CHAPTER 5
1177 Words
I looked back at the screen. The program was still running. Give it another twenty minutes and I would have the account holder's name.
Twenty minutes.
But Christina had been talking about this event for weeks. Something about it mattered. I should remember what. Should have been paying attention when she explained it.
My door opened.
The valet. Looking apologetic.
I glanced at my screen one more time. The progress bar: 23% complete.
Fuck.
"Fine."
I closed the laptop. Grabbed my phone. The account number was still in my head: #3829.
I could work with that later.
I sat there for another second. Then opened the door. The noise came first – voices, camera shutters, heels on marble. Then the lights. The hotel had that expensive brightness that made everything look like a magazine spread.
Photographers on the steps. People in tuxedos who all looked the same, all here to donate money they would write off while congratulating themselves for caring.
Someone in that building was paying my mother's bills.
Account #3829.
I would figure out who.
I walked inside, already opening my phone to pull up the tracking program again.
---
CHRISTINA
The necklace kept pulling my attention. My fingers would drift up, touch the chain, check that it was still there. Still intact. It shouldn't feel this heavy.
Seventeen pieces.
I could still see them on my workbench. The clasp had snapped clean off. Three links were just... gone. Three links in pieces so tiny I had to use my phone flashlight to find them all. The pendant was across the room – actually across the room – caked in dust like it had been there for weeks. Someone had just... let it fall. Walked away.
But I found them.
I was down there for two hours. Hands black with dust, knees aching, sorting through garbage and wood shavings and god knows what else. But I found every piece. Every single one.
Then forty-three hours at my workbench. Soldering each link. Testing the strength. Making sure it wouldn't break again.
There was one link – the seventh from the clasp – that had been almost powder. I had to fabricate a replacement from scratch. Matching the metal took three tries. Then I had to age it with acid so it wouldn't look brand new next to the others.
No one would ever know it wasn't original.
But I knew.
I touched it again now.
Hudson still wasn't here.
The ballroom was filling up. I recognized most of the faces. The same donors at every event. They'd write their checks, shake hands, go home feeling good about themselves. None of them would ever meet the people they claimed to help.
I used to hate them.
And now here I was. Running their galas. Laughing when they made terrible jokes. Telling them how generous they were while they patted themselves on the back.
All so I could stay in Hudson's orbit.
I'd made myself essential to him. Showed up before he did, left after he did, anticipated what he needed before he asked. And he still only saw me as someone who made his life easier.
Some woman had destroyed him. That much I knew. Five years ago there was supposed to be a wedding – I saw the announcement before it was pulled from the society pages. Hudson Herrera and... someone. I never learned her name.
But three days after the wedding date, Hudson showed up at my father's office for a meeting and he looked –
Hollow.
That was the only word for it. Hollow. Like something essential had been scooped out and he was just walking around with the shell.
And I thought: I can fix this.
The way I fixed the necklace. Carefully. Piece by piece. Patient enough to let it take as long as it needed.
But it had been five years and he still didn't see me.
He saw a business partner. A convenience. Someone who made his life easier.
Not someone who had been in love with him since the first time he walked into that meeting and pitched Herrera Security with such quiet certainty that I forgot how to breathe.
The doors opened.
Hudson walked in on his phone.
I looked away.
"Harker Armswell is here."
My father. Right next to me. I hadn't heard him approach.
Harker. Of course. He'd been circling the firm for six months, trying to convince everyone he was more than his trust fund.
"He's been asking about Singapore," my father said.
Singapore.
My father met VitaGen's CEO at a conference in Geneva last February. Some sustainability panel he got invited to because Brisson Capital likes to look like we care about ESG investing. He came back talking about this biotech firm that was "doing something interesting with crops."
That's all he said. "Something interesting with crops."
So I looked into it.
VitaGen had developed a fungal resistance gene modification for rice. And before your eyes glaze over – this actually mattered. Rice blast fungus destroys twenty to thirty percent of rice crops globally every year. Farmers lose billions. People go hungry. VitaGen figured out how to modify rice plants to resist the fungus without using pesticides that f**k up everything else.
They had real data. Field trials in Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines. The modification worked. Yields went up thirty percent. Pesticide use dropped to almost nothing.
Their problem was scaling. They needed manufacturing facilities, regulatory approval across multiple countries, and capital to survive the three to five years it would take to get through every government's approval process.
My father's genius contribution was saying, "Talk to Singapore."
So I talked to Singapore.
Singapore imports ninety percent of their food. Ninety percent. They're obsessed with food security – it's practically a national anxiety. They've been dumping money into vertical farming, agritech, anything that makes them less dependent on other countries not f*****g them over during the next supply chain crisis.
VitaGen's technology was exactly what they wanted.
But Singapore doesn't just hand you money and market access. Their Economic Development Board wanted proof we understood their strategic priorities. The Ministry of Trade wanted local partnerships. The Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority wanted compliance structures that proved we weren't just going to take their incentives and disappear.
I built all of it.
Partnership models with local universities for research. Manufacturing agreements with Singapore-based firms. Regulatory frameworks that satisfied their IP protection requirements and ours. Financial projections showing job creation, tax revenue, long-term commitment.
And the whole time I'm doing this, I'm also managing currency risk – we're moving forty million in initial capital, another sixty for phase two expansion. Singapore dollar to US dollar fluctuations could cost us millions if I f****d up the hedging.
Three months of this. Calls at 2 AM because Singapore is twelve hours ahead and the Ministry of Trade doesn't care about my sleep schedule. Building financial models during the day. Negotiating terms at night.
My father went to the Hamptons in July. “Strategic thinking time,” he called it.
- Writer
