Page 2 of For Your Eyes Only
Remaining off the record, in the deep background, protects me. I never stick my neck out for anyone. It's a world of poker players, and I’ve got the straightest face in the group—or should I say, the most detached smile.
“Don’t speak to me that way.” My mother acts offended, but she’s not.
Turning from the window to the mini-bar, I pour a tumbler of vodka casually. “Forgive me. I wasn’t trying to be rude. Would you like a drink?”
“Of course.” She touches her hair lightly with her fingertips, preening like a goldfinch in her bright yellow Balenciaga caftan. “The very idea of you sleeping with my best friend, a woman twice your age. What would your father say?”
“He’d make some crack about my manhood.” I glance at the bronze urn on the mantle holding his ashes. “He’d wonder aloud why I couldn’t land a girl my own age or something like that.”
William Robert Alexander II took great pride in tearing his only son and namesake to shreds. He’d focus his green eyes on me like a hawk, ready to rip through any exposed weakness or vulnerability. I hated him, but he taught me to be strong.
He sent me to the finest boarding schools his inherited wealth could buy. He made sure I got into Columbia, then when I realized I didn’t need him, I quit wasting everyone’s time and dropped out.
Naturally, he had many unkind things to say about that decision, and what he dubbed my failure to finish anything, as if he had any idea the deals I was closing. But I had stopped listening to that old bully a long time ago.
“Your father wasdifficult, but he took care of us financially. We can be thankful for that.”
Did he?For starters, it wasn’t his fortune to leave, not that it matters to me, and secondly, his finances always came with strings—or barbed hooks.
“I find other things to be thankful for.” I hand her the drink.
She can live off the spoils of an unhappy marriage, pretending to be unaffected by years of emotional abuse, but I’m doing everything in my power to divorce myself from that man’s legacy. I’m so close to being completely, utterly, independently wealthy. I just have to stay focused, then I’m cashing out, leaving the game.
“Still,” she continues, “I don’t know why you’d want to validate his low opinion of you by sleeping with that woman.”
Taking a sip of my drink, I decide it’s time to prick the air out of her precious gossip bubble. “I didn’t sleep with Belinda Desayda-Rice.”
Her eyes narrow, and I can tell she’s trying to decide if I'm being honest.Give me a break. Of course, I didn’t sleep with Belinda. I could murder Grish for putting me in this position. He’s the one who can’t keep his dick in his pants.
Greg Peters is one of my most trusted business partners—because we’re the same age and equally hungry. He’s from Moscow, so whileGrishais the Russian diminutive for Greg, I shorten it further toGrish.
Shaking her head, she sighs. “I confess, I wasn’t sold on the story. Belinda isn’t your style, and you’ve been friends with Debbie since you were a child. It would be too bizarre.” My mother lifts the olive from her drink, chewing as she speaks. “But why would anyone spread such a lie? It must be a terrible strain for you, Trip dear.”
I can think of several reasons Belinda would allow people to think I was her lover. For starters, it feeds her ego. It makes her look desirable if an ambitious twenty-something wants to fuck her, but more importantly, it distracts everyone from the fact she’s actually sleeping with her daughter’s boyfriend.
Fucking Grish. My clever Russian pal thinks he’s scored a pair of queens, but he’s got a seven and a two—a notoriously bad hand in poker.
“It’ll blow over in a few days.” I pause at the mirror to straighten my yellow silk tie.
My thick brown hair curls around my ears, and dark stubble is on my cheeks. I need a trim and a shave, and I want to be anywhere but this goddamned city. I’m not in the mood for bullshit.
In that moment, I decide. “I’m going out of town for a few weeks. I’ll check on our properties in West Palm…”And my own business investmentswhile this drama dies out.
In south Florida my work is more colorful and a lot more relaxing.
“Sounds lovely.” Mother walks over to give me air kisses. “I’m leaving for Saint Moritz on Monday, so before you go, would you be a dear?”
She smiles sweetly, which means she wants me to transfer money into her account. My father couldn’t stop her from pursuing other interests (a.k.a.,othermen) after he died, so in his will, he put me in charge of her purse strings. Barbed hooks.
As long as she remains single, she’s entitled to as much of the family estate as I am, but if she ever remarries, she’s out. Our eyes meet, and I catch a flicker of apprehension in hers.
It fucking pisses me off.
My father put me in this position of power because he hoped it would turn me into him. It gnawed at him when I would watch him be a racist, elitist bastard and not laugh at his jokes. It infuriated him when I drank vodka instead of scotch. He called me names and said I thought I was better than him.
I didn’t think it. IknewI was better than him, and the idea that he’d put me in a position to make my mother cower stirs an anger so deep in me it almost breaks my façade. Does she truly think she has to beg for what she deserves?
I suppose all those years of having to account for every penny created a mindset she can’t break. My father was a nouveau-riche dipshit who didn’t realize the truly wealthy never think about money.