Fuck, I missed it.

“And, Jaime.” Vicious continued, pacing across the office now. He planned it all along. Knew that we were going to corner him. Sly bastard. “Don’t you want to move back to Todos Santos? Have Daria grow up with Luna and my kid and Dean’s kid and her grandparents? Don’t you want that?”

Jaime growled. “Are you going somewhere with this speech, Martin Luther King, Jr., or are you just rubbing it in our fucking faces?”

“Going somewhere,” Vicious assured, sauntering over behind me to his desk and flipping his laptop open. “So the last six months had me thinking. Between the wedding, my future kid, what happened to Trent, Jaime living on the other side of the world, and Dean dating a girl with enough health issues to last a fucking lifetime,” he said casually, typing on his keyboard. “Why the fuck are we working our asses off? We’ve already made a sick amount of money on top of what we were born with. More than we can ever spend. I feel like we’re making something truly straightforward extremely complex. I, for one, don’t care for this lifestyle. I want to spend time with my wife, I want to fuck her three times a day like I used to, I want to work out more, to stress less, to go on longer vacations, and to live. Unlike the majority of the world, I actually can. So why am I here? Why are we all here?”

He was starting to make sense, but the concept he was offering was insane. Fiscal Heights Holdings was our baby. We got very far very quickly with our hedge fund company. Mainly because we worked twenty-four seven. The idea of not working, or working less hours, taking less responsibility, never crossed my mind.

“So, you want to retire? Be a philanthropist at the tender age of thirty?” Jaime asked.

Vicious dragged his laptop so we were all looking at a Wikipedia page without a picture. Jordan Van Der Zee.

“Fuck no. I’m still going to work, but maybe two, three times a week. The rest of the time, I will indulge. The rest of the time, I will act like the god I was born to be.”

“Bad high.” Trent pointed at Vicious, rolling his eyes. “You talk like Napoleon on crack. Why are we looking at this man, Vicious? And more importantly, did you forget that I wasn’t born into money? I can’t spontaneously decide to quit.”

“You’re already a millionaire,” Jaime barked at Trent, and that meant that he was actually considering Vicious’s idea. Whatever Vicious was offering, Trent was against it. Jaime pro.

This made me the deal-breaker.

“Millionaire or not, I’m not interested in retiring at thirty,” Trent spat every word, his eyes narrowed slits. “I don’t have a wife, and I don’t have a girlfriend. I have a daughter, and right now, she’s going through a ton of issues. I need a distraction, an outlet. And fuck,” he kicked the coffee table underneath him, and the thud rang in our ears, “am I the only bastard around here who enjoys working?”

“You can still work,” Vicious stressed, pointing at the screen. “This dude is buying out all of the investment companies around this area. He started with San Francisco three years ago and worked his way down to SoCal. Multi-fucking-billionaire. Forbe’s darling boy. Savvy as hell, and, let’s not forget—his deep pockets like us. A lot.”

“We know who Jordan Van Der Zee is.” I put a lid on his speech. “You’re not the only one to pick up a business magazine once every full moon, Vicious, but thanks for the useless info.”

I went to Harvard. So did Van Der Zee. Not at the same time, obviously. He was much older. But he was a legend there, because he was one of those rare self-made people. You know, worked his way up from a scholarship in an Ivy League university, interned, busted his ass, and became a mogul in his own right. I watched a documentary about him after I graduated from business school. Dude came from a Dutch working-class family. His father was a shoeshiner, for God’s sake. “Do you wanna sell out your shares? Is that it?” I probed.

“I want to sell most of them, and I suggest you do the same. Let’s sell out, keep fifty percent of the shares between us. We’re at a point where we can negotiate a very good deal. If Trent still wants to work, he can. I do, too.”

“I’m not retiring,” I said.

“Me neither.” Jaime’s voice was unconvincing.

Vicious looked between us all and smiled. “Then why don’t we expand Los Angeles and all work here?”

“Let’s start with the obvious reason—he’ll want to buy us out with fifty-one percent shares.” Trent leaned his massive shoulder against the wall. Vicious tsked.

“That would be the obvious thing to do, right?” Pretty much. It was Business 101.