4. Adam

4

ADAM

C ontrition wears many faces, as does regret. They’re both complex emotions, both weighty enough to behave in similar, cyclical ways to grief.

I should know.

I have enough experience of all three.

I bow my head. I learnt in prison that the aggressor is capable of regretting the occurrence of a past trauma just as fully as his victim, and in myriad ways that are all as necessary to rehabilitation as they are painful to digest.

Over the past two decades, I’ve forged for myself an existence that allows me to endure my past, to make the only kind of fractured, imperfect peace with it that I’ll ever make. Empathy has played a key role, even if it’s been one of the toughest lessons of all.

There are people who…people who’ve helped on that front, let’s say, people for whose compassion I’ve been indescribably, pathetically grateful, even if their roles belong in the shadows of my journey back to myself.

But the careful, ring-fenced form of empathy for Stephen Bennett that I’ve espoused over the past two decades threatens tonight to burst its banks and become a tidal wave that will fucking engulf me, and that’s because someone who loves him, someone whose life I presumably shattered alongside Stephen’s, is right here, in the same building as me, and now I understand what it was I saw in her beautiful eyes.

Staggering, unequivocal hatred.

My overwhelming instinct is to bury my face in my hands, to shield myself from the disgust, the disappointment, written across Gen’s face.

But I don’t.

I won’t shy away from it.

I’ll take it.

I’ll own it all.

Because that, quite simply, is what I deserve.

‘I see,’ I say quietly, holding eye contact with her. I can’t imagine the conversation she’s just had, the things she’s heard about me. She’s watching my face to see how I’ll react. There’s no sign of spite; she’s simply pissed off beyond belief on behalf of her employee, and so she should be.

‘What am I missing here?’ Anton barks, and I turn to him.

‘Give me a sec and I’ll explain. But first—is she okay? Nat, is that her name?’

‘ Natalie to you, and no, she’s not okay,’ Gen says, picking up her coupe and taking a healthy slug of champagne. I wait. ‘She’s extremely shocked and distressed, so I sent her home.’

My mind reels at what Natalie must think of me. I recall the fire in her eyes, the way she couldn’t even bring herself to reply to my banal offer of a glass of water. No surprise there.

‘I’m waiting,’ Anton says in the voice of a man who is most definitely unused to being on the fringes of a conversation.

I give Gen a little nod to show her I understand what she’s telling me. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. It’s so fucking inadequate, but I swivel on my stool towards Anton nonetheless. Once again, this is my problem to own, to deal with, even if it makes my position as his and Gen’s preferred buyer for Wolff’s Alchemy stake untenable.

‘The guy I assaulted,’ I tell him, my voice as steady as if I was updating him on the weather. ‘The one I served time for hurting.’

He nods. He knows my history well. I was in prison when we first met as part of an entrepreneurial programme he ran for young offenders. ‘Nat’s brother, I assume.’

‘Yes.’ I inhale sharply and continue, the sound of my voice dispassionately recounting my own crime surreal in my ears, surrounded as we are by Swiss watches and crystal chandeliers and expensive women. ‘I got some of my mates to hold him down while I had at him. I beat him to a pulp, and he lost an eye and broke three ribs.’

Those were the headlines, rather than the full extent of his injuries. The prosecution made sure to spell each one out at my trial, to show colour photographs of every bruise and welt I’d inflicted, and of the back of his head, shaved so the medical staff who treated him could remove every last piece of gravel embedded in the back of his skull.

Anton sucks in a horrified breath and squeezes his eyes shut, as well he should. It’s barbaric. Grotesque. Abhorrent. And though he knows I was sent down for GBH, he’s never asked me for the specifics. When he opens his eyes, he looks at me, pausing before he speaks.

‘Fuck, mate,’ he says, and there’s an element of censure, of disappointment, there, naturally, but that’s not all. There’s also, I think, compassion, and space, and acceptance.

‘I know.’ I look down, tilting my tumbler so the amber liquid swirls enticingly around it, before forcing myself to meet his eye again. But he’s looking at Gen—for guidance, I assume.

‘We’re not here to be judge and jury,’ he says slowly. ‘You’ve had that, you’ve served your time. You deserve to be judged on the man you are today, and I’m proud to call you a friend. I’ve been proud since the day we met.’

‘Thank you.’ There’s an ache in my throat. Anton is intimately familiar with my past. He’s mentored me for two decades now, since I was blessed enough to stumble into a business programme he was running for inmates when I was inside, and I value his friendship and support enormously. Still, there’s a vast gulf between his being aware of my past crimes and our coming face to face with someone whose family I shattered when I inflicted those vicious injuries on her brother.

‘I maintain that you’re the right person to take over the JV,’ he continues, looking at Gen again, ‘but I really need to defer to my wife here. This is her company, Nat is her employee, and I’m unclear how we proceed in light of this… revelation , I suppose, for want of a better term.’ He leans back defeatedly.

‘Of course,’ I say. I wouldn’t expect anything else. I remind myself that this Alchemy thing is a tiny deal for me, a kind of potential pet project, more than anything else. A nice little bolt-on acquisition.

I’m no stranger to the sensation of doors being slammed in my face—both literally, in prison, and metaphorically, in business. So to be back here, essentially being judged on crimes I committed half a lifetime ago, should smart far less than it does.

Gen’s surveying me through narrowed, thoughtful eyes. She’s not being outright hostile, but she doesn’t have the personal relationship with me that her husband does. She’s firmly in Natalie’s camp, I suspect, and rightly so.

She blows out a breath. ‘Fucking hell,’ she sighs. ‘I honestly didn’t see this coming. I’ve had no problem with you coming on board, Adam. Not until just now, at least. And the JV mainly concerns itself with our overseas pop-ups—and Manhattan, of course.’

Manhattan, which opens next month, will be the only permanent Alchemy outpost and has largely been funded through the joint venture. Post Gen and Anton’s union, the JV expanded so that Wolff bought a stake in the entire group—a stake I’d assume in full if I came on board. That said, the management of this London club remains under the control of its executive team: Gen and her three co-founders.

‘So you’ve got no actual jurisdiction here, really,’ she continues. ‘But I have to say, I’m reticent to bring on an investor who has such a particularly horrendous personal history with the family of a trusted employee.’

I wait, and so does Anton, because it sounds like she’s working through her thought process aloud here. Sure enough, she keeps talking.

‘I need to chat to the guys about this, and I’d want to talk to Nat again, when she’s had some time to gather her wits.’ Anton opens his mouth to speak, but she cuts him off. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get her to sign an NDA.’

He grins fondly at her. ‘You read my mind.’

‘I always do,’ she retorts, but there’s no missing the affection on her face when she looks at her husband.

‘You’d run the acquisition past her?’ I clarify, surprised. I understand I’m on dangerous ground here, but I can’t see any circumstances when I’d allow a lowly host any say in my management affairs.

‘I would,’ Gen says. Her voice is neutral, but something in it tells me she wouldn’t welcome being challenged on this. ‘Nat is a loyal employee. She works incredibly hard, and I would never put her, or any of my team, in a position where I brought in someone at a management level who made them feel unsafe in their place of work, however unlikely I find the threat.’

Her words hit me like a blow to the stomach. Here was I thinking this was about a potential employee’s deep dislike of me, but it’s not.

It’s about the fact that in Natalie’s eyes I’m still a common thug—a violent, volatile entity.

And a danger to those around me.