After a few more glasses of champagne, I have a slight buzz. Now sitting atop stools, we sip on cups of green tea. Eustace remains behind the bar, cleaning our glasses as jazz music emits from distant speakers.

All is well until I catch my mom gazing ahead of her, blatant worry shining in her irises.

“Is something wrong?” I graze her arm.

She flicks her attention back to me, quickly covering the expression with pleasantry. “Of course not.”

“Don’t do that—I saw that look.”

“Oh… I’d hoped to wait for another time, dear. Tonight’s special.”

Her tone… My shackles rise at her obvious distress. She rarely sounds like that.

“Mom, what’s going on?”

She pauses for a moment.

“Forget tonight. We can celebrate again some other time. Tell me,” I urge.

Her shoulders droop, turning from me. “Eustace, could you give us some privacy?”

“Yes, Madame,” he says, disappearing to another room.

For a moment, save for the music, it’s painfully silent between us. Then more than a moment, leading my brain to make up the worst possible scenarios, ones I don’t have the courage to voice.

“Your father’s gone away again.”

“Jeez, Mom.” Air gusts from my lungs. “Why didn’t you just say so?”

I pick my tea back up, a puzzling feeling overtaking me when I notice she still looks concerned. “Come on, don’t look so down. What’s new? He probably needed a breather.” The explanation comes easily, as it’s the one I always use when explaining my father’s reoccurring disappearances.

But it’s true, I remind myself. He runs the largest cyber security company on the planet. The man needs time to himself, and if that means he wants to jet off to the Bahamas or some relaxing port town from time to time, then so be it. He’s never been gone for longer than a week.

But why is she so quiet?

“Really, it’ll be fine. You know he’ll be back in no—”

“It’s been a month.”

My back straightens, disbelief rippling down my spine in jagged waves. “No… No, that can’t be right.”

“He can’t handle the stress, Lauren.” Glossiness shines in her eyes, refusing to look my way.

“Did you call the authorities? Did something happen?”

“No, what use would that be? He responds to every one of my texts, says he’s in Switzerland—and his phone location records attest to that. This is the same old him, dear, just… I think maybe the stress has finally gotten to him.”

Guilt nips at me all over again. Ever since I took on the trial nearly two years ago, the media coverage of our two families has been nonstop. Smear campaign after smear campaign, and more gossip headlines than I can count, they never fail to paint us as either the aggressors or even accomplices of what happened—and still don’t.

Even before the trial, running Astor Security has never been easy on him, but he’s always pulled through. “Why now? Why—”

“There’s been talk of an investigation.” Her face hardens, accentuating the subtle wrinkles across her aged yet striking features. Then laughter that doesn’t reach her eyes rings hollow across the lounge. “The state will use you to win their case, but they’ll still turn around and put us under scrutiny. And they don’t need evidence to do so. Our familial ties with Bass Mobile alone warrant an audit, probably more.”

She’s right. Search warrants, subpoenas, sifting through years of data… It could last months, if not longer.

“But he has nothing to be worried about,” I state with confidence. “His company has never veered from the law.”

“Doesn’t matter. You know how these things work. Even if they don’t find any criminal evidence—and they won’t—to suggest otherwise, they’ll point their attention on him. All it takes is one small slipup or a poor explanation.”

“Couldn’t he hire more lawyers and advisors? Or…”

But if they made him testify in court, it wouldn’t matter how many lawyers he had on his defense. He’d have to do the talking… I bite my lip, finding myself agreeing with her. He can’t handle that.

I can’t see a proper solution, only to sell off shares before things get out of hand. And he would never do that. The company is our family’s greatest asset, a true beacon on Silicon Avenue, raking in twenty times the annual revenue of Astor Associates.

Appraising her, I wonder if she’s contemplating the same solution. But I quickly conclude she can’t be, not with her looking so torn… Then it hits me—

While he’s the largest shareholder by far, he doesn’t own over fifty percent. She could sway the board to de-seat him as CEO.

“You’re not thinking…”

She places her cup on the bar top, hands revealing a slight tremor. “It’s what’s best for the family. The board would go through with it on goodwill alone.”

Suddenly, my dress’s fabric seems too tight at the neck, my toes too cramped in my pumps. There’s something uncomfortable and horrid about picturing my father stripped of his dignity. But deep down, I admit it’s for the best. Because he hasn’t been at his best, not for years, with his mind elsewhere—on what, though, is anyone’s best guess. But it surely hasn’t been on the company, at least since the beginning of the trial.

“And who would take his place?” I dare ask. We would want the board to pick someone from our family. “Felix?” I name off the obvious choice by age birthright—my older brother and only sibling.

Her lips thin, annoyed by my suggestion. “He’s more absent than your father is.”

Like the strike of a match, rage simmers beneath my skin. “And why’s that, huh? He wouldn’t be so absent if you and Dad only cared to—”

“Enough.” She flicks her vicious gaze at me, sending my heart racing, revealing a rare side of her that only comes out when she feels backed into a corner. “Don’t bring that into this. That has nothing to do with the decision, and you know it. We need someone who can answer the questions, someone who can handle the lawyers… You know what it is I’m asking, Lauren.”

As I release a calming breath, the tight cord of tension wound tightly in my shoulders loosens, and I force myself to face the facts. She is stuck in a corner, and she wouldn’t ask this of me if she knew there was another way.

But there’s one flaw in her grand plan.

“I don’t know the first thing about computers. I may be a data privacy lawyer, but that doesn’t mean I can make the right business decisions for a cyber security company, let alone write code or decipher algorithms.”

In light of my protests, her strong presence holds firm, keeping her gaze locked onto mine. Which could only mean one thing. She already thought of that.

And then I’m nothing but a sailboat out of wind, navigating treacherously foreign waters, faced with two options. On the one hand, I could continue straight in my deafened ways, abandoning all else for my own personal gain. In essence, do what I do best. Or I could acknowledge the call from the shore, put my ambitions on hold, and help my family.

“This type of life comes with sacrifices,” she’d always said growing up. But I’d never felt the weight of the warning, not once, until I hear her next words, practically sentencing me with the swing of a judge’s gavel.

The only plausible solution.

“Which is exactly why I’ve taken the initiative and arranged you a marriage with someone who does.”

Some content on the website is uploaded by users. If it infringes on your rights, please contact us.