Chapter 4
FOUR
NEO
Twenty-five years old
Two years later
Exhaustion was seeping through my bones. Although I was barely twenty-five, some days, I felt like I was in my fifties.
“Bro, are you even paying attention?” Tatum asked.
Wes coughed to cover up his laugh. We both tended to tune the guy out half the time. Loyalty—that’s what kept him in my orbit. Living in mansions, you might as well live in a glass house where everyone knows your business. Rumors and secrets are what kept everyone going.
“Yeah, I’ll ask, but I’m not sure. I just moved to a new department.”
Tatum rolled his eyes.
“Just tell your new daddy. I’m sure he’d love to help you out.”
My jaw clenched, but I didn’t say anything. Wes was less tolerant toward Tatum’s shit than I was, but then again, he had no loyalty toward him. Tatum and I went back a decade. When I had no friends, he was there. When people talked shit about my family, he never repeated anything they said.
His parents hadn’t snubbed me because they were glad their son had made a new friend. Being new money, they didn’t involve themselves in the bullshit politics played by everyone else.
“I already told you it’s not that simple. I’ve been busting my ass off for the last two years working my way up the company. I don’t see much of Richard.”
“Don’t you mean your new daddy?” he mocked.
Before I could snap at him, Wes spoke.
“Tate, you see those girls at the bar?” He nodded toward the location. “I’m sure they wouldn’t mind if you bought them a drink.”
“You know what, you’re right.”
He got up and left us without a backward glance.
“His parents fucked up by spoiling him,” Wes muttered, and I agreed. We were all rich and spoiled to an extent. Tatum was an only child, and he was more entitled than us. Maybe it was the fact that my family was fucked up or that Wes’s parents didn’t come from money that we appreciated what we had in a way Tatum didn’t.
Even if I had felt like an only child growing up, the shadow of my siblings was always there. I had two older siblings, a brother and a sister, and now I also had a younger stepsister, but she didn’t count—she couldn’t count.
“You ever going to tell me why you changed your last name?”
If I could confide in someone, it would be Wes. He would listen without judging.
“My sister celebrated her sixtieth birthday a few weeks ago,” was my response.
“I know, I saw the newspaper article. The whole family was there. Your brother is getting ready to retire, too. His son will take over the Caldwell Enterprises.”
“You know, growing up, I didn’t know why they didn’t like me. They acted like I wasn’t even there when they visited our dad.”
Wes sipped his drink, probably getting his thoughts together before responding. I’d never talked to anyone about this. People speculated all the time, but the reality was fucked up enough that I figured that if it never got brought up, people would forget about where I came from and instead focus on where I was going.
“So, you guys never built a relationship?”
“They loathe Pricilla. They never bothered to try.”
My mother had done a lot to give me a good life, or so she claims.
“And your father never told them anything?”
There was nothing graceful about my snort.
“By the time I was born, Nathaniel Jr. was already forty, and Celest thirty-five. My father tried his best, though. I know he loved me.”
Just not more than he loved them, I wanted to add, but I bit my lip.
Wesley shifted in his seat, and I raised an eyebrow to prod him to continue with whatever he wanted to ask now that I was sharing information.
“Richard is younger than the age your father was when he had you, right?”
I nodded.
For my kindergarten graduation, my father was in a wheelchair since he had a stroke a few months before. He didn’t even watch me graduate high school. By that point, he was already bedridden. He passed away a few weeks later. It was odd to reconcile the version I knew as my father to the one my siblings got. Hell, my nieces and nephews were older than I was. It was one whole fucking mess.
“Richard is a good man. He has mentored me, and when he gave me the chance to start over, I took it.”
I wasn’t going to tell Wes how Richard was there when my older brother humiliated me, and he probably had offered to help me out of pity. At least this way, I could give my siblings their peace.
Sensing that the conversation was getting too heavy, he changed the subject.
“You bringing a date for the company holiday party?”
The Rivieres held a holiday party every year, which Richard’s previous wife made into a charity ball. The funds collected went to local shelters.
“Yeah, it will work in my favor if the assholes in the board see me with a hot piece on my arm.”
I looked at what Tatum was doing, and I was sure he would be bringing one of those girls on Saturday night.
“How’s Lou doing?”
His question caught me off guard. We never talked about her. Since my mother’s wedding, I tried to limit what information I gave him regarding her, and he rarely brought her up.
“I don’t know. Busy with school. She rarely comes back home unless her father demands it.”
That was true.
For the last two years, we had both been busy. She went to California to study at Stanford while I finished my studies at UPenn. Her father hoped she would go to Columbia, where he and her mother met.
“Cali agrees with her,” Wes muttered.
“What the fuck does that mean?” I barked out before thinking twice about it.
Wes regarded me with a look I couldn’t decipher. He just shrugged and pulled something up on his phone to show me. It was her social media account.
Why the fuck was he following her?
I had an account but rarely used it. The only reason I made it was so creeps would stop DMing chicks pretending to be me. After an unhinged chick approached me and asked me why I never wanted to meet, I figured I should have one, even if I rarely used it.
From the glance I let myself have, I could see Lou was very active on her account. I quickly realized what Wes had meant about California agreeing with her. Half her pictures had been of her at the beach or on the back of someone’s yacht in different stages of undress—well, a swimsuit, but it was the same shit.
“I can see she’s been very busy with her academics,” I sneered.
If my mother texted me one more time, I would lose it. We were set to meet at Mr. Riviere’s house. Gerald was old and I was sure he would die sooner rather than later. Since we were all in town for the gala, he wanted a nice family dinner.
Maybe because of how my brother and sister treated me, I found it odd that the Rivieres took well to us. I know my mother was a piece of work, but at the end of the day, she was still my mother, the only person who had ever had my back.
She was fucking brilliant too. While with my father, she changed majors, and now she worked alongside Richard. As his wife, and because, for some insane reason, Gerald liked her, she would have a spot on the board before I did.
When I arrived at Gerald’s house, I searched the long driveway for the pink Porsche. I didn’t realize how fast my heartbeat was until I realized it wasn’t there.
My mother and Richard were already there. I gave my mom a quick peck on the cheek, accepted the drink Richard handed me, and then patted Gerald on the back, before taking a seat on the love seat across from them.
“Where the hell is that girl? She’s always running late,” Gerald muttered.
“She’ll be here soon,” Richard replied, a bit annoyed at his father.
“The company jet is at her disposal, and she can’t be bothered to make it on time? You know how many people would kill to have their own planes?” It was a rhetorical question.
“Some people are meant to spend money. Others are meant to make it. Isn’t that right, honey?” my mother joked, which irritated me because I knew it was a dig to make Lourdes seem unreliable.
My mother’s ambition was something I admired growing up. She was ruthless when it came to business. And I knew she was just trying to paint me in a better light because she hoped I would be in charge of Riviere Conglomerate one day.
“She didn’t use the company jet and said some of us already leave enough of a carbon footprint that she was fine flying business class.”
“Isn’t she modest,” my mother muttered after Richard was done speaking.
Gerald turned toward me.
“How are you liking the company, Neo? I know starting from the bottom is a bitch, but it’s the way we have always done it. To really run a company, you need to learn how it works from the bottom up. It’s how my grandfather, father, and son did it. It’s the Riviere way.”
His words touched me, and I hated that I made eye contact with my mother because something about the way she was beaming soured it.
Just then, heels could be heard tapping down the foyer. I sat up straighter and forced myself not to crane my neck since my seat had my back facing the entrance she would come in from.
“Sorry I’m late, Grandfather, the plane got delayed for over half an hour,” she greeted sweetly as she entered the room.
She went straight for Gerald when she walked in. She had on a pair of ridiculously high brown pointed boots and a cream wool coat that matched her designer purse wrapped around her. Her dark hair was tamed into soft waves that cascaded down her back. She leaned down to kiss Gerald on the cheek. She then turned to her father to do the same.
Lou had changed.
I noticed it at the wedding, but I thought it was a one-off since it was a party, and people always dressed up for those. Her lips, which were already big and pouty, were dark red, which most people in our circles wouldn’t do because that color was reserved for a night out. The same was true of her eyes. They were round and big, with black liner and dark curly lashes framing them, making them stand out.
Lourdes stopped trying to fit in—and now all she did was stand out.
“Hello, Father." She gave him a soft smile—a lot softer than I had seen her give him in years—and I knew it caught Richard by surprise because the poor sap looked like he wanted to cry.
“Pricilla, looking lovely as always,” she told my mother without looking at her.
She finally turned toward me, and I couldn’t help but smirk her way.
“Nathaniel,” she said while offering me a fake smile and effectively cutting mine off by calling me by a name I did not claim.
She then removed her coat before sitting down. Fuck me. I tried and failed not to look at her curves. Her brown boots reached just above her knees. She wore belted high-waist leather shorts that perfectly matched her boots, and a knitted brown sweater in the same color was tucked in at her waist. The gap of skin between her boots and the hem of her shorts was tantalizing. Her tanned, thick thighs seemed sun-kissed.
“I see California has emboldened you,” my mother told her, and I gritted my jaw because I knew it wasn’t a compliment.
Lou sat next to me. She was close enough that I could feel the heat she emitted, but I could not touch her.
“I’ll make sure to let the writers at Vogue know you thought their outfit was tacky since I did see a similar style on there.”
My mother didn’t miss a beat.
“Well, just because I can still fit into the dresses I wore in my twenties, it doesn’t mean it is appropriate. Graceful style varies by bodies and ages.”
“That is something I wished your first wife would have learned,” Gerald added his two cents.
Lou very much looked like her late mother.
My mother preened at the compliment while Richard looked murderous. I took a sip of my drink just as Lou spoke.
“Well, Pricilla, some of us actually grew a rack and a big fat ass after puberty, so it’s kind of hard to fit in a size two.”
I almost choked on my drink.
“Lourdes!” her father chastised her.
“This is what happens when you don’t listen to me,” a red-faced Gerald told his son while pointing at Lou.
“Sorry, Grandfather,” she mumbled.
“If you’re going to behave that way, don’t even bother showing up tomorrow at the company party.”
She didn’t say anything back to him, but a while later, I could have sworn I heard her mutter, “You’ve never been proud of me.”
For someone whom I swore held no meaning to me, her words made my stomach sink. At that moment, I knew why I had been keeping her at arm's length.
Lourdes could have the power to bring me to my knees.