CHAPTER ELEVEN

Adrian saw me before the elevator doors finished opening.

His smile slipped for half a second. Then the smile came back, wider and sharper, and his thought reached me across twenty feet of grey carpet.

What the hell is she doing here?

Another thought came right behind the first.

Nathaniel's little wife, playing office. Or spying for him. Tsk!

Simon Leach turned to see what had caught Adrian's attention.

He was forty-six, tall and polished, with silver at his temples and a pocket square folded into three sharp points. He looked at me the way a man looks at a stain on a good shirt.

“Ms. Whitmore,” he said. “Right on time.”

Adrian let go of Simon's hand. “Isabella. Small world.”

“Good morning, Adrian.”

He strolled towards the elevator, and as he passed me, he dipped his head close to my ear.

“Learned any new definitions this week?”

I stepped into the corridor without looking at him. “Good morning, Adrian,” I repeated.

The elevator doors closed on his smirk.

Simon's thoughts arrived before he opened his mouth.

The chairman's bride and her brother-in-law in my lobby on the same morning. Marvellous.

Then, colder.

Ten million dollars of Blackwood capital so the chairman's new wife gets to play analyst on my floor. Three months of babysitting. I spent nineteen years earning this floor.

“Let me show you around,” he said aloud, with a smile.

I followed him across the research floor. Forty desks. Two walls of screens. The hum of a hundred conversations about money.

Behind his smile, Simon kept thinking.

Cole's allocation goes to the investment committee in November. Twenty million to an emerging manager. Research recommends, the committee signs. Two hundred thousand a year to Leach Consulting for my advice. Nobody reads a consulting contract.

I kept my face perfectly blank.

So Adrian had not come here for a coff*e. He had come to buy a Blackwood allocation with a bribe dressed up as a consulting f*e.

I filed the fact away in the back of my mind, beside every other thing I had no way to prove.

Hearing a thought was not evidence. A thought was only a direction. Nothing more.

Simon stopped in the middle of the floor and clapped his hands twice.

“Everyone. A moment.”

Heads rose above the monitors.

“This is Isabella Whitmore, a family friend of the chairman. She'll be running a trial portfolio alongside our five for the next three months.” He paused. “Be nice.”

A ripple of laughter ran across the desks.

The thoughts arrived all at once.

Nepotism. Of course.

A trophy with a terminal.

Pretty. Useless, but pretty.

How long before she cries? I give her a week.

I smiled at the room and said, “Good morning.”

By lunch, I had a nickname.

I heard the words first inside Brad Kessler's head while he stood at the coffee machine. Then I heard them out loud, when he said them to the man beside him.

“The charity case wants a desk by the window.”

I had not asked for a desk by the window. I had only asked for a chair which did not wobble.

At half past twelve, my phone buzzed.

Nathaniel: How is the forty-first floor?

Me: The coffee is a crime. And I have a nickname.

Nathaniel: What nickname?!

Me: The charity case.

The typing dots appeared and disappeared three times.

Nathaniel: Do you want me to come down?

Me: Don't you dare.

Nathaniel: Then win.

I put the phone face down on the desk and found I was smiling.

***

Five analysts ran the identical portfolios.

Four of them were men. Brad Kessler led them. He was twenty-eight, Simon's favourite, with gelled hair and a large gold watch he checked every few minutes so everyone noticed the watch. Kyle, Owen, and Pete laughed at his jokes a beat before the punchline.

The fifth analyst was Tobi Adeyemi.

She was twenty-six, Nigerian-American, with braids pinned up in a neat crown and a navy suit which had belonged to someone else first. The sleeves were a little long. She had rolled them back once, carefully, to hide the length.

At the nine o'clock meeting on my second morning, Simon asked the five of them for their views on the week.

Tobi spoke first.

“The regional power auctions are clearing higher for the third month running. Grid operators are paying for storage capacity at...”

“Power's a utility play,” Brad said over her. “Boring money. Tech's where the momentum is.”

Simon nodded at Brad.

Tobi closed her mouth.

Ten minutes later, Brad leaned back in his chair. “Here's what nobody's talking about. Grid storage. The power auctions keep clearing higher.”

Simon wrote the point down. “Good catch, Brad.”

Tobi's face did not move. Her thoughts did.

Third time this month. Fine. Write the point down. Date the note. Keep the paper.

Then, quieter, tired.

Half my salary goes home to Mummy on Friday. Her rent is due on the fifth. Keep your head down, Tobi. Keep your head down and win.

After the meeting, I walked past her desk on my way to the printer.

Her screen showed her model. Back-tested returns, risk-adjusted, across three years of data.

Brad's model sat on the shared screen at the front of the room.

Hers was better. By a wide margin.

She caught me looking and minimised the window.

“Do you need something?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “But your storage numbers are right.”

She stared at me. Her thoughts flickered with suspicion and something close to surprise.

The charity case reads auction data?

***

At eleven, Julian Cross strolled onto the floor.

He was thirty-one, sandy-haired, in shirtsleeves with no tie and he moved through the room as though the whole building was a party he was hosting. Analysts sat up straighter as he passed.

He stopped at my desk.

“Ms. Whitmore,” he said gravely. “Welcome to the forty-first floor. I'm told the coffee is a crime.”

“I'm told the same about the analysts.”

He grinned. His thoughts were warm and amused.

So this is the wife. Nathaniel undersold her.

When nobody was looking, he winked at me.

Then he wandered to Tobi's desk and leaned on the partition.

“Ms. Adeyemi. I read your note on the power auctions. Have dinner with me and walk me through the model.”

Tobi did not look up from her screen as she spoke, “Mr. Cross, my model fits on one page, and so does my answer. No.”

Four desks went silent.

Julian put a hand over his heart, bowed slightly, and walked away grinning.

I'm going to marry this woman, he thought.

I bent my head over my keyboard so nobody saw me smile.

***

At two o'clock, I placed my first trades.

Forty percent of the portfolio into short-dated government bonds. Thirty-five percent into a listed renewable infrastructure fund which owned solar farms, wind farms, and battery storage under long-term power contracts. The rest in cash.

Zero technology.

The trades were confirmed on my screen one by one. My three months had begun.

Across the room, Kyle laughed first.

Technology stocks were up four percent this week. Every screen on the floor glowed green with chip makers and cloud companies and social media darlings. Every analyst on the floor owned them.

Except me.

Brad stood up from his desk with his phone in his hand and announced to the whole room, “The charity case bought solar.”

The floor erupted.

Pete slapped his desk. Owen wiped his eyes. Even a few of the senior staff at the far end looked up and chuckled.

I kept my eyes on my screen.

In my first life, I had sat through a hundred dinners while men laughed at my ideas. Then I had watched the same men toast Adrian when my ideas made them money.

Laughter cost nothing. Being wrong cost money.

Only one person on the floor was not laughing.

Tobi Adeyemi sat still, her eyes on my positions.

Short-dated bonds. Storage contracts. No tech at all. She's not guessing. She's bracing for something.

Then, slowly.

What does she know?

***

At six, the floor began to empty.

I packed my laptop bag and walked towards the elevators. The route took me past Simon's glass office.

He sat behind his desk with his jacket off, his pocket square still perfect, watching me through the glass. He lifted a hand in a polite little wave.

I waved back.

His thought followed me down the corridor in a manner smooth and certain.

Two weeks. Her numbers will never reach the chairman clean.