Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 93578 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 468(@200wpm)___ 374(@250wpm)___ 312(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93578 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 468(@200wpm)___ 374(@250wpm)___ 312(@300wpm)
She sighed. “Fine. But if I change my mind about the app, would you really buy it and shut it down for me?”
“In a heartbeat.”
“Thank you. Have fun with your family.”
We hung up, and I felt guilty that I’d refused her request for a favor. I believed in doing good things for good people, and Felicity was as good as anyone I’d ever known.
Still, a high school reunion? A room full of people staring at me? Judging my every word, or worse, my awkward silence?
Fuck that.
A few minutes later, I pulled up in front of my sister’s house and parked on the street. Before getting out of the car, I glanced at my phone and noticed a text from my business partner, Wade Hasbrouck.
His home address was San Francisco, but since it wasn’t even eight a.m. there, I knew he wasn’t in California. Wade was a night owl, which used to cause some friction between us when we were roommates at M.I.T., since he was not a particularly quiet night owl, and I was an early riser. His family had a lot of money and owned several luxury homes around the globe, and he hopped from one place to another as easily as he hopped from bed to bed, which was why his marriage of two years was already on the rocks.
Yo, his text said. (I truly hated the media stereotype of the dudebro tech billionaires, but the image fit Wade to a T.) Date with Sam final. July 28. Can’t push it back. Gird your loins, bruh.
Sam referred to Uncle Sam, and the date I was hoping to push back—again—was the date I had to appear in front of the House Financial Services Committee in D.C. They wanted testimony regarding regulation of the digital-asset industry in general and our crypto exchange in particular.
My gut clenched. Today was the 9th.
I had just under three weeks.
While I’d known for months this was coming, the idea of having to give a public, live, televised statement and field questions on the fly was almost enough to make me want to cash out of HFX and go underground.
But what kind of person is so fucked up he can’t even handle the thought of defending the business he’d helped build, especially if it meant losing half his net worth? Not that money was everything. I’d never set out to get rich, and I knew better than to think money could solve all your problems. In fact, I liked giving it away just as much as I liked earning it—what was the point of being a billionaire if all you did was horde your riches? Collect yachts and cars? For fuck’s sake, how many Porsches does one person’s ego need? I wanted to do things that mattered.
But most of all, I wanted what money couldn’t buy.
I wanted to be the kind of guy who could testify without breaking a sweat—at least not visibly. The kind of guy who could conquer his fear of being put on display and subjected to pressure. The kind of guy whose nervous system didn’t react like he was walking into a den of angry lions every time he thought about all the eyes in the room on him.
The uncontrollable thoughts. The racing heart. The sweating, the nausea, the inability of my head to find words and my mouth to form them. The blurry vision. The dizziness. The refusal of my lungs to take a full breath. The sheer terror of knowing that I could publicly humiliate myself in a hundred different ways, expose myself as deficient. A failure. A fool. A fraud.
Actually, give me the fucking lions.
I’d take my chances with them.
I walked up the driveway to my sister’s side door and paused before knocking, my fist in the air—were those my parents’ voices I heard through the open kitchen window? My dad’s loud belly laugh confirmed it a second later.
Allie pulled the door open, a gleam in her eye. “What’cha doin’?”
“Deciding whether I want to come in. Are Mom and Dad here?”
She nodded. “They stopped by after their Saturday morning power walk. Matching track suits and all.”
“Any way I can avoid them?”
“Why do you need to avoid them?”
“They’re just a lot. Mom’s all over me about what she calls my emotional avoidance issues, trying to set me up on dates with her kooky clients right and left, and I’m already hanging out with Dad later tonight.”
She grinned. “Poker night?”
“Yeah.”
“Lucky you. But you can’t leave. I need to be at the salon in twenty minutes, and Mom and Dad both have to work today. They just popped in to see the kids real quick.” She sighed heavily. “They love popping in.”
“I told you not to buy a house right around the block from them.”
“I know, I know.” She threw a hand up. “But it’s a good location and the price was right. We’re not all billionaires.”