CHAPTER TWELVE

Adrian's POV

I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and practised the name.

“Cole Global.”

Too fast. I tried again, slower, the way the men on the financial channels spoke when they wanted a room to lean in.

“Adrian Cole. Chief executive, Cole Global.”

Better.

The mirror was cracked in one corner, and the light above the sink buzzed, but the man in the glass looked like money. Clean shave. White shirt. The good tie. If I squinted, I almost saw a magazine cover.

I grew up in the Bronx, in two rooms above a laundromat. My mother cleaned office towers in Westbridge at night. When I was twelve, she took me to work with her once because the sitter quit. I sat in a leather chair on the fortieth floor of a building with somebody else's name on the door and watched her empty bins under a desk bigger than our kitchen.

I made myself a promise in the service elevator on the way down.

One day, I would own a tower of my own. One day, women like my mother would clean my floors, and I would make sure they were paid well, and I would never once have to sit in a chair which belonged to somebody else.

One day. 

Today, I was twenty-seven years old. I had three employees, an office above a dry cleaner and a bank rejection letter in my desk drawer.

I also had a sister-in-law who had made me look like a fool in front of the only family in Westbridge willing to open doors for me.

The dinner still burned in me. 

Discounted cash flow. Bonds and interest rates. Debt-to-equity. Isabella had asked her little questions in her soft voice, with her hands folded on the tablecloth, and Richard Whitmore had stared at me with open disgust.

Isabella. The quiet one. The sister nobody noticed.

Where had she learned to talk like this?

And why did she look at me as if she already knew how I would answer?

I splashed water on my face.

The dream…

The dream had come again last night. In fact, it came every night now.

The dream was of a marble staircase. White steps veined with grey. A woman lying at the bottom with her dark hair spread across the floor. I always stood at the top. I always looked down. I never saw her face.

Every night I woke with my heart slamming and my hands shaking. Some mornings my nails had cut half-moons into my palms. And every night I told myself the same thing.

Stress. It can only stress. After all, a man starting an empire did not sleep like a baby.

***

“Northway Freight,” Vanessa said over breakfast. Again.

“Vanessa.”

“I'm serious. Look at Northway. Trucks, warehouses, rail contracts. Logistics is the future. Energy and logistics. You have to think bigger.”

“I need money to think bigger.”

“Then find money.”

“From where? Your father?”

Her mouth thinned. “Father is busy.”

Father was always busy now, I thought. Too busy to return my calls. Too busy to sign over the apartment. Too busy to explain why the Whitmore Enterprises shares in Vanessa's settlement still existed only on paper.

“Trust me,” Vanessa said, buttering toast she never ate. “I know these things.”

“How?”

She smiled and did not answer.

She said the name Northway every day now. As though she had read the future in a newspaper and was waiting for the rest of us to catch up.

She had renamed my firm on Monday, as promised. New cards. A new sign on the door. Cole Global, in silver letters on frosted glass, above a dry cleaner on Pell Street. The sign had cost four hundred dollars. The letters were bigger than the window.

Grace, my part-time bookkeeper, had looked at the sign and then at me and said nothing at all. Grace was a single mother who left every day at three to collect her son. She kept our books in a binder and kept her opinions to herself.

The bank had said no.

Simon Leach at Blackwood had said yes, eventually. Twenty million from Blackwood's emerging manager programme, recommended by research, signed by the investment committee in November. A small consulting f*e for Simon, of course. Everyone paid for doors.

But November was weeks away, and Simon was in no hurry.

I needed money now.

***

He walked into my office at eleven on Wednesday without an appointment.

Late twenties. A charcoal suit worth more than my car. Dark hair, easy smile, and a thin white scar through his chin which somehow made the smile more charming instead of less.

“Adrian Cole?” He held out his hand. “Marcus Hale. Hale Advisory.”

“Do we have a meeting?”

“We do now.” He sat down without being asked and crossed one leg over the other. “First National turned you down for a nine-million-dollar facility three weeks ago. Collateral too thin. Revenue too thin. Founder too young.”

My jaw tightened. “Who told you?”

“Banks talk. So do loan officers who like a drink after work.” He smiled. “Relax. I'm not here to embarrass you. I'm here because banks are cowards, and cowards never build anything.”

I liked him at once. I hated how much I liked him.

“What does Hale Advisory do?”

“I connect ambitious men with lenders who ask fewer questions.” He spread his hands. “Private credit. Fast money for fast people. You want energy? Logistics? Real assets? You need capital before the market notices you exist.”

“Who's the lender?”

“Meridian Bridge Capital.”

I knew the name. Every man in finance in Westbridge knew the name.

“Gideon Vale's fund.”

“The lending arm of Vale Meridian Partners. Gideon likes ambitious young men.” Marcus leaned forward. “And between us, Gideon enjoys nothing more than funding the next man to beat Nathaniel Blackwood.”

Nathaniel Blackwood.

I saw his hand on my wrist in the Whitmores' front hall immediately. His fingers opening mine, one by one, while my wife's family watched. We are not brothers.

Something hot and sweet moved through my chest.

“How much?” I asked.

***

By six o'clock the same evening, I had a term sheet on my desk.

Fifteen million dollars from Meridian Bridge Capital. Three years. Sixteen percent interest, paid monthly. Secured against Cole Global, every asset Cole Global would ever buy, and my personal guarantee. Two percent to Hale Advisory as a success f*e.

Sixteen percent. Banks charged seven.

Banks had also said no.

“Sixteen is steep,” I said.

Marcus shrugged. “Low rates are for men who plan to fail. You don't plan to fail, do you, Adrian?”

He held out his own pen. Heavy, black, gold-tipped.

“Sign, and the money lands on Friday,” he said. “Or wait for Simon Leach and his committee.”

He knew about Simon too. I did not ask how.

I signed even as something in me told me that I might be selling my soul to the devil. 

Marcus stood, buttoned his jacket, and shook my hand.

“Welcome to the big table, Mr. Cole.”

After he left, I sat alone in my office above the dry cleaner and looked at my signature on the term sheet.

Fifteen million dollars.

For the first time in my life, I felt like a king.

***

Marcus came back at noon on Thursday with the final loan agreement. We were halfway through the signature pages when the office door opened.

“Surprise,” Vanessa sang. “I brought lunch. Turkey on rye, and two coffees, extra hot, because a man running an empire needs...”

She stopped in the doorway and the paper bag slipped out of her hands.

The coffees hit the floor and burst. Brown liquid spread across the cheap carpet, around Marcus's polished shoes, under my desk.

Vanessa did not move to save the sandwiches. She did not even look down.

She was staring at Marcus.

Marcus rose to his feet, stepped around the spreading coffee, and smiled at her the way he smiled at everybody.

“Mrs. Cole,” he said. “A pleasure.”

Every drop of colour drained from my wife's face.

***

Vanessa's POV

I knew the scar on his chin.

I knew the smile. I knew the voice. I knew the cufflinks, silver knots, the same pair he wore in my first life on the night he told me Nathaniel would never find out.

He did not know me. In this life, Marcus Hale had never seen my face before today. So why was he smiling at me as though he had already decided what I was worth?

The last time I saw Marcus Hale, he walked out of a hotel room with my last ten thousand dollars.