Chapter 3

03

Late at night, the corridor lights were dim, and the space was thick with the rise and fall of coughing and moans.

I curled up under the blanket, shivering with cold, but my mind drifted back four years.

Back then, I was "Half-the-City Henson" of the Riverport construction world.

The first time I saw Pansy Fox was backstage at a charity gala.

She was a working student waiting tables, and after knocking over a glass of red wine, she stood trembling under the headwaiter's scolding.

Those eyes of hers were stubborn, holding everything in, so much like me when I was young, just come to the city to make my way.

I got her out of the spot she was in and handed her my card.

It was meant to be nothing, a small favor, but a few days later she really did track down my company. She wasn't there for money. She came with a thick business plan, asking me to invest in her education and her future.

She said, "Mr. Henson, right now I'm a stock that's hit the floor. But if you're willing to buy the bottom, I'll pay you back a hundred times over."

Arrogant, but interesting.

I funded her. At first it was just tuition.

Later, her mother was diagnosed with cirrhosis and needed a transplant. Surgery plus anti-rejection medication came to an astronomical figure.

She knelt outside my office door and knocked her forehead against the floor until it bled.

I didn't hesitate. I had finance transfer over a million.

After that, she wanted to do a finance master's in the United States, at an Ivy League school, where tuition and living costs were sky-high.

Everyone around me told me not to. They said the girl was restless, that once she left she'd never come back.

I looked at the longing in her eyes and signed the check anyway.

The last big outlay was two years ago.

She'd come home wanting to build a fintech startup, and it happened to coincide with the time my company's cash flow was starting to tighten.

But I overrode all the objections again and moved two million from my personal account to give her as an angel round of funding.

Over those four years, all told, I spent no less than five million on her.

Some people said I was after her body.

Heaven knows I never even touched her hand.

I had no daughter. My son had been spoiled rotten by my ex-wife and cared about nothing but racing cars and clubbing.

In Pansy I saw a kind of life force that was terribly rare, the drive of a weed that pushes its way up even with a boulder pressing down on it.

I wanted to see how high a person could fly if they were given enough resources.

I treated it as the proudest "venture investment" of my life.

But reality slapped me hard across the face.

Two years ago, after she took that two million, Pansy cut off all contact.

At first her messages went unanswered, her phone switched off.

Then I heard her project had run into trouble, and after that she vanished completely.

Right on the heels of that, my construction company hit an industry winter, and the cash flow snapped.

I tried to reach her, thinking even a few hundred thousand back could tide me over, but the messages I sent sank like stones.

That was when I truly understood what it meant to throw a meat bun to a dog and never see it again.

My friends' mockery, my ex-wife's accusations, became a boulder pressing on my heart.

"Oh, Leo, you're just too naive. College girls these days, they've got plenty of scheming in them. She took your money and went off to live it up abroad. You think she cares whether you live or die?"

Maybe they were right.

I slid my hand under the pillow and felt for the photo I'd rubbed pale from handling.

It was taken at the airport before Pansy left for the United States.

She was smiling brightly, her eyes full of ambition and gratitude.

"Con artist."

I cursed the photo under my breath, and the tears slid from the corners of my eyes down into my ears, icy and biting.

Tomorrow they were stopping the dialysis.

Without it, the toxins would build up, and I probably wouldn't last a week.

Fine. Dying would be release.

No more looking at people's contempt, no more being hounded for debts, no more dragging out my days like a maggot in this corridor that reeked of disinfectant.

I drifted off into a hazy sleep, and in the dream I was back in that glorious office, Pansy standing across from me with a report in her hand, saying to me, "Mr. Henson, we won."