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I careen through the winding and nonsensically narrow street of the Rivers Estate. The rows of manicured shrubs are nothing more than blurs of dark green as I run yet another stop sign.
On a street without a single intersection.
In a subdivision with only one house.
It’s just one example of the lack of planning and the sense of entitlement that’s created the mess I’ve been cleaning up since I took control from Uncle Thomas.
It’s been eighty-seven days of inconsistencies, complaints, and so much fucking disappointment, that I’m starting to forget what it feels like to be satisfied.
A flock of baby geese step into the road just two hundred and fifty feet ahead of my speeding car. I slam hard on my breaks to stop in time. My high- performance Maserati protests with groans, shrieks, and sputters. I struggle to hold my steering wheel straight to stop the threatening spin out that’s pulling my tires to the right. The acrid stench of burned rubber and the uncertainty of whether I had ten geese crushed beneath my car congeal like cooled grease in my stomach.
I peer out of my window and breathe a sigh of relief when the gaggle waddles past, completely oblivious to the havoc they nearly wreaked and how close their lives came to ending.
“Where’s your sense of survival, you idiotic animals?” I chide them as I pull past them and hook a right up the dark, concrete tiled driveway. The rows of pink flowering bushes on either side were planted by my mother the year before she died.
I’m surprised Eliza didn’t pull them up. She tore out the rose garden my mother planted within months of marrying my father. I pull up the drive and park under the huge carport that should have been knocked down years ago. I throw my car into park and give myself a minute to collect my thoughts before I walk into the house.
Built at the turn of the twentieth century by my great-great-grandfather, Jeb Rivers, it’s one of Houston’s oldest homes. As my uncle likes to remind anyone who will listen, at nearly twenty thousand square feet that sits on two and half acres of land, it’s also one of the biggest and most expensive homes in the city.
Houston’s nearly one-hundred-mile sprawl means that even as we get close to edging Chicago out of the number three spot on the list of America’s largest cities, there’s a seemingly endless supply of land that keeps home prices down. That forty-million-dollar price tag would buy a six thousand square foot penthouse apartment in New York City, max.
It’s why Houston’s wealthy can indulge in more cars, food, theatre and retail therapy than their wealthy counterparts in other cities. And indulge, we do. I stare out at the expanse of lawn that’s bisected by a ground level fountain with a pool full of koi fish. The estate boasts a citrus grove, rose gardens, a tennis court, Olympic-sized infinity pool, and is surrounded by hundred-year-old trees. But after Confidence’s visit, when I look at it, all I see is a tomb where our family’s skeletons live. If I had my way, I would tear it all down.
A sharp rap on the passenger’s side window of my car startles me out of my daydream. My uncle, the Crypt Keeper himself, is peering in at me. His thick silver eyebrows are drawn down over his thunderous dark eyes.
He doesn’t look like an old man. He looks like an old villain. One that threatens to eat children when they make too much noise. His wide, thin-lipped mouth is moving, but my blissfully soundproof car keeps the assault from reaching my ears. I savor the quiet in my car long enough to take three deep breaths before I step out of the car into a jarringly different atmosphere.
“You’re late. The team has been gathered for more than twenty minutes,” he says. He’s got the kind of voice that’s powerful without being loud. But, the power of that is lost on me. I know that he’s nothing more than an empty vessel for delusion and resentment.
“Well, since the meeting couldn’t start without me, I’d say that I’m right on time,” I tell him. “And if you had held this meeting in the office ins
tead of here, it would have started twenty minutes ago,” I tell him. We step in the gargantuan foyer and start up the stairs to the room that’s always used for Kingdom business. Swish’s old office.
“You forget that you’re talking to your uncle, Hayes. I will have your respect,” he says from behind me.
I stop and turn to find him standing on the bottom step, hands folded behind his back, an expectant look on his face.
I walk back down so I’m one step above him.
“You forget that you’re talking to the head of your family,” I remind him. “If you want my respect, you better set about trying to earn it.” I turn and start back up the stairs. “The mess you’ve made of things has left us vulnerable on too many fronts and has lost you any built in credibility I gave you because you’re my uncle. You’ve done a piss poor job,” I say over my shoulder.
A lawsuit filed by a group of tenants whose homes were damaged in the flood last month is just the latest in a pile of shit that’s been landing on my desk for the last three months. I’ve spent nearly all of my time as chairman of the board putting out fires. It’s meant to be a figurehead position, but with an incompetent and corrupt executive team, I’ve been forced to take a more hands on approach. None of them like it, but I don’t care.
“The lawsuit is what we called you here to discuss,” he says, still behind me as I push open the doors to the room that’s decorated like a nineteenth century country club. Whatever traces of Swish there were in here are gone. I want to hurry and get out of here.
“Gentlemen, please have a seat,” I say to the three men who stand when I walk in.
I sit down at the head of the table. “Tell me what’s going on with this.” I look at Rich Jones, the current head of operations.
He slides a folder over to me and opens the one in front of him.
“There are twenty-five thousand units that are included in the class; they represent an annual revenue of about three hundred million dollars to the Real Estate Investment Trust. Our investors expect those dividends and profit shares.”
“What’s this got to do with the flooded-out apartments?”
“Well …” he tugs at his collar and looks around the table at the other two 80-year-old incompetents who had helped him and my uncle destroy Kingdom one bit at a time.
They all stare down at their laps.
