Trillion(5)

She reaches for the black device in the center of the table. The sound disappears and the screen goes dark. Nothing but a flashing icon that shows we’re on hold.

“Can’t wait to be done with this prick.” I point my pen toward the screen. “At this point, I should make him pay me for wasting my fucking time.”

Broderick exhales. “Just be patient. It’s going to happen. You always get what you want.”

I sink back into my chair.

He’s right.

I always get what I want.

In fact, I don’t recall a time when I haven’t.

Glancing to my left, I take in a view of the somber Chicago skyline outside and contemplate my weekend plans. When I return my attention to my legal pad, I’ve jotted a name on the lower right corner of the first page. I don’t remember doing it, but it’s undeniably my handwriting.

Sophie Bristol.

I must have written it so I could remember. With over sixty thousand employees, I couldn’t begin to remember anyone’s names outside my tight-knit circle of trusted executives.

The screen fills with the Ames baker’s dozen once more and the sound returns. A handful of indiscernible whispers. Shuffled papers. Cleared throats. Creaking chairs.

I circle Sophie’s name to remind myself to check into her later—mostly out of curiosity. Her face—and body—suddenly adulterate my focus, and very rarely does something distract me to this degree.

“Have we reached a decision?” I ask.

Broderick gives me a subtle wink, as if he’s certain this is the moment Nolan finally relents after eight agonizingly tortuous months of back-and-forth negotiations.

“Not quite. I have a proposition for you,” Nolan says. “If you’re open to hearing it.”

“Of course.” I sit up.

Broderick shifts in his seat, listening, taking notes as Nolan lays out an offer I never could have anticipated.

Nolan Ames is holding strong on the legacy clause. He wants me to “find someone,” to “settle down,” to get fucking married and start a family. He’s also graciously giving me two years because according to him, “you’re thirty-five and your best years are behind you anyway.” He even had the audacity to say I’d thank him someday.

Thank him for what? For a money-hungry trophy wife? For a kid that’ll inevitably be raised by a team of nannies? For a version of my life I’ve never wanted?

People like me don’t do the marriage-and-family dance.

It’s not who we are.

It’s not who I am.

I’m aware of my strengths. I’m also aware of my weaknesses. I’d be a horrible husband and an even worse excuse for a father.

Nolan agreed to put everything in writing—that he wouldn’t offer his shares to anyone else in the next two years, and the board agreed to do the same. I imagine there was an extensive amount of coaxing going on behind the scenes, hence the muting, but I don’t have time to imagine what he could possibly hold over their heads because I’m too busy wrapping my mind around this preposterous, unprecedented stipulation.

“Who the hell does he think he is?” I all but spit my words at Broderick when we disconnect a few minutes later. “He’s insane.”

Broderick rises, his chair groaning beneath his bodyguard-esque frame, and he tosses his pen on the table. Pacing the windows, he inhales hard and heavy, always a man of few words.

“I’m going to need you to actually fucking say something.” I exhale, my patience non-existent. Though my words are sharp, Broderick’s got a chainmail ego. He can handle it, unlike the spineless trout before him. He puts up with my moods, whichever way they swing, and when necessary, he puts me in my place.

It’s why I’ve yet to replace him in the ten years he’s worked for me.

Most people tell me what I want to hear.

Broderick tells me what I need to hear—the truth.

A man can’t make savvy business decisions based on sugarcoated lies.

“It’s a power move,” he says, eyes pointed yet unfocused. I don’t like this side of him. I need my shark, not his shell-shocked alter.

“Obviously.” I clench my jaw. “So what do you propose?”

He stops wearing a pattern into the carpet with his polished dress shoes and turns to me. “How badly do you want this?”

“Do I even have to answer that?”

His mouth forms a straight line, nostrils flaring. “Fine. This is the plan. We hire someone. We find a woman—one we can trust—and we pay her to marry you, have your child, and to do it all in Nolan’s timeframe.”

“Please tell me you’re fucking joking.”

He lifts a brow. “Eight months of this back-and-forth bullshit and the man hasn’t budged, Trey. Hasn’t even come close. You heard what he wants. He’s not wavering on that clause. And unfortunately, he knows he has the upper hand because anyone else would’ve walked by now.”

“This is the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard.” In my nearly fifteen years of negotiating acquisitions and takeovers, I’ve yet to hear of such a provision. If I didn’t know better, I’d think I was being pranked. But Ames has a reputation. He’s a family man. Wife of nearly ten years. Two kids. The bastard even wrote a book on “creating the ideal marriage in an anti-marriage world.” Instant bestseller. He considers himself an expert in that—and many other—arenas.