Chapter 27 - The Window Shopper

Chapter 27: Chapter 27 - The Window Shopper

Jesse laughed.

It started low in his chest and kept building until he had to put a hand on the back of the chair to steady himself. It was a loud and full laugh, the kind he hadn’t let out in years.

Andrew’s smile vanished.

"What’s so funny?"

"You," Jesse said, still catching his breath. "You’re funny, Andy."

He straightened up and wiped the corner of his eye.

"Look at you. Sitting in your daddy’s chair, in your daddy’s office, at your daddy’s company. And the best you can come up with is ’I’m not paying you a dime.’" He shook his head. "You sound like a kid who got his toy taken away at recess."

Andrew’s face darkened.

"You’ve spent five years treating me like your slave, and this morning you couldn’t even keep your company running without me. Half an hour ago, you were begging me to save your fall collection." Jesse leaned forward and put both hands flat on the desk. "And now you think holding back my money makes you a big man?"

He let his eyes drift down, deliberately, toward Andrew’s lap. Then back up.

"Guess some things just come in small sizes."

Andrew shot up out of his chair so fast it rolled back and hit the window.

"You think you’re something now, Jesse?" His voice was low and shaking. "You think a fancy car and a corner office change what you are?" He came around the desk until they were face to face. "You’re Jamie Byrne’s son. That’s all you’ll ever be. Everybody in this building knows it. Everybody in this city knows it. Your father was a thief and a coward who ran off and left you and your mother to rot. He didn’t even care enough to come back when she was dying."

The words hit hard.

They landed somewhere deep, somewhere that still ached. A part of him that had cried over a hospice bed and stood alone at a grave scanning every face in the crowd.

He was at the funeral, Percy had said. And he didn’t say a word.

Jesse felt it all the way down to his bones.

But he didn’t let it reach his face.

He smiled. Easy. Bored. Like Andrew had just told him the weather.

"Are you done?"

Andrew blinked.

"Because I’ve heard that speech before, Andy. From better people than you. It stopped working on me a long time ago." Jesse straightened his jacket. "So here’s how this is going to go."

He tapped the wire confirmation still lying on the desk.

"You’re going to reimburse me. In full. Before the end of the day."

Andrew scoffed. "Or what?"

"Or I’ll treat that four hundred thousand dollars as an investment." Jesse’s voice stayed perfectly calm. "In Standard & Silk. I’ve already paid your supplier. I’ve already kept your fall collection alive. If you don’t pay me back, then as far as I’m concerned, that money is my stake in this company. And I’ll get my lawyers to make it official."

The color slowly drained from Andrew’s face.

Jesse watched him do the math. The company was already bleeding. The board was already restless. Uncle Robert was waiting in the wings for any excuse to come back. And now Jamie Byrne’s son was threatening to buy his way in through the front door with a receipt and a lawyer.

If word got out that Jesse Byrne held even a sliver of Standard & Silk, the press would eat Andrew alive. The investors would panic. The board would start asking questions he couldn’t answer.

He couldn’t allow it. Not under any circumstances.

Andrew’s jaw worked for a long moment. Then he turned away, walked back around the desk and sank into his chair.

"You’ll have your money," he said through his teeth. "Within the hour."

Jesse smiled.

"See? That wasn’t so hard."

He turned and walked out of the office. He didn’t close the door behind him.

Margaret was back at her desk. She looked up as he passed, took one look at his face, and quickly looked back down at her screen.

Jesse walked down the hallway toward his office, his footsteps slow and even.

He kept thinking about the look on Andrew’s face. The panic. The way it had cracked through that perfect, polished mask the second Jesse mentioned investing.

Andrew had built his whole life on being Andrew Hyland. The name. The company. The office with the view. He’d never been told no. Never been knocked down. Never lost anything that mattered.

What would happen when Jesse took it all away?

’Do you think he’ll kill himself?’ Jesse asked. ’When I become CEO of this place?’

The answer came almost immediately.

[That is very likely, host. Judging from his reaction today.]

Jesse stopped walking.

He stood in the middle of the hallway, staring at nothing.

He wanted Andrew to suffer. He wanted Andrew to lose everything. He wanted him to know what it felt like to sit in a basement with no windows, to have people laugh at him behind his back, to be humiliated in front of a crowd.

But that?

He thought about his mother. About how hard she’d fought for every single extra day. About what it had done to him to watch her lose that fight.

No. Whatever else he was turning into, he wasn’t that.

Revenge was one thing. Someone dying because of him was another.

He filed the thought away in a corner of his mind and kept walking.

******

Jesse left work at a quarter to three.

The reimbursement hit his account at 2:41. He checked it in the elevator on the way down. Every cent was there.

He smiled, slid the phone back into his pocket and drove uptown.

McQuise Hospital sat on a quiet, tree-lined block on the Upper East Side, all glass and white stone and polished brass. It didn’t look like a hospital. It looked like a five-star hotel that happened to have operating rooms. The waiting area had leather armchairs, a marble water feature and fresh orchids on every table. Soft piano music drifted out of hidden speakers.

Jesse had been here three times before. Each time, he’d felt like he was trespassing.

He walked up to the front desk.

The receptionist was a woman in her thirties with a sleek black ponytail, sharp eyeliner and a name tag that read KIMBERLY. She looked up from her computer with a practiced, professional smile.

Then she recognized him.

The smile didn’t disappear. It just died behind her eyes and stayed fixed on her face, like a sign left on in an empty store.

Jesse recognized her too. She’d been at this desk on his last visit, a year ago. He’d heard her whispering to the nurse beside her as he walked out with his cost estimate folded in his pocket.

The window shopper’s back. Comes in, looks at everything, never buys.

"Good afternoon," Kimberly said. "Can I help you?"

"I’d like to see Dr. Ramsey and Dr. Kessler," Jesse said. "I’ve had consultations with both of them before."

Kimberly turned back to her computer screen without even pretending to check anything.

"I’m afraid the doctors are very busy today."

"Both of them?"

"Both of them." She typed something. Clicked something. Didn’t look up.

Jesse watched her.

She was lying. He could see it in the way her eyes stayed glued to the monitor, in the way her fingers kept moving across the keyboard without actually accomplishing anything. The way her body angled slightly away from him, shoulders turned, as if she could make him disappear by refusing to acknowledge he was standing in front of her.

He’d seen people do it most of his life.

Jesse smiled anyway.

"That’s fine," he said. "I’m not here for another consultation. I’d like to book the surgeries. Both of them. As soon as possible."

That got her to look up.

For a second, she just stared at him. Then she laughed. A short, sharp laugh she didn’t even bother to hide.

"Sir." She leaned back in her chair. "With all due respect, McQuise only books procedures for serious patients." Her eyes flicked over his face, lingering on his crooked nose and crossed eyes like she was reading a menu. "Not people who just come in to waste the doctors’ time because they can’t afford anything."

A woman sitting in one of the leather armchairs looked up from her magazine. A man by the water feature turned his head.

Jesse’s jaw tightened.

Some part of him wanted to turn around and walk out. Get back in the Porsche and drive away and never think about this place again. There were other hospitals in New York. Other surgeons.

But not like these two.

Dr. Ramsey was the best strabismus surgeon on the East Coast. Dr. Kessler had rebuilt the faces of fighters, models and movie stars. Jesse had spent years researching every option, and every road led back here. These were the people he wanted. The best. And he wasn’t going to settle for less just because some receptionist had decided he wasn’t worth her time.

He opened his mouth to respond.

"Is there a problem here, Kim?"

Jesse turned.

A security guard was walking toward the desk from the elevator bank. He was big, built like a refrigerator, with a shaved head and a radio clipped to his shoulder. He stopped beside Jesse and looked him up and down.

Kimberly didn’t hesitate.

"Yes, actually." She folded her arms. "This gentleman is causing a disturbance."

Jesse stared at her.

"Could you please escort him out of the building?"