Chapter 4 Phoenix
PHOENIX
The Pacific breaks against the rocks below my house. I’m supposed to be focused on the quarterly reports spread across my desk. Instead, I'm refreshing my bank account for the hundredth time today.
The check hasn't cleared.
Three days. I sent it three days ago, hand-delivered to her mailbox in that run-down building in Boston. She should have it by now. She should have opened it, stared at the number, wondered who the hell would send her that much money.
She should have done something.
I close the laptop and walk to the floor-to-ceiling windows that make up the entire west wall of my home office.
The ocean stretches out forever, blue and endless under the California sun.
My house sits on a cliff in Malibu, all glass and steel and expensive architecture.
It's the kind of place that gets featured in design magazines, the kind of wealth that most people only see in movies.
I built this. Well, I built on top of what my father gave me, but the success is mine.
Crawford Ventures started as family money and connections, but I turned it into something more.
A tech investment firm with stakes in half a dozen startups that are about to go public.
I'm twenty-seven and worth more than most people will make in ten lifetimes.
None of it matters if she doesn't cash that check.
My phone buzzes. A text from Marcus Sullivan, my business partner.
Board meeting at 3. Don't be late.
I ignore it. The board can wait. The Singapore investors can wait. Everything can wait until I know she got the money.
I open my laptop again, but this time I navigate to a different site. A blog called "Green Eyes Dragon," hosted on some free platform that hasn't been updated in two weeks. The last post is titled "Drowning on Dry Land."
I work three jobs and it's still not enough. My mother is in the hospital and I can't pay the bills. I write stories no one reads about feelings no one cares about. Sometimes I think about what it would be like to just stop. To let the water close over my head and sink.
But then I remember: I'm my mother's daughter. And we don't quit. We just keep swimming even when there's no shore in sight.
I've read that post a dozen times. Each time, something in my chest tightens. She's drowning, and I'm the only one who can save her.
The only one who will.
My phone rings. Not Marcus this time, but Owen, one of my two closest friends. He and Kai are probably already at the beach, wondering where I am.
"Where are you?" Owen asks when I answer. "We've got the fire going and Kai brought his sister's friends. You're missing out."
"I'll be there in twenty."
"You said that an hour ago."
"I mean it this time."
Owen laughs. "Sure you do. You've been weird all week, man. What's going on?"
I could tell him. Owen and Kai have known me since college, watched me build Crawford Ventures from the ground up, covered for me when I needed to disappear for days to chase down leads on investments. They're the closest thing I have to brothers.
But I can't tell them about Jade. Not yet. Not until she's here.
"Just work stuff," I say. "I'll explain later."
"Whatever. Get down here before Kai drinks all the beer."
I hang up and change into board shorts. The surf report says the waves are decent this afternoon, and I need to clear my head. Need to stop obsessing over a bank account that hasn't changed in three days.
The beach below my house is private, accessible only by a steep staircase carved into the cliff. By the time I reach the sand, Owen and Kai have already started a bonfire. There are half a dozen other people scattered around, most of them women I don't recognize.
"Finally," Kai says, tossing me a beer. "We were starting to think you'd turned into a hermit."
"Just busy."
"Too busy for this?" Owen gestures at the scene around us. The sun is starting to sink toward the horizon, turning the ocean gold. Music plays from someone's portable speaker. Two women in bikinis are laughing at something Kai said.
This is my life. Beautiful people on a beautiful beach, wealth and freedom and no obligations except the ones I choose. I should be enjoying it.
Instead, I keep checking my phone.
Still nothing.
"Dude, what is going on with you?" Kai asks. "You've looked at your phone like fifty times in the past ten minutes."
"Waiting on something."
"A deal?"
"Something like that."
Owen leans back on his elbows, studying me. "Must be a big one. I haven't seen you this wired since the Meridian acquisition."
It’s bigger than that, bigger than any deal I've ever made.
One of the women approaches, introduces herself as Vanessa or Veronica, I'm not really paying attention. She's pretty, blonde, exactly the type I usually go for. She sits down next to me and starts talking about something, but I can't focus on her words.
My phone buzzes.
I pull it out so fast I nearly drop it. It’s a notification from my bank.
Transaction processed: $387,443.00
She did it! She cashed the check.
"Everything okay?" the woman next to me asks.
"Yeah." I stand up, suddenly restless. "I need to make a call. Excuse me."
I walk down the beach, away from the fire and the music and the questions. When I'm far enough away that no one can hear me, I stop and stare out at the ocean.
She took the money.
Now comes the hard part. Convincing her to come to me.
I pull out my phone again and open a notes app where I've been drafting and redrafting a letter for the past week. The words have to be perfect. Not too demanding, not too desperate. Just enough to intrigue her without scaring her off.
Tonight, I’m going to write it on good paper and overnight delivery it to Jade's address.
Then I open her blog again. There's a new post, published just an hour ago.
Title: "The Check"
What would you do?
$387,443 appears in your mailbox. No explanation. Just two initials.
You don't know who sent it. You don't know why. You don't know what they want.
But you're drowning. And this is a life raft.
Do you grab it? Even if you don't know who's pulling you to shore?
I did. God help me, I did.
I read it three times, searching for any hint of what she's feeling. Fear? Hope? Curiosity?
The comments section is empty. She doesn't have many readers, just a handful of other writers who occasionally leave encouraging words. But I've been reading every post for years now, watching her document her struggles and dreams and fears in careful, beautiful prose.
She writes like she's afraid someone might hear her. Like she's whispering secrets to an empty room.
Soon she won't have to whisper anymore.
I walk back to the fire. Owen and Kai are deep in conversation with the women, and no one notices when I grab my stuff and head up the stairs to my house.
Inside, I pour myself a whiskey and sit down at my desk to wait. The letter will arrive tomorrow morning. She'll read it, probably panic, maybe call her friend Chloe for advice.
The house is quiet except for the sound of the ocean below.
I open my laptop one more time, not to check the bank account but to look at a folder I've kept hidden for years.
Inside are screenshots of her blog posts, photos from her Instagram before she made it private, a scanned copy of a photograph I stole when I was ten years old.
A little girl in a purple dress, smiling at the camera. Dark hair, dark eyes, a gap between her front teeth that's probably gone now.
Because seventeen years ago, I made a promise to myself. And I always keep my promises.