3. Cold and Calculative
“Are your claims about your track record holds true?” I read any random question only to realize it too late.
Too-fucking-late!
I regret asking him this question, just like I regret what I did to him three years ago. One wrong statement in the police station and I sent him to jail. Accidentally.
It was not in my intention to take his name that day as my mind was badly preoccupied to save someone from prosecution and unknowingly my lips spelled his name to that infuriating cop in front of me.
But I never thought my one statement would cause such a havoc in his life, that he would lose everything and the curse will stamp a degrading black spot on his name forever. And no amount of money could buy that whitener which can clear it.
Like a horror movie, I watch his face getting hard like granite. He lifts his long finger and presses on the pause button of the recorder. Green light blinks to orange and my heart loses a beat.
“Seriously, Emara?” Dakota inhales sharply and I watch the glint in his eyes turn dark, animalistically.
Adrenaline rushes through my bones as I hear my name in a threatening way, indicating I stepped into a danger zone. “I-I-no. It’s not my question-it’s written here.” Blood drains from my head and I panic breathlessly.
He presses the button and green light blinks again as he straightens his spine. “I am not going to answer the baseless rumours my legal team deals with. That is not something I would waste my time on.” Dakota says in a flat emotionless voice, but his eyes say otherwise.
His green eyes sharpen like a glass as he stares at me with an intensity that would slit through my skin in the most painful way. “Yeah, sorry.” I immediately shuffle through the pages, to look for a better question which will save my ass from his chainsaw cutting gaze.
“How much trust do you have that in the near future Artificial Intelligence is going to take over the world?” I gulp nervously, avoiding the sweat building in between my breast.
Dakota leans forward and my nose hits with an earthy woodsy scent mixed with some rich cologne. He taps his two long fingers on the glass table and says in a calmer tone, “For an example, consider AI as Internet. Now back in 1995, there were not many people on Internet and they believed this online thing was going to be a fad.”
The way his fingers make circles on the glass, something churns inside of my stomach. Everything about him is alluring and intimidating. Like a red danger sign that blinks of green light.
“And now the circs of humanity is, you can live without people, but not Internet. The system has infiltrated into your life like a necessity. I believe AI would be a necessity in the future. It has been already started. Our phones, watches, computers are now designed to program with AI and machine learning. It’s like blood and veins, you can separate none from your system.”
The way he described it in a collective manner, makes me want to go take a major in this AI shit. “That’s interesting.” Every cell in my body is overly impressed and is applauding at his little tED-Talk.
“It is.” His lips curve up arrogantly and he sits back like a boss that he is. “Many people lack to see it’s a multi-billion dollar bonanza, but only with the use of correct technology.” He smirks at the end, hinting why his company owns the market.
I find my spine slowly relaxing as I smile at him and read the next question. “You are an alumnus of Washington University, Science and Innovation branch. Being an orpha-” The fuck?
“You are an orphan?” My eyes snap at him with surprise written all over my face. As if I never really knew this man, he is like that huge iceberg in the Atlantic, and all I saw was the tip.
Dakota’s jaw clenches as he stares me with his previous stone-cold gaze. “Yes, Miss Stone. I was left in an orphanage at the age of two. It is available in public records.” His voice stern while his fingers curl up in a fist on his thigh.
Unknowingly I stepped on another ‘shouldn’t have touched’ nerve. “I.. didn’t know.” My voice gets soften and I feel ten times more worse than ten minutes ago, before starting this interview.
But his expression remains stony as if all the emotions in him dried up long ago. And now what is left is a cold-calculative businessman whose only goal is to upgrade the world with technology.
“Being an orphan, how did you achieve that level of big-budget education?” I ask him, chucking away my bag of guilty feelings. I just want this interview to be over so I can disappear from his life. Fast and furiously.
“Scholarship and part-time jobs covered my expenses.” He says in a flat tone.
Images of his part-time job flash in my head, which mostly contained brutal punches and bone shattering blows. People chanting his name, betting on him while he knocks the hell and blood of his opponents in illegal underground fights. Suddenly, I feel glad that we met in a professional setting.
“What was your first job?”
“I worked at a dog bakery.” He replies dryly and I almost gasp out loud. He used to bake dogs? Well, he does look like someone who like cats.
“Do you plan to produce your own product, other than providing services to tech giants?” I read to him fast.
“I haven’t thought of that far.” And he replies faster.
We both want to be done with this interview.
“Which is the turning point day of your life that you owe your success to-”
Suddenly the recorder on the glass table makes little beeping sound while its green light flicker like heartbeats. I tap the gadget like giving it chest compression, but it breathes its last beep and dies in my palm.
The green light turn black and no further sound comes from the gone voice recorder. It’s dead. Dead like Dodo.
I swallow hard and slowly lift my not-so-long eyelashes at him. Dakota stares down at me with a blank expression. As if his features are fighting a battle not to frown or roll his eyes, he stares at me with a deadpan face.
I bite my lip nervously and blink innocently at him. Dakota takes a deep sigh and pulls out a pen from his chest’s pocket. I shyly take the black steel pen from his hand as if it is a condom. “Thank you.” And murmur sheepishly.
The pen feels pleasantly warm in between my fingers, and I know it is the warmth of his body. Something moves inside my belly like worms as my mind display images of his hard body underneath those piles of clothes. His eight pack abs.
“25th September 2019.”
My eyes look up at him in shock as he spells the date of that awful night of college’s annual fest event, when I met him for the last time. When he warned me to never come in front of his eyes, ever. And now here I am, sitting on his leather couch, in his vast cabin, and taking his interview.
“Three years ago, I met with an accident that night when I was driving back to my place. A bit angrily.” He pauses and fixes his green stare at me. “I broke my arm and three ribs, and I was hospitalized for two weeks under critical care. During that time of my life, many things were going inside my head. But the one on repeat was, if somehow I would have known, even seconds before that a car out of nowhere is going to crash into mine. I would have saved my few bones.”
I could feel the world slowing down around me, colours fading and replacing with melancholy as I look at his impassive gaze that holds mine like steel. “Since then I have been working on augmented reality, integrating it with autopilot and radar, to track the activities on the road in a 360 degree angle to avert such disasters in the future. Which I sold it to Tesla and build my company with that money in 2020.”
It was only too late for me to figure out that he was answering to my previous question. I swallow my saliva and it took a great effort to gulp it down my clogged throat.
“So I owe my success to that one blue moon night of my life.” And I know he is not talking about the accident.
I open a fresh page in the notebook, black ink flows through the pen like blood oozes from a fresh cut and I write his answer with the same feeling. Every word cuts through me with its knife of regret.
A part of me wants to hold him, hug him tightly and beg for forgiveness. But I know, no amount of my sorry will fix his broken past. Ever.
I look up and see him going through notifications on his apple watch. Frown decorate his forehead but that didn’t decrease his elegance. He looks equally handsome as he looks heartless.
Someone who won’t rest until he owns the world.
“Mr. Black, are you busy?” I ask him in a hope to end this meeting.
“No.” He instantly answers, giving me his full predatory attention. As if this interview will give him a billion dollar break, he has been waiting for.
“Dakota Black, a high achiever, millionaire in his 20s and a hot shot bachelor who got girls drooling for him..” I almost cringe reading out to him.
“Is your heart surrendering to settle down?” I look up at the end.