Chapter 29 #2
“No, Bram, you’re not getting it. I’m cut off, man.
Like, fully. The whole angel investing thing?
My dad let me run it, as a kind of…test. And according to him, I failed.
And now he’s not giving me a penny more.
His words. I’m living in a house that isn’t mine.
I have to beg my dad for any dollar I need to live.
Ajax Prop was the one investment I had that’s in the black.
The one investment that made me think maybe I’d pull my fund out from underwater at some point down the line.
But given you’re sitting here trying to blackmail me, I’m gonna take a shot in the dark and say AP’s a failure, too. ”
When his father didn’t respond with outraged defenses, Zach only heard his mother’s voice.
There’s nothing to have.
“But, there’s got to be…” his father came through strained as if speaking from far away. “Wait, you mentioned your place in LA? And you fly private. A trust fund, or—”
“I’m thinking you know a bit about how to look like you have money when you’ve got nothing, Bram. The banks are all over me. That check you gave me, that’s going straight to them, whether I like it or not.”
A tapping noise. Bram pacing?
“Your dad wouldn’t want this coming out,” Bram said. “Maybe if you tell him about Ginny, he’d—”
Pike interrupted with a scoff that ended in a kind of sob.
“Please. He’ll throw a damn party over this.
” Pike collected himself. “In his mind, it’ll prove he was right, and that’s all he really cares about.
He couldn’t stand that the rest of the family was on my side, on and on about how he worked his way up from nothing.
How I’m a spoiled brat. The same old tired nonsense.
The man inherited a quarter-of-a-billion-dollar empire at twenty-two that’s worth less now than it was in the seventies, and I’m the entitled one?
I’m the bad investor? But he believes it.
He believes every word of his own bullshit.
Once he cut me out of the will, the rest of the family shut up.
The cowards are too scared he’ll do the same to them if they don’t get in line. ”
“So there’s nothing? Really nothing?”
“Technically, less than nothing.” Pike sounded perversely pleased at being able to rub his failure in Bram’s face. “I owe around five hundred grand.” He paused, then added, “It makes sense now, though. What Ginny said.”
“Ginny?”
“You know her family cut her off, too? When she was in college, they found out her brother was gay, wanted to send him to one of those reeducation camps. But Ginny came and got him, and that was it. She had to figure out how to support herself, pay for her school, her brother’s, all of it.
After we broke up she wouldn’t even talk to me.
But when my dad cut me off, I knew she’d see we were the same.
I just had to get her to listen, you know?
” Pike took a long breath, shedding his sad desperation as he continued, words a release of pressurized spite.
“But when I came up here early, when I tried to explain, she refused to hear me. So self-righteous. So smug. Said her being cut off was nothing like me pissing away millions of dollars. Those were the words she used. Vulgar, you know? She whined about stuff that didn’t even matter from when we were dating, like how I wouldn’t let her see her friends, told her to close her social media accounts or whatever, when obviously all that was me trying to protect her.
And then,” Pike paused for dramatic effect.
“She said my dad was right to cut me off. Because I was an idiot who fell for your scam with Ajax Prop.”
Bram didn’t respond.
“I thought maybe she was in on it, but looking at you now I can see you didn’t know she was onto you.
But yeah, even Ginny figured out you were a fraud.
Even Ginny, who was stupid enough to kick a nice guy to the curb for no reason, then go gold-digging after a married man.
And she called me stupid, because of you.
It was—humiliating. It was all like—like I had no say in any of it.
Why should she get to decide? Why should she get to look down on me?
” A wistful tone crept into Pike’s voice.
“I loved her. If I didn’t love her so much, none of this would’ve happened. ”
“Brought it on herself,” Bram murmured almost automatically, as if his mind was elsewhere.
Annoyed by Bram’s apparent detachment, Pike snapped, “If you hadn’t cheated me, things wouldn’t have gone this way.
This is on you. Who knows how she would’ve used what she knew.
She was probably trying to figure out how to drain you of every damn dime.
I mean, that’s what she tried with me, with Shane.
Money’s all they care about.” A mirthless laugh.
“You think if I tell them you’re running some scam they’ll reduce my time, Bram? ”
At this the two men went quiet, and Zach wondered if they were trying to figure out, the way he was, what might be next. What each man wanted, and what he would do to get it.
Bram’s voice punctured the quiet, calm and even. “It’s not just me who knows what happened to Ginny, Pike. My son knows, too.”
A cold thing slithered around Zach’s heart. Squeezed.