Chapter 28
28
Theo
“ N o, Kai. Not like that. We need to take into account pricing data from more than one source.” I point at the screen while my eighteen-year-old mentee carefully corrects the code. He’s usually a ball of energy, but not while he’s working.
“Mr. A, what are we going to do with this when we’re done?”
His curly head is bent over the laptop we use for coding, which I keep carefully locked away when he’s not here. Corporate espionage knows no bounds, and the code we’re writing today is worth millions in the right hands.
I toss a stress ball in the air and catch it. “You can use it for school if you want. Or I’ll give you a hundred dollars, and you can see what you make with it.”
He looks up at me skeptically. “I’d rather use a hundred dollars for something else.”
“I know.” I remember the days when a hundred dollars was a big fucking deal, and Kai is still there. He won’t be forever, though. Not with the Harvard application he’s waiting on and the full ride I’m sure he’ll get. And not with the internship he’ll have at Kings Lane once he’s in college.
“A hundred dollars is like…” He pokes his tongue out as he concentrates on the screen. “Five trips to the movies.”
I laugh. “It was more like ten when I was your age.”
“Movie tickets cost only ten dollars?” His eyes are round. “How much did candy cost? What about beer?”
“You’re not supposed to know about beer,” I say mildly. “Your mom would not be happy knowing I’m talking to you about beer.”
Kai’s mom is a strict Puerto Rican woman with definite opinions on what is and isn’t appropriate for her son. His dad isn’t in the picture, but Kai says his family was from Taiwan. I sympathize with the kid. It’s tough going through life feeling like you’re on your own. Kai doesn’t have any siblings, and he spent a lot of time being benched on his school’s basketball team before we started meeting weekly. Now, he’s a computer whiz and he asked for a subscription to the Wall Street Journal for Christmas.
He’s a good kid, as evidenced by the fact that he still cares about candy and movies, when I was thinking about kissing girls in the movie theater at his age.
“Can’t you use the code for work?” he asks.
“Nah.” I toss the ball up in the air again. “We don’t do that. We don’t trade stocks. It’s something I used to do on the side, is all.”
“I still don’t understand how you make money.” He shakes his head.
I smile. “Most people don’t. We invest in existing businesses, and sometimes we start new ones,” I say.
“Like the grocery store chain you bought last year.”
“Yeah. Like that.” I told Kai all about our acquisition of a Canada-based international grocery store chain. We even went to tour one of the stores, and I asked what he thought we could improve—more sodas and chips, according to my teenage adviser.
“So what’s the latest?”
I choke down a laugh. It’s weird hearing this kid who plays Pokémon ask me about business, but he likes it .
“I’m trying to find investors for a joint venture overseas. It’s easier than going in without them. They know the regulators if we need approvals. They already have established connections in the region. We’re close with one Italian investor who has businesses across Europe. A casino in Monaco, luxury apartments in Switzerland, France, and Luxembourg. A budding German brewery. We’re not interested in that last one.”
“Why not?”
“It’s about our brand. A casino is pushing the limits for us. We don’t want to seem like we’re too… fun ,” I say, because that’s the most appropriate word for a kid.
“So you’re going to get this investor and then what?” Kai sounds skeptical.
“Well, I guess I’ll be traveling more. Like I was last year. We’ll have to meet remotely again. Or we can convince your mom to let you visit.”
He rolls his eyes. “She’ll never go for that.”
“Better make a million dollars with this code, then. Do that, and you can take yourself.”
Kai’s mom would cut my tongue from my mouth for suggesting her son go on a solo trip to Europe, but I want him to dream. It was something I learned to do only later in life.
A knock sounds. Cat.
“Close the program,” I hiss. Kai scrambles to save and close down our code while I unlock the door.
It is Cat, looking soft and sexy in an oversized sweatshirt that nearly meets the bottom of her tiny shorts. Her hair is twisted up over her head and her lips are glossed with something. It looks like lip balm…maybe lip gloss. Smells like—I inhale—watermelon.
“Theo?”
I’m staring. Shit.
“Hi.” I grin and block her way into the study.
“What are you doing?” She peeks over my shoulder, and I raise my arm to obscure her view.
“We’re working,” I say .
“We?”
“We’re good, Mr. A,” Kai says. I let my arm drop. He’s saved the precious code. We’ve been at it for months and we make sure to save it whenever there’s an interruption. If it were anyone other than Cat at the door, we’d be locking up the laptop too.
“Cat this is Kai, my mentee. Kai, this is my wife.”
Kai waves from his chair, looking serious and a little awed. I get it, man. I do. I felt the exact same way at eighteen, utterly taken by her liquid brown eyes and her perfect pink lips. Even as a teenager, she made my stomach flip.
“Nice to meet you, Kai. I hope he’s not being too hard on you.” She smiles at him. His eyes widen and he darts a look at me. Cat hasn’t been home to meet Kai the last few times he’s been over. I wasn’t sure how she’d be around him, since she grew up blissfully unaware of circumstances like Kai’s. But now I see she’s a natural with kids, kind and warm in a way that she isn’t with adults.
“Nice to meet you, Mrs. A.”
“You didn’t tell him I didn’t take your last name?” she whispers. She’s still smiling, but she turns it on me. I nearly take a step forward, but tighten my hand on the door instead.
I shrug. “He’s a kid. What’s up?”
“You said we had an event tonight. I came to remind you. What are you doing in there?” She cranes her neck, and I shut the door.
“Coding.” I stretch, and her eyes arrow to my stomach. I smile to myself.
“Code for what?”
“Trading stock.”
“Can I see?”
“It’s not done yet,” I say. “Right now, we’re working on how the program interprets signals and pricing data. It buys and sells stock algorithmically, but how it interprets data is something I’ve created.”
“So, theoretically, it could trade incredibly quickly? It would make decisions instantly once you’ve told it what to do.”
“That’s right.” She’s smarter than she gives herself credit for.
“What are you going to do with it? ”
“Give it to Kai, I guess. It’s not like I’m going to use it.”
“Because it’s not profitable?”
I shake my head. “Because Kings Lane doesn’t have any use for this.” Jonah and Miles don’t need to run some black-box trading operation. They’re not interested in that. It’s experimental and nothing more.
“It makes money, doesn’t it?” She crosses her arms. “You can always make more money.”
“It’s not really our thing.”
“You’re selling yourself short,” she says. Her lips are pressed flat.
“No, I’m not. I just know my business partners don’t need this. It’s okay. Kai can make a whole bunch of money with it.”
“How much is this worth?”
“Millions if it’s successful. But I have no idea if it would work. It’s purely experimental.”
“Millions. And you’re going to give it to a twelfth-grader,” she says.
“Kai’s smart. It’ll be a graduation gift.”
“I don’t understand you.” She looks annoyed at me, with her flashing eyes and her angry expression.
I don’t understand me either. I’m not going to explain to her that this code is useless. It’s a vestige of a former me, and while it’s fun, it’s not something Jonah and Miles will care about. I have bigger fish to fry. Like this European deal.
I push off the door and open it into the study. “I’ll be ready in a bit for the event,” I tell Cat, who nods and heads upstairs. I glance at Kai, where he’s bent over the laptop again. “Kai, you want to eat an early dinner with me?”
He stills. His mom doesn’t get home until late and he would probably love something to eat. “I’m good, Mr. A,” he says carefully.
“Let me give you some pizza for the road. It’s going to go to waste if we don’t eat it. I forgot about the event.” I didn’t forget. I just ordered a pizza when he got here because the kid loves to eat. “Come on.”
He trails me into the kitchen, admiring the art on the walls like he always does. I forget how ridiculous the mansion must look to outsiders, with the ornate outside and more modern interior. It’s ridiculously opulent for a single person.
“You don’t have maids or anything, right?”
“Correct,” I say as I pull out plates for us.
“How do you keep this place clean? Does your wife clean?”
I nearly drop a plate. “No, my wife doesn’t clean. She’s in school and she has a job. I would never ask her to clean.”
He looks skeptical. “But there’s, like, fifty rooms in here.”
“I don’t really use most of them.” I shrug and plate some pizza for us, mushroom for Kai and pepperoni for me, even though it’s going to ruin my dinner.
“You should hire some people. Lots of kids will be back from college for the summer. Just get someone temporary.”
My chest constricts. Kai takes a huge bite of pizza, but I can’t bring myself to eat. “My mom was a maid, you know.”
“She was?” His eyes are round, like he can’t imagine anyone in my orbit working for money.
“For a long time.” I nod. “It wasn’t an easy life. I wouldn’t ask someone to be my…servant.”
Kai shrugs. “Yeah, but Mr. A. You’re married now. You gotta grow up. You live like me.” He shakes his head.
I choke back a laugh. “What do you mean I live like you?”
“You’re eating pizza for dinner. Your study is a mess. And I’ve seen your fridge. My mom would be so pissed at you.” He takes another huge bite, and sauce drips onto his shirt. I silently pass him a napkin.
“You think I need to grow up?”
He swallows. “I think, if you really want to impress Mrs. A, you’re going to have to make some changes.”
“What makes you think she’s not already impressed?”
His gaze darts to the doorway. “She’s like…really pretty. Sorry. I know she’s your wife.” He whispers the last words, and I fight to keep a smile off my face.
“I know she’s really pretty,” I say. “I’ve been aware of that for a long time.” Longer than I care to admit, really.
He makes a face. “Sounds like you need to up your game, then. You’re rich but…I don’t know. You gotta really woo her.” The skepticism on his face is wildly amusing and disheartening at the same time.
“You think if I clean my house, that will do the trick?”
“Mr. A.” He levels me with a look. “You’re like…a millionaire. You should have a gourmet chef and a whole fleet of cars.”
“I do have a whole fleet of cars.”
“Yeah, but you’re still eating pizza. You should just hire some people. Pay them double or triple or something. A job is a job. Plus, you wouldn’t be a bad boss.”
“And you think if I do that, I’ll impress her?” The thought of having servants makes the pizza feel like a rock in my stomach, but Kai might be right. The mansion has at least ten unused, dusty rooms. And now I don’t live here alone. I could pay someone an absurd sum of money and have a team of people come in here. I don’t really need to impress Cat, but Kai doesn’t need to know that. And his utter disdain for my lifestyle is pretty funny.
He appraises me and wrinkles his brow. I look down. I’m wearing gray sweatpants and a black T-shirt. “It’s a start, I guess,” he says.