Was that possible? Was that part of what Arthur was doing? Turning Marc into an acceptable choice for me? Making sure he had the money my father thought he needed in order to forget his mother was a heroin addict.
I sighed sadly. Not willing to stray from the script I’d written for myself. “I don’t know that it matters much. You could approve of him. But Marc, well, I just don’t think he looks at me the way I look at him.”
“More fool him then.”
I laughed softly. Then I took a sip of my orange juice and another bite of toast. “You know, I was thinking about what comes next. I imagine you’re still not in favor of me attending Princeton.”
“We agreed not this year.”
“Yes, we agreed,” I said. “I was thinking about what I would do then. I’ve asked before about maybe getting a job.”
He scoffed. “Why on earth would you work when you don’t have to? I didn’t raise my daughter to be a common laborer.”
“I just thought the experience of working would help in my growth. So that I am ready for school next year. It doesn’t have to be anything serious. I could work at the Starbucks on Main Street.”
His face flushed. “Absolutely not! I don’t want anyone in town seeing you working. As if I hadn’t spent my whole life ensuring you would never have to. You know how that town thinks. What they would say? That I’ve raised you to be more than someone who pours coffee, of all things. Take a menial job and people will question everything we’ve built.”
His reaction was expected. I knew how important appearances were to him. “It doesn’t have to be in town. I can find something in some other town.”
“You don’t drive,” he countered
Of course, I drove. George taught me when I was fifteen, just like he did Marc.
“I can Uber,” I pressed. “I’m not trying to upset you, Daddy. I just don’t know what I’ll do with my time if I’m not going to school and I’m not working.”
“You’ll read,” he said, using a napkin to brush the crumbs from his shirt. “You’ll study independently. What would you say to another tutor? Maybe we can bring out a teaching assistant from Princeton to work with you one-on-one. How does that sound?”
It sounded like I was going back to my gilded prison. However, at this point, I’d pushed him as far as I could. Days of thoughtful arguments and give and take were over, it seemed.
He’d let me attend Marc’s soccer games. He’d let me attend school for three years. In his mind, the result had been me asking Marc to go to prom. Had been me announcing I was going to marry him.
It made sense Arthur was going to hold the reigns a little tighter now.
“That sounds excellent,” I said. “May I be excused? I think I’ll take a walk on the beach. It’s lovely today.”
“Of course. Don’t exert yourself,” he said serenely. “We wouldn’t want to bring on another attack.”
No. We wouldn’t want that.
I got up from the table and went inside the hotel suite. I walked past the couch where Marc had gone down on me. Into my room where he’d had me in so many ways, I couldn’t remember them all.
There was a certain amount of power in that.
Part of that was the sex. Marc had taken us to a new place, and, while intellectually I understood that sex played a part in any relationship, I’d had no idea how important it would be to ours. How much deeper our connection would become. An understanding of who we were to each other, and, more importantly, what we needed from each other.
There was power, too, in defying my father. In knowing that my life was happening independently of his, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. To that end, Marc was right. There was a limit to Arthur’s power. To what he could make me do.
And by next January, when Marc was finally out of school, his degree in hand, there would be nothing he could do to stop us from being together.
All Marc and I had to do was keep us a secret for one year.
How hard could it be?
Landen Enterprises, LLC
January
Marc
“Marc?”
I looked up from where I was sitting across from the reception desk, and saw a man not much older than me approaching. Clean shaven, conservative haircut. He was wearing jeans and a sweater, reminding me it was the weekend. But as my first day on the job, I’d still gone with a suit and tie.
I stood and shook his hand. “That’s me.”
“I’m Trevor. I’ll be your mentor while you’re here at Landen Enterprises.”
“You always work Saturdays?” I asked, as I followed him down a row of cubes that were neat and orderly.
No pictures on the desks, no personal items. Just PCs with double, sometimes triple, monitors. A smattering of people occupied the cubes, also working the weekend. Assistants, investors. There had been someone at the front desk to greet me when I arrived.
Maybe not as busy as during the week, but not as quiet as the weekends were at the bank where I’d done my last internship. I knew, because I’d worked weekends then, too.
“Most of them, yeah,” he answered. “It’s a dog-eat-dog environment around here. I’ll tell you that right now. Landen handles a few clients personally, but the rest are up for grabs amongst the investors. The person who works the longest and the hardest tends to win more business. And more business means…”
“More money,” I finished, knowing instinctively that’s what drove Trevor’s dedication. Mine, too, for that matter. Princeton was a stepping stone. The goal was total and complete economic freedom for me and George.
Now maybe Ash, too, if her father was going to make her choose.
Trevor led me to a vacant cube. Showed me the login to the software they used to do their investing, then showed me my own personal account.
“This has a thousand dollars in it,” I said, stating the obvious.
Trevor laughed. “Welcome to Landen Enterprises. Every rookie gets a thousand in cash to start investing. Landen’s theory—if you can’t make money for yourself, he can’t trust you to make it for his clients. How much and how fast you grow that balance determines when he might let you make investments on behalf of a client.”
“Is there a client list I should be studying?”
“Yes. You signed your NDA?”
I nodded. “Yes. And handed in my drug test and got my fancy security card,” I said, holding up the lanyard under my suit coat.
“It’s here,” he said, showing me where in the program to access the list. “Broken up by broker.”
I did a quick study of the broker list. “They’re all men.”
Trevor snorted. “Yeah, don’t tell any feminists you might know, but Landen doesn’t think women have the DNA necessary to invest. They’re only good in a support role. Says it’s too much of a cutthroat business.”
I would not be sharing that with Ash.
Curious, I clicked on Landen’s name to reveal his list and was prompted for a password.
“Uh, no. The boss keeps his clients close to the vest. No one knows who they are. Other than they are rich motherfuckers.”
I thought of Evan Sanderson and wondered if he was on Landen’s list.