Chapter 4
Four
The Least Bad Option
Xerses
Kelly slammed the door in my face.
Not the outcome I wanted when I drove across town before nine in the morning because seeing a woman furious with me at dinner and again on a terrace had not been enough.
I stood on the landing outside her apartment for one beat too long after the lock clicked into place.
Mostly because I was not a man who usually got doors shut on him.
And certainly not by women who were still flushed from anger, and still looking at me like they wanted me gone and closer at the same time.
By the time I pulled out of her street, my phone was already vibrating.
Maman. Twice. On the third call I answered through the car speakers and said, “Good morning.”
“Where are you?”
There was no greeting. No warmth. direct inquiry in the silk-lined voice she used when she’d been patient as long as she intended to.
“Driving.”
“From where?”
I smiled despite myself. “You know, when you ask in that tone, it makes me want to become evasive.”
“You were not in your room this morning.”
“I’m thirty-two.”
“And still capable of answering a simple question.”
I took the turn off Kelly’s street and headed toward the main road out of town. “I was out.”
“With Kelly?”
“That’s fast, even for you.”
“I’m your mother. Nothing is fast for me. Only for you.” A pause. “Was it with Kelly?”
At minimum, I should have redirected. Instead I said, “Yes.”
Silence met that.
I loosened my grip on the wheel. “Don’t.”
“I have not said anything.”
“You’re saying quite a lot.”
She made a tiny dismissive sound. “You looked at her all night.”
I almost laughed. Because she’d chosen that angle instead of the far more obvious one, which was that I had detonated dinner and then gone to find Kelly the next morning before most people had finished coffee.
“You invited another woman to the table,” I said.
“I invited the Azharis to graduation weekend. I did not drag anyone to the table by the hair.”
“You made the point.”
That I believed. She let a beat pass, then said lightly, “Kelly is now having coffee with Britney.”
“Is she?” I asked.
“Yes.” My mother’s tone sharpened with faint amusement. “And I suspect Britney is saying terrible things about you.”
“Not terrible,” I said. “Accurate.”
That bought me another silence, this one different. Smaller. More observant.
Then, very softly, “Xerses joon.”
I didn’t answer. Because that voice meant she was about to stop teasing and move into the territory I generally preferred to avoid with her. The one where she sounded less like a sparkling empress of family logistics and more.
“What?” I asked finally.
“What are you doing?”
I drove past the line where Virgin Cove tipped from scenic coastal town into the longer road toward the bridge. The Atlantic flashed between houses and hedges.
“Avoid traffic.” I said. I refused to talk to my mother about this.
“Then ensure Kelly knows you actually like her and it’s not fleeting?”
“We can’t talk about this.”
She hummed very softly. “You need help, clearly.”
“See you soon Maman.” I disconnected the call.
Kelly had been right on her landing. Her voice changed every time I was right, and that was useful. But she had also been right in the worse way, about the structure of the problem.
I had created it. And because of who my family was and how they moved around relationships like a collective weather system, there was no version of undoing it that landed equally on both of us.
If I corrected the story alone, she would carry more of the embarrassment.
If she corrected it, she would look rejected.
If we both corrected it, it still became a thing. None of those options were acceptable.
Which left one. Kelly was going to like it less.
I drove into Manhattan because work still existed, because my company had not paused to accommodate my mother’s schemes or my own increasingly inconvenient interest in a woman who had every reason not to trust me.
Roman and I occupied the fortieth floor of a glass tower that looked like the sort of place men built when they wanted the city at their feet and preferably making money while it was there.
The office was already in motion by the time I arrived. Assistants and developers. Conference rooms booked wall to wall. Screens lit. Low conversation. The hum of a place where everyone was too expensive to waste time.
I should have felt that familiar click the second I stepped into it. The sharpening. The narrowing. The relief of moving into systems I understood and controlled.
Instead my morning sat under my skin like a burn. Roman noticed the second I walked into my office.
He was seated across the sitting area by the windows, one ankle over the opposite knee, coffee in hand, looking as polished and impossible as ever.
“You’re late,” he said. “What happened?”
I dropped my keys on the desk and shrugged out of my jacket. “I will get everything done. I always do.”
Roman’s gaze moved over me once, efficient and unimpressed. “That’s not it. You saw Kelly.”
“Mom called me. She’s now getting coffee with Britney.” I searched him. “Are you all working from a shared script?”
“No. You have the expression of a man who’s been told no by someone he likes.”
I walked to the windows because if I looked directly at my brother while he was being this perceptive I would have to throw something at him. The city spread below in clean lines and reflected light, all movement and power and impossible scale. Usually it helped. Today it looked loud.
“She slammed a door in my face,” I said.
Roman froze enough that I knew I’d managed to interest him.
“That is,” he said after a beat, “unexpectedly gratifying.”
“You’re a poor excuse for family support.”
“Maybe. But I’ve never had a woman slam a door in my face. I’m curious.”
I turned back. “I publicly put her in a position she didn’t ask for. Privately attempted to discuss it. She was unreceptive.”
“That’s one word.”
“I’m honestly unsure what to do.”
Roman set down his coffee. “What’s the problem now?”
“Maman has made announcements. The story has spread,” I said instead. “She’s planning introductions that lead to weddings. Adian’s graduation weekend is in four days. If I correct it alone, Kelly takes the worse hit.”
Roman studied me with that infuriating, quiet attention that had always made weaker men underestimate him right up until he ended their leverage and walked away with their boards.
“We all know what Maman is like,” he said. “Including you.”
“That doesn’t fix what I did.”
I gave him a flat look. “Have you been difficult all morning or did you save it for me?”
“Only for you.” He leaned back. “So what are you going to do?”
That was the question.
Before I could decide whether I disliked Roman enough to share the thought, my office door opened and my assistant stepped in carrying a tablet.
“Your father’s office called,” she said. “He’d like you in fifteen.”
I smiled once with no joy in it. “Perfect.”
Roman lifted his brows. “Enjoy.”
“I never do.”
My father kept a private office two floors below ours in a suite that somehow managed to feel quieter, more expensive, and more dangerous than any boardroom in the building.
He had been called many things over the years, visionary, tyrant, madman, genius, the Tehran Wolf of Wall Street, and only some of them by enemies.
He did not rise when I entered.
He simply gestured to the chair across from him and said, “Sit.”
I sat.
The office smelled faintly of leather and the city baking itself against the windows. Behind him, lower Manhattan flashed in the late morning light. His desk held no unnecessary objects. His focus worked the same way.
“Our family has a reputation,” he said, “you and Kelly made an announcement last night.”
I was not going to get help from anyone in this family. Good to have that confirmed.
“We didn’t plan it that way.”
“No.”
He leaned back. “And yet it happened.”
“Yes.”
His gaze held mine. “Kelly makes you seem more stable. But we don’t have the luxury of taking our time, son.”
That question could have gone twelve different ways depending on how either of us answered it.
I chose the one most likely to end the conversation quickly. “No.”
His expression did not change much.
That was the problem with my father. He did not need dramatic reactions. A half-inch shift in stillness usually meant more than anyone else’s shouting.
“Long term dating is an unnecessary complication,” he said. “It hurts your business empire.”
“Yes.”
Assessment of the cost to Kelly. I respected that. Even while resenting that I’d walked into a room only to hear my own problem explained back to me by a man who had built empires and somehow still had time to emotionally dismantle his sons.
“I know.”
“Do you.”
I let the question sit there.
He reached for his tea and took a measured sip. “Your mother told me she saw you leave before breakfast.”
“I’m sure she did.”
“And you didn’t stay long there as she’s now out with Britney.”
I gave him a long look. “You’re enjoying this.”
“No.” He set down the glass. “I’m interested.”
He folded his hands over one knee. “What do you want, Xerses?”
“Today?”
“In this.”
I could have answered with the obvious. I want my mother off Kelly’s back. I want graduation weekend not to become a circus.
I looked past him for a moment, out over the city, because saying certain things while meeting my father’s eyes felt too much like stepping onto ground I didn’t intend to defend.
“My business will be fine, but I don’t want her made smaller by something I started,” I said finally.
Silence.
When I looked back, he was still watching me in that quiet, terrible way that made it impossible to forget I’d been raised by a man who had built fortunes by noticing the one true thing under ten false ones and betting on it harder than everyone else.
“And,” he said.
I almost told him away.
Instead I said, “And I don’t like the idea of any another woman taking up the social space I put her in.”