Step Aside, I'm the King of Capital novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Steps

Security throws Tristan out on Sullivan's signal, and on the steps a CEO taking a hospice call asks him to marry her tonight; her uncle's car pulls up behind them.

The two men took me by the elbows and didn't say a word.

I let them.

Sullivan had already turned his back, and he was shaking Lavinia's father's hand.

His other hand trembled at his side.

I had hired him for his steady hands.

The security men walked me across the lobby, through the revolving door and down the marble steps to the curb.

"Don't come back, sir," one of them said, almost kindly.

Then they went in, and the door whispered shut behind them.

It was a cold October night, and my overcoat was still on a chair inside.

I sat down on the third step with a ring in my pocket and no one to give it to.

My phone buzzed.

It was Ottilie.

"Did you mean it?" she said. "I'll need a reason for the auditors."

"Give them the truth," I said. "The donor changed his mind."

"And Sullivan?"

"He just had me thrown out of the room."

She was quiet for a moment.

"I've never liked that man's hands," she said.

I laughed once, and it came out wrong.

"Go to bed, Ottilie."

"It's one in the morning," she said. "I'm already in bed. I'm sitting up in it now."

I hung up.

Behind me the door opened and let out a slice of violin music.

A woman came down the steps fast, one hand pressed to her phone and the other holding a charcoal blazer shut over a black silk top.

She was tall, with a sharp ash-brown bob and a man's dive watch on her wrist.

She didn't see me until she almost stepped on me.

"Move, please," she said. Then she looked again. "No. You're him."

"I'm who?"

"The pledge," she said. "You're the man who proposed and then cost the Crane Foundation two million dollars in under four minutes."

"I didn't cost them anything," I said. "I took back what I'd given."

She stared at me.

On the phone against her ear a thin voice said something about hours.

"I'm on my way," she told the voice. "Tell her I'm on my way. Please tell her."

She ended the call.

Her hand stayed on the phone, and I watched her breathe in through her nose.

"Bad news?" I said.

"My grandmother is dying in a hospice on Butler Street," she said. "The nurse says tonight."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry. Be useful." She sat down on the step beside me, in her good trousers, on the cold stone. "What's your name?"

"Tristan Rowe."

"Emerson Lindahl. I run Lindahl Cold Storage." She watched my face. "That means nothing to you."

"I'm from Lawrenceville," I said. "I know the warehouses on the river. I used to drive past them on the bus."

For the first time, she almost smiled.

"Who's the woman you proposed to?"

"Lavinia Crane. She picked Mr. S."

"Everyone picks Mr. S," Emerson said. "He's trying to buy my company."

I kept my face still, and it cost me.

"Is that so?"

"My uncle's been taking his calls since August," she said. "Tonight he's inside, telling Mr. S's people which of my buildings is the best one."

She said it without any heat at all.

"What does your grandmother have to do with it?"

"Everything." She turned to look at me directly. "She holds forty-one percent of the company in a family trust. Her will says it goes to me and my husband, if I have one when she dies."

"And if you don't?"

"It goes to the chairman of the board."

"Your uncle."

"My uncle," she said.

A black sedan idled at the corner.

Neither of us had looked at it yet.

Emerson put a hand in the pocket of her blazer and took out a folded piece of paper.

It was a county marriage license, stamped and signed.

A name had been scratched out in the groom's space with a pen.

"I got that in September for a man who left the week after," she said. "It's good for sixty days. It expires on the fourteenth of November."

I looked at her.

"You're not serious."

"Marry me tonight," she said. "Not for real. It's a contract. You do it at her bedside, she dies knowing I'm covered, and then I'll sign anything you want."

"You don't know me."

"I know you stood up in front of three hundred people who laughed at you and made one phone call." She tilted her head. "I know the man who laughed at you is going to ask where you went."

"That's not a reason."

"It's the only one I have," she said. "You walked out alone, and you didn't beg. I'm out of time and I'm out of better men."

Behind her the black sedan's door opened.

A man in a tweed vest climbed out with his phone at his ear and his bald head shining under the streetlight.

His eyes found Emerson, and the face under the mustache began to smile.

"That's him," she said quietly. "He knows where the hospice is, and he's going to stop me."

"Then we'd better go," I said.

She was on her feet before I'd finished the sentence.

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