I close my eyes to shut out the questions, but it’s not enough. I bury my head in the pillows and throw the cover over my head.
Finally, the world is as dark as I feel.
I wake up a few hours later with my head pounding and my body shivering. I am drenched in sweat.
Climbing out of bed, I force myself to change my clothes to warm up. In the closet, I find a pair of sweatpants and am careful not to look where her suitcase once stood.
I need to rid this place of her memory, but if I do that, what will I have left?
I finally start to warm up when I put on a long sleeve shirt, a hoodie, and a pair of thick socks.
When I come downstairs, twilight has started to fall. Evening is about to come, my first night without Harley.
I have spent other nights without her, of course, but this one will be different. This one will have a finality to it that I’m not sure I will be able to handle.
I find Aurora in the kitchen.
Her head is buried in the refrigerator. She knows nothing about this, but if I tell her then she’ll know why I had to do this.
I debate whether I should.
Maybe I need to keep this to myself entirely. Maybe she needs protection, too. I don’t know. She moved out a week ago. She has a new boyfriend.
“I have to tell you something,” I start. I’m justifying my reasons for telling her, mainly because I need to tell someone who would understand.
“I broke up with Harley,” I say.
“Oh…okay.” She nods. She has always been good about not pushing me for answers I’m not ready to give. Instead, she just waits. Here’s my chance to protect her. Just lie to her. Tell her it’s nothing personal, it just wasn’t working out. Things happen. If anyone were to understand that, it would be Aurora.
“The Lindells threatened me.”
Her face loses all color. “What do you mean?”
“They think they deserve fifty percent of my company. Because of something they did all those years ago.”
“Didn’t you pay them back?”
I nod.
“Plus another hundred grand as a thank you. But they don’t think it’s enough.”
“This isn’t fair.” Aurora shakes her head. That was my initial reaction as well.
“Of course not. They’re the Lindells and they take what they want.”
“So…what are you going to do?”
“I said no, of course. So they threatened me. Said that I’m going to start losing things that I care about unless I change my mind.”
Aurora paces around the room. Her quickened breathing matches mine.
“That’s why I broke up with Harley. I don’t want her anywhere near here when they come back. There may be a chance that they don’t know about her.”
“She’s the first one they’ll come for to make you pay,” Aurora says as a matter of fact, as if I didn’t know that already.
“Do you think there’s any chance that it’s going to be okay?”
She shrugs her shoulders and looks away. She doesn’t have to lie to me. We both know the truth.
“Tell me everything,” she finally says.
It’s hard to know where to begin so I just start at the beginning.
Eleven years ago.
I was young, right out of college.
I had big dreams of running a start-up. I wanted to grow my own company from the bottom up.
I knew that people at Stanford would just have their professors connect them with some venture capitalists to raise seed money for operating expenses.
I’d read about these stories online. They didn’t have anything but an idea and that was enough to get started, to hire employees who would make your dream a reality. I didn’t know anyone in Silicon Valley and everyone at my school was looking for internships and regular entry-level positions.
But I had bigger aspirations. I must’ve reached out to two hundred venture capitalists by emailing and calling them directly, all to no avail.
I did everything short of showing up on their doorstep and forcing my way inside.
Looking back, maybe I should’ve worked harder.
Maybe I wouldn’t be in this mess otherwise.
There was a guy who raised one million dollars for a hotel idea where he would buy small cabins and place them within two hours driving distance from the city and then let people stay in them for $99 a night.
That idea wasn’t some complicated tech company. It was easily executable all on its own, starting with one cabin at a time.
But instead of starting small, this guy started with ten cabins and spent most of his time raising more capital for operating expenses.
If these people would invest in something like that, then why wouldn’t they invest in my e-publishing idea?
But they didn’t. In fact, I never even got the chance to make a presentation because none of them ever got back to me.
10
Jackson
Ten years before…
I didn’t know the right people and in the investment business, connections were everything.
Frustrated and angry, I turned to my parents for help.
They didn’t have any money, but that’s not what I was seeking.
I needed their advice.
After listening to me, they looked at each other for a moment and Mom started to say something.
But my dad cut her off.
“No, absolutely not.”
“What?” I demanded to know. “Please tell me. If you know anyone who could help, I need to know who they are.”
But my dad was absolutely adamant about it, so I let the conversation drop for a while. Until he went to sleep. Then I found Mom in the kitchen and begged.
“I’m not looking for much. I mean, I am by regular people’s standards. But VCs, they give away hundreds of thousands as if it’s nothing."
“VCs?” Mom asked.
“Venture capitalists.”
“This person isn’t exactly that.”
I waited for her to continue. “Please, you have to tell me.”
I begged and begged, and eventually she caved.
She was acting against her better judgement and, now, looking back I wish more than anything that she hadn’t told me a word.
She should’ve kept that name to herself.
Maybe then everything would be different.
“Alexander Lindell,” she said the name softly, as if even uttering it out loud would stir something in the world.
“Who is he?”
“He’s a bookie. He once lent your father a hundred thousand dollars and he lost it all on three games of blackjack.”
I clenched my jaw. Yes, I remembered that time. It was soon after that we moved into the RV and traveled around the country attending art fairs, shopping at yard sales, and reselling those things at flea markets.
“What happened to Dad’s debt?” I asked. I knew about the gambling, but not the name of the man who lent him the money.
“We paid it all back.”
“And now?”
“Now, it’s all fine. Dad goes to meetings for his gambling and he hasn’t been in a casino since.”
Suddenly, our hushed tone conversation was interrupted by my not so much sleeping father.
He rushed into the room, yelling at Mom for ever saying that man’s name again.
“Don’t you remember what we’ve been through? Why tell him about Lindell? He’s no good. His whole family is no good!”
“He was asking,” Mom started to say.
“It doesn’t matter! No child of mine will ever borrow a cent from that sadistic fuck. Do you know what they do to people who can’t pay them? He’s looking for a Goddamn business investment. What if the company goes under? How will he pay him back then?”
As my parents argued, I memorized the name, branding it on my soul.
This would be my way out.
I didn’t care about the danger. I was naive. Stupid. Ignorant. But mostly, I wa
s too in love with my own idea to know how foolish I was being.
After some more pestering and a promise that I would only pursue this if it felt safe, Mom finally caved and told me where to find him.
He was at a pool hall not far from our house in Tucson, Arizona.
I went there to scope it out and quickly found him in the back with a group of bodyguards crowding around.
Apparently, he owned the place and no one could see him unless they were exclusively invited.
At first, they didn’t want to let me through, but when I mentioned my father, they finally waved me through.
Alexander Lindell was a short man with thick dark hair and glasses. The glasses caught me off guard.
I had imagined him to be a thug, some punk in a leather jacket and muscles that were bigger than his brain.
But this man looked like an accountant.
He even played pool like one. He wasn’t very good, but everyone he played with cheered him on anyway.
When we spoke, he told me how much he missed working with my father but mentioned nothing about his once overdue debts.
I decided not to bring it up either.
When he finally asked me what I wanted, I launched into my proposal.
“I have this idea of an online publishing business. Amazon has just come out with its Kindle and everyone will be reading eBooks very soon. People will probably read more eBooks in the future than real books.”
The more I talked about books and online publishing, the more glazed over his gaze became.
He didn’t seem to know one thing about what I was talking about, but I kept talking anyway.
“So, what is your idea exactly?”
“We will publish books. We will be a publishing company, but we’ll specialize in the online space. We’ll find writers who are looking for someone to publish their work, edit it, and publish it.”
He nodded slowly. “Why?”
“To make money. We’ll focus on popular genres like romance, fantasy, science fiction, young adult. The things that people are writing on their own and publishing online. And we’ll just reach out to them and publish their work.”
“And how do you intend to make a profit?”
“We’ll publish it to Amazon. They are really open to new writers now. They want people to publish on their own. And they’ll pay us.”
Nodding for a bit, he took the cigar out of his mouth and asked, “How much money do you need?”
“Fifty thousand.”
He nodded again.
Perhaps, I asked for too much?
I only needed twenty-five, or maybe even less, but this was a man with big pockets and maybe if I had asked for more, then he would have given it to me.
“And when will you pay me back?” he asked after a moment.
“Well, you see it’s an investment. It’s not a loan.”
“I have to get my money back, son. Will I get my money back?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Well, then it’s not really an investment. It’s more like a loan.”
I trembled and nodded.
He signaled to one of the men next to him, who disappeared into the back room and then came out with an envelope.
“Here’s fifty-thousand dollars with five points interest. You have two months to get it back to me. After that you’ll owe me five points a week.”
Points were percent interest and five percent interest for two months was the definition of loan sharking.
But that was what he was, wasn’t he?
11
Jackson
Ten years before…
I held on to that money for some time without spending a dime. I spent so long trying to get it, that when it was actually in my hands, I couldn’t quite figure out what to do with it.
Of course, I knew what I needed to do.
I needed to find writers who would allow me to publish their work, and for that I needed a website, contact information, and a whole bunch of other things.
I didn’t have anything set up yet, and suddenly the clock was ticking.
If I had gotten the money from venture capitalists then I would’ve hired a website designer and an assistant to help me go through all the prospective books and make editorial decisions.
I could’ve done that as well, except that I only had two months. I needed a plan that would allow me to pay Lindell off in two months without losing the money.
A few days into the first week, I actually debated just giving all of it back. I wasn’t my father.
I couldn’t rack up thousands of dollars of gambling debts, thinking that I could just pay it all back with one lucky hand of cards.
He was always the one who lived on the edge, and he was always the one who pushed his family to the edge as well.
Growing up like that I became methodical.
I planned three steps ahead. I did all of my homework on time and I turned it in early. In my spare time, I devoured books and took notes on anything I found of interest in them.
There are things we gain from our childhoods.
One of the most important things that I had learned was how to live with very little.
My parents always struggled with money, and we never had much. When we relocated into the RV, we downsized even more.
I hated it at first, hating them for making me give up the few things that I had. But after a while I relished the fact that everything I owned fit nicely into a small box under my bed.
I didn’t buy and hoard stuff I didn’t need like my brother. Instead, I came to believe that things we own end up owning us and freed myself of them.
I probably could’ve easily continued the life of a monk except that I wanted to get rich. It’s hard to explain why exactly, but it had nothing to do with the monetary wealth of having cash.
My desire to build something that reaped real financial rewards was driven by my general need to succeed.
Dollars were nothing but points that I could acquire, and the more points I could get the better.
I stared at the cash in the envelope trying to decide what to do.
To grow a business you need to give it tender loving care and that meant that I couldn’t do it under pressure from Lindell and his loan sharking business.
But just giving this money back was also not an option.
Then I would be back to where I was in the beginning. No, I needed to use this money to get more money.
Legit money.
I searched my mind for possibilities and finally decided to just put it into my personal checking account.
Doing so would mean paying taxes on it, but that was the least of my problems. Once the money was in the account, I went online and applied for a new credit card.
I had one card with about a two-thousand dollar limit and I was faithful in not spending very much on it and paying it every month to maintain good credit.
When I was asked about my annual income, I lied and said that I made a hundred and fifty-seven thousand dollars.
I was careful not to choose a nice round number to make it more believable, though I suspected that the companies expected you to inflate your salary a bit.
Later that day, I got an email saying that I was approved for a ten thousand dollar limit, and that I could increase it if I could show that I had more money in my bank account.
I had read about this as a strategy to increase your credit card limit on a few forums. I quickly submitted all the required paperwork and waited.
A week later, I received another email.
I had been approved.
My new credit card limit was forty-five thousand.
To celebrate, I did cartwheels in my parents’ living room and then went back to the computer and applied for another card and did this all again.
Another week later, I had a total of eighty seven thousand dollars in credit with zero percent interest for six months.
Now, this was more like it.
Without even waiting another
day, I immediately went back to Alexander Lindell and returned his money.
I also added the five percent interest that I would’ve owed two months later.
“But it has only been two weeks,” he pointed out.
I nodded and shrugged.
“I appreciate your help and would like to pay early.”
“No one pays early.”
I shrugged and turned away from him.
“Where are you going?”
“I have returned your money plus some, and I’m going home now.”
Lindell nodded, looking at me suspiciously.
My heart pounded out of my chest, but I continued to breathe slowly to stay calm.
I prayed that he wouldn’t see the beads of sweat forming on my forehead. I decided not to wait for his permission.
I took another step away, but his bodyguards blocked me.
“Can I go now?”
He thought about it for a moment, but eventually gave his go-ahead. I let out a sigh of relief and walked away.
“How did you get the money back to me so quick?” he yelled after me.
“I decided that I didn’t need it anymore.”
“Yeah, right.” He laughed, not believing my lie. “I’m going be checking on you, Jackson Ludlow.”
12
Jackson
Nine years before…
With room to breathe, I took my time starting the online publishing company.
I worked all day and all night, but I did almost everything myself and without the pressure of paying off a big debt at the end.
Even though I had the credit, I wasn’t sure when money would start coming back into the company, so I did everything myself. I learned how to make a basic but appealing website.
I reached out to writers myself and I posted announcements for the company seeking new books in various writing-related forums.
I started out with three books and then by the end of the year I had ten, across three genres.
I learned how to format them and to upload them to Amazon and other platforms, and the money started to trickle in.
Tangled up in Hate Page 4
