“Hey, I was wondering if you wanted to come to dinner with Rosie and me on Wednesday? I was thinking maybe we could make it a foursome and you could invite your brother as well.”
“Oh, that sounds cool. I’d love to meet Rosie. I’ll ask Mattias, but who knows what he’ll say, he’s always busy. I’m pretty sure he’s going through a merger right now.”
“Oh, really? Who is he merging with?”
“Shouldn’t you know that already? As a shareholder?” His tone was clipped and I bit my lower lip. He was right, I should know that as a fake shareholder. I’d been slipping in my role and I knew that if I was an actress, there was no way I’d be in contention for an Oscar. I just had not committed to the role well enough.
“I must have missed the email they sent.”
“I see.” He paused. “By the way, I got the ‘Just to say hello’ card you sent me. That was really sweet of you.”
“I’m glad you liked it. I wanted you to know I was thinking of you.”
“Yeah. It was thoughtful. A bit girly, but thoughtful.”
“Hey, David,” I said slowly and took a deep breath, “I’m doing this research project on businesses in New York City and I was wondering if it was possible for me to go through the archives at Bradley Inc., as I’d love to include them in my paper.”
“Archives?”
“Yeah, old paperwork? I’m sure there has to be a room with that information, right? A place where all the older documents are archived? Maybe I could even speak to Mattias and see what he knows about the founding of the company. I’m sure your father must have spoken a lot about the early days.”
“He sure didn’t say much to me.” David’s tone was bitter. “All I know is that Dad inherited some money from his uncle and used it to start his company.”
“He must have been very smart to have turned it into a multi-billion dollar business.”
“Honestly, I don’t think Dad did that well in school.” David spoke candidly. “I remember my mother always saying that he was lucky to know the right people, people with brains, or something like that.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, I don’t really remember. My parents didn’t get on that well. It wasn’t really a love match, more a marriage for status.”
“Status?”
“My dad had some money and my mom had the blue blood. She could trace her ancestry back to the Mayflower.”
“Wow, impressive.”
“Eh, who cares about that stuff now?” He yawned. “They never should have married. I think they both loved other people.”
“That’s sad.”
“Yeah, but that’s life, right? You do what you got to do to make it.”
“I suppose.” I frowned. “Though doesn’t it depend on what you have to do?”
“Someone at some point in every great dynasty has to do something fucked up. Shit, look at the barons of industry. Look at all those empires. Everyone that’s been successful had to sell their soul in some way.”
“Yeah, they sold their souls and hurt people,” I snapped. “I don’t think it’s right to put the lives of other people in jeopardy just because you want to make a buck. I don’t think it’s right to take people’s property and make it your own, and then keep them in the dark.” I caught myself ranting and stopped myself immediately. Shit, what if he figures out what I was saying?
“You talking about Africa?” he said sympathetically. “That shit was fucked up, for sure.”
“Huh?”
“When all those Europeans went and split up the continent, that was messed up. Then started mining for diamonds and keeping the diamonds and the profits for themselves. I agree, I think that’s the ultimate greed and evil.”
“Did you watch Blood Diamond recently?” I asked curiously. I wasn’t sure how else David would know about the colonization of Africa.
“Yeah, how did you know? I’ve always been a fan of DiCaprio’s. He killed it in that role.”
“Yeah, he’s a good actor.” I breathed a sigh of relief. “And yeah, there are too many people out there who do evil things and then benefit from them. It’s not right.”
“Yeah, it’s not,” he agreed.
“Anyway, will you see if I can do my research at Bradley Inc. soon? It would be really helpful. I can even ask Mattias myself if that would help. I think it would really highlight just how great your company is and how much your father did to get ahead.”
“Mattias is a pretty private person. I’m not sure that he’ll be down for that, but I’ll ask him. Maybe you can ask him at dinner if he comes.”