1
MATT
Monday Morning, September 18
“You’re an angel, and I love you,” I say with a reverence usually reserved for people in church.
My assistant lifts an eyebrow and holds out two aspirin. “Are you talking to me or the bagel sandwich?”
“Both,” I say around a bite, holding out my free hand for the pills.
Kate waits until I swallow the sandwich, then holds out a venti Starbucks coffee that I use to wash down the pills.
“How’d you know?” I ask, picking up the egg and Swiss on sesame bagel once more.
“That you were hungover as crap? I get your flight change notifications. Taking an unplanned Sunday red-eye from Vegas to New York after a bachelor party pretty much says it all.”
I wince. “Can we not say the word Vegas? Or bachelor party? And until further notice, all references to alcohol are hereby banned.”
She smirks. “It sucks getting old, huh?”
“I’m not old,” I say automatically. The very suggestion’s an affront. After all, I’m Matt Cannon, Wall Street’s legendary wunderkind.
And yeah, only douchebags would call themselves legendary, but in my case? It’s kind of true. I graduated from high school when I was sixteen, college when I was nineteen, and got hired on at Wolfe Investments before I could drink. Legally. Because . . . this is Wall Street. Alcohol’s as much a way of life as the money.
Whoops. I just remembered we’re not talking about alcohol. Not until the aspirin, caffeine, and this sandwich work their sweet magic on my booze-fueled headache.
Anyway, the point is I’m only twenty-eight. Not exactly a boy wonder anymore, but to be one of the Wolfes before thirty is brag-worthy, and . . .
Oh hell, who am I kidding?
I can’t drink like I could when I was twenty-two, and I am officially feeling the effects of the forty-eight-hour rager that was my big brother’s bachelor party.
“How are you feeling, really?” Kate asks, giving me a critical once-over.
Kate Henley’s one of those assistants who you guard more carefully than your wallet, Pappy Van Winkle, or bank account password.
Sure, she’s got the petite, pretty, doe-eyed look of a 1950s debutante, but she’s obscenely competent at her job. So competent, in fact, she works for not one demanding boss but three. A couple of years ago, I got promoted to director the same month as my two best friends and Wolfe colleagues, Ian Bradley and Kennedy Dawson. The promotion meant we each got our own assistant instead of sharing one. We couldn’t decide who got Kate, so she took on all three of us and does it twice as well as any of the other assistants who support only one investment broker.
I smile. “Better. Thanks. Headache’s already receding.”
“Good. Because the Sams want to see you.”
My smile disappears. “Now?” I check my Rolex. “It’s barely eight on Monday morning.”
“Yeah, well, this is Wall Street. Everyone’s day started four hours ago. Speaking of which, I’ve called you, like, ten times.”
I rub my forehead. “I lost my cell phone . . . somewhere. The Sams say what they wanted?”
“Nope,” she says, bending to pull something out of a garment bag. “But they came by my desk themselves instead of sending Carla, which is never good. Put this on.”
She hands me a skinny blue tie, and I obediently tug off the striped one I put on in the airport bathroom at baggage claim. At best it smells like the smoke of a Vegas casino. At worst . . .
The way Kate wrinkles her nose when she takes it tells me it’s in the unnamed “worse” category.
I put the fresh tie around my neck, but she holds up a finger and waves it in a circle. “Hmm. You’re worse off than I thought.” She holds up a white dress shirt. “Wardrobe change. Where the hell’d you sleep last night, a barroom floor?”
“Didn’t sleep at all,” I mutter, unbuttoning my shirt.
It sort of sums up my and Kate’s platonic relationship that I’m shirtless, but she doesn’t so much as look at the six-pack I’ve earned through long gym hours as she hands me the shirt. “One day you really are going to be too old for this, you know.”
“One day,” I say with a grin as I put on the fresh shirt. “Not today.”
A minute later, I’ve got a clean shirt, new tie, and feel slightly better as the aspirin and caffeine finally start to kick in.
“The guys in?” I ask, referring to Ian and Kennedy, as I straighten the knot of my tie. I don’t have a mirror, so I spread my arms for Kate to assess.
She gives me a once-over. “Good as we’re gonna get. Soon as you’re done with the meeting, you need a shower. And no, the guys aren’t in. Kennedy was grabbing an early coffee with a client, and Ian said he had an early meeting as well.”
I lift my eyebrows. “Early meeting, meaning . . . he got distracted by Lara in the shower?”
“My thoughts exactly.”
Ian is rather disgustingly in love with his fiancée, Lara McKenzie. And while their level of infatuation is nauseating, there’s no woman I’d rather have lost my partner in playboy debauchery to than her. An agent with the white-collar division of the FBI, Lara’s smart, funny, and, best of all, tolerates exactly none of Ian’s bullshit, which is plentiful.
“Okay, let’s do this,” I mutter, taking one last bite of sandwich and a gulp of coffee. “Scale of one to ten, how intense were the Sams when they came by?”
“Eight,” she says as we walk toward the elevators. “Here.” Kate hands me a piece of gum as she punches the “Up” button.
I dutifully chew it until the elevator arrives, then spit it back into the wrapper so I’m not chomping gum like a sixteen-year-old cashier at the Gap when I meet with the CEOs of the company.
Kate holds out her hand, but I shake my head and step into the elevator. “I don’t pay you enough to throw out my already-chewed gum.”
“You don’t pay me enough for any of this,” she calls after me as the elevator doors close, separating us.
It’s a short ride to the top floor of the building. Can’t say I spend much time up here, thank God. It’s not that I mind the bosses—or my boss’s bosses in this case—I just tend to prefer drinking one vodka martini too many with them at the company holiday party.
Getting called up on a Monday morning when I’m hungover as hell? Not so much.
Carla, the CEOs’ longtime assistant, gives me a smile that’s friendly but a little sympathetic as well. That’s not good. Either I look worse than I feel or she knows something I don’t about what awaits me.
“Hey, Carla. Are they waiting for me?”
“Ohhh yes,” she says with a low, nervous laugh. “They’re waiting for you.”
“Any hints?” I ask.
She blinks. “You read the paper today?”
“Uh, no. Not yet. Which one? The Times? The Journal?”
She sighs. “Oh honey . . .”
My heart beats a little faster because Carla’s as unflappable as they come, and she looks . . . nervous.
I’m about to press her for more information when I hear my name. I glance up to see Sam Wolfe Jr. standing in the doorway of his office.
“Come on in, Matt.” Shit. If Carla looks worried, Sam looks about thirty seconds away from an apoplexy.
“Sure thing,” I say, forcing an easy grin as I amble into the small conference room where the other Sam is sitting at the end of the table.
Samuel and Samantha Wolfe, known as the Sams, are Wall Street’s ultimate power couple. Sam inherited Wolfe Investments from his father around the same time that he married Samantha, a Wall Street powerhouse in her own right.
Neither smiles as I come in and greet them.
“Have a seat,” Samantha says, gesturing at one of the available chairs.
I do as instructed, taking in the newspaper in front of her as I sit. I can see that it’s the Wall Street Journal but not much else. I certainly can’t figure out what the Financial District’s favorite newspaper has to do with me personally.
Samantha takes charge, getting right down to business. “I assume you’ve read this.” She sets a manicured hand on the paper.
“Ah, no. Not yet.”
Sam’s eyebrows go up, somewhere between disapproving and surprised. The WSJ’s required reading around here. I read it—I do. I just . . . Well, damn it. It’s not even nine o’clock. I haven’t gotten to it yet.
Samantha lets out a long sigh as she opens the paper, turns to the second page, and refolds it before sliding it toward me.
Still baffled, I reach out and pull the paper toward me, my eyes going straight to the photo. My stomach drops as I recognize the man in the picture.
Me.
And not just me. Me and a scantily clad woman draped across my lap, my hands on her bare waist.
The memories are hazy. This was Saturday night. Or was it Friday? The photo’s in black and white, but the woman was blonde, the bra was red. Or was it pink? It was late by the time we got to that particular strip club, I remember that.
I drag my eyes away from the photo to the headline:
Have the Wolfes of Wall Street gone too far?
My stomach churns. I’m used to the Wolfes of Wall Street moniker—it’s all any of us at Wolfe Investments heard after the Leonardo DiCaprio movie came out. But seeing it in print alongside my face in the Wall Street Journal of all places . . . this isn’t good.
“You must have heard about it,” Sam says, his voice a low, disapproving rumble.
“No.” I resist the urge to run a hand over my neck, to see if I’m sweating. “I was on a red-eye.” And lost my phone somewhere in the weekend’s debauchery.
Sam grunts, then exchanges a long look with his wife. In my hungover state, I’m not at the top of my game, but I know that look doesn’t mean good things.
Samantha’s the one to give it to me straight. “You can read the full article later, but I’ll give you the highlights: You stumbled into the same club as a WSJ reporter who was covering a story in Vegas. He was sober. You were not. You were seen tucking hundreds into G-strings, dropping thousands on a single round of expensive whiskey, and that wasn’t even your last stop of the evening. He followed you to three other clubs, where members of your party unabashedly partook in illegal substances.”
My head snaps up. “I don’t touch drugs. Booze, that’s it.”
“Booze and women,” Sam says with a pointed look at the paper.
“Lap dances aren’t illegal. Neither’s vodka or whiskey.”
“No,” Samantha grants. “And we’re not here to act as your parents. You’re one of our best, Matt, you know that. But this is bad. We’ve already received a half dozen calls from concerned clients, wondering just what the hell we’re doing with their money.”
“I spend my money,” I say, stabbing a finger against the newsprint. “And I’ve earned every penny.”
“We know that,” Samantha says. “But you know as well as we do that perception often counts more than fact. Nobody’s going to believe you didn’t touch the cocaine. Nobody’s going to believe the hundreds you threw at these women stopped at a harmless lap dance. Drugs, prostitution, reckless spending . . . those aren’t accusations we can weather easily. Especially not after the insider-trading allegations against Ian last year. We’re still doing damage control from that.”
“He was found innocent,” I snap, ever defensive of my friend, who may be a bit of a daredevil, but he plays by the book when it comes to his work.
“Yes. Officially,” Sam says. “But as we said, there’s the perception issue. And this . . .” He gestures at the paper and breaks off.
Samantha folds her hands on the table and meets my eyes. “Public relations and legal have been strongly suggesting that we let you go to ward off the worst of the reputation hit.”
For a second, I think I’ve heard her wrong. “Excuse me?”
“We don’t see the need to take it that far,” Samantha says, pausing to let an unspoken yet linger in the silence. “We understand this was a bit of bad luck on your part, being in the same club as a reporter. But Matt, we do have to do some damage control here. You’ve already had two clients request to be moved to another broker.”
I manage to nod, even as my racing brain is in denial that this is happening. “Sure. Of course.”
Samantha looks at her husband, who takes over. “We’re thinking an image makeover.”
“A what?”
“You know . . .” He waves his hand. “Cutting back on the booze. Limiting the late nights. Skipping the caviar at dinner. Keeping your bar bill under four figures. And for the love of God, avoiding the strip club and your cocaine-loving friends.”
“Sure, of course,” I say, already nodding.
“There’s another thing,” Samantha says. “All of this will help, but nothing signals a reformed man like a plus-one. I mean, look at Ian and Lara. He was even more wild than you, and now he’s—”
“Domesticated, I know,” I snap. “But he didn’t plan for that, it just happened. I don’t have a Lara McKenzie waiting in the wings. I’m single and happy to be.”
“Well, get un-single,” Samantha says, standing as though that’s the end of the conversation. “Preferably in time for the Wolfe Annual Gala next month.”
“Wait, what? What do you mean?”
Sam stands and moves so he’s beside his wife. “She means that nothing cleans up a man’s reputation like the right woman by his side.”
“But—”
Samantha pins me with a look. “I’ll spell it out for you, Matt. Get a girlfriend.”
“Or?” I ask, sensing an ultimatum at play.
She gives a thin smile. “Or get a new job.”