CHAPTER 218: SPA CHERRY (1)

When Jack got back to his room, Madison was still in the shower, so he sat on the couch and pulled up his banking app. It had been a while since he had checked on Natalie’s progress.

When he saw the asset total at the top of the page, he just stared at it.

He’d initially given her 50 million credits to manage, and she’d doubled that in just a few weeks. Then he’d given her an additional 450 million credits to manage.

Now, his balance was just over one billion credits. It had been less than a week! She claimed she might be able to get him a 900 percent return, or tenfold increase. And said it would happen over about three months.

Three months was twelve weeks, so a one-fold increase in slightly less than a week was sort of in line with her most optimistic projections.

He was now officially a billionaire! It was surreal and hard to process. He was still figuring out what he could do with Genesis Heart and had not spent much time thinking about what it meant to have that much money.

He was still staring at the large number when Madison came out of the ensuite wearing one of the hotel robes.

Seeing the way he was staring at his phone, she asked, "Hey, what ’cha lookin’ at?"

He made a come-here motion, and she walked over and plopped down on the couch next to him.

He turned the phone and showed her the screen.

She stared at it for a moment with a look of puzzlement. But that look quickly turned to understanding, then shock.

"I-I-Is that real?!"

He nodded his head.

"One billion?! How?"

He explained about Natalie.

"Damn. Why haven’t you soul bonded her?"

"I offered, but she declined. She said she wanted to beat the market fair and square, and if she accepted my soul bond, she’d be too tempted to leverage me and Genesis Heart. She said with Genesis Heart, it would be like shooting fish in a barrel and that’s no fun."

"Huh. That’s... I can respect that. She wants to beat them at their own game. But you can trust her, right?"

"Yup, I made sure of that before transferring the 450 million. What’s crazy is that in the next few months that one billion might turn into five billion. I’m still having trouble adjusting to being a multi-millionaire, so being a billionaire is just surreal."

"Yeah, I know what you mean."

They stared at the screen for a few more moments before she got up and grabbed his hand.

"Come on. I don’t want to go down there by myself. Miranda said there’s a waiting room with a fireplace and fancy water to drink. You can wait there while I get...you know."

He went into the bedroom, stripped to his underwear, and put on a robe, then joined Madison as they left his room.

Once in the elevator, Jack pressed the button with "SPA" next to it.

When they exited the elevator, they found themselves in a small foyer.

To their left was a display of items that included soaps, lotions, candles, and other bath products. To the right was a hallway. And directly across from them was a desk with a young woman standing behind it.

"Welcome to The Wellington Spa. How may I assist you?" asked the woman in a polite and cheerful tone.

Jack did not understand how anyone could smile and sound cheerful all day long, no matter who they talked to. He and Madison had talked about such people in the past and jokingly concluded it was some kind of superpower.

He approached the desk and said, "Yes, my girlfriend Madison has a one o’clock appointment, then the two of us have a manicure, pedicure, and massage appointment starting at two o’clock.

Without even looking at her computer, the woman said, "Ah. Welcome, Mr. Waldron, Mrs. Kavanagh. We’re all ready for you. If you’ll follow me, we’ll get you settled."

The young woman leads the two of them down the hall and through a door on the right. On the wall next to the door was a sign that read, "Lounge."

Past that door they found a fairly large room, with what looked like a fireplace on one wall, and scattered throughout the room were high-backed armchairs in singles and small clusters, and along the two walls were small couches.

Many of the armchairs had footstools in front of them as well.

On the wall opposite the fireplace was a long sideboard table laden with baskets of cookies, muffins, and other pastries, as well as a coffee urn, and three tall, glass water dispensers, each with slices of fruit floating in them.

In a hushed tone, the woman said, "This is our lounge where you can sit and relax while you wait for the next stage of your appointment. Mr. Waldron, you are free to wait here until your appointment begins at two o’clock. Mrs. Kavanagh, Hazel, your esthetician, is ready for you now. If you’ll follow me?"

Madison gave Jack a quick hug, then followed the woman back out of the lounge.

As Jack looked around the room, he noticed that there were only a few people and they mostly sat along the edge of the room.

Realizing he’d skipped lunch, he sauntered over to the sideboard, grabbed a plate and loaded it with pastries, then filled a glass with water from the water dispenser that contained strawberry slices and mint leaves.

Once he was loaded up, he turned and headed towards the fireplace.

There were three sets of two armchairs arranged in front of the fireplace, each pair was turned to partly face each other with a small table between them.

He sat in the right-hand chair of the center pair, then set his glass of strawberry and mint-flavored water on the table.

He looked down at the pastries on his plate. He’d taken one of each kind of pastry and recognized all but one of them.

There were two kinds of cookies: traditional chocolate chip and white chocolate with macadamia nut. A muffin that looked to be lemon with poppy seeds. And a small Danish.

The pastry he didn’t recognize was wedge-shaped, and he couldn’t tell if it would be moist or dry or flaky or crunchy.

He picked it up and was staring at it when a woman sat in the armchair on his left.

In an amused, but not mocking, tone she said, "It’s a scone."

He turned to look at her, then froze for just a second.

Sitting across from him was Evalyn fucking Tanner, and she was looking at him expectantly.