After acquiring my wealth, I realized half the power of money came from possessing it. I could spend it, sure, but I didn’t need to. It was a nuclear weapon. A threat looming over enemy heads.
It said, “I have the power to destroy you. Don’t make me use it.”
Flexing that power became an art I valued.
A way of life.
As natural as breathing.
By the time Delilah took her stance a step from my shoulder, the elevator dinged in the hallway.
The window behind me spanned the length of the room with panoramic oceanfront views, and Delilah and I had positioned ourselves in front, so Brandon had no choice but to look at what my money could buy.
Delilah wore enough jewelry to sink the Titanic, while I leaned back against my seat, shoulders relaxed and my new phone pulled out like I hadn’t a care in the world. I downloaded the Eastridge United app, opened it, and logged in.
Brandon Vu entered. I didn’t bother to glance at him as I read Durga’s messages, noting she’d been up as late as I was last night.
Durga: You know what would be an awful way to die? In a room full of people you don’t know.
Durga: Or worse—a room full of people you hate.
“Delilah Lowell.” Beside me, Delilah reached a hand out to Brandon as I shot a reply to Durga.
I ignored the death portion of her messages. It wasn’t like I avoided death, but I preferred not to think about it. After Dad had died, Ma invoked an unspoken do-not-go-there rule, and I had no arguments.
If I ever went there, I’d drown in the woulda, coulda, shoulda of my life. Death was a mistress approaching her expiration date. To be held at arms’ length, until one day, you forgot about her.
Problem solved.
Not the healthiest solution, but I’d never been the type to eat my vegetables, and even Michelle Obama ate at Shake Shack every now and then.
Benkinersophobia: You’ve never struck me as the type of person who hates people.
Brandon stepped closer, but I still didn’t glance up. “Brandon Vu, S.E.C.”
Durga: What type of person hates people?
I considered it for a moment, but the answer was obvious.
Benkinersophobia: Me.
Delilah’s elbow dug into my shoulder, and I waited fifteen seconds to piss her off before I slid my phone into the inner pocket of my suit and gifted the S.E.C.’s errand boy my attention. “Why are you here, Brandon?”
The cocky tilt of his lips had me questioning whether I’d left a trail of evidence. I hadn’t. Fika pissed me off, but I hadn’t lied to Delilah when I’d said years of being a corrupt cop had given him experience in hiding crimes.
Brandon eyed the oceanfront view, his attention lingering on Delilah before he turned to me. “I’d like to ask you a few questions if that’s okay.”
“Rhetorical questions are a waste of my time.” I leaned against my seat and pressed my fingertips together like a church steeple. Probably the closest I’d get to a church, because I was sure I’d burn alive if I ever stepped foot inside one. “Get to the point.”
Delilah made a show of checking her hundred-thousand-dollar watch with the hand not buried in my flesh. “We only have a few minutes to spare, Mr. Vu.”
Brandon focused on me, his smile something more fitting for a wax museum. “Do you have your lawyer at every meeting?”
Delilah’s elbow dug deeper into my shoulder as I spoke, “I’m sure this is a foreign concept for you, but I’m not in the habit of paying people salaries out of charity.”
“Charity. You do a lot of this.” Brandon lifted a finger with each charity he listed. “The Eastridge Fund. The Eastridge United app. Healthcare for All. Soup kitchens across the South. I could go on.”
Not exactly classified information.
Internet trolls accused me of doing charity work for good P.R. all the time. They were wrong. I couldn’t give two shits about P.R., but I did have an ulterior motive and talking about it always put me in a mood.
“I’m impressed. It’s almost as if you know how to use the internet.” I cocked a brow, daring Brandon to accuse me of something. “Is there a point to this or do you enjoy wasting my time?”
He’d come here expecting to rattle me. Maybe get me to make a mistake. I could see it in his face, the downturned lips and the pinched eyes. He could continue to be sorely disappointed for all I cared.
D’s stiletto heel found my shin, and she kicked. Hard. I didn’t wince, but she’d drawn blood. I felt it trickling down my shin and staining my suit.
“Forgive me. I’ll get to the point.” He eyed the rat before stepping closer. “Mr. Prescott, do you know what insider trading is?”
Rosco approached Brandon and sniffed his leg. I imagined him taking a piss on the fucker’s shoes. For a second, I thought he’d finally make his four-thousand-dollar price tag worth it. But the traitor curled up against it and laid down.
The motherfucking rat.
“Toddlers from Old Greenwich know what insider trading is.” I powered on my laptop and began sifting through the emails my Singaporean contacts had sent me. “Spare me the dramatics, and actually get to the point when you say you’ll get to the point.”
When I glanced up, Brandon’s face remained frozen for a half-second longer than necessary, his cool slipping like melted FroYo before he collected himself. “Fine. Let me lay it out for you.”
He placed two palms on my desk as if the movement would intimidate me. Leaning across the table, he lessened the gap between us until his chest brushed against the back of my laptop.
I responded to an email as he continued, “You came from a poverty-stricken family, yet you’ve amassed a substantial fortune in the past four years, particularly right after the fall of Winthrop Textiles. Two parties gained a large sum from the collapse of the company. You’re one of them.”
He gestured around the penthouse suite, which despite being sparsely furnished until the designers had the opportunity to do their jobs in here, boasted an ocean view I’d paid tens of millions of dollars for.
“Before I accuse you of anything and before you deny anything,” he bit out, “I saw Emery Winthrop here last night, a name tag pinned to her dress, working for you. Too many threads connect you to Winthrop Textiles for it to be coincidental. I am good at my job, and if there’s anything for me to find, I’ll find it. You may as well save both of us time and talk to me now. We can work out a deal.”
I pressed send on the email and glanced up at him in time to see his self-satisfied grin. Ripping out of his Saks Off 5th outlet suit and eyebrows so neat they had to be waxed, he looked more like a Tod with one D than a Brandon.
He knew too much for me to dismiss him, but I stood knee-deep in this shit I’d helped create for me to shift the blame onto someone else. If anything, this very moment had been in the making for seven years.
It seemed as inevitable as taxes.
I tilted my head to the side, taking the time to look down my nose at him despite the fact that he stood while I sat. “Does that ever work?”
“More often than you’d think.”
Delilah stepped forward, the picture of calmness. She reminded me of the principal parents and students secretly feared. Eyes that had seen everything in the book and remained unimpressed. “Agent Vu, I think it’s best you leave now. We have a strict schedule to adhere to, and if you’d like to talk any further, you may contact me and only me.”
Brandon’s eyes flickered between me and Delilah before he straightened and nodded. “Think about my offer, Mr. Prescott.” He tossed a business card onto the desk. “A deal doesn’t have to be a bad thing.”
After Delilah shut the door behind Brandon, she turned back to me, a vein bulging on her temple. I’d once named it Delilah Jr. “What part of ‘do not talk’ do you not understand?”
“The words ‘do’, ‘not’, and ‘talk’.”
“Nash, this is serious.”
Wasn’t that the truth?
In my opinion, insider trading fell on the lowest rung on my list of crimes. I always knew I couldn’t hide the money I’d made from trading in Winthrop Textiles stock, but insider trading was difficult to prove, and I’d done a good job of cleaning my tracks.
What I hadn’t known was someone else had profited from the fall of Winthrop Textiles.
I slid out my drawer and brushed my knuckles over the charred leather I traveled with. “Get me a P.I.”
Delilah’s nose curled up at the sight of the burnt leather, but she said nothing. Her naked, furless rat pawed at her legs to be held. “What about Fika?”
“Fika is gone.” At the horror in her eyes, I rolled mine. “Relax. Gone as in fired. Fucker’s still alive and kicking.”
“Jesus, Nash.”
“Let’s not involve him. He’s never been my biggest fan.”
She ignored me. “You don’t tell someone a man with cancer is ‘gone.’ You also don’t pay me to be your assistant. Find your own P.I.”
I would have taken her more seriously had she not picked up Rosco and pet the five strands of hair on his body. “This shit again?”
“I deserve a raise.”
“Done.”
“But I don’t need one.”
Truth.
Her husband came from old money. The next ten generations of her family could stop working and still fund ten Star Wars franchises.
“What do you need, D?” I quirked a brow, giving her my full attention.
“Why do you assume I need something?”
“No one does anything out of the goodness of their heart.”
“You do.” So she thought. “You’re a cranky asshole, but you spend your nights feeding people at soup kitchens regardless of the town we’re in, you take care of your family, you donate a shit ton of your income, and you have never passed someone in need without expensing help.”
She made me sound like the saint Eastridge had made me out to be. The reality couldn’t be further than that. The word penance tattooed where my forearm and elbow met reminded me of this each time I stripped myself bare and forced myself to look in the mirror.
I ignored her Nash-Prescott-is-a-saint canonization speech and got to the point. “I need someone not connected to the company. Not the investigator with your legal department. An independent private investigator who isn’t afraid of getting his hands dirty.”
Someone like Fika, I didn’t say.
Burning bridges seemed to be a habit of mine. I’d go as far as considering it a hobby if I didn’t need those bridges to walk across.
“What’s being investigated?” Emerald eyes studied me, waiting for me to give something away.
“Vu mentioned a second party profiting off the Winthrop Textiles scandal. I want to know who.”
“Are we going to talk about how you’re one of those two parties?”
“No.”
She paused a beat, and finally, something other than indifference flickered into her eyes. Guilt, maybe. “About Emery Winthrop…”
I held up a palm to stop her. “I know. Spare me the lecture. She had a catering gig last night. We won’t hire them again.”
“What?” Her head shook until Rosco nipped at her neck to stop her. “No, that’s not it. Why would you think that?”
I pushed aside my laptop, ignoring the last question. “Spill.”
She cocked a hip against the wall and rubbed at Rosco’s belly, a nervous habit of hers. “Reed called me.”
Already, I knew I’d hate the punchline to this story.
Not because I hated Reed. I didn’t. The opposite. He was the one who hated me, and I didn’t blame him. I deserved the hate, definitely more than I deserved Eastridge’s naive adoration.
Didn’t mean I accepted it.
“Spit it out, Lowell.”
“I owed him a favor. He cashed it in. He wanted me to get Emery Winthrop a job for the company under Emery Rhodes. That was before I knew about the S.E.C. investigation. If I’d known it would cause problems, I wouldn’t have done it.”
This was the thing I admired about Delilah. She possessed the rare ability to admit when she was wrong. Her confidence was unmistakable. The humility required to pinpoint and admit her mistakes didn’t lessen it.
“Where is she working?” I asked, wondering if I could fire an entire department without a settlement.
“The design department as an intern.”
Fitting.
She’d always had her head buried in a sketchbook.
I pulled out my phone and shot a message to Durga.
Benkinersophobia: How would you treat someone who fucked your family over? Who hurt your family so badly, it’ll never recover?
Durga: Assuming I like my family?
Benkinersophobia: Clearly.
Durga: Like dirt.
Durga: Like less than dirt.
Great minds think alike, Durga.
Delilah continued, “It’s for the duration of the Haling Cove project, and the upper half of the floors are mostly designed based off old schematics. The budget is tight because we had to grease too many fingers to get the zoning and plans approved so fast. We took the money from the design budget.” When I didn’t speak, Delilah asked, “What aren’t you telling me?”
I hate Emery Winthrop.
She epitomized everything I stood against. Also, she’d known about her dad’s embezzlement and had done nothing about it. To think I ruined my relationship with my brother over her.
I didn’t say any of that.
Instead, I pressed the shin Delilah’s heel had pierced against the desk’s leg until the pressure drew more blood. “I got stuck in the elevator last night.”
“Stop changing the subject.”
“I got stuck in an elevator last night with Emery,” I amended.
“Fuck.”
One word, but it summed the entire situation up. I had a Winthrop working for me while a nosy S.E.C. prick was investigating me for insider trading over Winthrop Textiles. Fuck, indeed.
Delilah paced, her heels putting temporary little dents into the carpet.
“For almost two hours.” I watched the dents disappear before lifting my head to face D. “Maintenance had left for the weekend, and a twenty-four-seven crew won’t get hired until the hotel is done. The electricity didn’t come back for about two hours.”
“You were stuck in an elevator with Emery Winthrop for two hours?”
“She spent a part of those two hours knocked out.”
“Sleeping?”
“You could call it that.”
“I’m not even going to ask what that means, except to say I’m not representing you in that lawsuit. Her parents are loaded.” She picked a strand of lint off Rosco that I’d mistaken as a fifth hair. “Knowing the Winthrops, they’d probably bribe the judge.” Delilah stepped in the kitchen and filled a bowl with water for Rosco. “Is she going to be a problem? I can fire her. I included a thirty-day clause in the employment contract she signed. She’s been here about a week. Totally fireable.”
I considered it for a moment, but Reed didn’t need more reasons to hate me. It would only hurt Ma. “No. I’ll take care of it.”
By take care of it, I meant I’d put Emery Winthrop in her place. The liar. She’d told me she was a caterer, and I’d believed it because Reed had mentioned to Ma that Emery was figuring out what she wanted to do with her life. I should have expected her to lie. The Winthrops had turned lying into an art.
Reed would blame me if I fired Emery. He couldn’t say anything if she quit. Making her job miserable enough would bring me pleasure.
Delilah disappeared into the spare bedroom before exiting with a giant L.V. suitcase she must have brought while I was in the shower. “I know you’re here until the hotel is done, so I’m staying in the room next door until we take care of Vu. I had it set up this morning.”
Rosco lapped at the bowl while Delilah lugged the suitcase toward the door and called one of the security guards to help her move in next door. I side-stepped him and leaned against the kitchen island, watching her stack her Birkin bag on top of the suitcase.
Delilah had moved to Eastridge years ago to work full-time in the company headquarters, but she basically traveled with me as I jumped from new hotel location to new hotel location in order to oversee their construction.
She referred to me as a walking liability, and I referred to her as my personal Swiffer, cleaning up my messes with a quick spritz and a back-and-forth swipe. Convenient. Effective. Reliable.
“How much does your husband hate me?” I pulled out my phone to check for messages from Durga, not really caring about the answer.
My software designer had encouraged me to try the Eastridge United app and test functionality. I’d never intended on keeping a pen pal, let alone for this long. If you could call Durga a pen pal. Did other people who used the app sext late into the night?
I palmed my dick. Delilah grimaced at me, pulled out her phone, and dialed a number.
She covered the bottom microphone of her phone with her fingers. “Only when it’s cold at night, and he wants something to fuck other than his hands.”
“Lovely image.”
“I thought you’d appreciate it.”
I picked at the breakfast spread and popped a fresh strawberry into my mouth. “One more thing.”
“Great.”
“Pay last night’s date a bonus.”
“What did you do this time?”
“Booted her without a place to stay until her flight at eight this morning. It might have been storming.”
“You’re an ass.”
“So you keep saying.”
One of the security guards showed up and grabbed Delilah’s bags. Rosco trotted after her as she left, leaving me alone in the room with the half-empty water bowl still on the floor—and a puddle beside it.
Loneliness sometimes felt crippling. Not in the sense that I needed someone near me at all times, but in the sense that I found no difference between standing in a crowded room and standing in an empty one. I still felt hollow with every breath I took.
Dipping my eyes to my phone, I read Durga’s message.
Durga: Would you shoot your best friend in the arm for five million dollars?
As always, I wondered if Durga had a wiretap into my head.
Benkinersophobia: I don’t have a best friend.
Durga: Color me as surprised as a cheerleader being chased down by a man with a machete five minutes into a B-grade horror flick.
I snorted before gunning a response I knew would make her laugh.
Benkinersophobia: I’d do it for twenty.
Durga: Twenty better include dismemberment, too.
Unraveling the notes on my table, I prepped for the design meeting. One where I planned on confronting Emery Winthrop, my little liar, and endeavored to make her life as miserable as she’d made mine.
She reminded me of the rat I accused Rosco of being, and though I couldn’t extinguish her without pissing my brother off, I’d happily trap her inside a box she couldn’t escape with a smile on my face.
And maybe, just maybe, I’d learn where Gideon Winthrop was hiding in the process.
Fitting.
I was the downfall of my family, and she would be the downfall of hers.
