Chapter Eight
~ Kenneth ~
Wednesday morning started as a five-alarm fire, but the only thing burning was my reputation.
By eight a.m., the group chat of my board of directors was a solid wall of color.
One thread was a rolling stock report with the share price in cheerful blood-red: minus three percent, then minus four, then an optimistic rebound to minus two-point-eight.
Two board-member emails were flagged as “requires urgent review,” both copying in an uncomfortable number of people.
My phone screen was a parade of missed calls—my father twice, my mother once, the second one just to confirm that the first had not been an accident.
I ignored them in order of importance.
The first real problem was Reeves, my attorney. He had the kind of voice that could induce insomnia over the phone, and he used it with the precision of a neurosurgeon.
His opening volley was, “We need to discuss the legal exposure of the current situation, both in terms of your personal standing and the optics for the company.” I could hear him clicking a pen as he talked, a staccato that kept time with every bullet point he laid out.
He outlined the risks: reputational, contractual, familial.
“If we get ahead of the narrative, we can minimize the damage. Otherwise, we risk the opposition setting the terms.” By opposition, he meant my former fiancée, and a press ecosystem that could manufacture drama out of a single misplaced vowel.
The word “optics” occurred nine times in forty minutes.
The word “exposure” occurred six. He wanted, in the way only lawyers can, for me to issue a public statement “clarifying the circumstances of the Las Vegas incident” and “affirming the integrity of the engagement’s dissolution.
” He wanted me to use the phrase “amicable separation” even though the evidence suggested something closer to a war crime.
I let him talk, and when he was finished, I said, “Thank you, Reeves,” in the tone that signals the end of a quarterly report and, possibly, a professional relationship.
I did not authorize a statement. I was not going to apologize for Jude Thomas.
The rest of the day rolled out on the same frequency.
Nine calls, no two shorter than twenty minutes.
The content varied only in the surface details: one associate expressing “total support,” another warning that “any instability at the top would be amplified by the markets.” Two in-person meetings, both with men who wore expensive watches and cheap aftershave, each taking the measure of me like I was a particularly fragile vase on a narrow shelf.
I performed, because that’s what you do. I performed as a man who had everything under control, who had anticipated every move on the board, and was not even slightly rattled by the prospect of his entire adult life being subject to public audit.
Lunch was with a shareholder whose smile was so fixed it looked like a medical condition.
He ordered the steak, then ate none of it, while he reassured me that “these things blow over, Kenneth, they always do,” and “you just have to keep your head down until they lose interest.” He meant it kindly, but his hands trembled when he poured the wine.
By the time the car rolled up to my building, it was well past dusk and my jaw was tight enough to register as a seismic event. I rode the elevator up alone, no music, no chatter, just the soft mechanical grind as I climbed toward something resembling safety.
The penthouse was dark. The scent of wood polish and old air hit me at the threshold. I turned the lights on low, crossed to the kitchen, and poured a glass of something that cost more than a semester of college and tasted like it.
I took a sip and braced both hands on the island. The city was a smear of lights beyond the window, and for the first time in years, I was aware of how far up I really was.
What I wanted was a drink, a quiet room, and Jude.
Two of those things were immediately available.
I pulled out my phone and typed, “Can you come over?” It took less time to send it than it did to think about sending it. I put the phone face-down on the counter, because watching the screen for a reply was not something I was willing to do.
I poured another finger of whiskey. I drank it. I waited, arms crossed, staring at the closed door as if the answer might come walking through it.
The phone vibrated, once. I ignored it for a full minute before picking it up.
“Be there in thirty.”
No question about why. No negotiation.
I read it twice. Something in my chest that had been braced since morning released, just slightly.
I poured a third finger. This time, I tasted it.
The city, outside, kept moving.
But inside, for the first time all day, I stopped.
I showered, because some rituals have the force of law, and put on tan slacks, a white shirt open at the collar, and slip-on loafers that were engineered to look effortless. I skipped the watch. I didn’t want the evening measured in intervals.
The penthouse ran on a kind of latent energy, always a few degrees away from the precise temperature you wanted.
I started the fireplace, watched the blue-orange pulse catch and hold, then set the flame at seventy percent because the algorithm insisted that was the optimal ambience for “entertaining in spaces over 1,400 square feet.”
I asked Adams to prepare dinner for two. “Anything special, sir?” he asked, with a politeness calibrated to neither offend nor ingratiate. I told him to pick a wine that wouldn’t survive the evening, and to make it something memorable.
I opened the retractable balcony doors, even though it was early March and the city air was just a few degrees past dangerous.
The cold sucked the warmth from the living room in a matter of minutes, but I liked the way it made the edges of things sharper: the slipstream of cars far below, the red points of brake lights threading through the city, the intermittent shout of a distant horn.
The sound system, which I never bothered to understand fully, responded to the command for “something undemanding” by launching into a playlist that was 70% jazz, 10% Leonard Cohen, and 20% algorithmic confusion. I kept it. I didn’t want to risk silence.
At 7:03, Adams appeared at the threshold. “Mr. Thomas is here.”
“Send him in.”
Adams disappeared. I was on my second glass of wine, tablet propped on my knee, eyes skimming the hourly metrics, but not seeing any of them.
When Jude stepped into the living room, he did so with the wariness of a man who had, at one point or another, been made to account for every possible variable in a room.
He took in the fireplace, the open balcony, the glass in my hand. He looked at my shirt, at my bare wrist, at my face. Then he asked, “What did she do?”
The laugh caught me by surprise. It was not the kind of laugh I would have authorized. It was short, sharp, and more honest than anything else that day. “How do you know she did anything?”
He shrugged, but it was not a dismissal. “You only open the balcony when you’re trying to not feel suffocated.”
I set the tablet aside. “She went public.”
He nodded, waiting for the rest.
I ran him through it: the social media campaign, the reframed narrative, the shareholders. The way the board had lined up, not to support me, but to triangulate which direction the wind was blowing. The emails. The calls. The lunch where the steak had gone untouched.
He listened. He always listened.
When I finished, he picked up my wine glass—still half full—and drained it in one go. He held up the empty glass, turning it just so, and said, “Got more of this? I’m going to need it if we’re dealing with my sister.”
I called for Adams, who materialized with a fresh bottle and poured two glasses in complete silence. I watched the line of the wine catch the light, watched Jude’s eyes follow it, and then watched his fingers as he wrapped them around the stem, careful not to make a sound.
He sat on the couch next to me, close enough that the pressure of his presence altered the magnetic field of the room.
Adams retreated, leaving the tray and the bottle on the side table, then vanished into the kitchen.
The room was quiet except for the music, which had drifted into a sequence of piano chords that would have been corny if I’d chosen it on purpose. I hadn’t, and it was better that way.
Jude sipped the new glass, set it down, then said, “She’s not trying to destroy you outright. She’s running a pressure campaign.”
I almost smiled. “You think?”
He nodded. “She wants you to come to her. If she wanted to finish you off, she’d be pushing the family narrative a lot harder. This is about leverage, not revenge.”
He was right, of course. He was always right when it came to Carolyn. He could have written her playbook, and maybe had.
The fireplace caught the edge of his face, gold on one side and shadow on the other. He looked like a man who had been bracing for this conversation all day, and now that it was here, was trying to decide whether to fight or let himself be fought for.
I said, “You want to eat?”
He shrugged again, but this time it was an invitation. “If there’s food, yes. If not, I’ll survive on wine and passive aggression.”
“Adams is making something.”
“Good. I can trust Adams.”
We sat there, not talking, for a few minutes. I watched the city move outside the window. I watched the way the wind made the air shimmer above the balcony railing. I watched the clock on the wall tick down the minutes until dinner, and found that I was not in a hurry for it to arrive.
Jude leaned back, arms crossed, wine glass in hand. “You could just let it happen, you know.”
“Let what happen?”
He looked over at me, glasses reflecting the fire. “The narrative. Let her win. Start over.”
I considered it, really considered it, for the first time since the whole thing started. There was an appeal in the idea of walking away, of letting the world think whatever it wanted, of starting the next thing with no baggage at all.