Chapter 2

The elevator in James’s Tribeca building had never felt slower. Each floor seemed to mock him with its steady progression upward while his world crumbled downward. Twenty-third floor. Twenty-fourth. The numbers blurred through the unshed tears he refused to acknowledge.

His apartment greeted him with the same pristine order he had left that morning—everything in its place, every surface clean, every book aligned on mahogany shelves. The space reflected who he thought he was: refined, purposeful, destined for something greater. Now it felt like a museum exhibit of his own delusions.

James stood in the foyer for what felt like hours, water from his soaked clothes forming a small puddle on the Italian marble. The Tiffany box remained in his pocket, its weight both infinitesimal and crushing. Finally, he pulled it out and set it on the console table next to his keys, as if it were merely another object to be organized rather than the crystallized remains of his future.

The first thing he did was pour himself three fingers of the Macallan 25 his grandfather had left him. Then three more. The whisky burned, but it was a cleaner burn than the one searing through his chest.

He called in sick to work the next morning. Then the next. On the third day, he simply didn’t call at all.

The days began to blur together in a haze of routine self-destruction. James had always been methodical, and he applied that same precision to his dissolution. He ordered groceries online to avoid human contact. He had meals delivered when he remembered to eat, which became increasingly rare. The expensive suits remained untouched in his walk-in closet while he lived in old Harvard t-shirts and sweatpants—clothes that predated his careful cultivation of adult sophistication. Weeks bled into one another, marked only by the growing disarray of his once-immaculate home.

His reflection in the bathroom mirror became a stranger. The clean-shaven jaw sprouted stubble, then a proper beard. His usually perfectly styled hair grew unruly. The gym membership he had maintained religiously for years went unused, and his body began to soften, losing the lean precision he had maintained since college.

The anger came in waves. Sometimes he would pace his apartment for hours, imagining confrontations. He crafted elaborate speeches in his mind, devastating comebacks that would expose their cruelty and his own worth. He pictured walking into his father’s office and laying out everything he had witnessed, watching Richard’s face crumble with shame. He envisioned cornering Derek at one of their private clubs, humiliating him in front of their mutual acquaintances.

But these fantasies always ended the same way—confrontations that always ended with James becoming someone he didn’t recognize. Someone vindictive. Someone cruel. Someone like them.

The worst part wasn’t the betrayal itself, but the way it made him question everything he had believed about himself. Had he truly been naive, or had he chosen to see what he wanted to see? When Victoria had kept him at arm’s length physically, had he really respected her boundaries, or had he simply lacked the courage to push further? When his father had relegated him to the logistics department, had James’s acceptance been dignity or cowardice?

He spent entire days lying on his couch, staring at the ceiling, picking apart every interaction from the past three years. Each memory felt contaminated now, every smile from Victoria suspect, every conversation with Derek potentially loaded with hidden mockery. The foundation of his identity—that he was honorable, that he was loved, that he had a meaningful future ahead of him—had been built on quicksand.

Two weeks into his isolation, his phone rang constantly. He had seventeen missed calls from work, twelve from Victoria, and surprisingly, three from Derek. He listened to none of the voicemails. Instead, he turned the phone off entirely and placed it in a drawer, as if silence could somehow protect him from their concern—real or feigned.

The apartment began to reflect his internal state. Newspapers piled up outside his door until his neighbor complained to building management. Dishes accumulated in the sink despite his ability to order clean ones from the same designer who had furnished his kitchen. The Tiffany box remained on the console table, gathering dust, a constant reminder of his humiliation.

It was during his third week of self-imposed exile that James discovered something unexpected about rock bottom—it was surprisingly comfortable. There was a perverse relief in having no expectations to meet, no image to maintain, no future to work toward. For the first time in his adult life, he had no obligations to anyone, including himself.

Meanwhile, thirty-two floors above in the gleaming offices of Newhouse Industries, a different conversation was taking place.

Richard Newhouse III sat behind his massive desk, fingers steepled, regarding his younger son with growing irritation. Derek lounged in the leather chair opposite him, seemingly unconcerned by their current predicament.

“Three weeks, Derek. Your brother hasn’t shown up for work in three weeks, and according to Victoria, he’s not answering his phone.”

Derek shrugged, adjusting his platinum cufflinks. “Maybe he’s finally realized he’s not cut out for corporate life. Could save us the trouble of easing him out.”

“This isn’t like James,” Richard said, his voice carrying a note of uncharacteristic uncertainty. “He’s many things, but irresponsible isn’t one of them. Even when I’ve given him the most menial tasks, he’s completed them with that insufferable perfectionism of his.”

Victoria entered the office without knocking, a privilege she had earned through months of careful cultivation. She wore a designer suit that suggested professional competence while remaining undeniably attractive—a balance she had perfected for these meetings.

“Any word from our missing prince?” she asked, settling into the chair beside Derek with practiced grace.

“Nothing,” Richard replied. “I’m beginning to wonder if we underestimated him.”

Derek laughed, but there was a slight edge to it. “Come on, Father. This is James we’re talking about. The man who still asks permission to leave work five minutes early. He probably has food poisoning or is reorganizing his sock drawer by thread count.” A flicker of unease crossed his face, quickly masked by his usual bravado.

“For three weeks?” Victoria’s voice carried genuine concern, though not for James’s wellbeing. “What if he ... what if he somehow found out?”

The question hung in the air like smoke. Richard’s expression darkened.

“Impossible,” Derek said quickly. “James couldn’t find his way out of a paper bag without written instructions. He’s probably having some sort of quarter-life crisis about whether he’s living up to grandfather’s legacy or some other pathetic existential nonsense.”

“Besides,” Victoria added, though she sounded like she was trying to convince herself, “if he knew, wouldn’t he have confronted us by now? That’s exactly the kind of noble, righteous thing he’d do. Storm into your office demanding explanations and apologies.”

Richard nodded slowly. “You’re right. James has never been subtle about his feelings. When he’s upset, everyone knows it. Remember when he found out Derek had used his Harvard connections to get that internship at Goldman? He couldn’t stop talking about ‘fairness’ and ‘earning one’s place’ for weeks.”

“Exactly,” Derek said, his confidence returning. “If James had discovered our arrangement, he’d have written us all strongly worded letters by now, probably with citations from business ethics textbooks.”

Victoria smoothed her skirt, a gesture that drew both men’s attention. “So what’s our play? I can’t keep up this charade indefinitely. I have other opportunities to consider.”

“Give it another week,” Richard decided. “If he doesn’t surface by then, Derek, you’ll go to his apartment. Check on him. Play the concerned brother. If he’s discovered our little secret, we’ll know immediately—James has never been able to hide his emotions. If he hasn’t, we’ll express appropriate family concern and gently guide him back to work.”

“And if he has found out?” Victoria asked.

Richard’s smile was cold. “Then we accelerate our timeline. Derek’s promotion becomes effective immediately, and we let James rage impotently while we consolidate control. What’s he going to do, sue his own family? Contest documents that have been legally prepared for months? He doesn’t have the stomach for a real fight.”

“You’re giving him too much credit for intelligence,” Derek said dismissively. “James is probably sitting in his apartment right now, working on some self-improvement plan or reading philosophy books about finding meaning in mundane work. He’s always been more likely to blame himself than others when things don’t go his way.”

“True,” Victoria agreed. “He once apologized to me for not being ‘emotionally available enough’ when I was the one who kept canceling our dates. The man takes responsibility for everything, even things that aren’t his fault.”

Richard leaned back in his chair, his confidence restored. “Then we proceed as planned. Derek, prepare for the announcement of your promotion. Victoria, maintain the relationship for now—it’s still useful cover. And both of you, practice looking surprised when James finally emerges from whatever hole he’s crawled into.”

As they discussed the logistics of their deception, none of them considered that James’s silence might represent something more dangerous than discovery: evolution.

In his apartment, James sat by the window watching the city below. People moved with purpose along the sidewalks, heading to jobs, to meetings, to lives that mattered to someone. He envied their certainty, their ignorance of the particular kind of betrayal that made you question not just others, but the very foundation of your own judgment.

The anger had burned itself out over the past week, leaving behind something colder and more calculating. He had always been analytical, but now he turned that analysis inward with surgical precision. What had he learned about himself in these weeks of isolation? What were the patterns he had been too close to see?

He was not, he realized, the man he had thought he was. The James who had walked into Victoria’s apartment three weeks ago had been a construction, carefully built from other people’s expectations and his own desperate need to be worthy of his family name. That James had been performative nobility, learned rather than felt.

But who was he really, underneath all that careful cultivation?

The question terrified him more than the betrayal itself.

He had spent his entire adult life trying to earn his father’s respect through a kind of moral mathematics—if he worked hard enough, sacrificed enough, proved himself honorable enough, surely love and recognition would follow. But what if the formula had been wrong from the beginning? What if his father’s love was simply not available, regardless of what James did to earn it?

The realization was strangely liberating.

For the first time in his life, James began to consider what he actually wanted, separate from what he thought he should want. Did he truly care about running Newhouse Industries, or had that dream been imposed upon him by expectation and tradition? Did he love Victoria, or had she simply fit the image of who he thought he should love?

The answers that emerged surprised him.

He did care about business, but not the particular business of Newhouse Industries. What excited him was the puzzle of logistics, the elegant mathematics of supply chains, the satisfaction of solving complex problems. He had genuinely enjoyed his work in the warehouse, had found meaning in optimizing processes that others considered beneath their notice. Perhaps his exile from executive management hadn’t been punishment—perhaps it had been liberation he had been too proud to recognize.

As for Victoria ... James struggled to remember a single moment when he had felt genuine passion for her, as opposed to appreciation for her suitability. She had been beautiful, intelligent, well-connected, appropriate. But had she ever made him laugh unexpectedly? Had she ever surprised him with an unconventional thought or challenged him in a way that made him grow? He couldn’t recall a single instance.

The woman he had planned to propose to had been another performance, another attempt to check the boxes of what successful men were supposed to want.

But it was while packing his grandfather’s books that he found it: a slim volume of sheet music tucked between a biography of Andrew Carnegie and a treatise on railroad economics. Bach’s Goldberg Variations, the same edition Madame Volkov had given him for his thirteenth birthday. The inscription was still visible in her precise handwriting: “For James, who understands that music is not about perfection, but about truth.”