Page 94 of Take Her
“Good.” I swallowed, and asked a question that’d been on my mind for a while. “Have you ever played this game with anyone else before?”
His head swiveled to look down at me slowly. “At what point did I ever make any of this sound like a game?”
I flushed beneath his attention.
“This,” he said, drawing a finger between the two of us, “is not a game. This,” he went on, circling around to indicate the whole rest of the building, “is absolutely a game, but I’m the best player. Now focus up, Business Lia,” he said, just as the elevator doors opened.
Everyone in the cafeteria was intensely interested in what Rhaim and I were getting to eat—and I knew running away like I had in Times Square was not an option. We got in line, got our food, and then I followed him to a corner table, where he sat himself against the wall. I sat across from him and tried to act natural while he pulled out a pencil and started sketching a pie chart on a napkin for me.
“This entire circle represents the shares we’ll make available. This amount’s already spoken for,” he said, cutting a very large wedge into it and shading it quickly. “And the man who’s bought them is going to shortly owe me a favor.”
“Which will be?” I asked.
“Getting you on the board.”
I had to stop myself from gasping.
“It makes sense,” Rhaim said, refuting whatever fears I was about to share. “I’ll make sure we never have an even number. They’ll always need to have a tie breaker—and who better than the girl with the right last name who already owns fifteen percent?”
I pitched my voice so that only he could hear it. “You would do that? For me?” And then I couldn’t help myself. “Why?”
Rhaim leaned back, considering this, and I realized he might not have asked himself that same question, up until that very moment. “Because you’re something pure. And I...am not.” Then he shook himself and continued at a quicker pace, as if to distract me. “Also I enjoy a challenge, and eventually I’ll get to get my dick wet, so shall I go on?”
“Yes. Please.”
“Very well,” he said, and illustrated out the rest of his plan, dividing the circle into additional pie pieces, and discussing the investment groups he’d already picked to give slices.
I looked at him when he was finished. “So all of this is coordinated in advance?” I asked. The way he was explaining things made it all feel rigged to me.
“At our level, yes. We’re not day trading, we’re talking about creating the game plan for a future billion-dollar company.” He folded the napkin up and put it into his pocket. “The more you can allocate in advance the better; only a fucking idiot would toss shares out to plebes like confetti.”
“Oh,” I said, having apparently never understood the actual process before.
“I mean we’ll still have to do the song and dance and presentations—all of the groups we’re interested in will make us sing for our supper. And it’ll require twenty-hour days for weeks on end—you might want to invest in a comfortable cot to keep here and make a go-bag with a change of clothes.”
I nodded like that absolutely was a thing I was prepared to do—because I would.
I wanted it.
But I couldn’t believe he was going to give everything to me so easily. “And you don’t want anything after that?”
He pierced me with his eyes. “Don’t mistake my generosity for kindness, little girl, because it is not. You told me the other day in my office you wanted what you were owed—well, I will want what I am owed, too, eventually, and God help you when I come to collect,” he said quietly, then his attention flickered behind me.
There was a distant whoop inside the cafeteria. I twisted to see why it’d happened, then saw people elbowing neighbors, showing them their phones. Jaws dropped, suited men slapped one another on their backs, women beamed and clapped their hands, and I realized I was watching news of the IPO travel around the room like a game of telephone.
And once they realized Rhaim was actually in the room with them, the man who was somehow going to make everything happen and create enough wealth for Corvo that some would trickle down into everyone’s pockets...
“Fucking yes!” someone shouted, to the laughter of others, and the men and women nearest us started to clap and cheer.
If avarice had a scent, it would’ve been in the air—a potent mixture of hope and greed—and I would’ve been lying if I’d said I didn’t find everything about the moment addictive.
“Welcome to going public,” Rhaim murmured, and to everyone else, he gave a wave that said they should knock it off—which only made them clap harder. “Come on,” he said, standing up, and gesturing at the sandwiches we hadn’t even started in on. “Let’s take these to go.”
By the time we made our way back upstairs, the maintenance people were done setting up the eastern cage on the twenty-second floor for us. It was a large, square meeting room, and had been outfitted with two main desks that were similar in size and facing one another, holding the same types of computers, with the same fancy office chairs—and I realized they were equal in every way. Rhaim truly was trying to give me my own footing. There were no differences between us here—except for the fact that only one of us was wearing underwear.
“We can toss a coin for them if you’d like,” he said, walking in behind me. I heard the glass door behind him slowly thunk into place.
“You weren’t kidding about the view,” I said, looking from between the desks out the wide windows.