desire .

Inheritance - Chapter one

ao3 author: JulietsEmoPhase

summary: Accidental billionaire Draco meets adorable book publisher Harry.

  “But what do I do with this!” Draco all but shrieked, flailing his arms at the obscene amount of corner office space he was apparently supposed to…office…from. Who knew Great Aunt Morwenna had such an empire to her name, or why on earth she thought her brother’s niece’s uncle’s son was fit to inherit it.

   Pansy Parkinson, his sparkly new PA who he was rapidly falling in love with for her lip gloss alone arched a contoured eyebrow. “Send memos,” she suggested. “Check emails. Order rent boys and writhe around in piles of ten pound notes.”

   “That,” said Draco with a click of his fingers. “Can we put that on the agenda?”

   Parkinson rolled her eyes, which Draco hugely respected, seeing as every single other person he had encountered since he had traversed the elevator to the thirty-sixth floor of Heron Tower had scuttled away and refused to even so much squeak at him. This girl had sass, she was getting an immediate pay rise.

   As soon as he worked out how to do that.

   Three days ago he had been in a perfectly drunken haze at one of Oxford’s more reputable bars (and they were hard to find, he had done his research.) Now, now he was staring at chrome and glass fixtures with price tags he guessed would eclipse his monthly rent.

Draco rubbed his tongue over his teeth. That kind of attitude made him sound common – he had hardly lived in squalor his whole life – it was just it had always been his parent’s money, and when he’d flown the nest, he’d imagined amassing his own wealth, not having it dumped on him like some reality TV star.

   And it wasn’t like he’d gotten into Oxford because of anything so vulgar as money. Or connectionseroHeronconnections. Or power. Ptsh! Half of his fellow Etonians had equal amounts of that. Draco Malfoy really loved the study of history, his A-Levels had been a doddle, and had been perfectly content to coast through his under-grad years in The Rose and Crown pubuntil he was required to actually muster up some original thought on the French Revolution in – hmm – about three years?

   Instead, he had literallybeen whisked from his bar stool at 3am by a downright terrifying private security firm, and informed that his Great Aunt Whatever had tragically passed away during ‘negotiations’ with the Lithuanians, and now, he, Draco Malfoy, had control over a large chunk of the ‘Family Business’.

   A quick consultation with his mother’s lawyers had left Draco with a vague, hungover concept of a (surprisingly) legitimate and lucrative book publishing company that also had close ties with Hollywood and the BBC. He strongly suspected, as soon as the ibuprofen had started to kick in, that he was simply the cleanest member of her family his aunt could find to lump this particular business on in the event of her tragic passing.

   It could have been worse. Although Draco himself was confident his parents were on the straight and narrow, you didn’t have to wander too far off the family tree to find those with tax free incomes, and, seeing as he didn’t have much of a choice about this inheritance, he was relieved at least not to have to worry about Revenue and Customs breathing down his neck. There were several restaurants and even a bowling alley he was very glad to had skirted clear of.  

   And so yesterday on the drive down to London, he had checked his bank balance on his many-months-shattered iPhone, only to discover his account now had almost as many zeros to it as Draco had years to his name.

   Many, many, coffees and a new, non-broken iPhone later, he stood in the damnable office, looking down over Bishopsgate and trying so very hard not to be overwhelmed at being the youngest and least qualified person in the building by a long shot. The cleaning staff probably had a better concept of how books got made than him at that point, plus, they had the added advantage of knowing where all the loos were, which Draco would need to learn if he was going to hide as much as he suspected he would need to.