_OceanofPDF

I checked the stock ticker.
Maybe it was time to tell my broker to start buying.
Byron rapped on my open door. “You in?”
“Yeah. What’s up?”
Byron dropped onto the couch on the other side of the room, propping
his feet on the table. He never sat in the chair on the other side of my desk.
That would imply he was in an inferior position and Byron was never, ever
the subordinate.
I sat in one of the chairs across from him.
“So,” he said. “You seem happy being a married guy.”
“Yeah. And?”
“Deal was, you’d be in charge and I’d back off.”
“I am in charge.”
“What you don’t know is, Dad asked me to stay on.”
I wasn’t surprised at the deception “for my own good” or the fact that
Byron was telling me. The circumstances of the marriage weren’t ideal. I
had time to make them so.
“Mom loves Ella. He’ll come around.”
“But no tingle still.”
“Don’t get me started on that shit.”
“I know, I know.” He took his feet off the table and crossed his legs,
putting his arm over the back of the couch so he could take up more room.
“We’re gonna close this pipeline deal soon.”
“You’re an optimist.”
“I’m an opportunist. We bought a lot of land to lay that pipe on, and
some of it is very, very viable for other uses.”
“Such as?”
“Residential.”
Jesus, he was going to throw risk on top of risk because he had nothing
else to do.
“Hear me out,” he said, reading my mind as only a brother could. “This
is going to be the safest pipeline ever built. It could leak in ten places, shit,
it could crack in half and not a single butterfly would die. It’s safe to live
right on top of it, so why not?”
“What’s Olivia say?”
She was an environmental attorney and wasn’t the type to pull punches.
“She agrees.”