Chapter Four - Five
“Well?” Oliver asks as I walk up to the car. He’s grinning like he won and leaning against the hood like this ride belongs to him. “Did you make her happy?”
“I’m halfway there,” I say. I’m smiling, so Oliver’s smiling too. But I can’t stand for his insubordination, so I gotta make an example out of him. I open up the driver’s side door, get in, and then click the doors locked before Oliver can walk around and get in his side.
“Hey!” Oliver says. “What the hell?”
I pull my door closed, start the engine, and roll the passenger window down two inches to say, “This team only has one boss, kid. Me. So you can walk home.”
He flips me off, but I’m already pulling away.
I don’t want to think about Oliver Shrike. I want to think about his delicious princess of a sister.
She’s not the reason I came home. Obviously, I thought she was staying back east like she’s been for a couple years. And I wasn’t really gonna stop off in New York to look her up. Now? No. But I really was gonna make this the year we reconnected. Christmas was the plan. Another perfect Christmas Eve like the one we had just before I left for Oxford.
You know what they say about the best-laid plans.
But bright side… she’s here in FoCo where I can keep an eye on her. Maybe I could stay all summer? Would she stay all summer too, if I came back tonight and asked?
I think so.
Don’t get ahead of yourself, Five. You’ve got a meeting in Denver for a reason.
Right.
And that whole Snowflake thing kinda gets to me. Right in my cold, black heart. God, we had such good times with that pony.
She was a tiny thing. The smallest Shetland I’ve ever laid eyes on, now that I think back with a grown-up mentality. But when we were little, she was every bit a knight’s steed. My steed. I was the knight. Literally.
Ron the Bombshell turned into Ron the Momshell after she had kids. She is all mom, all the time. Even though I’ve seen the off-limits photographs of her all painted up in Spencer’s office and her talent as a tattoo artist is on display on Spencer’s body, I could never reconcile in my head these two versions of her.
Ronnie made the best birthday cakes. For all of us kids. She threw all the parties and made all the Halloween costumes.
And that is my first real memory of me and my princess.
Halloween.
I was five and Rory was four. Momshell made me a knight’s costume and Rory was a princess every year, so no surprise there. But this was the first year we really took Halloween seriously. We waited for it. We sat under that old buckeye dreaming about it. It was the first year I started holding her hand everywhere we went. It was the first year I stopped calling her Rory and started calling her Princess. It was a whole bunch of firsts. And even though I’ve known Rory Shrike since she was born, it was the first year we started making memories together.
Snowflake was young then. Rory’s first pony. She’d just started learning to ride. And on that Halloween night we trick-or-treated riding around downtown Fort Collins on a perfectly-groomed white pony dressed up in every detail as a princess and her knight.
I can still feel Rory’s tiny hands holding onto my little-boy armor as we clip-clopped up and down the sidewalks.
We were so damn cute, we were even in the paper. I still have that old clipping framed and hanging in my boyhood bedroom back at the house, and another copy of it in my London flat.
And that wasn’t the only time Snowflake stood in as my steed. When I was seven and she was six, we’d go off on our own little adventures and it was Snowflake who took us there. Granted, these adventures took place in the Shrike backyard, but that’s a big-ass place. Especially when you’re so young.
Momshell would pack us a picnic, we’d stuff that into a pannier, and off we’d go. Rory would sit in front of me, holding the reins. She didn’t trust me as a rider by this time. She was the expert and needed to control the pony. But I didn’t care. Are you kidding? I could stare at her golden hair shining in the sunlight all I wanted when I sat behind her. And talk into her ear as she navigated the little rocky outcropping on the north side of the house. I could point things out to her and watch her eyes follow the line of my arm to whatever caught my curiosity.
And that was just the start of it. Snowflake took Rory to her first horse shows. She jumped those cross rails like a champion. I mean, I’ve seen the videos. The jumps were only a few inches off the ground, but it made my princess feel like she was flying. She won her very first blue ribbon on that pony. She scribbled Five and Rory on the back and gave that prize to me. I have it framed, hanging on the wall of my flat, right next to the newspaper clipping. I’ve kept it with me all through school. It’s faded to a weird purple color now, it’s so old. But I love that damn ribbon.
So yeah. Snowflake dying is a hit to the heart. And I’m actually a little ashamed that I didn’t come home for whatever elaborate funeral the Shrikes cooked up to match that pile of rocks marking her grave.
I’m in Denver before I know it, driving down the I-25 towards downtown. I get off at Speer and make my way towards Cherry Creek. It’s a pretentious neighborhood filled with pretentious houses, but these are pretentious people, so…
The meeting is really a garden party hosted by the Young and Mobile Society. It’s something they’ve been bugging me about joining for years now, but I keep turning them down. This year something they said piqued my interest.
“Mr. Aston,” they said. “It would be a mistake to fight the inevitable.”
It came off as a threat. I’m not a paranoid guy. I don’t believe in much, even though I know the real facts behind my oldest sister Sasha’s background. I know about the Company and how Kate fits into things. I have an idea about some important details my parents left out when they sat me down the night before I left for Oxford and tried to explain our complicated history.
But my life has been perfect. In just about every way. No weirdoes stalked us when I was little. There were no more trials or run-ins with the FBI. There were no secret meetings about assassins and all that crazy shit they talked about that night. And unless you count my grandfather’s attention every summer, there was nothing but lazy days on the Shrike ranch with my princess and her pony. Nothing but summer camps filled with the best and brightest. Lots of special invitations to join national robotics teams and such. And my little side business building apps that made me millions before I turned eighteen and landed me on in the top three of the “Who’s Who Up and Coming” list in Forbes four years ago.
We won.
We did win, right?
I can’t shake the feeling that something’s coming. That my parents missed something, or forgot something, or just plain left something out. That offer the Young and Mobile Society made me sounded like a threat. So I’m here to see just what the fuck these people want and get them off my back with a firm no, thank you, and that’ll be the end of it. Maybe I really can stay with Rory all summer? Maybe we really can finally have that fairy-tale ending?
When I get to a stop light, I open the Love Notes app, choose something special for her, and then press send.
It’s not a perfect second-chance plan, but it’s a start.
I make my way through the neighborhood streets until my map app tells me I’ve arrived. There are no valets parking cars. There is no sign on the front gate. There’s no music blaring or people walking down the sidewalk dressed up in their summer finery.
It’s just a big house with a big gate.
Hmmm.
I park the rental car, get out, buttoning my suit coat as I cross the street, and press the buzzer on the gate.
“Yes?” The answer comes almost instantly.
“Five Aston,” I say.
Silence.
Hmmm again.
Then a buzzing sound from the walk-in gate off to the left. Can these people be any more annoying?
Whatever.
I go through, follow a stone path leading up to the house, and end up at the front door of the most ostentatious-looking Tudor revival mansion I’ve ever seen.
The Astons are old money. We are rich. But my parents are modest. We live in an old four-bedroom house in an upper-middle-class neighborhood in Fort Collins, Colorado. Ostentatious it is not.
Now my grandma, she’s a little more like this. Her house is a massive four-square in City Park with an imposing brick wall and massive iron gate. And even though her house is just a few miles up the road, City Park and Cherry Creek are worlds apart.
The door opens before I can knock.
“Mr. Aston,” the butler says.
“Yes,” I reply. “I was invited to a party?” I try to see past him, my curiosity in overdrive right now, but he’s a big guy. About three inches taller than me and I’m over six feet tall. Plus, he probably outweighs me by thirty pounds.
“This way,” he says, moving aside just enough to let me pass.
I end up in a two-story foyer with a chandelier that probably cost more than the rental BMW parked on the street.
Again, no music, or people, or decorations.
“This is a party, correct?” I ask.
“Follow me, sir,” the butler says.
So I do. What choice do I have?
We pass numerous hallways, rooms, and servants as we make our way to the back of the house and here—finally—is what I’ve been looking for.
A large tent. The kind used for wedding parties or grand family reunions. But it’s empty, save for workers still setting up.
There is a small gathering on the far side of the lawn. I take it in as the butler opens a set of double glass doors and waves me through.
A dozen men are sitting around a table, all wearing white linen suits and smoking cigars, looking pretty much like The Great Gatsby come to life. They laugh, sip amber liquid from cut-crystal glasses, and generally act very full of themselves.
One of them spots me and stands. “Ah, Mr. Aston! Finally!” He maneuvers away from the table as all the other men turn to look and stand. He meets me on the lawn with an outstretched hand.
I shake it out of habit, saying, “I’m afraid I’m at a disadvantage. I’m not sure why I’m actually here.”
He claps me on the back like I just made a fantastic joke. “I’ve heard about your bluntness, Aston. All in due time, son. All in due time.”
Son. It makes me bristle a little. He’s not old, maybe thirties? And I’m not really that young. Not when you take into account who I am and what I’ve done with the twenty-one years that came before this one. So… son? Really?
“Bring Mr. Aston a drink.”
I’m not even sure who he says it to. The other men approach. A few are my own age, but most are in their thirties, like this guy.
“I’m Grant Pittman, Mr. Aston. And these are my colleagues in the Young and Mobile Society.” He rattles their names off one at a time. I have an uncanny memory, just like my father. So I hear the names, shake each hand, and catalogue them for later.
“What should we call you, Mr. Aston? I hear you have a rather interesting nickname.” This comes from a guy called Stanford. Stanford Young. He’s one of the older guys.
“Five,” I say. “I’m Rutherford Aston the Fifth, but everyone just calls me Five.”
“I knew your father,” another man says. He might be the oldest in the bunch. Maybe early forties. Severance VonPatrick. What a fucked-up name.
“Did you?” I ask Severance.
“Yes,” he says, bellowing laughter. “And from my recollection, nobody called him Four.”
“No,” I say, stepping back to give myself a better view of the grounds. Large trees give us shade. A long table with a cream-colored tablecloth is set with fine china. Whiskey bottles, cigar humidors, and, yes, a fucking badminton net is set up off to the side. “He’s just Ford. And I’m just Five. Does one of you want to tell me why I’m here?”
“Cuts to the chase,” another man says. Young, like me. Montie Christian is his name. “Just like his friend.”
“Friend?” I ask. I really don’t like these people.
“Jack Joseph. You went to Oxford together.”
Well. That explains a lot. Jack Joseph is a pretentious bastard.
“Did I hear my name?”
And there’s the asshole now. Coming out of the main house, dressed just like these society men, with the biggest wild grin on his face. He’s British in every way you can imagine. I think his father is an earl or some shit like that.
“Five!” Jack exclaims. Like this is the most fortuitous meeting ever and not a setup, even though it clearly is a setup. He walks up to me, taking my hand to give it a good ol’ boy shake, and claps me on the back, just like Grant did.
I wince at the touch, but pull myself together quickly. Just make nice, hear them out, say no as politely as you can, and leave.
Good plan, Five. Good plan.
“Jack,” I say, turning to him. “I’m afraid I have no clue why I was asked here.”
“Sit, sit,” he says, motioning to a chair at the head of the table. “You’re the guest of honor today, Aston. Enjoy it. It won’t happen again for decades, if that.”
I won’t be associating with any of these fuckers for more than an hour, let alone decades. But I sit anyway. It’s the fastest way out of this meeting.
They pour me a drink, offer me a cigar, joke in their offhanded we-all-know-each-other way, and then settle back into their seats.
Grant sits at the opposite head of the table. He picks up a gavel, pounds it on what is clearly hardwood underneath the tablecloth, and says, “Let the meeting come to order.”
From there it’s a whirlwind right out of my own worst nightmare.
And I rescind every thought I had earlier about winning.