The Starlight Motel on Route 11 wasn't the
kind of place Alexander Kane was supposed to end up. Forty-three dollars a
night, cash only, no questions asked. The kind of place where the carpet stuck
to your shoes and the air conditioning unit rattled like it was dying a slow,
mechanical death.
I'd been here for five days now, watching
my last two hundred dollars dwindle to one hundred and thirty-seven. Marcus had
stopped calling after I'd refused his offer to extend my stay at the Oriental.
The humiliation of having my lawyer pay for my accommodations had been the
final straw in what was already a complete collapse of everything I'd once
been.
The room smelled like disinfectant and
broken dreams. A single bed with sheets that had seen better decades, a TV that
only got three channels clearly, and a bathroom where the mirror was cracked
right down the middle. Looking at my reflection was like seeing myself split in
two – the successful businessman I used to be, and the hollow shell I'd become.
I was lying on the bed, staring at the
water stain on the ceiling that looked vaguely like a map of some country I'd
never visit, when the news came on. Channel 7, the only station that came in
without static.
"Good evening, I'm Sandra Clark with
Action News. Today, we have exclusive footage of pharmaceutical heiress Elena
Kane and her brother-in-law Roman Kane departing from the airport aboard a
private jet bound for Switzerland."
My blood turned to ice water.
The footage showed them walking across the
tarmac like movie stars, Elena in a designer coat I'd bought her for Christmas,
Roman in the expensive suit I'd helped him pick out for the board meeting where
he'd sealed my fate. They were laughing about something, and when Roman put his
arm around Elena's shoulders, she leaned into him with the kind of casual
intimacy that spoke of more than just business partnership.
"Sources tell us the couple plans to
oversee Kane Industries' expansion into European markets from their new
headquarters in Geneva. The company's stock has continued to climb following
the restructuring that removed founder Alexander Kane from leadership..."
The couple. They were calling them a
couple now, openly, without even pretending to maintain the fiction that this
was about business or Elena's supposed mental health concerns about me.
I grabbed the remote and turned up the
volume, needing to hear every word of my destruction.
"...Kane Industries spokesman
released a statement saying that Elena Kane and Roman Kane are excited to bring
the company into a new era of growth and innovation. When asked about Alexander
Kane's whereabouts and condition, the spokesman said only that the family hopes
he gets the help he needs."
The help I need. As if I was some kind of
mental patient who'd wandered away from supervision.
The camera zoomed in on Elena and Roman
boarding the jet. She turned back toward the camera for just a moment, and I
swear she was smiling directly at me, like she knew I was watching. Like she
wanted me to see how happy she was to be rid of me.
Then the plane door closed, and they were
gone.
Gone with my company, my money, my life's
work, and apparently each other.
I turned off the TV and sat in the sudden
silence, listening to the sound of my own breathing and the distant noise of
traffic on Route 11. Somewhere out there, people were living normal lives,
going to jobs they probably hated, coming home to families that actually
existed.
I envied them.
For the first time since this nightmare
began, I understood why people sometimes decided that the pain of living wasn't
worth enduring anymore. Not the dramatic, movie-suicide of revenge and final
statements, but the quiet surrender of someone who'd simply run out of reasons
to keep going.
I pulled out my phone and scrolled through
my contacts, looking for someone, anyone, who might care that Alexander Kane
was about to disappear from the world entirely. The list was pathetically short
now that I'd deleted Roman and Elena. Business associates who'd probably
already written me off, casual acquaintances who'd only tolerated me because of
my money, Marcus who was already doing more than any lawyer should have to do.
My finger hovered over one name: Dr.
Florence Hernandez.
Florence had been my mentor at Columbia,
back when I was a twenty-two-year-old kid with more ambition than sense, trying
to turn a pharmaceutical startup into something that mattered. She'd been the
one to teach me that business wasn't just about profit margins and market
share, it was about improving lives, about making the world marginally less
terrible than you found it.
I hadn't spoken to her in 6 months, not
since she'd retired to her ranch in Montana. The last conversation we'd had was
at David Garcia's funeral, where she'd looked at me with concern and said
something about remembering who I used to be before I lost myself in the empire
I'd built.
I'd dismissed her words then; thought she
was just being sentimental. Now I wondered if she'd seen something I couldn't.
My hand was shaking as I hit her number.
It rang four times, and I almost hung up, almost spared her the burden of
hearing from her former student at his lowest point.
Then she answered.
"Alex?" Her voice was exactly as
I remembered, warm, strong, with just a hint of the Texas accent she'd never
quite lost. "Jesus, boy, I was wondering when you'd call."
I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing
came out except a sound that might have been a sob.
"Alex? Are you there?"
"Florence," I managed, my voice
coming out broken and raw. "I'm... I'm in trouble."
"I know, sweetheart. I've been
watching the news. Are you somewhere safe?"
I looked around the motel room that
smelled like other people's failures and almost laughed. "Safe is a
relative term."
"Where are you?"
"Some motel in New York. I don't even
remember the name of the place." I wiped my face with the back of my hand,
surprised to find it wet. "Florence, I think... I think I might be
done."
There was a long pause, and I could hear
the sound of wind through her phone, like she was outside on her ranch, maybe
looking at the mountains that had always given her peace.
"What do you mean by done,
Alex?"
"I mean I don't see the point
anymore," I said, the words coming easier now that I'd started.
"Everything I built, everything I worked for, it's gone. My wife never
existed, my brother tried to kill me, and everyone thinks I'm insane. Maybe
they're right."
"Are you talking about hurting
yourself?"
The question hung in the air like smoke. I
realized that yes, I was talking about exactly that, had been circling around
it for hours without wanting to admit it to myself.
"I just... I don't know who I am
anymore, Florence. Alexander Kane was a man who had a family, a company, a
purpose. That man is dead. I don't know who's supposed to take his place."
"The same person you were before you
had any of those things," she said quietly. "The twenty-two year old
kid who came to my office with a business plan written on notebook paper and a
dream of changing the world."
"That kid was naive."
"That kid was pure," she
corrected. "Before the money and the success and the people who wanted to
use him. Before he learned to see love as weakness and trust as
stupidity."
I closed my eyes, remembering that young
man who'd believed that good intentions and hard work could overcome anything.
He seemed like someone from another lifetime.
"Florence, they destroyed everything.
Not just the company, not just the money. They made me doubt every good memory
I have, every relationship I thought was real. How do you come back from
that?"
"The same way you came back from your
parents' death," she said. "The same way you came back from that
scaffolding accident. One day at a time, one choice at a time, by remembering
that you're stronger than the people who hurt you."
"I was twenty-two then. I had Roman
to take care of, something to fight for. Now I'm thirty-two and alone and
everyone thinks I'm crazy."
"Good," she said, and her tone
was so matter-of-fact that I almost smiled despite everything.
"Good?"
"Good that everyone thinks you're
crazy. Good that you're alone. Good that you have nothing left to lose. You
know why?"
"Why?"
"Because now you can become who you
were always supposed to be, instead of who you thought you had to be to keep
everyone else happy."
I sat up straighter, something in her
voice cutting through the fog of self-pity that had been suffocating me.
"Florence, I need help," I said,
the words feeling strange in my mouth. "But not the kind you think."
There was another pause, longer this time,
and when she spoke again, I could hear the smile in her voice.
"Finally."
"Finally what?"
"Finally, you're ready to learn what
I've been trying to teach you for ten years," she said. "Pack
whatever you have and get on a plane to Montana. It's time for your real
education to begin."
"I can't afford a plane ticket."
"I'll wire you money. But Alex?"
"Yeah?"
"When you get here, leave Alexander
Kane at the airport. I don't want to see him again."
"Then who am I supposed to be?"
"Whoever you choose," she said.
"But choose carefully. Because the person you become next is going to have
to live with everything that's happened, and everything you're going to do
about it."
After I hung up, I sat in the silence of
the motel room for a long time, thinking about choices and consequences and the
difference between revenge and justice. Outside, I could hear the sound of
eighteen-wheelers on the highway, carrying goods from one place to another,
part of the invisible infrastructure that kept the world running.
Tomorrow, I would fly to Montana and begin
whatever Florence had planned for me. Today, I was still Alexander Kane,
pharmaceutical mogul, betrayed husband, failed brother.
But maybe that was okay.
Maybe some people had to lose everything
before they could find out who they really were.