AllFreeNovel
Share Us
* * *
The Westing Bank is a major financial institution in New York City. Started in 1988 by Sloane Westing, the bank handles the finances of tens of thousands of New Yorkers. But my end of the business doesn’t deal with the average clients; I handle the big boys (and girls). The accounts that can range into the billions. The people who are household names, or their products are.
It’s a hard job, but one that I’m good at. It takes a certain amount of, uh, flexibility to succeed when trying to convince rich people to trust you with their money. I don’t consider it phoniness; just that I can smile through a lot. I can make people I’ve never spoken with before laugh. And occasionally I’ll sacrifice a bit of my dignity to close a stubborn deal.
Still, I’ve never done anything I regret. I’ll never accept a date with a client, though many have tried. I’m part of the package but not like that — my go-to phrase for dodging dates. I’ve said it more times than I can count and it always gets a chuckle. It’s just another skill in my arsenal, walking the fine line between business-fun and outright flirting. And I can honestly say I’ve never been tempted to go further than that. Fortunately, my type of man doesn’t sport bespoke suits or five-hundred-dollar haircuts.
As I sit in Ms. Westing’s waiting room on the sixty-fifth floor, I wonder what my boss’s own history has been like in the business world. Few people are more respected, even fewer have made more money. The Westings are the definition of loaded. Just sitting in this gleaming, stylish office makes me impressed, not to mention a little nervous.
We’ve met a few times before, of course. None were more memorable than the first. When she poached me, she sent her top recruiter: herself. The tall, elegant woman had approached me at a party my own company was throwing, on the rooftop of the building in which I’d spent my entire career.
“You look sick of this place,” had been her opener. She’d followed it with her card and a nod. Then she’d whisked away to the more important pitches of the evening. Still, the fact she’d given me even a moment said a lot. Specifically that the paycheck was gonna be big. I’d mentally checked out of Robinson and Robinson that very evening.
I wiggle my toes in my business heels. They’re not squished; my feet molded to uncomfortable shoes ages ago, kinda like how ballerinas have fucked-up feet forever after decades crammed into pointe shoes. I may need a cane by fifty, but at least I’ll be able to afford one made of solid diamond.
If I pass whatever test Ms. Westing throws my way, I’m in the clear for a long and comfortable career. Okay, actually maybe just long. Comfortable is relative in finance. The people who feel the best are at the very bottom of the tier, making pennies in dark offices and doing work that’s as boring as it is unimportant.
Well, almost everyone.
As if reading my snide thought, the flat-screen sitting across from me on a decorative chest of Brazilian teakwood flashes the same face pictured in my mind. A man I haven’t met yet and doubt I will anytime soon. Rhett Westing.
The only child of Sloane Westing has an office in the clouds, a paycheck that would bully mine in high school, and has never felt discomfort in his life. Actually, ignore that. I’m sure he has. Only Rhett thinks discomfort is the feeling he gets when he has to wait a couple weeks for a custom motorcycle to be shipped from Japan.
Excess oozes from Rhett Westing’s pores. The shot of him on the television shows him leaving some red carpet event, tall and lean in a tuxedo. High cheekbones and platinum lips, a razored jawline and black hair that flops over his forehead. As he trades a barb and a Listerine grin with a photographer, he pushes it off his forehead, smooths it straight back over his head and then winks right at the camera. Right at me.
Even through the screen Westing is enough to make a girl dizzy. I mean, total smoke show dream boat, despite him being the polar opposite of my type (and yet somehow just as toxic). He’s also my one reservation about working for the Westing Bank. He’s the heir to the throne, the reminder that monarchies are only semi-cool with a wise and noble leader. A wild card which almost made me take his mother’s gold-plated offer and say, “Hey thanks, but the moment you retire you know your idiot son’s gonna murder your company with a chainsaw, right?”
Rhett was the paparazzi’s bad boy in his late teens and early twenties. But a while back shareholder statements were released announcing that he was about to take a more active role in the bank. It wasn’t long before the rumors started that he’ll be in charge in a decade or two once Sloane — who’s in her late sixties — decides to take her last years in a coconut by the ocean. “An active role” was vague on purpose. All the employees I’ve asked claim that Rhett rolls in late, leaves early, and hasn’t made a significant impact on the bank since he took Sloane away for a week thirty years ago to come bursting out of her vagina.
In the end, I didn’t let fears of Rhett Westing get in the way of a good thing. Who knows what the bank is going to look like then? And hopefully at some point Sloane will realize that her darling son isn’t fit to run her empire.
It takes a moment — my worries about getting Jefferson Reed’s name on the line mushing with annoyance at Rhett and topped by a healthy sprinkling of my god I’ve been sitting here forever I don’t have time for this — for me to realize that it’s kinda odd that Rhett is on the news. For some reason I initially assumed that either Rhett is constantly followed by a television crew (and a makeup chair) or that Sloane plays footage of her gorgeous son to set her guests off their guard.
Neither is the case.
The newscaster’s tone is low, but it comes through clear enough in the quiet waiting room. “Mr. Westing is set to inherit the Westing Bank along with the family’s fifteen billion dollar fortune. He was arrested last night for performing a dangerous stunt caught on camera in the West Village.”
The shot flicks from event footage of Rhett to a video, shaky and from someone’s cell phone. It’s of a shadowy street in the city and features a dark-haired man on an expensive-looking motorcycle. He waves his hands to gear onlookers up before revving the engine with a frightening roar. The cameraman turns to follow the bike as Rhett streaks down the street on one wheel before setting it down just in time to hit a mound of dirt obviously being used for some roadside construction project. The bike hits the dirt at fifty miles an hour and rockets Rhett and the bike into the air, jumping a row of cars. I fully expect him to land safely on the other side to a roar of cheers. He doesn’t. The bike comes down with a bone-crunching crash directly atop a parked van.
The video dissolves into blurred activity and shouts before finally cutting to black. It takes me half a second to realize that it isn’t the video that’s cut off, but the television I’m watching it on. A tall man in a slim-fitting pinstripe suit with a neat mustache and shallow eyes is standing with the remote. He casts a blank look in my direction and then returns to where he was sitting behind his desk guarding Ms. Westing’s door.
This is Wallace, and Wallace has already made it very clear that he didn’t become Sloane Westing’s right hand by being friendly.
“I was watching that,” I mumble under my breath, not to anyone in particular. I wonder if Rhett was hurt in the crash. He wasn’t wearing a helmet. But then would Ms. Westing really be meeting with me if her son were in the hospital? Probably not.
I also wonder if he was drunk. Who the hell does something like that on a busy Manhattan street? The answer: the kids of billionaires. I’ve met a lot of rich people in my line of work and not all of them are flat-out insane, but the ones who’ve inherited their money definitely are.
Ragging on Rhett Westing is proving to be a nice distraction. Irritating enough to occupy my mind, but not nearly as pressing as this talk with Ms. Westing. Who knows if I’ll ever even meet “Mr. Westing” with the way people talk about his work hours. And that’s fine by me. I don’t need anymore messes in my life.
“You can’t go in there.” Wallace’s clipped tone makes me look over. A tall man has appeared on the other side of the room in front of Wallace’s desk. He’s dressed in a coal-gray suit and has his hands on his hips. Then one of those hands reaches up and swipes black hair straight back over his scalp.
Oh shit.
“I know you get off on this, Wally,” Rhett Westing’s distinctive bass booms across the room, “but I have a schedule to keep and if Mother wants to talk to me, she’ll see me now.”
The look on Wallace’s face implies exactly what he thinks of Rhett’s apparent schedule. “Ms. Westing’s orders,” he says silkily.
I’m sure the look Rhett gives Wallace is devastating. I’m also sure that Wallace doesn’t care. Then my boss’s son turns and fixes me directly in his deep blue eyes.
