Page 29 of The Betrayer
Typically, I would have found somewhere else to go, a bar or a club, where it would have been easy to pick someone else up. After the debacle that was my argument with Paul at the gala, none of that had sounded enticing. Instead, I’d wandered home on my own two feet and spent the weekend alone in my penthouse of cold glass and steel far above the city.
All I wanted to do was brush Paul’s words off, to let them bounce off me like problems usually did. If I allowed grudges and displeasure to get to me every time someone was angry with me or didn’t like what I’d done, I wouldn’t be the CEO and founder of my own company.
But this one, I couldn’t shake. This time, the words had sunk beneath my skin, maybe because Paul was my son or perhaps because no one had ever said those specific words to me. The charges my son had spit at me acted like a pall all weekend, hovering over me, there when I went to sleep at night and there when I woke up in the morning.
As much as I hated to admit it, his accusations and the look of hurt in my son’s eyes had finally made me acknowledge I could have been wrong at the gala. Perhaps I had screwed up by not being there during the presentations and the auction. Maybe I had gone a little far, showing up late and bringing Steffanie with me.
I lived my life trying to avoid regret, which was why I lived the way I lived. I wasn’t getting any younger, and I had spent so many years with my nose to the grindstone building my business that I had missed out on a lot. I was making up for lost time because I didn’t want to go to my grave thinking about everything I hadn’t done. I had seen my father work his life away, thinking that one day he would see the world, only to die a month after he had retired.
That wasn’t going to be me.
For the first time in a long time, I felt bad about what I had done. I felt regret. I could see I had hurt my son, even if I disagreed with his reasoning, even though that hadn’t been my intention.
I was up with the sun on Monday, probably setting some kind of personal record for the last decade. I wanted to ensure I was out the door with enough time to get to the office by eight.
Well, almost enough time. I stopped to get a coffee for Paul and myself, adding the whipped cream my son had loved as a kid. Maybe that would help soften him up enough to get him to listen when I offered to take him out to breakfast as a small measure of apology.
I scanned the headlines of the gossip magazines as I waited for the guy at the street-side stand to fill my order. It was the standard stuff—the celebrities caught with someone who wasn’t their partner, the socialites misbehaving, the woman who married a pirate ghost, and someone who claimed to have lost all their weight just by using a bracelet.
Just as the guy handed me the first paper cup of coffee, black, the way I liked it, a picture on the bottom right-hand side of one of the local rags caught my attention. Blonde hair and a jewel-toned red dress were hidden by the bulk of a guy in a suit.
No, not a suit. A tuxedo.
My tuxedo.
For a moment, all my attention was focused on that small square. It was difficult to see much of anything—the lighting was dim and terrible, and the way the two figures pressed together, it was almost impossible to make heads or tails of it all. But the one clear thing was that the two figures, a man and a young woman, were pressed together in an intimate way.
The words beside the small photo read in big, bold letters: CEO SHARES HIS NIGHT WITH YOUNG BOMBSHELL.
At the last second, I grabbed the first issue on the rack and handed the cart’s owner a large bill before waving away his offer of change. I rolled the rag magazine into a tight cylinder and stuffed it into the inside pocket of my coat before grabbing the coffees and setting off. The stop had cost me time—I was going to be twenty minutes late.
Well, it was better than usual, and several surprised glances followed me as I strode into the lobby of our building.
“Up with the sun, Will?”
One of the company’s head lawyers ducked into the elevator just before the doors closed. Not everyone was on a first-name basis with me, but this lawyer and I went way back to the company’s beginning. He wasn’t only our first legal counsel but also one of our first investors.
Shrugging, I eyed the illuminated numbers on the small pad, increasing the higher we went. “Everyone needs a change in schedule at some point.”
A raise of an eyebrow told me how much my old colleague believed that bunch of crap. But he didn’t ask, and I didn’t offer. We made small talk up to the top floor, then parted our separate ways.
I could see Paul in his office, his fingers flying over the keyboard of his computer even as his mouth moved—though I couldn’t hear the words, I imagined he was on a call. That was my son, constantly multi-tasking to see how much he could fit into one day.
Balancing the two cups of coffee, I pulled open the glass door.
Paul looked up from his computer as the person on the other end of the line continued to talk, his fingers freezing over the keys. For a moment, his eyes widened before his gaze slid to the clock on his desk, then flicked back to me and narrowed.
“Hey, George, I’m going to have to go. I have some business to deal with, but I appreciate your work. Talk more tomorrow? I should be in the office all afternoon.”
The voice on the other end of the line agreed, and I heard the dial tone before Paul pressed a button to hang up.
Then the office was very, very quiet, and I could have sworn the temperature dropped several degrees, despite the morning sun streaming through the windows.
“Paul.”
For a moment, my son continued to glare at me. The only sound in the room was from the office behind us: phones ringing, employees talking, and the usual sound of a busy office muted by the thick glass of the windows separating us.
“Dad.”
