“Hit the button the top of the tablet, Harmony.” She motioned with her finger.
“What’s this?” I stared at the screen as it shifted to a folder full of photographs.
“I have someone watching him at all times. I would have stepped in, no matter what. It will be much better if you’re the one that does it, though. I’m more the lock-them-in-a-box type of person.” Angelina reached into her purse and pulled out an envelope. “Here’s some money and a plane ticket.”
“What do I do when I get there? I mean, if he even wants to see me.” I stared as she pushed the ticket across the table.
“Let your heart guide you. All I can do is put you on the road. You’re the one that has to walk it.” She nodded and took her tablet back.
I guess I’m going to—New York City? Wait, wasn’t that where Nate found Angelina in the first place?
12
Connor
Misery—party of one?
I stared at the papers in front of me. My job as CEO of Vale Investments was to figure out which direction our money was supposed to go. I had tons of recommendations, risks, calculations, potential returns, and everything that I needed to make the right decision, except I didn’t have the instinct. My father had it. He founded the company and it killed him when he was forty. The doctors said it was a stress induced heart attack. My brother had it too, and whether the newspapers reported it or not, it was the job that ultimately took his life as well. He started drinking the day he took his spot at the head of the table and he was too drunk to function, much less drive, when his car hit the telephone pole.
It’s going to kill me, too. I won’t wait for it to take my life—I’ll make my own exit soon enough.
I sucked at my job. The company had been losing money since I took over. My best option would have been to sell it, but the trust my father set up wouldn’t allow it. It stated specifically that as long as he had a surviving heir, they would be the CEO of the company. I couldn’t even walk away. All of the people in the building depended on my family to feed theirs. If I was gone, then the company could be sold. All of the employees would likely be retained since they were good at their jobs. They didn’t deserve a CEO that didn’t know what what the hell they were doing. My father never meant for me to run the company. It was always supposed to be my brother. I either had to find a way out, or watch the company burn to the ground around me and ruin all of their lives. The losses we had suffered might as well have been lit matches piling up around me.
Suffocation—that’s a rather painless way to go if you do it right.
“Mr. Vale? Have you finished making your selections? We need to get the report submitted before the market opens.” My second-in-command, an older man named Leonard, stepped into my office.
“I’ve told you not to call me Mr. Vale. Connor is fine.” I quickly circled a few options and pushed the papers across my desk. “Yea
h, invest in these.”
“Perfect.” He smiled and picked up the papers.
“If you think any of those selections are wrong, feel free to tell me.” I stared at him with hopeful eyes.
Please!
“That isn’t my job, Mr.—Connor. I just manage the money once it’s invested.” He smiled and nodded before walking back towards the door.
A monkey could do this job better than me.
I hoped the calculations were right, but I didn’t have much faith in them. My father and brother could spot a funny result that was propped up by an erroneous report from a mile away. I couldn’t spot them if they were right in front of my face. Those were always the investments that lost money for us. I was going to school for marketing before my brother died. I was going to get as far away from the world of investments as possible. I wished I could just pick up where I left off and finish school. It just wasn’t in the cards for me. When the day was finally over, I got in my car and headed back to my apartment overlooking the city. Technically, it wasn’t even my apartment. I just moved in once my brother was gone because the lease was paid up for a year.
I miss happy—happy was a good emotion to feel.
I sat down with a glass of vodka and my laptop. The alcohol took the edge off, and I really didn’t care if it killed me one day. I remembered the last moment I felt happiness. I was on a date with Harmony Carmichael and I was falling hard for her beautiful smile. We had just finished a round of putt-putt golf and were talking about seeing a movie when I got the call about my brother. I never told her why I really left. I couldn’t find the words in my tangled thoughts after packing everything up to return to New York City. She still had that beautiful smile. I loaded her Facebook page and for a brief moment, I felt a glimmer of what I used to call happiness. Her sister had just got married. Harmony looked beautiful in the few pictures I saw that she wasn’t trying to get out of the shot.
Why is fate so fucking cruel? I would have married you the day I met you if I could have. You were so energetic—so happy—those eyes hid your sadness, even though I could see it beneath the surface.
I looked at her pictures a few more times before finishing my glass of vodka and starting on a second. I would either drink myself to sleep and wake up with a hangover or finally get the courage to kill myself. Alcohol was actually saving my life, even if it was poison in my veins. I hadn’t found the right way to do it or how I would actually pull it off. I considered jumping from the top of a building once, but a man followed me all the way to the top and wouldn’t leave. He tried to make conversation like we were standing on a street and never got far enough away for me to actually do it.
What deity did I anger to be pushed into hell before I even got the pleasure of death?
Maybe if I just lay here in bed, I’ll die of thirst and starvation.
I stayed in bed as long as I could when I woke up the next morning. Eventually, I did have to get up. There were reports to review, decisions to make—bad decisions based on the way our investments performed the previous day. I made them quicker than I did most days. They didn’t seem to matter regardless. Once that part of my morning was over, I nursed a cup of coffee and scrolled through the list of people I had been researching. When I was gone, the company would need a temporary CEO.
I had a few top candidates from around the industry. We had tried to recruit a few of them, but they were looking for seats at the head of the table, not the one to my right. As soon as they found out that they wouldn’t even have the option of usurping the one in the chair due to my father’s trust, they immediately rejected our employment offer. Men like that—men that could lead the world—they wanted prestige to go with the salary. We couldn’t offer that. I couldn’t exactly contact any of them to tell them that I wasn’t going to be around much longer, so I compiled a list to help select a better candidate once I was gone. Hopefully it would save someone a headache when the time came.