Page 48 of Broken Brothers

By the end of the week, though, I was ready to snap. I had moved past from “quietly accepting Burnson’s critiques as being better than the alternative” to “silently stewing as the unattended anger began to fester.” I could handle a few days of being his and the office’s bitch, but there was something else of crucial importance. My internship technically ended today, and while I would have happily extended it had my world not comecrashing down for a little bit, there was no way this was lasting any longer.

Trying to do my duty, I brought his morning cup of coffee into his office.

“Promise me you didn’t get this coffee from Hunt Industries,” he said, barely looking up.

I snapped.

I grabbed the mug and slammed it on the wall.

“I should have for how little fucking work you’ve done here.”

This is career suicide. This is so fucking stupid.

But fuck it. I’ve already killed my career. Might as well send a message on the way out.

“All you ever do is go play golf. I’ll bet you have a tee time set up on your calendar already, or at least time you can sneak out to play golf. Maybe if you kept an eye on us once in a while, you wouldn’t have had to pass off something like this to your so called ‘intern.’ Maybe you would’ve done diligence and kept in touch with the Taylors. Instead, we all got fucked.”

“Chance Hunt, if you think—”

But I stopped.

“Chance Givens. I’m going by my birth name now. But you won’t have to worry about that, John. Today’s the last day of my internship, and if you think I’m coming back even if you gave me a seven figure salary, you’re out of your mind. I busted my ass to get a deal done with no support from anyone here. Yes, I made some mistakes, but I’m 22 and an intern, what the hell did you think was going to happen?”

The look on John Burnson’s face was priceless. No one had ever spoken to him like this as best as I could tell. But no one had also ever lost so much as I had—no one was so willing to attack him as I was.

“I know I’m cutting myself off from the world of finance forever with this, but I don’t give a fuck,” I said. “I’ll make mybillions elsewhere. Here, you want to seem me make a deal? Watch!”

Without another word, I grabbed my coat, walked out the door, headed to my office, grabbed the few essentials I had, and stormed out of the office and onto the streets of New York.

I didn’t know where I would go or what I would do. I felt incredibly alone and isolated from the world. I had not just burned all my bridges, I had nuked them.

But I had one thing I didn’t have before.

Freedom.

And what I would do with that, only time would tell.

Six Months Prior

Graduation seemed almost tooclose for comfort. I had an internship lined up with Burnson Investments despite Morgan begging me to come to Hunt Industries. No matter how much I told him I didn’t want to do it, though, he never listened. Nor, for that matter, did he ever get it.

At least he was a great guy to be around. And at least he recognized working for his dad would suck.

“You know, you could just not go to Hunt Industries,” I said after Morgan bitched for about the hundredth time that day, having wrapped up all of his finals, our graduations now officially requiring nothing more than the ceremonies. “You do have a choice. We live in a country of free will, ya know.”

Morgan just laughed sarcastically at that statement. It was a nice little dance that we did—I would remind him he had a choice, he would say I’m crazy, I would say he was crazy, and we were like 12 year olds again, mocking each other and calling each other names without really meaning it.

“And now how the fuck is that supposed to work, ya fool?” he said. “Just imagine me telling my dad that everything he had worked for over the last twenty-two years with me had suddenly devolved into… nothingness. He’d have to find a business heir elsewhere. Oh, sorry Pops! Yeah I’d be banned from the family faster than the old man would kick out a clown at a business meeting.”

I laughed, but there was something to Morgan’s answer that made me think about something in a way I had not yet to that point.

For all my life, I’d criticized Morgan as naive and unaware as to how 99.99 percent of the population lived. I told him there was just no way I could easily follow in his footsteps like magic.

But I had never considered the reverse—maybe I could never understand the pressures and tough challenges that Morgan faced. I could never know what it was like to expect to follow in the footsteps of Edwin Hunt. I could never know what it meant to be in your father’s shadow for your entire life, even after Edwin Hunt would pass away.

It was a thought that shook me a little bit. It also surprised me I had never considered this before just now.

… But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to give him shit for it all the same.