Chapter 4: Junior Associate
Chase Donovan told Olivia the view from his office made people quiet. He described floor to ceiling glass. On Tuesday morning he sat in a cubicle on the nineteenth floor with a partition that stopped at his shoulder and a view of the copier.
"Morning, SVP," Marcus Leung said, leaning over the divider with two coffees. "Rough commute from the corner office?"
"Keep your voice down," Chase said.
"I am keeping it down. That is the point. If I stood up, I could see your whole kingdom, Chase. There is a stapler in it."
Marcus set one down. "You want to tell me why you are wearing that watch again? The rental place charges by the week."
"It is not a rental. It is a rotation membership."
"It is a rental with a newsletter." Marcus sipped his coffee. "When is it due back?"
"Friday. I extended it."
"For Olivia."
"For the viewing," Chase said. "There is a difference."
"Is there? You are assembling a rich man from rentals."
Chase turned his monitor so Marcus could not see the spreadsheet, a junior associate's spreadsheet, columns of client codes he was meant to reconcile before noon. "You do not understand positioning. People fund what they can picture. Olivia pictures a senior vice president, she acts accordingly. Her family acts accordingly."
"Olivia pictures a senior vice president because you told her you are one."
"I am on track to be one."
"Six years on track, Chase."
The managing partner, Whitaker Sloane, passed the row of cubicles with an assistant at his elbow. Chase straightened, lifted his chin, arranged his face into the calm of a man interrupted mid decision.
"Mr. Sloane," he said. "On the Meridian file, if you need my read before the partners' lunch, I have it."
Sloane did not slow. He frowned at Chase the way a man frowns at furniture in the wrong room. "And you are with which group?" he asked.
"Donovan," Chase said. "Chase Donovan. Capital strategy."
"Sure," Sloane said, already past him. "Send it to Priya."
Marcus waited until the elevator doors closed. "Capital strategy," he repeated. "Bold. Last week it was client solutions."
"He knows my work."
"It is a not knowing your name thing."
Chase's phone lit up. Olivia. He picked it up and stood, because the performance needed his chest open and his voice carrying a little across the cubicle farm, the way it would carry across a corner office.
"Liv," he said. "Tell me you are not calling to cancel on me."
"Never," Olivia said. "I am calling because Nathan asked, again, whether the car is actually purchasable. He used the word purchasable, Chase. My brother talks like a contract."
"Your brother talks like a man who has never wanted anything badly enough." Chase smiled for an audience of partitioned desks. "The Lumen One is one of one. That is the point. Things like that do not sit on a price list for the public. They move between people who get called."
"And you got called."
"I made the call," he said. "Paula Nguyen runs the Glass Pavilion. She and I have an understanding. Private viewing, Thursday, after hours. No sales floor, no tourists with phones. Just us and the car."
"You are sure they will sell it to you?"
"To us," he corrected gently. "I am sure they will listen. Three million is a number, Liv. Everything at that level is a conversation."
He heard her breathe, pleased, a little frightened. He liked the frightened part best. It made her hold on.
"Nathan wants to meet the banker first," she said.
"There is no banker meeting. I have handled the financing through the firm, privately. Ashford structures this kind of thing before breakfast." He lowered his voice theatrically. "Trust work has to stay clean and quiet. Your brother will thank me when it is done."
"Do not let him ruin it," Olivia said. "He acts like the trust is a museum."
"The trust is a tool," Chase said.
When she hung up, he stayed standing a moment longer than the call required, phone in hand, watch catching the light, letting the nineteenth floor see a man closing something large. Then he sat and looked at the loan confirmation open in his private email, filed that morning, two point eight million dollars, collateral listed as the Ashworth trust portfolio, signature line for Olivia Ashworth still empty.
Outside, his leased coupe waited in the garage with a payment due Monday. Thursday, he thought, and the wanting steadied him like a hand on his back. Thursday he would walk into the Glass Pavilion with Olivia on his arm, and the Lumen One would stop being a car and become the first true thing anyone could point to and say: that is Chase Donovan.
Chapter 5: The Ashworth Trust