Page 11 of Mexico Can Choke On It
Not when it turns your choices into obligations and your name into a leash.
I pull out my phone and scroll through an avalanche of emails that accrued during my week in the Big Apple. Subject lines scream for attention: quarterly projections, board meeting minutes, and Heartvest’s looming IPO.
This past week was an exercise in futility. I’d gone to Manhattan with one mission: convince my father to give me more time at Heartvest, the company I built with my best friend Gavin from the ground up. Instead, I got a masterclass in Reginald Sterling’s particular brand of negotiation.
“The agreement was thirty, Bryce. You turn thirty next month.” His voice was steady, emotionless, as he swirled eighteen-year-old scotch in a crystal tumbler. “A Sterling man honors his commitments.”
As if I needed the reminder.
This is the deal I made after Princeton. Five years to stretch my legs. Get my hands dirty in something “real” before being dragged back into the family dynasty. Five years to pretend I had a say in the matter.
I spot an email from Gavin:Board impressed with projections. IPO on track. See you at the gala.
Gavin Brinkman. My chosen brother.
The guy who worked three jobs so his mom could keep their two-bedroom rental in Beverly Hills. The guy who tutored rich kidsto cover tuition. The guy who looked at me—a symbol of privilege and legacy and everything he didn’t have—and chose friendship over resentment.
The guy I’m going to abandon.
Heat floods my chest, a mixture of shame and regret bubbling up like acid.How the hell am I supposed to tell him?Over canapés at Mother’s charity soirée? “Splendid affair, old friend. Oh, by the way, I’m cutting ties on the eve of our company going public. More champagne, perhaps?”
My throat tightens. After high school together, getting him into Princeton with me was the least I could do. My father called it “misplaced charity.” The truth was far more selfish: I couldn’t imagine navigating those ivy-covered walls without the one person who made me feel I was more than just another Sterling.
Heartvest was Gavin’s vision from the start. We were in our senior year, drunk on mid-tier Merlot, when he pitched it—his eyes alive with an excitement I had never felt, his hands gesturing wildly as he laid it all out.
“Wealth management for the working class,” he’d declared. “Your family’s bank requires what, a million minimum, to get a meeting? My mom worked her fingers raw cleaning toilets for twenty years and still doesn’t understand how to save for retirement. That’s fucked up. We’re going to fix it.”
I’d nodded along, mentally allocating the seed funding he’d need. But it was more than money—for the first time, I saw a path that wasn’t preordained by my last name. Something that mattered beyond quarterly returns and shareholder value.
Five years later, Heartvest has sixty million users: everyday people investing spare change, learning financial literacy, building nest eggs.We’re two weeks away from a public offering that analysts are calling “the democratization of wealth building.” Our users have collectively saved over half a billion dollars.
And I’m walking away.
My phone vibrates—my mother’s aggressive text glows accusingly on the screen.
Mother:Car arriving in 40 minutes. Wear Armani, not Brioni. Giorgio Armani’s niece Roberta will be attending tonight.
I drop my head into my hands, palms pressed to my eyes, until I see stars.Tonight. I have to tell Gavin tonight.
I drag myself toward the master bedroom, each step heavier than the last. I press on the large bedroom door. The room yawns open, revealing a space that could comfortably house a family of four. The bed alone is obscene.
It’s not a king-size bed. It’s aking plus a side of king.
I glance at my reflection in the expansive mirror and groan. “Christ, you’re already falling apart—and it’s only been one week working alongside him.”
My blue eyes are haunted, my usually neat blond hair flops over my forehead, and the five o’clock shadow darkening my jaw would have my mothertsking. I can already hear her clipped tone: “Appearance is currency in our world, and you look positively bankrupt.”
Still no sign of Amanda.Strange.
Collapsing backward onto the bed, I pull up my favorite playlist—classic rock ballads. Songs that are supposed to be ironic but somehow end up punching me in the damn feelings.
Steven Tyler wails through the speakers. “Dream On.”
How fitting.
I close my eyes and let the music drown out the world. Let it press back the expectation. The deadlines. The inevitability.
My mind drifts to the boardroom disaster from earlier today.
