8. Nick
— ? —
Nick
The Anderson family meeting is a disaster.
The large conference room, the one reserved for important clients, the one with the mahogany table that cost more than most people’s cars and the floor-to-ceiling view of the city glittering below, has the air of a courtroom.
My parents are waiting when the doors open, arranged at the head of the table, judges about to deliver a sentence.
Mother is immaculate in Chanel, not a hair out of place, her expression the carefully neutral mask she’s worn my entire life. Father looks like he’s about to fire someone, which, historically, has been his default expression for as long as memory serves.
Matthias is already seated, a bruise darkening on his throat where my forearm pressed. Good. He deserved worse.
Three weeks ago a meeting like this would have owned me. The cold table, the row of disappointed faces, the particular gravity of my father’s silence. I would have sat up straighter and braced to be told what I had failed at this time.
Today I’m barely in the room. Today there’s a woman two floors down with charcoal on the side of her hand and a laugh she keeps trying to hide behind it, and the memory of her is louder than anything these people can say to me.
I keep thinking about the break room, about her guard finally down.
I keep wanting to be there instead of here.
It’s the kind of softness this family spent my whole life teaching me to bury before anyone could use it against me, and I can feel the old instinct moving even now, reaching to lock it somewhere safe.
For the first time in my life, I decide they don’t get this part. Whatever this is with Jo, it’s mine. I’ll not set it on the table for them to break.
“Sit down, Nicholas.”
Father’s voice could freeze lava. The command isn’t a request, and twenty years of conditioning makes my legs move toward the indicated chair before rational thought can intervene.
Matthias takes the seat opposite, that smug smile already creeping back onto his face despite the marks left on his neck. Whatever fear surfaced in the hallway has been replaced by the confidence of someone who knows he has backup.
“We’ve been hearing troubling things.” Mother’s voice drips with carefully manufactured concern. “About an employee. A woman who’s been... bothering your brother.”
The word employee comes out the way most people say cockroach. The implication is clear: this woman is beneath them, beneath consideration, beneath the basic dignity of being referred to by name.
“Joanna Holland is a talented architect.” The words come out calmer than the rage simmering underneath. “Her personal history with Matthias is irrelevant to her professional performance...”
“Her personal history with Matthias is entirely relevant.” Father’s interruption lands, a gavel coming down. “She’s using this position to manipulate you. To get close to the family money. Anyone with eyes can see that.”
“You haven’t met her. You don’t know anything about her.”
“I know she’s a gold-digger who trapped your brother with a secret marriage and then fled when it didn’t work out.
” Father leans forward, eyes cold and certain.
“I know she’s been hiding this information from you while worming her way into your good graces.
And I know that you’ve been spending an inappropriate amount of time with her, alone, after hours. ”
The blood in my veins turns to ice. “What did you just say?”
“Oh, didn’t she tell you?” Mother’s voice drips false sympathy, the kind she uses when she’s about to deliver a killing blow. “They were married, Nicholas. When Matthias was studying abroad. We had to fly him home right before graduation because she went insane.”
Went insane.
As in: found out her husband was cheating on her with another woman. As in: refused to be gaslit into accepting it. As in: left instead of staying to be humiliated.
“That’s not...”
“We know everything, Nicholas.” Father’s voice is flat, final. “We know about the marriage. We know she’s been hiding it from you. And we know she’s trying to seduce you to get access to Anderson money again. The same play, different brother.”
They don’t know that Jo already told me.
They don’t know that the story they’re spinning, poor innocent Matthias, victimized by a crazy gold-digger, is a complete inversion of the truth.
And the fact that they’ve so readily believed their version, without question, without investigation, says everything about this family that I’ve been trying not to see for most of my life.
“Fire her.” Father’s command detonates in the silence. “Tonight. Before this becomes a scandal.”
“No.”
The word is a gunshot. Mother’s face goes pale. Even Matthias’s smug expression flickers with surprise.
“Nicholas...”
“I’m not firing her.” The voice stays steady, but underneath, something is cracking.
The foundation of everything I thought I knew about my family.
The carefully maintained fiction that we were decent people who just happened to have money.
“She’s innocent in all of this. Matthias cheated on her.
Matthias abandoned her. And now you want to punish her? ”
“She’s a liability...”
“She’s a person.” The chair scrapes back, sitting still no longer possible, the rage that’s been building since those bruises appeared on her arm finally boiling over.
“A person who was young and in love and made the mistake of trusting my brother. And instead of holding him accountable, instead of acknowledging what he did, you’re going to destroy her life to protect his reputation? ”
“Don’t be naive.” Father stands too, hands flat on the mahogany table, leaning forward, a predator that has spotted weakness.
“This family has worked too hard for too long to let some nobody from nowhere drag us down. She doesn’t matter, Nicholas.
She never mattered. And if you can’t see that, you’re not the son I raised. ”
“Maybe I don’t want to be the son you raised.”
The words hang in the air, heavy with everything they imply. Mother makes a small sound, almost a gasp. Matthias watches with bright, eager eyes, enjoying the show.
“Then we’ll make this simple.” Father’s voice drops to something cold and quiet, more dangerous than his shouting ever was.
“Fire her, or we’ll destroy her ourselves.
We have enough resources to make her disappear, ruin her professionally, financially, legally.
She’ll never work in this industry again.
She’ll lose everything she’s built. Don’t push us, Nicholas.
Because you know damn well we could go further if necessary. ”
The threat lands, a physical blow.
Further. As in: dangerous. As in: threatening more than just her career. As in: the kind of threats that people with money and power can make because they know they’ll never face consequences.
“If you touch her.” The words come out quiet, steady, the calm before a storm. “If you touch a single hair on her head, if you so much as make her uncomfortable, I will burn this family to the ground. And I’ll start with you.”
Father’s face goes red. Mother’s goes white. Matthias, for once, has nothing to say.
“You don’t mean that,” Mother manages.
“Try me.”
The walk out of the conference room is the longest of my life. Each step echoes on the hardwood. Behind me, Father starts shouting, Mother tries to calm him, Matthias’s voice rises in that wheedling tone he uses when he wants something.
None of it matters.
The elevator doors close, and alone in that small space, the shaking starts.
Not with fear. With rage.
They threatened her. They threatened her life. My family, the people who raised me, who shaped me, who I’ve spent thirty-three years trying to please, just threatened to destroy an innocent woman because she had the audacity to exist in their orbit.
And standing in that descending elevator, watching the floor numbers tick down, one truth crystallizes with absolute certainty:
Whatever comes next, whatever war this starts, whatever it costs...
I know whose side I’m on.