CHAPTER TWO
CADE
“I’ll see you tomorrow, just after seven,” Gordon Rivers said as our phone conversation wound down. It was almost nine, and this was my last call of the day, taken from my home office. His voice blared through the speaker on my mahogany desk. “I think we’re all set.”
“Glad the accommodations were to their liking.”
I stood from my chair, eager to end this.
Tomorrow was going to be a long day with the Samurai Group, and I wanted to wrap up a few more personal tasks before going to bed.
Fifteen years in real estate development taught me the value of good sleep, especially the kind that happened before a major business deal.
“If that’s all, Gordon, I’ll catch you at the office tomorrow,” I said. “Rest up, we’ve got a big day ahead.”
I finally clicked the end button and rolled my shoulders a few times, the weight of the day radiating from my neck into my lower back. I tended to carry a lot of tension there, and the bones in my spine cracked as I moved it back and forth.
Damn, being forty really does suck.
Lucky for me, I’d added a steam shower when I renovated the house.
Before heading there, I shot a quick email to Chris Rowan, one of my most trusted employees and a holdover from my dad’s days of running the company.
I considered him a sort of CFO emeritus, even though he only worked part-time.
He still had a significant role as an adviser and overseer of the brain trust that included connections to almost everyone who mattered in South Florida.
Double-check the Samurai financials before tomorrow? I typed.
His reply came almost instantly: Already on it. Projections look solid, and I'll have the audit summary by dawn.
Chris's efficiency was unmatched; he'd been the one to flag discrepancies in past deals that saved us millions.
With him in my corner, I felt ready for whatever the Samurai Group threw at us.
Stepping out from Dad's shadow meant building on foundations like Chris.
He was reliable, connected, and always one step ahead.
After I shut down my desktop computer, I wandered down the long hallway connecting the home office with the rest of my place.
Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a large kitchen, and an open concept living room with a terrace and a world-class view of the Atlantic Ocean.
Each room had been decorated in a minimalist, clean style with some splashes of bold color and peeks of what my interior designer called “French revival.” A few oversized pieces of art and a sculpture in the corner of the room next to the couch gave the place a polished look, but I wasn’t attached to any of it.
I worked too hard to care much about the rooms where I barely spent my days.
Once in the bathroom, the steam from the shower helped me relax, even as I went over the final checklist in my mind for the following day’s events.
The Samurai Group was one of the most prominent real estate investment firms in Tokyo, and the fact they wanted to partner with my firm was a sign that I was finally on the cusp of achieving my long-awaited goal.
Meaning, I was about to step out from underneath Dad’s shadow and make my own mark on South Florida.
Finally.
I turned off the water. It wasn’t late, but I needed to get some rest. Both the COO and CFO of the Samurai Group had made the trip from Japan to West Palm Beach, and I was sure they would want to maximize our time together.
I wanted to make the best first impression and hoped that it would lead to one of the most significant deals of my career.
But damn it, sleep didn’t come.
An hour later, I still lay awake in my king-sized bed, the blackout curtains hiding the almost panoramic view outside the floor-to-ceiling windows on the far side of the room, my mind racing with thoughts.
Did I understand every aspect of the development’s financials?
What if they ask about last year’s audit? Are all the permits in order?
I flipped on the bedside light and took my phone off the wireless charger a little after eleven. I’d only been in bed for an hour, but if I managed to fall asleep now, I’d be able to get some decent rest before waking up at my usual five.
Still, I couldn’t turn off the questions in my mind.
Aimlessly, I unlocked the device and scrolled through the latest headlines on the browser.
Not even the latest analysis of the recent stock market crash, the article about online safety in the UK, or the op-ed screaming about the lack of decent candidates in the upcoming presidential election interested me.
It all sounded and looked like gibberish.
Then, I opened Facebook for the first time in years.
It was an endless line of inane life updates, galleries of vacation photos, and ads for AI-generated content.
I didn’t bother opening X. I suspected that would be even worse, and I’d never been much of a fan of that platform.
Instead, I opened the other one I never posted to.
Instagram.
It was full of meaningless stuff too. Influencers posting videos about cooking tips, high school classmates desperate to hang on to their youth, travel tips for luxury resorts, videos about crypto, and more.
But it was also a great place to look at photos of gorgeous women.
Hashtag brunette, hashtag blonde, hashtag South Florida.
.. On a night like this, though, scrolling through accounts of women wearing bikinis and tiny dresses while posing in exotic locations and far-flung cities was enough of a distraction for me.
So what if she was a hustler or even a hooker?
At least she was selling what she had. And at least she was—oh shit.
An account about halfway down the screen made my breath catch in my throat.
The photo was well done but not nearly as staged or photoshopped as the ones in the rest of the tiles on the screen.
The woman wore a light pink bikini and posed on a large rock with what looked like a grove of palm trees behind her.
And within my next jagged gasp of air, I knew why the photo had caught my eye.
I know her.
Well, I did not know her. Knew of her, more like. And even then, I wasn’t sure that was the right term for our relationship. More of a...
Fuck, that doesn’t matter.
What mattered was that it was her. There was no doubt about that.
People change a lot from their teens into their twenties, and she certainly had, but not enough to lose the unforgettable soulfulness in her eyes.
A pair of eyes that, a decade ago, had looked at me with nothing but anger, pain, and contempt.
She’d hated me back then, and I’d deserved it.
I clicked on her profile and skimmed through the photos.
There were fewer than ten, and it looked like a new account under the handle @marie0505.
The profile information didn’t have her full name, but I still knew it was Isabella Moretti.
Fifteen years old when I last saw her, and probably around twenty-five now.
So why is she on Instagram trying to be a fake model?
Determined to find out, I clicked on the link in her profile. In a flash, the link took me to a place I hadn’t thought she’d go. My stomach churned.
FanZone.
Fuck.
I’d never visited the site, but I didn’t have to.
I knew what it was—a sleazy hub for pornography masquerading as a social network.
In the last decade, FanZone had turned a whole legion of young women into amateur porn stars.
And it had happened overnight, exploding into the mainstream like a bolt of lightning.
It was even worse than Instagram because it was full of nothing but naked ambition and hustle.
And now she was on there.
I scanned her subscription page. For a few bucks a month, I could access photos and the occasional live stream. I could become a VIP for ten dollars and get unlimited access and special perks for less than a hundred.
How could Isabella Moretti be a part of a site like this? I considered throwing my phone against the wall. Sure, we’d never interacted much, but she was from a good family.
I took my wallet from the top drawer of my nightstand.
As shocking it was, seeing her account made me curious.
What was she posting? How many subscribers did she have?
Is she showing everything? Do I need to know?
A quick scan of the FanZone terms and conditions confirmed that my information would remain private and encrypted.
If the payments cleared, nobody on their backend would ever reveal who’d subscribed and for how much.
She’d never know who I was either. I could choose an anonymous username and keep my profile photo a generic avatar.
This was not something I ever did, and yet, one annual membership fee later, I had access to her entire account... Again, Cade, why? If I was honest, it was penance. A small token for the wrong done to her. I wasn’t my father, but I had profited from his actions. A burden I carry around daily.
I locked the phone again, placed it back on the charger, and shut my eyes, praying for sleep to come.
But that night, I only dreamed about her.