Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 12:59:27 +0100 From: Gerry Taylor Subject: The Changed Life - Chapter 2 This is the 2nd chapter of part one of a trilogy of novels of gay sex. Keywords: authority, control, slavery, punishment, re-training, submission, loyalty This story is entirely a work of fiction and all rights to it and its characters are copyright and private to and reserved by the author. No reproduction by anyone for any reason whatsoever is permitted. If you are underage to read this kind of material or if this material will be unlawful for you to read where your live, please leave this webpage now. Contact points: eMail: gerrytaylor78@hotmail.com Web: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Erotic_Gay_Stories The Changed Life by Gerry Taylor Chapter 2 -- Deckams It is quite clear that Fate has a hand in our individual destinies. While we can influence so many things in our lives, subtle events have a knack of putting us on paths which in a thousand other years we would never normally walk. Looking back on events, I can truly that Fate intervened that April morning when I went to see one of my partners. It was, perhaps, one of the three or four definite occasions in my life when Fate has intervened. Let me explain, I am a banker, an Englishman, and have worked all my working life with the same firm since I left public school -- admitted a minor English public school, which our American cousins would call a private one. Aha! That's another thing. Language. We do say things a little differently at times! Our Bank, Deckams, goes back just over three hundred years and is a private merchant Bank with our HQ in the heart of London. Our present chairman is a direct descendant of the original founder, who in turn was a direct descendant of one of nobles of William the Conqueror, though by the mid 1600s, the family had changed the original Normal spelling `Deschamps' to its now English equivalent. We are up to our oxters in history at the Bank as Charlie Deckam, our chairman, is so fond of reminding us. Though 30 of us are directors of the Bank, we call ourselves partners, because the business success of one will bring profit and success to all, and a poor investment will hurt us all in the long term. Not quite "all for one and one for all" of the Three Musketeers but close enough. We all meet once a month on the third Monday in the great boardroom, by either being physically present or by real time video link from the fifteen subsidiaries around the world. That April morning was one such day. Let me say for starters that we are very civilised at our board meetings. Things are always done and thrashed out in advance. Our meetings are a confirmation of minds - at times a request to pursue a new avenue of investment and the reasons why - an updating by each one of the other partners either by prior report or two minute summary which was our standard maximum. So, I was not entirely surprised when the partner in charge of personnel, John Tunnor, asked to see me before the meeting. He allocates you staff and he takes them off your hands when their time is us. Normally, of course, he would not take staff from your own area without first consulting you or vice versa. Today, he looked just a tad worried, but greeted me warmed with a "Jonathan, come in. Thank you for taking the time." Another of the partners of my own age group so to speak, Tommy Elford, was there to whom I also said `hello'. "Jonathan, we have a bit of a problem. Johnny Mahon is dead. They found him in his bed this morning. He died during the night." I must have looked a bit stunned because our `man' in the Tokyo was one our star financial performers. John Tunnor went on. "You may not have known it but he had an acute stomach cancer for years. Its amazing he lasted so long." I was indeed sorry to hear the news and it did explain why the dead partner rarely attended meetings physically, which I had erroneously put down to the bother of travelling each month half way round the world for a meeting which rarely lasted more than two hours. "I had hoped just to inform the board this morning of some less pressing matters, but as you know we have those two major deals in steel and shipbuilding and the only partner here with sound Japanese and a knowledge of the office there is young Elford here." John Tunnor regarded anyone under fifty as young. I looked across at Tommy and nodded. He had been in Tokyo when I had headed up the Cairo office years back, and like myself had made it to the top. I was even the godfather of his third and youngest daughter. "So, John, what's the suggestion?" "Jonathan, I want to recommend Tommy here for the Tokyo office. It will be a big challenge for him." By challenge, I heard and knew the coded implication. Get the steel and shipbuilding deals done and Tommy, my lad, you would be in clover, with a million euro in various bonuses for self and a healthy end of year bottom line for every one else. "The bad news, Jonathan, is that I want you to head up the Dahra office. I know that Tommy has only been there for six months and has not really been able to fully settle in. You have two great advantages going for you. You have Arabic and you are single." I looked at Tommy and raised an eyebrow. Our office in the Sheikdom of Dahra was a real earner. The country was sitting on lake of oil and three years earlier when drilling for water between the two main mountain ranges, they had hit on the fourth largest deposit of natural gas in the world. As an office, it was not quite in the same prestige league as New York or Tokyo, but a very secure position. Tommy had taken it over six months or so previously and had seemed deliriously happy to do so. He and the wife and two younger girls had gone out there, the eldest girl being in school back home here in England. Tommy Elford chimed in "Janet has not been able to settle in at all, Jonathan. She, in fact, hates the climate, the heat and the Arabs. It's a very male environment. On the other hand, Janet loves everything Japanese." There was half a tone of pleading in his voice. Janet, I knew, could be an all-star bitch when she wanted to be and if she did not like Dahra, then the person who took here there was and would be in hell. Tommy had said nothing about the "challenge" of the Tokyo office, but knowing his level of ambition, the future bonuses would make it all worthwhile and Janet would be off his back. I pretended to mull over it for about twenty seconds, smiling inside to myself at how readable some people and situations are when you strip them of the superfluous. Finally, I said "I'm sure Pattie, my god daughter, will just love Tokyo." Tommy Elton almost bounded across the room and hugged me. We Englishmen do not hug, but he hugged me. I put it down to the fact that he was simply excited. "Jonathan, I owe you one. I owe you big time. Thank you." John Tonnor's secretary and -- very - personal assistant put his head around the door and said "Sir, the board is meeting" and meet we did. The blank monitor screen for Tokyo was what I remember of that meeting, and John Tonnor saying that he was pleased to report that even at such short notice, two partners would be immediately heading up the offices of Tokyo and Dahra. To be continued...