The Dealmaker (Sex & Bonds 1)

Grabbing my notebook, I head to the conference room a little earlier than usual so I can sneak in a quick grocery order on my phone. That way I can just pick it up on my way home.

Keira Wedgewood, one of the younger traders on our High-Yield desk, is the only person in the conference room. We exchange a quick greeting, and that’s when my eyes catch on the notebook on the table in front of her. It’s open to a page full of impeccable script, the notes neat, clearly thorough.

Reminds me of Nora’s notes. Her attention to detail. How she came to our meeting so well prepared.

Come to think of it, Keira’s always in here when I arrive. Makes me wonder if she’s always first in, last out.

I glance at my notebook. It’s filled with random scribbles and one giant MOTHERFUCKERRRRRRR written in red at the top of the page. If I remember correctly, I wrote that after losing out on a trade by half a basis point this morning. Such a professional.

Meanwhile, Keira’s picked up her pen and is jotting down even more notes, tucking her long hair behind her ears so it’s out of the way.

Other people start to filter into the conference room. There’s one other woman—Elizabeth, a trading assistant from the mortgage desk—but the rest are men in rumpled khakis and white or blue button-up shirts. The guys greet each other, but I notice only a few, like Brooks, greet Keira and Elizabeth.

It’s weird.

I can only imagine how isolating—infuriating—it must be for these women. I get why Nora wants to die on this hill. There’s a fuck-ton wrong with this place, and I know I’m only seeing the tip of the iceberg. We can do better. We should be doing better, but we’re not. I’ve been at A&T all of a month and I can already tell there’s a leadership vacuum on stuff like this, and that’s a big problem.

The head of global trading, John Knight, sits at the far end of the conference table. Elizabeth dials us into the call—managers in our satellite offices and traders who can’t get off the desk can call in instead of attending the meeting in person—and the speakerphone in the center of the room beeps. The room doesn’t quiet.

“All right,” John says. “Keira, why don’t you kick us off?”

Only when Keira starts talking, filling us in on her desk’s flows, the direction spreads are heading in different sectors, the room still doesn’t go quiet. She tries raising her voice, shooting a glance around the table, but it’s obvious everyone’s too busy filling each other in on all the golf they missed this snowy weekend to pay attention.

John’s typing something into his phone, so he’s not helping set the tone. Neither is the ABS trader next to me, who’s doodling a surprisingly decent Milwaukee Bucks logo in his notebook.

Anger flares to life inside my gut. I’d be pissed if this is how people behaved while I was speaking. Yeah, none of us want to be here right now. But we have no choice, and the least we can do is shut the fuck up while others are speaking.

Keira’s face is pink, but she keeps talking. I wonder why she doesn’t stop. Why she doesn’t tell us to quiet down. I would.

Then again, no one would call me a bitch behind my back if I did that. Would they say I’m a little pushy? Sure. Impatient? Absolutely. But they wouldn’t think less of me. In fact, they might pat me on the back for trying to get shit done in a timely manner so we can all get the hell out of here. But if Keira told everyone to shut up?

Yeah, I imagine that’d be a different story.

Is it wrong if I say something right now? Is it wrong if I don’t? I don’t know. All I do know is that the guy on the other side of me is complaining to the guy beside him about a woman in their group who’s “never at her desk even after all that maternity leave, aka a three-month vacation” and something inside me snaps.

“Y’all,” I say loudly. “Listen up.”

The room immediately goes quiet. Keira’s eyes dart to me, and for a split second I panic that I overstepped. But then she continues, her voice clear and calm in the silence, and I feel slightly less like a dickhead.

It’s bullshit, that I had to be the one to tell all the people in this room—some of whom have been trading bonds for decades—to listen when a colleague is speaking.

It’s bullshit that they’ll listen to me but not to Keira.

It’s bullshit that half these guys have had dumbass nicknames lovingly bestowed on them by male colleagues, while Keira and Elizabeth don’t.

It’s bullshit that half these guys are still hungover from the weekend but Keira is sharp as a tack, not missing a beat as she makes her way through her carefully prepared notes.