Our Broken Pieces - M.E. Clayton Page 0,27

delis. She also had promised to make me copies of to-go menus she had stuffed in her desk. The day had been promising, and while Sadie introduced me to a few people, the Mean Girls had made themselves known rather unapologetically.

The worst of them was Reagan Contreras, who just happened to occupy the private office directly across from my workstation. She had been polite enough to acknowledge the introduction, but the snotty look in her eyes had been very apparent.

She was the one to watch out for or try to avoid altogether.

Good times.

Chapter 16

Gage~

Looking out at the city of Chicago, I could see the clouds rolling in and it felt ominous, like a premonition. The sky was dark, and I couldn’t help but feel a kinship with the darkness that was ready to blanket the city with depression instead of sunny, happy thoughts.

I loved the dark.

I loved the cold.

I loved the clouds, the rain, the lightening, and thunder. I especially loved it when it hailed. I liked the idea of nature throwing down lotteries of possible damage. I wanted the world to be dark because then, that way, I could live my life without faking bullshit pleasantries. Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t give a fuck what people thought of me, but even I knew it wasn’t financially beneficial to be a complete dick to everyone all the time.

I turned away from the window to face my desk and I knew I’d be working this weekend. But that wasn’t anything new. I worked around the clock regularly, and the non-stop grind had paid off and continued to pay off. Stymic Financial Holdings had its fingers in just about damn near everything and I had no plans on letting up anytime soon.

I could go on and on about hard work and repeat the bullshit speeches I’ve given over the years, but I was driven by a much darker force. I worked myself sleepless to stay ahead of my demons and it didn’t hurt that my IQ was 127 either. Now, while I wasn’t intelligent enough to find the cure for cancer, I was smart enough to create millions out of nothing. And that nothing came in the form of a shattered soul that even my mother, with all her psychiatrist experience, couldn’t help me with. And she tried.

Lord, how she tried.

However, all she got out of the deal was a son who still spoke to her on occasion, even though she called a few times a week. Now, don’t get me wrong. I loved my mother; I loved her so damn much. But my love for her couldn’t drown out the misery that consumed my life. Sure, on paper, I was everything a successful man should be, but darkness was what drove my ambitions, not love.

As for my father, I stopped speaking to him the day I graduated high school. He and my mother were still married, but as far as I was concerned, I only had one parent. I hated my father something fierce, and I made no secret of it as I’d grown older. He also downplayed it for my mother because, the second I had left for college, he quickly realized he couldn’t control me anymore. He knew he had no more leverage to use against me, other than my mother’s happiness and my love for her.

We were engaged in a cold war. I didn’t speak to or about him, and he extended that same curtesy. And my mother stopped asking questions years ago.

Sitting down, I pulled up the Darwin report, and did my best not to groan. Lawrence Darwin needed an investor for his battery longevity creation, which wasn’t a bad product. However, the more I met with the man, the more apparent it was that he just wanted money from someone to make his dream of being rich come true. He didn’t want a partner or an investor really. He wanted someone to lend him all the capital, and in the event his battery was successful, he’d pay it back and just walk away with one hundred percent of the profits.

Yeah.

That wasn’t how it worked.

My cellphone rang, and I saw that it was my best friend, Lorcan Cavanaugh. I answered as he was one of the very few people that I answered the phone for. Unless I was expecting a very specific phone call, I let most of my calls go to voicemail. I didn’t have time for bullshit, and it was near impossible to get