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I pressed end to the call and stared at the surface of the phone. My reflection, the one I’d hoped to avoid for the evening if I was going to be able to do what I needed to do, stared ominously back at me. I threw the phone through the doorway and onto the bed, sick of looking at myself, and undressed. Standing in the shower, I washed the flight off my body and hair. I let the hot water run over my sore shoulder for half a minute. I made a mental note to have Bridge rub it out for me. Hope she’s feeling okay. Poor kid, I thought.
When I got out, I wrapped a towel around my waist and headed for my closet, sliding the large doors across half the length of the room on each side. Immediately, I grabbed my three-piece tailor-made suit from Gieves & Hawkes in London and a crisp, starched shirt and laid them on the bed. I took a deep breath and entered the bathroom, situating myself at the sink, and looked in the mirror. I averted my eyes quickly and laced my toothbrush with toothpaste. I brushed my teeth without looking at my reflection and applied deodorant, but shaving and waxing my hair was a different story. I didn’t have a choice but to face myself then. I let the Bvlgari after shave sting, a self-imposed penance that didn’t touch the surface of paybacks for the sins I’d committed or was about to.
I dressed, took a quick look in my closet mirror, acknowledged that I was as ready as I would ever be and grabbed my keys, jacket and wallet before tucking in my Kiton pocket square.
I strode down the hallway, the sun hidden now, hidden from exposing me for what I truly was, a walking contradiction. I twirled the keys to my Aston Martin, a habit that feigned how carefree I wanted people to think I was. I’d just made it to the second level stairs when I did an about- face to check on Bridge before I left.
gue
Greed is a strange, strange sin.
All you want to do is acquire. Acquire money, acquire material, acquire time, acquire energy, acquire attention. The running mantra is “I want, I want, I want” but that quickly turns to “I need, I need, I need.”
Suddenly there just isn’t enough time for friends, for family, for anyone. Your goal is to acquire and to make sure what you acquire stays acquired. Your life depends on it. You don’t see truth because the truth is shadowed by enormous homes, incredibly fast cars, in lavish spending. Your life no longer belongs to you, but you are blind to it all because those around you are seeking the same.
So you shuffle along at an impossible rate, and you pass the real world around you.
But what you’ll come to realize, altogether too late, is that it’s never enough.
It’s simply never enough.
Chapter One
“It’s confirmed. Peter Knight of Evergreen won’t approve the acquisition. You know what to do,” my snake of a father told me, not two steps into his front door.
“I just got off a seven-hour flight. You can’t let me settle in? Possibly say hello?”
He stood, watching me, a slight tick in his square jaw. He tucked his hands into his Italian silk pants. His six-foot frame followed the steps up to the foyer and stopped a few inches away from my own. We were face to face. Although I fell an inch shorter, he no longer intimidated me. I knew if I had to, I could kick his ass.
“Hello, Spencer,” he said, a serpent’s smile spread wide across his mouth before falling flat. “Get to work. I don’t pay you to sit around. I don’t care if it is your Christmas break.”
We stayed where we were, each waiting on the other to back down. The tension was palpable. In the end, his face relaxed and he began to chuckle, stepping aside and making way for me. I picked up my bags and headed for my room, giving myself plenty of space to pass him without touching him.
When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I changed my mind and threw my bags on the second to last step, intending to pick them up later. I stretched my muscles, loving the feel of my back popping, and started for the kitchen.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” he asked, still standing in the foyer, watching my every move.
“If I don’t say hi to Mom and Bridge, they’ll think something’s up,” I told him and continued on.
He didn’t respond, but I felt his stare burning into the back of my head.
I knew my sister and mother were in the kitchen because I could hear their laughter from across the immense modern monstrosity that was my parents’ home. My dad picked it out because he picked out everything, and my mom went along because my mother always goes along with what my dad says.
My mother was a beautiful woman, though she doesn’t realize it. In fact, she was gorgeous, inside as well as outside, but she shared the physical characteristics of a woman in her forties who’d had two kids, and for some reason, she thought that gave my father carte blanche to be a cheating, lying asshole and get away with it.
As soon as I entered the kitchen, my seventeen-year-old sister, Bridget, or Bridge as I call her, squealed, jumping off her stool and threw her arms around my neck. Her eyes burned with moisture when she pulled away to look at me.
“My Bridge,” I told her, squeezing her cheeks together, puckering her lips.
“My Spence,” she garbled through goldfish lips.
I released my grip, kissed her cheek, then hugged her. “I missed you, Bridge.”
“I missed you, too, bub. What are you doing here so early? We weren’t expecting you for another two days.”
“I know. After I finished my exams, I thought I’d surprise you, decided that last dorm blowout wasn’t worth it.”
Bridge’s hands met her hips and one brow arched over a grey eye. “You’re lying, but I don’t care,” she said, smiling.
