The man who stepped out of the elevator might have been slipping off the cover of Town and Country’s Top 50 Bachelors issue. He was one of those young men who understood his clothes, his shirt collar higher than most men would have dared, the suit an impossibly-fine vicuna wool. That’s what they noticed first in reception, what everyone always noticed first: the clothes. The suit itself, two shades darker than electric blue, seemed to slice through the air of the room.

Why was he here? Questions and whispers followed in his wake, filling the atmosphere around him.

He strode quickly past the onlookers, with what looked like confidence. They saw the clothes, and a few might have seen the bright smile showing perfect white teeth. No one would have made it all the way up to his eyes. They would not have seen the tension there, the tiny lines of stress that were the only imperfection on his freshly moisturized and glowing skin.

“Mr. Cray!” said the receptionist at the end of the hall, rising from her desk to greet him. She did not hide her worried look. “Your uncle has been waiting for you.”

For the first time since he’d entered the building, he allowed his mask of perfect confidence to slip. His eyebrows knitted, and that bright smile became a grimace. “How bad is it, Wanda?”

“He hasn’t emerged from the office once since he got here this morning.” She brushed off his lapels and looked him over. “Sweetie, I think it’s going to be bad.”

Nothing for it but to marshal one’s forces, straighten the spine and go in confident. Evan Cray put his smile back on, maybe a few millimeters wider than natural, and walked through to meet his uncle.

“Wasted potential. Squandering of resources. Besmirchment of the family name and honor.” Archibald Cray did not look directly at Evan, nor at the stack of papers in the manila folders on his desk. Behind him loomed a topographical map of Cray’s Quarry, their town, their home, and it was quite a backdrop, as though a reminder of the family’s power and reach. Because of that power, Uncle Archie wasn’t the sort of man to speak in exclamation marks. He didn’t have to. You’d never see him pound his fist on the desk, and the veins in his forehead always remained small and invisible. Yet his voice chilled Evan’s blood.

“Is besmirchment a word?” Evan asked.

“Was that one of your jokes?”

“More a deflection than a joke. You have me worried, Uncle Archie. Surely all those papers aren’t about me.”

The older man leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. Lifting his face to heaven, he said, “When your father entrusted me with your safety and welfare, Evan, it was not so that I could finance all your debaucheries and degradations.”

“I’m hardly debauched, Uncle,” said Evan.

The newspaper clipping that Archibald Cray removed from the folder was headlined: Drunken Playboy Crashes Boat Into Plane. “How do you explain this?” he asked Evan.

“Oh, come on, it was a sea-plane! Who expects to see a plane just sitting in the ocean? Besides, all I did was mash its tail-feathers a little. Insurance took care of it.”

Archibald’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, the insurance that we pay for. I understand that when the Coast Guard arrived, they found twenty people on your boat in various stages of undress and inebriation.”

“We were celebrating!”

“In January.”

“New Year’s?”

“On January 14th?”

“Bastille Day?”

“That’s July,” Archibald said curtly. He pulled another clipping out. “You were spotted in New York last month with the nephew of the Ambassador from Estonia.”

“Which one—oh, the quiet blond one? You really have to watch out for those guys, it’s always the quiet ones.”

“You were found cavorting in a public fountain—”

“We weren’t cavorting! I was trying to sober him up! Also it’s not like I was dousing the actual ambassador, although from the rumors I hear, he’s pretty into--”

Archibald let the papers fall onto his desk. “You caused an international incident. Look at these, Evan. Story after story of your drunken exploits, dishonoring the family name, and, not incidentally, the name of Cray Reliable Electrics, source of all the money you are squandering across the globe. Meanwhile your cousins are putting their noses to the grindstone, making this company great. Making the fortune that you seem to think it is your right to squander.”

Evan had been through enough of these talks to know how they were supposed to go. He would show a little contrition, give a shy smile, promise to do better. Hearts would melt, anger would relent, and he’d find a nice fat check deposited into his personal account, enough to keep him afloat until the next disaster. At least, that’s how it had always worked with his dad.

This was different. Uncle Archibald had always been superior, condescending, although flustered by Evan’s adventures. This was the first time he really sounded enraged. Calmly enraged, if that was possible.

Evan realized he wasn’t going to get away with an apology this time.

“It was one thing when your father was with us, rest his soul,” said Archibald, rising from his chair to go stand at the window that looked down at the city. “He insisted he saw something in you, a spark. He convinced us you would mature into an intelligent asset for the family business, like my own sons. He always was a dreamer, your father.”

That stung, the way he said dreamer. Evan’s dad often did have his head in the clouds. That’s what made him a great inventor, which in turn led to the millions and millions of dollars they’d earned. Dad had also been one of the few members of the family who saw any potential in Evan.

“C’mon, Uncle, it’s not that bad. I’m still the same guy you used to play catch with, when I was a kid! Remember that?” He found himself quailing under his uncle’s glower. “Remember…the catch?”

“What I remember, Evan, is the ungodly sum you receive each quarter from the trust fund your father created. Secondly, I seem to remember that I am its trustee. When I put those two facts together, it suggests a course of action: Cutting you off.”

Evan gripped the arms of his chair. The room had gotten twenty degrees colder. “Archie, you wouldn’t. You can’t. That money is all I have to live on.”

“One month of that money is far more than any of our employees makes in an entire year. And yet you burn through it with abandon, nephew. Parties that wind up involving the authorities, sports cars crashed into mountains, some strange business venture called Power Drank?”

“It was a soda made with extra caffeine and cough syrup! The market just wasn’t ready for it yet.”

“How much longer are you expecting to leech off the decades of hard work your father and I put in to build this company? To put it simply, Evan: When are you going to grow up?”

Evan rapped his knuckles against the desk. “Uncle, you’re absolutely right. I’ve seen the wisdom of your words. I’m a changed man. Henceforth I will give half of all my trust fund checks to widows, orphans, and animal shelter dogs. You’ll see an immediate brightening of my prospects. I’ll act like a normal person rather than a rich brat. I’ll be like my cousins. I’ll buy a station wagon. I’ll start wearing sweaters with deer on them.”

Archibald sunk back into his chair. He opened his drawer and pulled out one final envelope, and handed it to Evan with a heavy sigh.

Evan held it in his fingers. It was the wrong size to be one of his fund checks. There was something too light about it, and that had him worried.

“A little stipend?” he asked his uncle. “Something to get me through the winter?”

“Something like that, yes.”

Evan opened the envelope. Inside was a letter from the family attorneys. Evan looked up. “But this says there are no more checks coming.”

“Yes, I know.”

“But Archie, it says, let me read the exact phrase, No further distributions shall be made from The Cray Reliable Fund unless certain conditions are met! What conditions?”

Archibald removed his glasses and squeezed the thick flesh between his eyes. “The conditions are right there in the letter, Evan. For god’s sake, they’re right there.”

“…conditions herein outlined…blah blah blah…stipulated below…jeesh, are they getting paid by the word?…shall take a position within the company and earn the starting salary appropriate—oh my god, Archie, they’re saying I have to get a job!”

“Yes. You’ve been given a job, here at the company your father helped build.”

“But I don’t know anything about electrical fittings and switches and…and wires—”

“A perfect time for you to learn, then.”

“I can’t believe it, Uncle Archie! My father never would have made me work for a living! I’m not a, a what do you call it, one of those--”

“People, Evan. They’re called people. People work for a living, and they’re grateful to have the jobs they have, and they work hard at them, something you’ve never had to do before.”

Evan sat forward in his chair. “I mean, there’s work, and then there’s work. Can I have a job like the cousins? Ash and Callum seem to have it pretty good.”

“My sons have been working with the company since their teen years, leaving only long enough to attain their degrees. You, on the other hand, have no job experience whatsoever.”

“But that’s not fair!”

“It is eminently fair. Evan, you will not see one red cent of your trust fund unless you are successful at this.”

There it was, in black and white, down in the letter. The last paragraph. Distributions from the Trust shall resume if and only if approved by Executive President Archibald Cray and the Board. The board, which included his cousins Ash and Callum.

“So…so I come work for you?”

“Not for me directly, you understand,” said Archibald, more conciliatory now that the damage had been done. “It wouldn’t be right to start you off as one of the vice presidents or directors. No, I have set you up in an office on the second floor—”

“All the way down there? You may as well put me in the cafeteria with one of those little hair nets!”

A smile played across Archibald’s lips. It might have looked sinister, were it not so pleased. “Believe me, if you weren’t your father’s son, I’d have you starting in the mail room. But no, I do have to honor your father’s memory, as much as you seem to want to drag the family name through the mud. So it’s all arranged. You will come in on Monday and begin.”

“But I don’t know what to do! I don’t know what the job is! Or…or anything!”

“Fortunately we have someone who can help with that, someone your father trusted a great deal. You’ll meet him on Monday. I think it’ll do you good to know him.”

Evan’s heart sank. Monday was only three days from now. Three last days of freedom, before being chained to a desk the rest of his life…the very fate his father had tried to avoid for him.