Hold On

Leaving her there, I make my way down the hall to my office and turn on my computer. I know how to do my due diligence; I know how to gather the information that most people can’t access. Connor is my right-hand man, but he’s more of a day-to-day businessman.

Me? I get the dirt, I get the projections for the future, I make the deals that bring us on board with startups that are going to make it. It’s a risk, and sometimes it doesn’t work out, but more often than not I’m right, and it’s all down to being properly informed.

It doesn’t take me long before I have pulled all the details I need and I’m on the phone with my partner. The company she works for is no joke. They are expanding nationwide and currently have sixty-eight locations throughout the Midwest and Southern states.

But they want to be bigger, and they need capital to do that. I’m going to give it to them, in exchange for what I need.

“Buy all you can. Take it out of my personal account if you’re not sure, but I want us to own them by tomorrow. I want a seat on the board of directors.” Just thinking about that fucker having his lips on Emmy sends me into a rage, and I slam my fists on my desk, sending a violent pain up my arms.

“You okay?” Connor knows something is up. We’ve been friends longer than we’ve been business partners, and we know each other’s history. “You moved on this fast, never on our radar before today. Are you sure they’re going to be worth it?”

“Just trust me and get the shares bought. This isn’t a venture, it’s an investment, so I understand if you’re not on board. I’ll reimburse the fund if necessary, but tracking down shareholders and buying them out is your area of expertise, man.”

“I’m on it, brother, you know that. Don’t sweat it. But hey, I spoke to your mom this morning. We had some dividend checks for her, and I wanted to know if she wanted me to deposit them in her share account or her regular account. She told me you were acting a little off the other night. She was worried. And after what happened when we met with Newral AI, I just need to know if there’s something serious going on.”

Mom, Jesus.

“I’m fine. Just had some business at home come up.”

“Okay. You just seem tense.”

I haven’t always been the calm, corporate deal maker I am now. My life started out in homeless shelters and safehouses with my mom as she tried her best to navigate an abusive relationship with my father. He wasn’t always like that, apparently. He started drinking, then taking drugs, and it became so my mom hardly recognized him. She’s been worried about me going the same way ever since.

By the time I was ten, I’d taken the punches meant for her more times than I can count and learned that fighting fair is bullshit. I learned to fight to win, at all costs, because when you are a six-foot-five, three-hundred-pound grown man pounding on a woman and a kid, you lost the right to anything fair.

On the evening of my eleventh birthday, when he showed up drunk and looking for a fight, I gave it to him. Only this time, when he spun around and grabbed my mom by the hair, I snapped. I grabbed the closest, sharpest thing I could, which happened to be the knife she’d cut my birthday cake with, and put it in his chest.

I spent two months in juvenile hall, where I met Connor, but eventually, the prosecution dropped the case, citing self-defense. Still, that shit imprints on you, and in an instant, I can bring up that anger—and whoever is in its path had better get the fuck out of the way.

Growing up like that, you learn that people you can trust are rare. Connor is one of those, and my mom is the other. Okay, I guess Dorothy comes in a close third—we may not always get along, but I know she wouldn’t stab me in the back. She was the product of a side-chick my father had, but to my mom’s credit, she never held that against Dorothy and made sure she and I knew we were blood and we would always have her back.

That’s why I encouraged Mom to bring her in to manage her stake in my company. I feel like it’s my duty to take care of them both. It was a long road for all of us in our own ways. I know I did the right thing that night with my father, but it left us all damaged in ways we may never understand.

Despite it all, Mom is always there for me, and nothing will ever come between us again.