AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter 1
Nate
It was all mine. The office, the building, the company, all in my name. I was having a hard time believing it. Even wandering around the CEO’s suite, I couldn’t believe my good fortune. My father was out, and I was in. Just like that, I was catapulted to a leadership role and became one of the youngest influential businessmen in the country.
I could call up the presidents of any Fortune 500 company and ask for lunch. They would fall all over themselves to oblige, rolling out the red carpet if I gave any hint of interest. My name was in theWall Street Journal, along with the story of how I made my first million.
It seemed like so long ago, but it was really just ten years. And I was working for my parents, up until the divorce. What my dad lost in the court battle, I gained. My mom turned the entire enterprise over to me, putting me in charge of hundreds of thousands of workers and real estate holdings in all fifty states.
I had the chops to do well. While I wasn’t accustomed to the CEO role, I had at least ten years of middle management under my belt. That meant I could politick with the best of them. I knew all the power players in the company, their likes and dislikes, and how to get them on board. The energy in the building was electric. Everyone knew it was my first day, and they were eager to see where I would go with the organization.
I had yet to sit down with all the books to figure out what my dad did wrong. I knew exactly where his mistakes lay, and they weren’t with the finances. He was a serial cheater, and it all started right here in this very office.
The desk caught my eye and I frowned. I was sure something nasty happened in that chair and across the surface of the massive walnut slab. It had probably happened many times, with many different women. I didn’t want to imagine my dad banging his secretary right where I was trying to eat my lunch. The first thing that was going to go was the desk.
At the moment, though, my mom was sitting cross-legged on top of it, holding one of Dad’s credit cards in her manicured hand. She snipped it in two with a pair of scissors, laughing wickedly.
Her hair was dyed pink and teased out with product. She looked a little bit like a 1980s rock star, though I was too young to know which one. She wore bright red lipstick, and her fingernails were a pale green. She was dressed like a hippie in a pair of leggings and a baby doll dress. I had never seen her look so comfortable or so relaxed.
I watched as she picked up another card from the desk and cut that one in half, tossing both halves over her shoulder. Working her way through a small pile of credit cards, she was having fun. I didn’t have the heart to share what I suspected the desk had been used for, previous to our arrival. She was all too familiar with Dad’s proclivities; I didn’t need to throw them back in her face.
My parents had been married for almost forty years, since long before I was born. I don’t know how old I was when my mom first learned my dad was cheating on her, but I must have been young. She just hid the pain and didn’t say a thing until it all got to be too much for her. Most recently, Dad was caught banging his secretary, Lauren.
That was the final straw. Mom took him to court and won, taking his cash, his car, and his company. He didn’t fight her. I think he was embarrassed to be caught, and possibly even ready to retire. It was always his plan to hand the business over to me anyway; this just sped up the process.
I tried to keep an open mind and maintain good relations with both my parents. I didn’t approve of what Dad had done, but he was still my dad. Eventually, I might need his help to make some business decision, so it was in my best interests to remain friendly. But Mom was a different story. She was in my life whether I wanted her there or not. She wasn’t the type to take no for an answer.
On day one, she installed herself on my father’s desk and made a game out of destroying his credit cards. I couldn’t get any work done while she was there. At the very least, I couldn’t use the desk, and considering what it had been used for, I wanted nothing to do with it.
I stood by the window, looking out over Boston. It was such an old city, with brick buildings and narrow walkways. I loved it the way you can only love a place called home. I’d grown up there, going to a private school downtown and then to Harvard.
Of course, I had been all over the world. My father had a private jet, and when I was a teenager, he was in the habit of taking the family on spontaneous vacations. Come to find out, he was boning the flight attendants, but I didn’t know that at the time.
We went to France and Italy, to Canada and even Japan. We didn’t stay in any country for more than a few days before flying back, but we saw enough that I had a taste of what the rest of the world was like. I couldn’t see myself settling anywhere outside Boston, though. The exorbitant price of living did little to scare me away. I wasn’t hurting. I grew up rich and landed on my feet. If anyone could tame this concrete jungle, it was me.
There was a knock on the door.
“Come in!” I called, turning away from my view.
Dad’s secretary, Lauren, came in, her arms full of files. She looked at my mother perched atop the desk and frowned. I raised my eyebrows, daring her to comment. She chose discretion, keeping her adulterous mouth shut.
She wasn’t sure what to do with her files, and so she hovered awkwardly near the door. I hadn’t asked for anything, and I didn’t know why she’d brought them. I didn’t care. She was the last person I wanted to see. If there was one particular extramarital affair that sparked my mother’s ire, it was Lauren. The woman was a secretary. How much more cliché could you get? It was bad enough that my dad was sticking it to women he met overseas, but he fell back on the most overused trope in the book.
Mom didn’t look up. She was concentrating on destroying my father’s financial lifeline. I was grateful that she didn’t seem to mind Lauren’s presence. I didn’t want to preside over a cat fight on my first day.
“What do you need, Lauren?” I asked.
“These are the Oliver files,” she said, holding them out.
I stepped forward, scooping them out of her hands. “Is that everything?”
“I’m organizing the client files so that you’ll be able to find things going forward,” she replied, straightening up to her full height.
“I didn’t ask you to do that.” I couldn’t help the acidic tone in my voice. I didn’t like her, and I didn’t approve of what she’d done to my mom. Lauren knew that my father was married. She had met me when I was in college and an intern in the family business. She knew and didn’t care, and that was almost worse than what my father did.
Lauren pressed her lips shut. I was making this difficult for her, but I couldn’t bring myself to feel bad. She deserved the clipped words and cold shoulder I was throwing her way. She knew she was out the moment I was in, and her desire to pretend to be professional stuck in my throat the wrong way.
“You know this is your last day?” I asked, just to be clear.
