36. Sinclair
Sinclair
In the end, Felix takes pity on me and drags me out to dinner with his father and stepmother, who are in town for the week of Thanksgiving.
Not sure I can think of anything worse than sitting across a table from the woman who cofounded the club that has just revoked my membership, but there you have it.
Felix isn’t an easy guy to say no to, and I’m starting to hate the inside of my apartment.
For the past two weeks, I’ve gone to the office, worked out to stupid levels at the gym, and stayed home. I’m no good for anything else.
The only small consolation is that, if everything went the way I believe it did, Elyse’s family has had the specter of bankruptcy firmly removed.
It lightens my heart to think of them finally being able to move forward with their lives from a place of financial security.
I’ve thought about it way too much, in fact: what they thought when they received the letter from Unburdened, the charity whose arm Mickey was able to twist. How they reacted. Whether they celebrated.
And I guess it’s nice to know that the donation has helped a lot of other families this Thanksgiving, too. While I donate plenty of money to all sorts of causes, I don’t often get this close to the actual giving. Maybe I should change that.
Typical of the bloody Wolffs to force me into not only leaving my apartment for the evening but trekking all the way downtown to Casa Cipriani, which is at the southernmost tip of Manhattan.
I wouldn’t usually mind, but it’s fucking cold out.
Admittedly, it is a beautiful building—a onetime ferry terminal for visitors to Governors Island and a Beaux Arts dream.
Its location is a turnoff for me, although its members club is heavily frequented by college buddies of mine who ended up on Wall Street.
Apparently, Felix’s folks are members and are staying here, too.
I’ve met his father before—last year, when he was over on a business trip—but not his stepmother.
Anton Wolff is a force of nature, a beast in the business world whose reputation for partying matches that of his business acumen.
In his late-fifties, he’s still something of a heartthrob—according to the British tabloids, anyway—and he has the indecent tan of someone who doesn’t believe in staying put for the winter months.
He pumps my hand heartily and gives me an even heartier slap on my shoulder as he does.
His wife, Genevieve, is, objectively speaking, a knockout who speaks like the late Queen of England.
She’s a statuesque platinum blonde whose majestic curves are swathed in ivory silk.
While she can’t be more than early forties, she somehow feels like far more of a grownup than me.
She may be wife number four, but, according to Felix, she’s the love of his father’s life.
We greet each other with a kiss on both cheeks, European style, and it’s clear before we’ve even sat down at our white-clothed table in the Pickering Room that Gen—as I’ve been instructed to call her—is even more of a force to be reckoned with than her husband.
As Felix and I take our seats opposite them, I have the uncanny sensation that we’re two boys being taken out of school for the evening by someone’s parents.
“Lovely room, isn’t it?” she comments airily, looking about her at the warm, honeyed wood and low brass lights that give the space a distinctly maritime feel. “Are you familiar with the story behind the name, Sinclair?”
I frown to hide the fact that I feel as though the math teacher has picked on me. “It’s named for Harry Pickering, right? As in, Harry’s Bar?”
“That’s right.” She taps her collarbones delicately to establish that the grotesquely large diamonds nestled there are right where they’re supposed to be.
“Harry was a bit of a lush. Ran up a mountain of debt at the bar in Venice where Giuseppe Cipriani used to work. Long story short: his family cut him off, Cipriani bailed him out with a loan, and when he rocked up to repay it five-fold, they decided to go into business together—and Harry’s Bar was born.
” She smiles angelically at me, cocking her head.
“It’s a lovely tale of trust and indebtedness…
and making good when you’ve royally fucked up. Don’t you think?”
I squint at her. Is she fucking with me, or am I imagining it?
A beat passes, then Felix and his dad, who are sitting opposite each other, crack up.
“Well, that only took about thirty seconds,” Felix says.
“I gather you didn’t warn him about her,” his dad comments, picking up his menu.
“Nah,” Felix says. “More fun this way.”
“Sometimes,” Gen says, nodding at the server that yes, she would like some champagne, “parables can be useful when one lacks sufficient self-awareness to appreciate the true extent of the damage one has inflicted. And don’t worry, I have no intention of harping on about this all night.
I just want to get the great, lumbering elephant in the room out of the way. ”
I lean back to give the server space while he fills my flute. “I assume you’ve been speaking to Katrin Lawlor.”
“Precisely. And you’re with us this evening as Felix’s guest, which is lovely.
But I wanted to make it clear from the outset that I not only stand by Katrin’s decision to rescind your membership but applaud it.
I absolutely won’t have Alchemy be a conduit for men to fail women. I just won’t stand for it.”
I look her straight in the eye. “I understand, ma’am.”
“Jolly good. Now, are we still licking our wounds, or are we striving to make amends?”
I glance at Felix. He shrugs, as if to say Answer her.
“We’re striving to make amends.” Clearly, we’re using the royal we now.
She nods, eyes still downcast. “Mussels. Ooh. They sound lovely. And how are we planning on doing that, if I might be so bold as to inquire?”
“I need to find a way for her to trust me again,” I mumble, because fuck knows how I’m going to do that.
She snaps the menu shut so suddenly that I almost jump and fixes me with an icy blue stare.
“Hmm. Tricky. Anton may be able to help.” She inclines her head graciously toward her husband, who’s looking like he enjoys seeing his wife toying with her prey far too much.
“He was a bit of an overstepper, back in the day. What it is with you entitled billionaires, I’ll never understand. ”
Anton smiles sheepishly and stretches an arm across the back of Gen’s chair. “It’s true, though I’d call it helping.”
“You were a patronizing, power-hungry arsehole.”
“And you were an ungrateful little trollop.”
They grin at each other as if it’s an old joke, and I get a glimpse of how well matched these two are. No wonder Felix tends to reserve more glowing terms for his stepmom than for his own mother.
Gen turns back to me. “I was dealing with some unsavory twats who opened a rival club and had no qualms about playing dirty. Anton stepped in after being specifically told not to, got his little henchman to hack their accounts, and reported them to HMRC—that’s the IRS to you. Even though I was handling it.”
Yikes. “Brave man,” I say.
“Foolish man.” This from Gen.
“How did you fix it?”
“That’s not a story my son needs to hear,” Anton says, stroking his wife’s shoulder. “But she had my balls on a platter, basically. I learned my lesson.”
Felix just laughs. I guess if your father met your stepmom at a sex club that she founded, your family is a little more liberated than my family’s brand of WASPy repression.
“So he persuaded you to trust him?” I press, because if either of these two has any advice on how to get Elyse to trust me enough to even have a conversation, then I’d be a fool not to take it.
Gen makes a face. “More like he persuaded me that he wasn’t stupid enough to pull a stunt like that ever again. That said, the shit you pulled on that girl was a million times worse. You blew up her entire life.”
I may run a multibillion-dollar company, but in the face of her contempt, I feel like a piece of shit beneath her shoe.
She says it so matter-of-factly, and it has me wondering once more why the hell it took a trip to Jersey and a dossier from Mickey for me to fully appreciate the sheer horror of what I did to Elyse.
Am I such a self-obsessed, sociopathic asshole that it’s only through the perspective of other, regular people with actual moral compasses that I can calibrate it properly?
And how the fuck am I ever supposed to get her to trust me again when I can’t even trust my own judgment?
“I know,” I say. “I did.” I don’t bother mentioning that I’ve repaid the medical debt, because these two would scoff at that.
Putting your hand in your pocket is the easiest way for guys like me to soothe their conscience and stroke their ego.
Understanding and respecting the agency of others is what this is really about.
Gen nods, like Glad you realize that.
“Honestly, he knows he fucked up,” says Felix, whose shoulder I’ve cried on for the past two weeks. “The question is, is there any reality in which he can get Elyse to trust him again?”
“Highly unlikely,” Gen spits. I flinch. Anton arches an eyebrow at his wife’s brutal honesty. “But,” she says, “utter capitulation aside, he does have one hand left to play.”
I lean forward. I’ll take anything she’s got. A hand suggests agency. A hand suggests I’m not out of options just yet. “But what?”
“Easy,” she says, closing her menu. “If she won’t trust you, and nor should she, your only option is to trust her.
Trust her with everything you’ve got. Give her every last moldy old skeleton in that big Voss cupboard and put your entire self in her hands.
In other words, you’re done being in control here.
Hand every last vestige of it over to her.
” She turns to the hovering waiter. “I’ll have the mussels, please. ”