shared an amused glance. “But that’s as good a reason as any for a personal project. First time my eavesdropping has turned into something worthwhile.”
“Ha!” I barked out a laugh as we finally reached the first floor. “Why am I not surprised?”
“Yeah, you’d think listening in to conversations of old bikers and ex-meat market patrons would bring something good, huh?” Mia teased.
“Ahh, but if I hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have known about this place,” Dean said with a tap of his nose and a wink as he stepped to the side of the banister to let us fully climb up the stairs.
The second floor was obviously not as big as the ground floor and was roughly half the size. It was a wide-open space, though, apart from a long wall that had five doors along it. I guessed those were the shower rooms, and opposite them was literally just an empty room.
This could be where my pack slept. It was big enough that they could all have their own little area, and we could even get some walls put in at some point so they could have some proper privacy.
It was gonna take a little while to get this place fully sorted, but overall, I could really see the potential in this place. And for a grand, I’d hit the jackpot. Sure, I didn’t need to worry about money anymore now that I’d inherited my parents’ fortune and company, but a good deal was a good deal, and this was the first thing that had been offered to me.
Who knows how long it would take a real estate agent to get back to us, let alone show us a place so we could put an offer in? I just knew it would be a tedious process that could take weeks, minimum, so taking this off Ron sounded like the best idea for me and my pack.
“We’ll take it,” I said determinedly as I looked around the room, and I could almost envision all of us chilling in here.
I still had a long way to go with bonding with my pack, but a place like this was just what I needed in order to make that happen. Not to mention, it wasn’t too far away from my penthouse in Midtown East, so protecting my pack and keeping an eye on them was gonna be a hell of a lot easier than what it was before.
I was getting giddy with the idea of setting this place up and moving them in, and I knew Luke and Amy would appreciate this especially. Out of the group, they were the youngest, and I knew they’d been through a lot. But at least they had each other. And now they had me and Mia.
“Great! Ron’s gonna be over the goddamn moon, but I’m tellin’ ya, you’re gonna regret paying for his tab,” Dean warned as he pointed his finger at me. “Let’s head back and sort out the payment. I’ll bill you his tab every week?”
“Sounds good to me.” I nodded. “But maybe we should put a limit on his weekly spending. Just for his own good. I don’t want him to end up in the hospital because of my generosity.”
“You’re a smart one, St. James,” the older man laughed. “How much did you want the limit to be?”
“I’ll leave that up to your discretion,” I chuckled before I looked around at the gym again. “Before my inheritance, I would’ve had to take out a sizable loan to afford a place like this in New York.”
“Yeah, Ron’s good for it,” Dean agreed, and he started to lead us back out of the old gym and out the front door.
Then he locked it behind him and handed me the keys with a smile.
“Not official just yet, but you should hold onto them,” he said. “Welcome to your very own run-down gym, Joshua St. James.”
“Woo!” Mia cheered and clapped her hands in front of her face.
I chuckled at how cute she was, and I slipped the keys into my pocket.
“Let’s go and make it official.” I grinned, and the three of us quickly made our way back to the bar so I could pay Ron his money.
I stopped by an ATM on the way and got out another five hundred bucks since I was carrying just over that already. Then we shook hands, and I handed over the money, and bam… I was the owner of a run-down gymnasium.
Mia and I decided to take the rest of the day off to sort it out, and none of the Board had a problem with it considering we’d come close to crashing to our deaths last night. So, we drove back in my beat-up car and went back inside the dark building.
According to Mia, we would need to get the building rezoned for residential use or something, but she said she already emailed the necessary information to the company lawyers, and they would take care of things.
I was pretty glad we’d decided not to wear our business attire, especially when we stepped back into the dusty main room and tried to evaluate where we should start.
Mia suggested that instead of us trying to clean the whole place ourselves, we should just hire a cleaning company to scrub it clean and do a better job quicker than what we could do.
So, I found the nearest one that was available, gave them the address, and told them they could just let themselves in while we went shopping for some new furniture to make the place livable. I was a little iffy about leaving the gym unlocked while we were gone, but the cleaners said they’d be there in half an hour or less, and it wasn’t like there was anything stealable in the currently decrepit building.
I was buzzed the whole drive down to the store, and Mia kept looking at me with a knowing smile on her face. She leaned over and rested her hand on my thigh as I drove, and just the feel of her put me at ease.
“Alright, what are we looking for?” Mia asked as I parked the car in a free space outside the huge shop.
“Five beds, some couches, kitchen appliances,” I suggested with a casual shrug. “If you wanna take the lead on this, go ahead. I got most of my old furniture off Craigslist or the side of the road.”
“I don’t mind taking the lead then,” Mia giggled. “I mean, I am your assistant after all.”
“Not just my assistant,” I teased. “I need your girlfriend skills to give that place a bit of life, too.”
“You got it, St. James,” my mate said with a wink and grabbed my hand as she led me into the store.
The store we’d picked was huge, and as soon as we set foot inside, the smell of plastic filled my nose. There were towering shelves stacked with different furniture that stretched as far as we could see, and I was glad I had Mia here with me to navigate this labyrinth rather than roaming endlessly by myself not knowing what to get.
There was no way we were gonna get a cart big enough for all of the furniture we were gonna buy, so Mia suggested she just note down everything we wanted, and we could just get a truck to help move all of the furniture back to the gym.
We had to drive out of Manhattan to get to this place, and as great as my Aston Martin was, it was not gonna hold everything we wanted to make the gym feel like home.
“Single or double?” Mia asked as she pointed to the row of various bedframes that towered in front of us.
“Double,” I said without hesitation.
I had the money to probably buy out this whole place, but I wanted my pack to have a comfortable place to sleep with plenty of space. They’d probably been forced to sleep on the wet floor of the abandoned subway station for god knows how long, and I didn’t want them to suffer anything like that ever again.
I wished more of Drake’s pack had wanted to join me, but I wasn’t going to force them to, even if I knew I’d be able to help them.
“Mattresses are a different question,” Mia said with a smirk. “Do you want me to just pick one?”
“Yeah, I’ll trust you to deal with that,” I chuckled. “Okay, beds are done. What’s next?”
“Couches?” my mate suggested.
“Sounds good.” I nodded and took her spare hand that wasn’t holding her phone.
“This is real nice, you know,” Mia said as she started to steer me toward the couch section.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“This is like the epitome of a couple date,” she said like it was obvious. “Shopping for furniture for our new house.”
“Except instead of our new house, it’s a place where a bunch of werewolves are gonna live,” I teased.
“Don’t take it away from me,” the blonde teased back. “It’s still cute, okay?”
“I’m not disputing that,” I said as I buried my head into her hair and wrapped my arm around her waist. “This is cute. And hopefully one day, we’ll do it for our own place.”
“You mean that?” she asked as she looked up at me with her bright green eyes.
“Of course I do,” I said. “I don’t plan on living in my parents’ penthouse forever.”
“I would if I were you,” Mia snorted. “That place is awesome.”
“It is,” I said with a smile. “But I don’t know how great a place like that would be for raising kids. My mom would have hated taking me up and down all the time.”
“Kids, huh?” Mia smirked.
“Wait, I didn’t mean-- it’s not like I don’t want to, but I--” I stuttered like a fool.
“I’m just winding you up, Josh,” my girlfriend giggled. “But I know what you mean. A penthouse apartment is great for everything other than getting a screaming child out of the house to go shopping.”
I smiled at the thought of Mia and me having kids. Of course, it was still wayyy too early in our relationship for something as serious as that, but the thought still made me feel warm inside.
I’d never really thought about being a dad before, because I’d never met anyone I thought I’d be able to actually settle down with. But Mia was my mate, and that bond was for life, and I knew if there was anyone in the world I wanted to have kids with, it was her.
Still, that was a long way away. I’d just become CEO, and now was definitely not the time for bringing kids into the world.
Especially considering there was apparently a hit out on me from Leon Drake.
Mia ended up picking out a few brown leather couches and matching armchairs for the space, as well as matching wooden coffee and end tables. Then she whisked me over to the houseware section, and we decided we’d be able to take those things ourselves, so we stuffed a cart full of shit.
A coffee maker, a toaster, a microwave, pots, pans, plates, cups, and utensils. Everything my pack would need to survive. I’d have to give them a monthly allowance to get food and whatnot, but I knew that wouldn’t even put a dent in my paycheck, so I didn’t have any worries about that. What mattered was that they could live as close to a normal life as possible.
After we’d got the essentials listed down, we bought the other appliances in our cart and asked to have the other furniture delivered. The end price was way into the thousands, but I didn’t even bat an eye as I paid it.
Thankfully, they had a delivery service, and the cashier said a previous delivery had been canceled for this afternoon, so they could actually get the truck packed and the items delivered in the next hour. That sounded great to me, so Mia and I decided to grab a bite to eat, bought a few essential groceries, and then headed back to the gym.
The cleaners had done an incredible job in the few hours that we’d left them there, and when we re-entered the property, I was amazed by how different it looked.
I still wanted to repaint everything in the future, but for now, all of the wooden floors had been swept and mopped, and there was no dust clinging to every piece of mottled furniture anymore. In fact, there was no mottled furniture. The cleaners must have taken the ruined couch and half-moldy table away along with all of the shattered glass.
We made our way to the kitchen with our haul of stuff and were surprised to see that it was completely spotless, too. The trash was gone, and the floors were mopped and scrubbed clean. The counters were also gleaming now, and the singular window had been wiped down to get rid of any lingering dirt that once clung to it.
We set down the appliances one by one and unpacked the groceries we bought, and I relished the sharp smell of cleaning products. I never thought I’d be so glad to smell ammonia, but it definitely beat the stench of damp and rot.
“Holy shit,” I said as I took it all in. “I’m leaving them the fattest tip ever.”
“Come on, let’s go check upstairs before the delivery people get here,” Mia said with an excited grin, and she pulled me out of the kitchen and through the other door that would lead to the spiral staircase.
Even that had been scrubbed down, and the dark metal beneath our feet shined and lacked any kind of dirt or debris caked into the ornate patterns.
The cleaners were still finishing up in the large space that would be the bedroom, and they gave me a wave and a smile as we entered.
“You guys are incredible,” I said as we walked further in.
It was spotless apart from the windows along the side of the gym that they were spraying down and cleaning.
“The showers were in a bit of a state, but we’ve managed to get all of the grime off in time,” one of the cleaners said. “I’d probably look into getting new ones, though. They look pretty old, and I don’t know how well they’ll run.”
“Thanks, I’ll definitely look into that.” I nodded. “Can we go look?”
“Be my guest,” he said and extended his arm toward the various doors on the far right.
Mia tugged me along and opened the closest door to us. It was a modest room, with a spout stuck on the wall and two knobs to adjust the temperature below it. Then there was a sink opposite it that was gleaming from how clean it was.
There were five shower rooms in total, which worked out perfectly for the time being, so each of my pack could have their own space.
“Sir, there’s a delivery coming in for you!” another cleaner called out from the staircase. “Do you want me to tell them to start bringing stuff in?”
“That would be perfect, thanks!” I called back before I turned to my mate. “This place is already starting to come together, huh?”
“It is.” Mia grinned. “I can’t wait until the others see it.”
“Yeah, I’m sure they’ll be glad to get out of the hotel room,” I said. “We should try and set up as much as we can before they arrive.”
