Chapter 20

The truck door slammed shut with more force than necessary, but I didn’t care. Dad gave me a look and shook his head as we walked up the front steps, probably writing it off as teenage angst.

It wasn’t, though.

Joshua had gotten away with it again. Whatever he’d taken from the Sunday school classroom this time, Mrs. Dawson had been pretty upset about it. But just like always, Mom had swooped in with excuses about how Joshua was “just curious” and “didn’t mean any harm.” The way she’d smiled at Mrs. Dawson while completely dismissing what had happened made my stomach turn.

This was how a psychopath was made. One excuse at a time.

“Blake, you need to let this go,” Dad said quietly as he unlocked the front door.

“So you keep saying.”

“Your brother is eleven years old.”

“Would I have gotten away with any of this stuff when I was eleven?”

“Blake...”

“No, I’m serious. Would I?”

Dad’s silence was answer enough. We both knew I would have been grounded for basically my entire childhood if I’d behaved like Joshua did.

But then I wasn’t Mom’s favorite. Mom always had excuses. ‘Boys will be boys,’ she’d say, or ‘Joshua’s just so curious about everything. I think it shows intelligence.’

As if on cue, the sound of Mom’s voice telling Josh to be quiet ‘cause she had to go lie down, drifted out the now open door.

I dropped onto the couch harder than necessary, still burning with frustration. Every time Joshua pulled something like this, Mom defended him. I couldn’t exactly tell Dad ‘Josh is going to become a serial killer.’ I mean, sure, I’d come up with some weird knowledge about sports, but he’d already started explaining that away as intuition. Besides, guessing the outcome of some games was a lot different from convincing a parent their child was a psychopath.

When I’d got close to the subject, Dad had gotten angry with me.

Dad settled into his chair and reached for the remote, but before he could turn on the TV, the phone rang.

“I’ll get it,” Dad said with a sigh, getting up and walking to the kitchen phone. “Hello? Oh, Mr. Henderson. Good to hear from you.”

Dad waved to me and held the phone between us so we could both hear.

“Tom, I wanted to call and update you both on my meeting with Jeff Bezos. I have to say, it went much better than I expected.”

“Better how?” I asked.

“Blake, I’ll be honest. When you first pitched this idea, I thought it was a long shot. I got that it had the catchy online buzz people are starting to talk about, but I just couldn’t see it, but after spending two hours with the man yesterday, I’m genuinely impressed.”

“By what, specifically?” Dad asked.

“His background, for starters. You’d said he worked at a hedge fund, but you didn’t mention he was one of the youngest vice presidents in D. E. Shaw’s history. That’s not a fly-by-night outfit. That’s one of the most successful shops on Wall Street. He understands finance, market analysis, and customer behavior. This isn’t a guy operating on gut instinct. More importantly, his business plan is thorough. Really thorough. He’s got his market well thought out and he’s focused. Too many times these guys try to go pie in the sky and get too big way before they’re ready. I like that his plan is grounded and focused.”

That part made me frown. In my head, I felt like they only stayed a bookstore for a few years before branching out into other stuff and were buying up companies by the end of the dot-com bubble in ... four years? Five? Somewhere in there.

Of course, most of what I knew about Bezos wasn’t from these years but was from the late 2010s when he had his head shaved and was going up in rocket ships or whatever. That guy would lie to anyone, so of course he must have always been like that.

At least right now, it was in my favor. Although, it did make me think of something.

“Just make sure our shares or wherever are airtight, ‘cause from what I’ve heard he is kind of a shark, so he could devalue our stock or whatever.”

Mr. Henderson gave an appraising hum and said, “What do you know about devaluing stock?”

I had to stop myself from laughing. I knew nothing about it beyond what I’d seen in a movie. “Nothing, just something I heard about once. I’m just saying, this guy has a track record of screwing over his partners if he can get away with it, so ... just make sure we’re solid.”

“I’m not saying he would,” I said, backpedaling quickly. The last thing I wanted to do was sink this deal. “I’m just saying to be careful. My understanding is hedge fund guys can be a little shady.”

“Well, that was my plan, but I’m glad you are thinking about those kinds of things. They are important in business.”

“So you’re recommending we proceed with the investment?” I asked.

“I am. But there’s something else I want to discuss. He was originally planning to raise two hundred thousand from his parents as seed funding. After our meeting, I’ve decided to make a proposal. I want to match Blake’s hundred-thousand-dollar investment with a hundred thousand through my firm. That would give us a combined two-hundred-thousand-dollar investment, making us the primary investors instead of his parents.”

“Wait,” I said immediately. “Mr. Henderson, you don’t need to do that. I didn’t ask you to risk your own money.”

I wasn’t worried about him losing his money, since I was certain this would work out. This wasn’t like some of the little stuff I’d changed that had rippled out and caused other changes. Nothing I’d done would have altered the path of the company yet.

It was more that if he became an investor, then what happened to our investment. I didn’t want this to turn into a finder’s fee.

“Blake, this isn’t about you asking me to do anything. This is a separate business decision I’m making based on my evaluation of the opportunity.”