Page 58 of Legally Yours
“Well, I wasn’t quite twenty when I finished here,” he said. “Even the small investment firms were nervous about taking me on that young.”
It had been a frustrating year, he told me as he steered us down another street lined with much taller buildings. Despite having a degree from one of the best schools in the world, he barely got a job as an assistant at a small hedge fund.
“I don’t blame any of them. Imagine me: an eight-foot-tall, skin-and-bones kid with acne, spouting what probably sounded like conspiracy theories about the marketplace.” He chuckled. “I wouldn’t have hired me either.”
His foster parents had allowed him to continue living with them rent-free so he could try his hand at investing the small salary he made working part time.
“They sound like they really believed in you,” I said.
“They’re good people,” Brandon agreed. “I don’t know where I’d be without them. I lived in a few homes before them, but with people who already had about five kids and were just looking to collect welfare.” He looked grim at the memories, but quickly shook them off. “Ray and Susan couldn’t have kids of their own.”
“Did they ever have any other kids live with them?”
“Nope,” Brandon said with a lopsided grin. “Just little old me.”
It turned out to be a good investment for them. His algorithm ended up predicting certain dot-com stock trends with uncanny accuracy, allowing him to triple his paltry minimum-wage salary within six months. He also managed to create a nice retirement for his foster parents within five years, get himself a decent job at a hedge fund, and later, pay his way through law school.
Brandon kicked a stray rock after he finished telling me the story. He shrugged again, suddenly bashful the way only certain men can be when they are pleased with themselves. I squeezed his arm, although I was still processing the gravity of his accomplishments. All that by the time he was, what, maybe twenty-five?
“I’m surprised you didn’t just become the next Gordon Gecko, or whatever,” I said, doing my best to make light of his past despite the fact that I was awestruck and a little worried. He did run an investment firm. Maybe he was like the character, an investment snake, just nicer looking.
Brandon just snorted. “It was just a means to an end, and my goals at fifteen, or even nineteen, weren’t really the same ones I had ten or twenty years later. It becomes sad after a while, knowing your only job is basically to play a game—one that’s not that challenging, honestly—with money, a lot of which is legally swindled. I went to law school mostly out of curiosity, to know what my lawyers were doing, but I ended up really liking the law for that reason—I like the way justice works in court. Everyone has to be held accountable.”
He started Sterling Grove with one of his old law school classmates initially to represent the interests of some of his investments, but eventually it became the voice of a company that began working with closely held startups, allowing Brandon and his partners to pick and choose projects that, as he put it, actually made something more than just money. Many of those companies were now closely associated with his independent investment group, Sterling Ventures.
“I guess you could say I have my fingers in a bunch of different pies now,” he concluded, coming to a stop so he faced me.
He took my free hand with his other one and let our arms dangle, connected.
“Which do you like best?” I asked.
He tipped his head slightly from side to side, weighing the question. “I’m not sure. We funded a couple of instructional design projects that were pretty amazing a few years ago. But lately, I’ve been interested more in helping with some renewable energy ideas. There’s this—” He cut himself off abruptly and smiled sheepishly. “Actually, Skylar, I can’t talk about it yet. I trust you and all, but—”
“I get it,” I interrupted, though I desperately wanted to know. “Liability. Don’t worry about it.”
“It’s just…sensitive.” His voice rang with a passion I hadn’t heard in the rest of his story. “When I can say something, I promise you’ll be the first to know.” He looked around at the darkened silhouettes of the campus buildings that loomed over us and back down at me. “This is really what you want?” he asked. “Listening to me jabber on while we walk around these ugly buildings?”
“Is this who you are?”
“It’s part,” he said simply.
“Then yes,” I replied. “I want to know whatever there is to know about you. I just want the truth.”
Brandon squeezed my hands tightly and nodded, then let go of one as he turned toward the building where we had stopped, an unassuming brick box that stood a bit out of the way of the streetlamps. It didn’t seem like enough to house the brilliance undoubtedly inside.
“Home sweet home,” he said. “So to speak. Come on, Red. I’m going to introduce you to the man who raised me.”
* * *
Raymond Petersen’soffice was at the end of a dreary hall that housed the Electrical Engineering faculty. A thin, hunched man with sparse gray hair and large glasses perched on a long nose, he wore stereotypical professor garb: faded khaki pants and a plaid, button-down shirt rolled up his forearms. A brown sport coat was tossed over the back of his chair. Engrossed in some sort of problem, he didn’t stop scratching equations at his very messy desk for at least a minute after Brandon knocked on the open door.
“Bran.” He pushed back from his rolling desk chair and stepped over multiple piles of library books in order to execute a brief, awkward embrace with his foster son, who towered over him. “This is a surprise.”
They eyed each other warily, reminding me of a nature show where two wolves circled each other, sniffing.
“We were just in the neighborhood and thought we’d catch you after your last class. Susan said you were running a graduate seminar on Friday evenings now.”
Ray turned toward me at the word “we.”