The Love Of Money - S01 E237

Story 2 weeks ago

The Love Of Money - S01 E237

Read Story: SEASON 1 EPISODE 237

Dark Turns.

It's time for the board meeting.

Monday, 5:30 am

Unable to do another pushup, I face-planted on the matted floor.

"Not bad," Tara Gellar sing-songed in that attractive Australian accent. I thought I was going to enjoy working out while a supermodel-beautiful, Olympic-level fit, Aussie goddess coached me along. Right now, I hated it, and I hated her.

"This is humillating," I muttered, the words muted by the foam on the gym floor.

"Nah," Tara said. "This is an assessment. I've seen worse."

I rolled over on my back and looked around the gym-all the equipment was state-of-the-art and expensive, but it had Tara's approval. I had a couple of ellipticals, treadmills, stair-step machines, and cardio rowing machines. There were machines for building muscle in different areas of the body. Free weights had been stacked and racked along one wall for easy access. Two of the walls had mirrors mounted on them, and the entire floor was padded with the highest quality gym foam Erin could find. I could efficiently work any muscle in my body without leaving the comfort of my home-my body transformation journey had begun.

The problem was, having never been a consistent member of a gym or a fan of working out in general, I wanted to throw up after thirty minutes of working with Tara... and apparently this was just the assessment. I shuddered to find out what the actual fucking workout was like.

Tara offered me a tablet. "Okay. Assessment's done. This is the schedule I've built out for you."

I rolled closer to where she sat and sat up, mirroring her position on the floor by crossing my legs as I took the tablet and looked it over

"Do we have to do this every day at five in the morning, though?" Tara asked.

"No," I said. "I hate mornings as much as you. I just wanted to get my blood pumping before the meeting today. Didn't expect to feel nauseous though."

Tara grimaced. "Wish you would have told me that's what you were going for. It'll pass once you get some food in you. I've already started working with Camille on a diet."

"Lovely," I said, anticipating being sentenced to egg whites, salads, and protein shakes for the next few months. "This workout doesn't seem like much," I said, holding up the tablet.

"You won't be saying that by the end of the week," Tara said with an amused smile. "Don't worry. It'll get harder."

"Okay," I said, eyeing the schedule skeptically, but she was the expert, so if she said this was a good start, I believed her.

"Has anyone else talked to you yet?" I asked.

"Just Chloe. She doesn't need personal training, but she asked for a regular sparring partner."

"Cool," I said. "Erin wants to set something up with you, too."

My personal trainer sat straighter when I said that, displaying a few subtle signs of interest. I couldn't blame her. Erin in a sports bra and some yoga pants working out? I imagined that was one of those natural wonders that made you reconsider your belief in God -like the Grand Canyon. To be fair, Tara was a work of art all her own. Catching both of them in here at the same time might take years off my life just from the sheer amount of arousal they would inflict on me.

"Bobbi will probably reach out to you today, too. I want you to build a schedule for her."

"Yeah," Tara said, "About Bobbi..."

"The collar?"

"Yeah," Tara said, her piercing blue-gray eyes full of questions. "Who is she?"

"That's a long story," I sighed as I set the tablet down.

"I'd like to hear it."

Tara would be working with us all pretty intimately, so I decided she might as well know the entire situation. Erin had drawn up a boilerplate NDA for her that she'd already signed, so I felt relatively comfortable filling her in on a few of the details. I left out a few of the darker elements of how we met, but told her most of our situation-Bobbi had been stealing from the company I bought, had mistreated most of the people she worked with, and was an outright bitch. I threatened to turn her in, but instead of accepting that fate, she decided to enter a deal with me that resulted in a collar and a status as a live-in plaything story had a thin coating of sugar to make the whole thing a bit more palatable, but hadn't lied. If Bobbi told a different narrative, and Tara decided she didn't like it, well... I'd burn that bridge when I came to it.