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“You say that like you’re not the one who created them.”
Mother doesn’t respond. Instead she gets up and comes around the side of her desk to stand in front of me. I get my height from both my parents; Mother is five foot ten. Still, she always seems to shrink by at least a foot whenever she’s directly in front of me and I can see the actual gulf in our size difference.
She smooths out my tie, straightens my collar. I can’t tell if it’s an attempt at affection or a display of her power over me. It may be both. Finally, she says, “I wouldn’t expect you to understand, Rhett. You couldn’t fathom the difficulties of building an empire. You’ll just inherit one. And in the interest of both my children having a successful future, I need to make things very clear.”
She pauses and her expression would be easy to interpret as regret on another person. But this is Mother and she rooted out all such weakness ages ago. It’s a trick of the light, and that’s confirmed when she says, “If you come back from this trip unsuccessful I’m cutting you off. Completely.”
“Wait, was that always an option?” I ask.
“Ha. Ha.” Mother isn’t joking, but honestly I’m not either. Did I always have the choice to walk away completely? No, I quickly decide. She never would have allowed it if it didn’t come as a punishment. It’s no huge surprise that this is coming hours after I stopped being eligible for the Marines.
“Be flippant,” Mother says as she returns to the other side of her desk, “but deeply consider what your life would look like if I pulled the plug, metaphorically speaking of course.”
“Seems pretty fucking grand to me,” I say. “I wouldn’t have to sit around this office wasting time doing nothing all day, for one.”
“And you wouldn’t be spending it on those idiotic bikes either,” she says. “Everything you own, everything I ever paid for would go back to me. So just keep that in mind this weekend because I already know you’re planning on ditching Ms. Slate.”
“Why would I ever do that?” I mutter, but I don’t fight beyond that. My gaze flits around her office, from my shoes to out across the city. Would she really cut me off? What would that even look like?
I finally glance over when I feel her staring at me. “Rhett,” she says, “I love you. But don’t fuck this up.” Then she clicks her computer back on, ignoring me completely in favor of more pressing work.
The monitor that was showing the picture of the Alencars is still turned to me. It turns on as well, but our targets are gone. The screensaver is a shot of the three of us — her and me and my father, Rhett Westing, III. It was taken on a boat party. I am six, gangly in my suit and racing to go back to shooting spitballs at my parents’ fancy guests. A menace even then. But I’d stayed still for this one last family portrait. Dad’s hand is on my shoulder. Mother’s arm is around me. They stand close and smile genuinely. It’s an expression I haven’t seen on Mother in a long time. How real is it? Who can tell.
I head for the door. She doesn’t speak to me again.
Outside, Wallace works on his computer and ignores me too. For some reason, I’d hoped that Liz had stayed out here in the lobby. She hasn’t, of course. She’s downstairs in my office starting work on this grand new assignment. Too bad. I want someone to fight with right now.
I glance at Wallace and decide, for once, not to antagonize him for my own amusement. I’ll go downstairs and get on my bike, race it through the city until I’ve outrun my own thoughts.
I have to chuckle as I push through the lobby doors, out into a frosty January morning.
Cut off.
Ridiculous.
CHAPTER THREE
LIZ
“It was amazing. Seriously. The pictures don’t do it justice. Cole was able to get us in an hour before the gates opened so we had the entire place to ourselves as the sun came up. Mountains as far as you can see. The ruins. Alpacas! Or, wait, maybe they were llamas? I don’t know, but they were there! Just in a wild herd with little babies.” Anna, my best friend and former roommate, stops for breath and then says, “I’m sorry, Liz. Don’t mean to be going on and on.”
I have to laugh. I’m lying on my couch with my laptop on my chest, talking to my best friend on a video call, as comfortable as I’ve been all week. One of my favorite things about Anna? She’s way too nice. She can’t even properly brag after visiting Machu Picchu with her billionaire fiancé, Cole, a situation that would cause most women to take to the streets with a megaphone.
“Anna, please. I want to hear all about it. It sounds incredible. You better send pictures ASAP because I need something pretty to look at.” My apartment in Hell’s Kitchen has a decent view of my across-the-street neighbor’s living room, and when he isn’t painting in the nude, he’s doing yoga in the nude. I try not to look out my window. But even if I ignore the flaccid, bushy situation’s rubbery dance across the street, the city itself — what I can see of it — is cold and gray. Miserable in the post-Christmas gloom that descends over the city every year as it gears up for the worst of winter.
“It hasn’t snowed yet?” Anna asks. “I heard it’s supposed to get pretty bad.”
“Yuck, I hope not.”
“Aw, but New York is beautiful in the snow. I mean, until it stops and all the white just gets dirty and melted.”
“I couldn’t enjoy it either way,” I say with a sigh. “You’re bringing me to my news. I’m flying to Chicago with Rhett Westing tomorrow morning.”
Anna’s eyes bulge. “What. How? Why?”
Anna’s been off the grid in Peru, and this is our first call in a while. I’d wanted to talk to her immediately after my weird meeting with Sloane Westing and her son, but she’d been trekking in the mountains without cell service.
I spend the next fifteen minutes filling her in on my argument with Rhett in the lobby and the horrible awkwardness of listening to mother and son fight right in front of me. The cherry on top is the mission set to me: get Marie Alencar to switch her loyalties to the Westing Bank.
