2026-01-11 06:53:44His left eye was still swelling as a result of the slap of Sandra. He put it to his lips, and fainted at the pain. Its skin had gone a dark purple, and was bruised.
He was in front of the bathroom mirror, looking at the damage. His reflection looked back half his face swollen and discolored. His white of eye had red streaks in it.
"Bitch." He muttered under his breath.
His telephone rang on the night stand. Robert strolled back into the bedroom where he took up the phone grudgingly. The name Uncle Phillip appeared in the screen.
He answered. "What?"
Robert, the board is prepared to have an interview with you tomorrow at ten. Don't be late." There was a kind of artificialness of warmth in Uncle Phillip that crawled along Robert.
"I'll be there." Robert said flatly.
"Excellent. We have everything ready to receive you. The office, the contracts, all that. Everything's made as you wanted it to be made."
"Good. I would not want anything less than that of the Jackson family. The voice of Robert was full of sarcasm.
Uncle Phillip with a nervous laugher. "Of course, of course. See you tomorrow, nephew. Get some rest big day ahead."
Robert hung up, and did not say good bye. He tossed the phone on the bed.
He brought his black card out of his wallet, and rubbed his thumb over the golden characters of his name. The following day, he would enter Zenco enterprise as the president. Not as the destitute nephew whom they kicked five years back.
The irony wasn't lost on him. The very individuals that had deprived him of all their possessions now required his services very much.
Robert took a shower and allowed the warm water to loosen the knots of the muscles. He lingered longer than needed under the spray, and took the luxury of not being hurried. No Roxanne jingling bells. And no Sandra screaming that he come faster.
Just silence. Beautiful, peaceful silence.
Having put on his French suit, Robert again glanced at himself. The high priced cloth was nonsensical when paired with delivery trainers. He needed proper shoes. Real shoes, expensive shoes.
He reached into his wallet and walked away. The hotel lobby was full of businessmen and tourists. No one gave him any attention just another guest.
The city had the most expensive shoe store occupying a corner of the Fifth Avenue. Hundreds of times Robert had passed it, making pizzas and never daring to enter the building. The individual prices on the window made him feel like turning over at the time.
He now thrust through the glass doors with a feeling of confidence. A bell chimed overhead.
The counter sales girl raised her head off the phone she was young, in her early twenties, with perfectly manicured nails and an attitude to accompany. Her blonde curly hair was drawn back in a tight ponytail.
She gazed down and up at Robert, and her nose wrinkled in clear disgust. Her gaze lingered upon his trainers.
"Can I help you?" She inquired it was something she would not prefer to do.
Robert went nearer to the counter. "I need shoes. Your best pair."
The girl laughed actually laughed in his face. She put her hand over her mouth, yet the delight was that of her eyes.
“Our least expensive pair, sir, begin with five thousand dollars. I don't think you can afford it"
Robert drawn back his black card and hard-slapped it against the glass counter to the point of her jumping.
"I said your best pair. Not your cheapest."
The girl's eyes widened. Her smile faded away at once. She picked the card so that she could look at it as she would have looked on a counterfeit card. She rolled it, examined the hologram, the weight, the carving.
Her face went pale. Every hue grew out of her cheeks.
"Right away, sir. Do have a seat in our VIP section, please.” Her voice had been entirely changed.
Robert didn't move. "I'll stand."
She ran away into the back room, her heels beating madly on the marble floor. She came back a few minutes later with a man in a made-up suit, who was older. The manager, probably.
I am very sorry, Mr. Jackson, I am sorry to cause any inconvenience. The manager stretched out his hand, grinning so broadly and unnaturally.
Robert ignored it. "Just show me the shoes."
The manager's hand dropped. "Of course. Right this way."
They ushered him into a small room where there were some chairs made of leather, and ice champagne. Robert was sitting as they brought box after box of shoes.
Italian leather, Handcrafted. Limited edition. All of them were costlier and costlier.
Robert put on a few pairs, and sauntered at his leisure. Making them wait and working them to earn his money.
Robert was wandering out twenty minutes later in Italian leather shoes that were worth fifteen thousand dollars. Delivery trainers were sitting in a designer shopping bag, a reminder of where he was.
He disposed them in the closest trash can next to the store.
His phone rang again. Dave. “I heard what you were doing after you left last night, man. Luke wouldn't shut up about it. He's telling everyone." Dave was apologetic, even ashamed.
"It's fine. I'm used to it." Robert answered, but his jaw made a clench at the thought.
"No, it's not fine. That has been an asshole of a guy. A complete jerk. Look, I suppose you want somewhere to sleep, my door is open. Seriously, anytime."
Robert smiled. Dave was the sole actual companion he had left. The only person who did not desert him when money came to an end.
"Thanks, but I'm good. Actually, I'm better than good. I will see you tomorrow, at Zenco enterprise, at ten. I have a surprise for you."
"Zenco? What are you doing there? Did you get a job or something?" Dave asked, confused.
"You'll see. Just be there." Robert cut short before Dave could put more questions.
The remainder of the day he spent in shopping. Designer suits of which he could hardly make the name. Armani. Versace. Tom Ford. Fresh watches that are more expensive than cars, Rolex, Patek Philippe.
New everything. A complete transformation.
The sneering clerks who had at first looked down on him at first were now falling over themselves to render assistance. They took his bags, brought him champagne, addressed him sir and did so with sincere admiration.
Money changed everything. Absolutely everything.
By night, Robert made a five star hotel check-in. The Ritz. The penthouse suite was even priced higher than he would earn in a month at the pizza place.
He didn't care. He might spare it a thousand times and not have its loss.
He ordered room service. Lobster, caviar, the best wine of France. He consumed like a king, and took his time. No more leftover pizza. Enough of scraps on the plate of Roxanne.
Robert slept in a bed that was larger than the whole bedroom of Roxanne and those silk sheets felt so good against his skin. The bed was as soft as cloud-bedding.
The actual performance would start tomorrow. They would all see tomorrow what Robert Jackson had been.
He slept with a smile on his face. An actual smile after several years.
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CHAPTER TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY-TWO
On Tuesday morning, Robert appeared before the international economic committee.The committee room was a big formal room, as is the case with international institutional spaces. Wood panelling. A long raised table at which the Committee members were seated facing the witness. Three international news organizations cameras. Four of the seven Committee members wore earphones for simultaneous translation.Robert sat at the witness position alone.He had refused to let counsel be with him. He had refused to accept a draft and a rewritten version of his statement by his staff. He didn't accept briefing papers he had prepared with answers to questions he expected to be asked.He only had water to drink.The meeting was called to order by the committee chair. She was Belgian. Seventy years old. The kind of person who'd spent decades asking tough questions in official settings and wasn't about to be impressed by formality or status.She expressed her gratitude to Robert for coming.She put h
CHAPTER TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY-ONE
This was Carver's second meeting with Phillip, who met him on a Friday evening.The same private club. The same room. However, the meeting was not the same as the first one. Carver had requested that they engage in it specifically through the channel that they had used and had stated that the subject was important and needed to be discussed face-to-face. Those three words had been read by Phillip and he knew that Carver had discovered something.He didn't anticipate the butterflies in his stomach.He had been in rooms where there was a lot of information. He had served a long career in financial operations where the important information was the currency and the receiving of it in the neutral act. You heard what you heard, you used what you could use.He was seated across from Carver.Carver regarded him as he had regarded him the previous time. The evaluation of a person who was going to make a decision as he was looking at it before arriving.He laid a folder down on the table.He d
CHAPTER TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY
Agent Chen visited Dave on a Tuesday morning.She had never come to the office before. All previous messages had been sent by secure communication or in private meetings on locations with special neutrality. The office wasn't neutral. The office was visible. When she came to the office, she had decided that the need for what she was bringing was more important than the visibility of the channel.She was met in the lobby by Dave and escorted to the small conference room on the second floor which was not part of the executive floor, and had no window overlooking the main floor atrium. He had selected it ahead of her because if anyone was observing the construction the little conference room would not result in a visible meeting between Dave Morrison and a federal agent.Chen sat down.She did not open a folder or produce documents. She had brought nothing with her that could be observed or photographed."I am not here officially," she said.“Yeah, I get that,” Dave said."Somebody’s bee
CHAPTER TWO HUNDRED AND NINETEEN
At two AM on Thursday, Robert was in Clara's room.Roxanne found him there.She had woken at one fifty, stretched out toward him in the darkness and found that the bed space beside her was empty, with the particular coldness of sheets that had been empty for some time. She lay silent awhile. She listened. The air in the penthouse was silent. Not the alarming quiet. The ordinary quiet of a building at two AM.She got up.She went and found him in Clara's room standing next to the cot.He wasn't doing anything. Not adjusting Clara's blanket. Not responding to a sound. Simply standing. Having a glimpse of Clara as he looked at her sometimes in these hours. The total focus of the person who has discovered something to observe and is actively observing it.Clara was asleep.The small quiet breathing of a sleeping child. Perfectly safe and perfectly sound.Roxanne stood in the doorway for a moment.She watched the man who was watching Clara.This she had seen before. Not once or twice. Regu
CHAPTER TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTEEN
Robert received the invitation on a Monday morning.A formal letter on headed paper from the secretariat of an international economic committee convening in three months. The committee was reviewing the effects of wealth concentration and corporate governance and the responsibility of large-scale businesses to the communities they served.They were calling a small group of business leaders to testify. The invitation described Robert as someone who is very well known in the public arena, for whom the employee ownership movement and his track record of community investment are very relevant to the work the committee is doing.He took the letter to his desk to read. He put it down. He went to window. He returned and read it once again.It was his instinct that first came into him, as it had with the Patricia Osei profile. To decline. To help keep the particular privacy he had found so helpful in many years of understanding that visibility created vulnerability.He had not declined the Os
CHAPTER TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTEEN
The doctor was located by Phillip's investigator on a Tuesday.Carver had been working backward through the records. From his limited access to the hospital's secondary system, as well as the names of the individual practitioners listed within that system. The majority of the names were common. General practitioners. Hospital staff. Expected rotations of routine care providers.A single name came up and then disappeared.A specialist. Connected to a private clinic that had since been closed. He specialist's professional registration had lapsed three years after the clinic closed. He had not practiced publicly since.It took four days for Carver to find him.He lived in a seaside town, eight hours away from the city. Not hiding exactly. Simply distant. The distance someone has maintained from an aversive connection to a professional life they no longer wished to have, as a result of physical separation, not hiding.His name was Dr. Aldric Mendes.He was an expert in obstetric medicine.
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