Page 187 of Broken Brothers

“Is she staying after?” I said.

“Yeah, she doesn’t want the house,” Morgan said. “She just wants his money. She’s going to rent a place here in the city so she can be close to us.”

I decided not to make mention of Layla’s request here. That was something I’d need to spend more than a few nights andweeks thinking about, given that it wasn’t just a matter of giving up my city, but now also my family—and yes, I was more than willing to say Melanie was my Mom and Morgan was my brother.

“Good on her,” I said, my mind elsewhere. “And how are you doing?”

“Me?” Morgan said, looking like he wanted to dismiss the question at first but then slowly coming back to answering it. “That’s… honestly, maybe I should feel more guilty for saying this, but the only real relationship I’ve ever had with my father was a business one. Thus, I can’t judge him as a son or anything like that, but only as a man who runs a business. He failed, and not because of bad luck, but because of malpractice and everything else in between. So I don’t really have a personal relationship to fall back on.”

Now it was his turn to lean back into the booth, giving a long sigh.

“I suppose a therapist would have a field day unpacking that, and I suspect that it’ll play out as such when the time comes. But for right now? It’s more just acceptance that justice has been rendered on a man who deserved it.”

Morgan was right, that was a bit of an oversimplification that would need unpacking. Not knowing my biological father had never played an especially harsh role in my life, but it certainly played a role in my feeling that life was one series of abandonments after another. What had happened with Layla and Morgan here seemed like the exception, not the new normal… but it had opened the door for it to become the new normal.

In any case, though, Morgan would have plenty of time to figure htat out.

“In any case, Chance, allow me to offer you a huge apology,” Morgan said. “You went through so much hell through all ofthis, much of it because of my actions, but you never faltered. You never quit or asked out. You kept fighting, as you said, and because of that fight, you’re here now. So, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” I said. “The nature of our business—of the business of the world—is that feelings don’t matter, results do. It’s tiring at times and I’m glad it’s done, but most of all, I’m glad we got the result we did.”

Although I’d stated it so simply, I was beyond glad it was done. I was feeling a little existential, to be honest. Was a series of silly, ultimately meaningless games in business all that life had to offer? Was the world of making money nothing more than a series of bloodlettings to get to the pile of green before the other? Was that really the world I wanted to live in?

I currently had a million dollars in my bank account from Mom and would likely have way more soon as a board member and when Virtual Realty and Rising Sun took back off. To many in New York City, that was just a starting point, not something that someone could look at with pride. And yet, outside of these walls of business, outside of the circle that we ran in, a million bucks was no fucking joke. It was enough to change lives.

Did I really want to play in games that the people involved in saw as quite trivial but the people affected on the outside saw as life-changing?

I didn’t have a real answer, but just the fact that I was asking these questions made me wonder how much longer it would be before I just took myself out of the game entirely.

“You know, the craziest part of this all, I know we touched on this some, but Layla,” Morgan said, his voice one of utter disbelief. “For what she did to you? I thought you’d never want to talk to her again.”

“I didn’t, not right after everything that went down. But… funny how that worked out, huh?”

And then Morgan asked me the most pointed question yet on that, the one that I knew was going to set the tone to resolve my final pressing issue.

“Indeed,” he said. “And how is that going to work out from here?”

I had no idea.

Well, OK, I had a general feeling of where things were going. But I’d push them off for so long to focus on Edwin Hunt that I had never given them the thoughts that they deserved. And now, with Edwin out of the picture, there wasn’t anything left to figure out but to simply ask one question.

Would Layla Taylor be the one?

“I guess we’ll finally get a real answer to that.”

75

“So yeah, he definitely took away all of your employees. But with our funding, you can hire new ones. You don’t have to worry anymore.”

I sat a few days later in Joe’s Latte with Claire, who still looked beaten down and stressed by everything that had happened over the prior few weeks. But when I gave her the recording to play, including the line about Rising Sun, she simply sat back, stunned. It looked almost like the words she had heard had paralyzed her, left her too confused to even say anything.

But slowly—very slowly, at that—she came out, an expression of hope on her face.

“You’re sure?” she said, tears starting to form in her eyes.

“I’m sure,” I said. “Edwin isn’t going to interfere anymore. I wouldn’t try and bring back the ones you had before, just because they’ll demand more money, but… yeah, Claire. You don’t have to worry. You can just focus on your business.”

I had never seen such happier tears in my life. She was thanking me as the tears streamed down her face. I realized then that just as Morgan and Layla had kept their promises, so had Ifor the sake of Claire. That wasn’t meant to congratulate myself or pat myself on the back, but it did remind me that not every promise was empty and that not every promise was meant to be broken.