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By the time I get to my Park Avenue building from Victoria’s West Village office, my programmers and traders are glued to their screens. Only a few of them notice as I make my way to my corner office. I’d normally stop by their desks to ask them about their weekend and get an update on our positions, but the market is already open, and I can’t distract them.
With ninety-two billion of my investors’ money at stake, there is no room for error.
My office is huge and has a great view of the skyscrapers on Park Avenue, but I don’t stop to appreciate it. Once, this office felt like the pinnacle of achievement for a scrappy kid from Staten Island, but now I’m hungry for more. Success is my drug, and with each hit, I need a bigger dose to get the buzz. It’s not about the money anymore—in addition to my personal stake in the fund, I have a couple of billion stashed away in real estate and other passive investments—it’s about knowing that I can do it, that I can succeed where others have failed. The recent market volatility has resulted in record losses for hedge funds and mutual funds alike, but Carelli Capital Management is up in the high teens, outperforming the market by over forty percent. Foundations, pension funds, wealthy individuals—they’re all tripping over each other in a rush to invest with me, and I still want more.
I want it all, including a wife who’d fit the life I’ve worked so hard to build.
On the surface, it should be easy. At thirty-five, I have enough money to keep the female population of Manhattan in Louis Vuitton bags and Louboutin shoes for the rest of their lives, I’m not bad-looking, and I work out daily to stay in shape. The latter I do more for health than vanity, but women seem to appreciate the results. I can pick up any woman in a club in a matter of minutes, but none of them are what I want.
I want high class. I want elegance.
I want a woman who’s the complete opposite of the one who raised me—hence, Victoria Longwood-Thierry and her old-money connections.
It was my friend Ashton who pointed me in her direction. “You know the kind of woman you want isn’t going to be hanging out at a bar, right?” he said when, after a couple of beers, I mentioned my specifications for a wife. “You’re talking about American aristocracy here, Mayflower and all that shit. If you’re serious about tapping high-end pussy, you need to talk to my aunt’s friend. She’s a professional matchmaker working with politicians and rich Wall Street dudes like you. She’ll find you exactly what you need.”
I laughed and changed the conversation, but the germ of the idea had been planted, and the more I investigated Ashton’s aunt’s friend, the more intrigued I became. It turns out Victoria had matched at least two hedge fund managers I know—one with an Olympic gymnast, the other with a Princeton biologist who once moonlighted as a model. Upon further digging, I learned that both marriages are going strong so far, and that, more than anything, convinced me to give the matchmaker a shot.
I intend to be as successful in my personal life as I have been in business, and having the right kind of wife is a big part of that.
Sitting down at my gleaming ebony wood desk, I turn on my Bloomberg monitor and pick up a stack of research reports. I have Victoria on the case, so I put the wife hunt out of my mind and focus on what really matters: my work and making my clients money.
* * *
It’s already eight p.m. when my phone buzzes with an incoming message. Rubbing my eyes, I look away from my computer screen and see that it’s a text from Victoria.
I have the perfect candidate for you, the text says. She can meet you at Sweet Rush Café in Park Slope tomorrow at 6 p.m. If that works for you, I will email you more details. Emmeline lives in Boston and is only in town for a couple of days.
I frown at my phone. Six o’clock? I almost never leave the office that early on a Tuesday. And Boston? How am I supposed to get to know this Emmeline if she doesn’t live in New York?
I start texting Victoria that I can’t make it, but stop at the last moment. This is what I wanted: for Victoria to introduce me to a woman I would never meet on my own. Given the matchmaker’s track record, I can spare one evening to see if there’s anything worth pursuing there.
Before I can change my mind, I fire off a quick text to Victoria agreeing to the date, and turn my attention back to my computer screen.
