“Stand in the corner, Elena. Your miserable face ruins the energy of your brother’s signing.”
She physically steered me away from the boardroom table, her manicured hand like a clamp. I caught a flash of myself in the reflection of the glass wall—dark hair scraped back into a low bun, simple black dress, no jewelry except the watch hidden under my sleeve.
I looked smaller than I felt, like the image belonged to some other obedient daughter. “Just pour the water properly,” she hissed under her breath. “Servitude is all you’re good at.
Do not let your bad luck haunt this family’s money.”
I didn’t scream. I didn’t argue. I had stopped doing that years ago.
I let her push me to the credenza against the far wall, where the water pitcher and crystal glasses waited. I picked up the pitcher. It was cold and slick with condensation, heavier than it looked.
The air-conditioned boardroom felt over-refrigerated, built more for intimidation than comfort. Frosted glass. Dark wood.
A huge screen mounted on the far wall like an eye. I lowered my gaze as I’d trained myself to do and checked the watch under my sleeve. Four minutes.
Four minutes until the mysterious investor arrived. The investor that my father, my mother, and my brother were all terrified of impressing. The investor whose money they thought they desperately needed to secure Julian’s bright, shining future.
The investor they had spent two weeks obsessing over. The investor they had no idea was already standing in the room, holding a water pitcher in the corner like hired help. From my vantage point, half in shadow, I could see everything: my father at the head of the table, my mother perched slightly behind him like an elegant vulture, my brother Julian lounging in the leather chair opposite, trying to look relaxed and important and failing at both.
It wasn’t just a family sitting around a boardroom table. It was a balance sheet. Arthur, my father, sat there in his tailored suit, one leg crossed over the other, fingers drumming the table.
To him, children were never people. We were economic units. Lines on a ledger.
Variables in a portfolio he fancied himself savvy enough to manage. Julian, my older brother by three years, was the asset. The high-risk, high-reward tech stock my father had refused to sell, no matter how much value it lost.
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