Page 82 of Audacity

She stops and huffs. The energy coming off her is like crack. ‘Well I’ve sure as hell never aimed forfine,and I’m not about to start now.Fineis positively offensive in my book. What adjectives would you like it to be?’

I scratch my beard. ‘Let’s see. Bold. Radical.Meaningful.’

‘Good.’

‘Transformative. Um, profound. Sincere. Borderline insane.’

‘Good!’ She slaps her hand on the marble. ‘Don’t filter. Just talk. Tell me more about whatborderline insanemeans for you.’

I sigh. ‘I suppose it means that other philanthropists look at it and thinkthose Sullivans are smoking crack.’

She throws back her head and laughs, delighted. ‘I love it! Why would they think you were smoking crack? Because of how much you’re giving or what you’re doing or the scale of the scope?’

I grin at her. Can’t help it. ‘All three. Because of the sheer audacity of it, I suppose. I want all those parochial naysayers out there to clutch their pearls and shake their heads and say, “The audacity of it!” when they see our proposal. “Who do those Sullivans think they are?”’

She gasps theatrically. ‘Oh my God.Audacity!I love it. I love it so much. Yes, yes, yes.’ Then she claps her hand to her mouth and stares at me, wide-eyed, and I marvel at how I could ever have found this woman implacable. These days, she allows me a front-row seat to every emotion that plays out on her beautiful face.

She hinges forward, resting her elbows on the island and drumming her fingers on it. I wait, knowing that something incredible is percolating in that terrifying brain of hers. It’s not until she slowly straightens up that she speaks. When she does, it’s as if she can’t believe her own words.

‘Fuck, Gabe. You want audacious? What if we’ve been looking at it all wrong?’

I stiffen in anticipation, watching as she begins to pace again. I swear, this woman could command the entire United Nations and have every delegate eating out of the palm of her hand. ‘Go on.’

‘The foundation might be looking good, but it’s still an afterthought. The entire Rath Mor model is built aroundmanagingyour wealth, right? It’s all very safe, very passive. Preserve the pot first, then give second.’

I nod my agreement. ‘Keep talking.’

‘What if you completely decimated that? I mean, who the fuck needs eight billion pounds? Not a former priest, that’s for sure. Not your parents, not Brendan or Mairead. What if you flipped the entire thing on its head and put the giving first, and everything else comes from that?’

I sit up straighter, the quickening of my heart rate a clue to the excitement that her words are sparking. ‘Like an endowment?’

‘If you like.’ She nods impatiently, as if now is not the time for semantics. ‘Rather than it all being about the stewardship of your money, make it about using the money to transform. Every extra pound you guys grow gets funnelled into this insane,audaciouspot that you pledge to give away. The end goal goes from being thesizeof the pot to thepowerof what that pot can do.’

Fucking hell, she’s right. My mind is racing as quickly as my heart. ‘We could set a target. Give away, what, seventy-five percent?’

‘Whatever you like. Or do it backwards. Say you want to keep two billion for the family. That’s more than you or all your heirs could ever need, and you could live off the interest, too. You have eight billion now, give or take. So you ring-fence two billion to manage like you’re doing now, for the preservation of wealth, but you commit to giving away everything else, no matter how much it grows, over the next decade. Two decades. However you want to play it.’

Without thinking, I close in on her, my arms going around her waist as I tug her against my body. If it’s inappropriate, she doesn’t seem to notice. She lays her hands on my biceps and looks up at me, her face shining. ‘Give the whole fucking thingaway. Old Jim will have a heart attack—we live in hope. And people will say you’re crazy. But what doyousay?’

I know Athena would rather die than admit to any kind of altruism. In fact, I suspect she sees it as a weakness. I also know that she’s fully aware ofmyneed to be altruistic. She sees it as a point of honour to deliver that for me in a far bigger, bolder version than I could ever dare to dream of.

She elevates me.

She dreams big for both of us.

She’saudaciousenough for both of us.

Since Athena has entered my life, not a single instance of her behaviour has been meek or fearful or apologetic. Whether she’s carving out her own take on the career ladder, or standing naked in a room with five aroused men, or proving that women are allowed to be both fiercely intellectualandfiercely sexual, she has been nothingbutaudacious.

I smile down at the life force visible on her face. She’s aglow with it. ‘I’m tempted to say I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before, but Icanbelieve it. I just used the termparochialdisparagingly, but honestly, I could say the same for my own approach. It is quite literally parochial—how apt. Everything I’ve done has been at such a small-scale, grass-roots level. It seems my brain is incapable of thinking as big as yours is. It’s incredible.’

‘Everything about this has you written all over it,’ she insists. ‘This isyou, and that grass-roots approach is exactly how it needs to be. All I’ve done is takenyourpastoral instincts and scaled them up—pretty dramatically. You’ve got these amazing, ancient values that are so intrinsic to who you are as a man, and I’ve got a decent high-level understanding of how modern finance can serve those values in a way that actually works.’ She grins cheekily. ‘Together, we’re unstoppable.’

It may be a quip, but I can’t help but think she’s spot on.

Bottom up and top down.

Grass roots and high finance.

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