If my wrist doesn’t heal, I might never see him—let alone touch him—ever again.
Chapter 2
Rex
It’s Monday night, or actually just before three in the morning on Tuesday. The Shanghai stock exchange is about to close and I’m with my team on the quant floor—we’re huddled around a table filled with to-go containers in front of a wall of monitors. Our eyes are on a pair of charts at the center—diverging lines that say our new strategy has killed it.
The algorithm we developed based on our new strategy moves the dial just a fraction of a fraction of a point, but when you deal with the numbers we deal with, it’s enough to make or break a small economy, and the trend is holding for the sixth day straight when tested live, which means I’ll be giving each of them the kind of bonus they could retire on.
The trend holds. And holds. I can feel their excitement building. The clock turns over.
Somebody behind me sucks in a breath. That’s the only sound I hear. The dozen of them will hoot and dance and hug as soon as I’m safely out of earshot, but for now, there’s silence. Large displays of emotion annoy the shit out of me.
“There it is,” I say. “Nice job. Keep it up.” Without another word, I get out of there.
Up in my office, I grab a quick nap, and then I wake up just after six for premarket trading and new initiatives with London.
Clark walks into my office at around nine, coffee in hand. “Did you just get here or did you never go home?” he asks.
“Stayed with the quants.”
He stops in front of me, watching my face, assessing my mood. He’s been with me from the start, and he can read me like nobody else.
“What?” I say, taking the cup.
“It’s Driscoll.”
“What about Driscoll?” I ask.
Driscoll is a family of brands that controls a huge portfolio of funds, including some massive private pension funds and investment funds that I’ve been working tirelessly to get my hands on.
We have a small part of their business, and we’ve given them an incredible return. I feel like I’m on the verge of getting all of their assets under management. If I could do that, I wouldn’t just be playing the markets; I’d be controlling the markets.
“I spoke with Gail,” Clark says.
“Good.” Gail is Gail Driscoll, matriarch of the Driscoll family of brands. “Is she ready?” Meaning, ready to give it all to me.
Silence.
“What?” I bark.
“She’s considering other suitors.”
“What?”
“Her board’s involved, and they’re conducting some sort of review now. It’s between you and Wydover.”
I nearly spit out my coffee. “You’re joking.” But his expression is wooden. He wouldn’t joke like that. Not to me, anyway. “This is coming from Gail?”
Clark nods.
“Has she lost her mind?”
No reply.
Gail’s known for good decisions; she’s a seventy-something woman with a sharp intellect and a spine of steel. Shrewd and tough in business, she comes out of a central Texas ranching family. I’ve always respected her, in spite of her ridiculously puritanical ways.
Then it comes to me. “Jesus Christ. Is it that Sunday feature article?”
Clark raises his eyebrows above his gold wire-rimmed glasses. He doesn’t have to say it. He thinks it could be.
“Did she specifically say it was the article?”
“She didn’t have to,” Clark says. “Everybody thinks you’re some kind of sex-addled emperor now. You’re Caligula up here, having orgies and bathing in the tears of virgins. Gail can’t be loving that image. You know how she is about image. She’s careful about who she ties her brand up with.”
The Sunday feature article from a few weeks ago was so far from the truth it’s crazy. Yes, I never sleep with the same woman twice. But I’m always up front about who I am—I’m the asshole who won’t call or text or come around for a second date. Ever. I go to great lengths to make that plain right up front with women.
“Such bullshit,” I growl. “And with this new algo, I’ve barely left this office for two months straight. Now I’m Caligula?”
Clark sips his coffee.
I want to kill somebody. I employed a team of people whose specific job it was to keep a lid on articles like that. Needless to say, I fired them when the article hit the presses.
“Making us compete against Wydover,” I say. “What is she thinking?”
Clark waits.
Pete Wydover of Wydover Asset Management is our biggest competitor. He’s a cheater and a liar, but unlike me, he comes from old money, which seems to buy him a squeaky-clean image no matter what he does.
Clark sits and crosses his legs. He has short, coiled hair and a coiled runner’s body. He’s smart, intuitive, and clients love him. “Ready for the good news? I took Gail to breakfast.”
“Good.” Clark is good with Gail. He’s good with all of the clients. “And?”
“I told her about the new algorithm. She’s very interested. Very positive.” He pauses then, and there’s something about the pause I don’t like.
“What?”
“I told her how eager you are to discuss it with her. On the yacht next week.”
I turn to face him. “What?”
“You know you have to say yes this year,” he says. “If you want her business.”
He’s talking about a two-week megayacht trip I always get invited to. A yearly Driscoll affair with extended family, friends, and business movers and shakers. I’ve turned down the invitation for the past three years. It’s a megayacht that’s longer than a football field and full of shuffleboard courts, cabanas, games, musical shows. A little slice of hell, basically.
“Anything but that.”
“Rex. If you want Driscoll—all of Driscoll—then you will put on a sailor hat, and you will get on that yacht, and you will show her somebody who fits in over there. You will correct the impression that the article made.”
I groan.
“I’m sure the thing has business services,” he says. “You can work while you’re there.”
“On what planet do I take two weeks out of my schedule—”
“You want Driscoll?” he asks.
I sigh. “Is Wydover going to be on board?”
“No, but he was at her New Year’s ranch gala. Maybe that’s how he wheedled into the running.”
The Driscoll ranch gala. Another invitation I blew off.
“You take that vacation,” Clark says. “Somebody else has her ear, and they’re talking up Wydover. And now the article? You need to get in there and do some personal damage control. Show Gail that the guy who gets her the best return is also the Driscoll family kind of people.”
I’m not the Driscoll family kind of people. I grew up in South Boston, living in the back of my father’s bar, working after school from the age of ten. To read that article, however, you’d think I spent my youth brawling in gutters and snatching old ladies’ purses when the truth is, I did everything I could do to keep my nose clean. What’s more, the article made my rise look like it was all about luck. Sure, I was lucky—I made my luck by being the best at what I do. Working twice as hard as Pete Wydover.