Chapter 14: The Real Mr. S

I walked down the center aisle in front of three hundred people.

It was a long carpet, and I had never been so aware of my own feet.

The two security men reached me at the fourth row.

One of them put a hand on my elbow, the same elbow as before.

"Sir, you need to come with us."

"Let him walk," said the woman from the pension fund.

She hadn't raised her voice, and she hadn't stood.

Both men looked at the stage for instructions.

Sullivan looked at her, and I saw him weigh a scene against a customer.

"Of course," he said, and spread his hands. "Let the gentleman have his moment."

The hand left my elbow.

I climbed the stage steps and stood beside him under the banner.

He was four inches taller than I was, and for six years that had been the point.

"The microphone," I said.

He kept it a beat too long.

Then he handed it over, smiling, because six hundred eyes were on his hands.

I looked at the room, and the room looked at me.

It was the first time anyone there had seen my face and known what it was attached to.

"My name is Tristan Rowe," I said.

My voice came out smaller than his, and I let it.

"Six years ago I founded Halden Row Capital with thirty-eight thousand dollars of my own money."

"I own sixty-one percent of it."

"The man beside me is Sullivan Greer, and I hired him to sit across tables from you."

A sound went through the chairs, half a laugh and half an intake of breath.

"No one would give a twenty-five-year-old a meeting," I said. "So I rented a man they would."

"You see?" Sullivan said at once.

He turned to the room, rueful and warm.

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