A man of Trey’s occupation could often find themselves growing tired of their offices. It was a high-stress job. There was a lot of pressure that came with being at the top of the hierarchy. Trey didn’t mind the pressure, he’d been dealing with it in one way or another for his whole life. He pulled the sweet, earthy smoke from a cigar he’d been enjoying over the last half hour. He blew it out in a ring, and watched it expand as it travelled towards the window. He watched it dissipate against the grey autumn sky.
He loved that trick. He smiled to himself as he put away the papers he had been skimming. He heard a knock at the front of the office. Mrs. Verilian’s signature double tap. Was it that time already? He loved his daughter— the life of a Council Seat was busy and making time to be present with her was challenging, but it was a challenge he didn’t avoid. It was important to him that he was present in her life.
But she was the scion of a great family. She was a future record holder, a tremendous athlete, an incredibly intelligent young woman, and she knew it. On their own merits, those weren't so bad. What gave him pause was the fact that she was a teenager. And like many her age, she believed she knew better than those who raised them.
It was a particularly difficult age to navigate as a parent, because he knew that she would one day be an adult, tackling with regrets and habits she’d fostered as in these years which would set the foundation for the rest of her life.
Still, his heart, having trended towards growing colder in recent years always warmed a significant degree when he was able to spend time with her. So he stood and made for the large double doors to meet with his favorite guest. Opening the doors, Mrs. Verilion stepped to the side, revealing the frowning form of his daughter.
He beamed at her. She was the spitting image of her mother. A bit more athletic, a bit more arrogant. But she has the same inquisitive focus, it gave her a fierce look and one day when she was leading a meeting with a dozen ambitious subordinates, all jockeying for position and distracting her with their pet projects and opinions, such a gaze would cut through their dreams like a hot knife through butter.
But until then, all it did was serve as a means to glare her disapproval.
Teenagers.
He wanted to laugh, but that would come later. He knew why she was here, and he had a strategy in mind for dealing with her complaints. Laughing would lighten the tone of this conversation a bit too much. He had a point to make, and he knew exactly how to make it. His daughter had learned much from him, but there was a gap which nothing but experience could fill. She might be bright, but compared to him she was nothing but a predictable child.
“Aera, so good to see you. Come in, come in,” he said. Mrs. Verilion raised an eyebrow at him, her silent way of asking if her presence would be required. He shook his head. She smiled politely and closed the doors behind them as they Trey led his daughter to sit on the sofas.
“Coffee?” he asked, pouring himself a cup. Aera shook her head.
“More for me,” Trey said. Four sugar cubes, and enough cream to make the purest of clouds connipt in envy. He sat opposite his daughter and sipped the heavenly beverage, sighing in bliss.
“So,” Trey said after waiting for the warm feeling in his chest to settle. He realized he’d left his cigar on his desk by the window, “You’re here about the tutoring sessions.”
Aera rolled her eyes. He smirked.
Should he go get the cigar?
“Am I so predictable?” she asked in an exaggerated, dramatic tone.
“Frankly, yes,” Trey said, “You know I raised you, right?”
“So…” she said, which he assumed was teenage-speak for asking him what his point was.
“I haven’t changed my mind,” Trey said, deciding that he was rich enough to just light a whole new cigar altogether.
She crossed her arms and frowned.
“I get why you brought him in. I already told you I thought it was a mistake, and nothing he’s done over the last few weeks has changed the way I feel. The benefit he can bring us pales in comparison to the damage he can do to our image, our legacy. For heaven’s sake, he’s the son of Gideon Koar —”
“Careful.”
Aera winced. She’d have heard that tone before, in board room meetings, when he’d be sitting face to face with powerful men who would like nothing more than to see his family and company forgotten by history. Its the kind of tone he used when he was ordering a man’s life to be ruined.
“I’m sorry,” Aera said, seeming to choose her words a bit more cautiously, “all i’m saying is that at best, it’s not a good look. And at worst, well, you’re the one whose always going on about how important our reputation is to the companie's future, especially now.”
Trey pinched the bridge of his nose. He didn’t like being the bad guy. He liked to think that his daughter was wise beyond her years. Many lessons he’d had to learn over the years had been painful, and he always hoped to spare his daughter the same pain. It was the kind of pain that came with regret, from mistakes made out of sheer naive ignorance.
But Aera was a very proud young woman. He’d raised her that way— because it would serve her. A weak willed heiress will not inherit the family’s fortune or position. She needed that pride. She needed every ounce of emotional advantage she could get in order to fight the battles she was going to have to fight, one day.
But there was still that gap. Experience and maturity came with learning about certain realities. And this was as good a time as any for her to start learning.
He once more considered his strategy for addressing this. Bridging this divide would be important for both Aera and Hunter. Bringing Hunter into the family was no small thing. Despite what his daughter may think in her episode of frustration, the family name meant a lot to him— but reputation was always a fickle thing. Sometimes you had to learn that the only way forward is to take steps backwards. Reputation ultimately served the family, not the other way around.
If a temporary hit in reputation meant the family would benefit, then reputation be damned.
That had been his first consideration, and it made the stakes of this conversation— and what he assumed would be a few similar conversation in the coming months and years— very clear. Hunter and Aera would have to learn to trust each other, and work together.
The life of a Council Seat was filled with more gambles than he’d prefer, but it came with the territory-- it was business.. And the woman his daughter would grow into was also his business. The company could not afford a spineless leader, nor could it afford for her to grow into an ignorant, immature narcissist. His job was to find the balance between reinforcing her confidence, and kicking out the foundations of her arrogance— or at least corroding those foundations, letting life take on the role of the teacher she’d need in order for her to become the woman the company and family would need in turn.
It wasn’t up to him to change her mind. Trey preferred to influence someone over the long run. It all starts with a seed, and it was one that he’d already planted, it just needed a bit of watering.
“You know what’s more important than reputation?” he asked.
She shrugged and shook her head.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.”
“No,” she said, her annoyance and frustration manifesting as a tension in her voice, “what’s more important than reputation?”
He took another sip of coffee, and after he placed his cup on the table he leaned forward, sure to slowly enunciate every sound, tapping his finger against the table to emphasize every syllable.
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“In-teg-rit-y.”
“But that’s exaclty what i’m trying to—”
“No, not the integrity of our image. Aera, you really are quite a brilliant young woman, but there’s so much you don’t know. How much have I told you about my time with Gideon Koar?,” he asked, using the same tone of voice she’s used to disrespect the man’s name.
“You’ve only told me that you two started a few businesses together when you were younger, and that you became good friends.”
He nodded.
“To be more accurate, he saved my life, and then we became good friends.”
Aera’s eyebrows furrowed.
“What do you mean?”
He hid his smile, letting the small warmth of victory he felt when a plan started to come together. The bait had been taken, and it was time for phase two.
He laughed, and enjoyed another sip of his coffee.
“What I mean is that I was quite the hothead when I was younger. I thought that, because I had money, because my father was seated on the council, that I was practically invincible. Sound familiar?”
“No,” Aera muttered.
“Of course not,” Trey said with a smirk, “I had taken advantage of the good will of some of the less fortunate in our society. I’d hired them to work in a warehouse, and thought it would be a brilliant idea to cut their already meager pay in half. I didn’t think anything of it. I was who I was, they were who they were, it would be their privilege to serve me for any amount of money, wouldn’t it?”
Aera’s frown deepened. By now, she’d be making the connection with the character he was illustrating and many of the young men and women she likely made associations with.
“That doesn’t sound like you,” she said.
“That’s who I was encouraged to be, when I was your age,” Trey said, “and those men and women, whose pride I had trampled over—whose lives were already difficult enough as it was and were made more so by myself and my youthful narcissism— had decided to take my fate into their hands. They demanded I pay them what they were owed, and when I refused, they beat me,” he said.
He still felt the fear from that day, over four decades ago. He took a breath to steady himself.
“Gideon stopped them. He’d been hired before— dirt cheap, he needed the money to pay his way through school. He would come by once a week, maintain our constructs, fix what was broken, that sort of thing. Well, that day happened to be the day he was scheduled to visit. It wasn’t like I'd treated him anymore fairly than I had the others, but for some reason he decide to pull them off of me, and convince them to leave me alone. I still don’t remember what he said, all I remember was the feeling of relief from being saved.”
“I still don’t get what this has to do with with me and Hunter,” Aera said.
“Children these days, always so impatient. I’m telling you I was almost beaten to death,” Trey sighed, exasperated by his daughter’s behavior over the last few days, “and to your point; i’m getting to that.”
He took another sip of coffee, realizing he’d almost drank it all already and pouted. He stood to grab some more, talking as he walked.
“He hailed me a cab, and we found our way to a hospital. This was before cellphones, and the landline in the warehouse hadn’t been working, so he held me up and kept me warm while I shook from remnant adrenaline and more pain than I had ever felt before. I was furious, Aera. I was talking about getting revenge. I could have had them all killed,” he said, sighing. He wasn’t proud of who he’d been back then.
“Gideon explained their point of view to me. I didn’t really get it, but it made some sense in an abstract way. I’d miscalculated how much they needed the work, and what they’d be willing to tolerate from me. The way he explained it, he made me realize that the only person I had to blame was myself. To be honest, I’d never taken the time to consider who the people I'd employed were, the kind of lives they lived, and what a cut in pay would mean for them. Most of them were supporting children and wives, and there weren’t a lot of jobs to go around during those days. Such pay cuts weren’t uncommon, and they’d had enough. Similar sentiments had been brewing all over the domain— and others.”
“Let me guess, he then went the extra mile and opened your eyes to the world of the less fortunate, awakening your heart to a new way of seeing the world?” Aera rolled her eyes again, exaggerating her disinterest and looking at the surrounding books with a board look.
“Another unfortunate quality of youth is the terrible habit of trivializing matters which are far from trivial. You mistake your immature attitudes for wisdom. Yes, he helped me see the world in a new way. He introduced me to other brilliant people, children and adults, and and others who weren’t so brilliant but had the kind of passion that would keep them working for days on end in order to better the lives of the people they loved. They worked harder than people I grew up around and some of them weren’t even a quarter my age. And you know what?” he asked, pausing to make sure his daughter was paying attention.
“What?” she asked with a sigh. Trey figured she was tired of being lectured to, but she needed to hear this.
“He didn’t have to do any of that. Ask yourself, if you were him, what would you have done?”
Aera was about to respond, but the look in his eye was gave her pause. She knew better than to push his buttons when he got like this.
She tilted her head, considering the question. Then she shrugged.
“I guess I would have pulled them off of you as well, but I'm not sure I'd have stuck around after getting you to a hospital.”
Trey shook his hand, indicating that he thought she was on the right track.
“If you were them, if you’d grown up in the same circumstance, and tended to hate the rich and powerful as much as they were tempted to, then you wouldn’t have stopped them.”
“So what? You’re saying Gideon didn’t hate you for being rich?”
“Oh, he most certainly did,” Trey laughed, “If there was one thing Gideon despised, it was the rich— especially the offspring of the rich. But he was the kind of man who was willing to put that aside if it meant he could change a life. Do you understand how rare that is? No, don’t answer, I’ll answer for you: No. You don’t. You couldn’t possibly, because you’re far too young and inexperienced to begin to understand just how important it is that most people are not only unable, but unwilling to do so,” Trey said, letting the frustration he was feeling about his daughters’ behavior rise to the surface.
He could see his reflection in the glass covering a rather nice painting he’d bought years ago. His face had been growing red as his temper rose a few degrees.
Good, he thought. Maybe it’ll help sell the point.
He sat back down, exaggerating the acts of calming himself down. A deep breath in, holding it for a second, and a deep breath out. He lit the cigar he'd taken out earlier, and took a long drag, savoring the flavor before blowing it out softly.
“Not only did Gideon Koar save my life, he saved me from the man I would have become if I had not learned just how lost I was to my own ego. Yes, we started businesses, most of which failed. And yes, we became great friends along the way. But the lessons we both learned, the impact that we made, ripple through the world to this day. We taught skills to people who never would have had the opportunity to learn them otherwise, which allowed them to transform their communities. They started businesses which have gone to make millions, even billions of credits. We helped transform countless lives, all because Gideon decided to give me a chance, a chance which-- by all appearances-- he had no reason to think would bare any sort of fruit, and came at a considerable cost to his own reputation,” he said, practically spitting out the last word.
Trey sighed, satisfied that he’d said what he needed to say. Aera was looking at him with open skepticism, but she wasn’t protesting his words out loud.
He’d done what he could to steer her in the right direction. He’d have to trust that life would show her the truth of what he’d said. And now that he’d said it, she’d be more open to learning a lesson that had almost killed him.
Although she clearly wasn’t happy with the way the meeting turned out, she seemed to accept that she wouldn’t be changing his mind. Trey told her she was free to go about her business, and she thanked him for seeing her. If nothing else, she knew how to appear polite.
He suspected that not only would she have a thing or two to learn from Hunter, but maybe Hunter could learn a thing or two from her as well. He knew how his daughter could be, and he imagined that she hadn’t made it easy for the young man. But Hunter had seemed genuinely proud of himself for having made it through the last few weeks, and Trey was relieved that his own gamble had paid off. He was eager to see just how far Hunter would go during his time at the Academy— if he could rise above the challenges that he’d be presented with.
He knew it wouldn’t be easy, though. The children of his peers often lived without much in the way of consequences— they were like ravenous wolves to those who they saw as lesser beings. After all, he'd been just like them once upon a time.
Barnum would be a crucible for the children. He would have to trust that Hunters sheer stubborn tenacity, and the loyalty that he himself had instilled in Aera would be enough to bond them together— and he had a suspicion that such a bond would be nigh unbreakable once it began to set.
Hunter would always be a Koar, and Trey wouldn’t have it any other way. But Hunter was now an Oberon as well.
That would mean more than wealth, power, and status ever could. Since it was Trey’s turn to steer his family’s future, he would ensure that being an Oberon would mean having integrity. And if Hunter had the potential to be anything like his father, then Trey would rest assured that the boy would fit in with the family line just fine.
Aera would come around, in time. He just knew it.
Fathers knew these things.
He took another drag of his cigar, and then remembered that he’d made himself another coffee. He chuckled as he drank it. It was still warm.
It was the small things that always got him through the day.
He stood and stared out the large window of his office, considering the gray sky, sipping the coffee and reviewing his plans— many of which he wondered if they would ever see completion.
There were troubling undercurrents rippling through the Council strata. Whispers of chaos that might require a very drastic action on his part— one which he’d already started to prepare for. Large movements of money and personnel. New ships being constructed at new, hidden shipyards, built with the family’s private resources— resources the company had no access to, or ways of tracking if he was careful enough.
The light of the phantom sun was fading. Soon, the dark would swallow up the sky, the mountains, and the valleys.
Yet the moon would cast silver linings upon the clouds, showing all those who care to see that even before dawn breaks, there is light.