“I’ve got to try, dad,” Samuel explained, though he didn’t really understand his motives fully himself yet. Something inside him was telling him to get back into the city and for once, he refused to fight against his instincts. “There must be something we can do. I still don’t believe all the money is just gone. There are people still in the building. Maybe I can help them. It can’t all just be over like this.”
“Samuel, darling,” Addison tried to calm her son down. “You work in marketing, what use is that going to be at a time like this?”
Glaring at his mother and seeing the side of her that Jessie resented so much, Samuel tried not to rise to what she had just said. “I don’t know mom,” he replied, “but I’m certainly more use there than I will be here. Where is my cell? Did you put it on charger?”
“In the kitchen. But –”
Addison didn’t have a chance to finish before Samuel was out of the room, picking up his cell phone from the kitchen counter and waiting for it to turn back on. As the screen lit up, he saw a large number of missed calls, a few from friends and family, but most importantly three from the Trident head office.
“Okay, now I really have to go,” he remarked, his mind already working frantically as he tried to figure out why Trident would be calling him. “Dad, can I borrow your car?”
“Samuel please,” Addison begged her son, “just wait a minute. Think this through.”
“Dad?” Samuel asked again, ignoring his mother and raising his eyebrows at his father, hoping the man would understand how much he needed to do this. He had to get Trident back on the phone and that was not a conversation he wanted to have in front of his parents. It felt like the situation had just heated up by a hundred degrees and he needed to get back into the city. “Where are your keys?”
“In my jacket pocket,” Charles answered. “Downstairs closet.”
Samuel was in the closet practically before his father finished speaking, rifling through the clothes until he finally found the jacket his father was referring to. As he pulled out the keys and went to step into his shoes, both his parents appeared behind him in the hallway.
“Are you sure about this, Samuel? Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
Looking at his father, Samuel paused for a second and nodded. He knew his father would understand, even if his mother didn’t. He loved them both very much, but he was no good to anyone shut away at his parents’ house just waiting for the disaster to pass them by. The best way he could help them was to get back into the city and try to get some answers.
“I’ll call you as soon as I know anything, okay? Stay here where it’s safe. I don’t know what’s going to happen now.”
“Samuel,” Addison continued, still worried. She never quite went about it in the correct manner, but she loved Samuel and Jessie more than anything in the world. She only wanted them to be safe and she hated them not being by her side.
“I’ll be fine mom, I promise.” Samuel opened the front door and pressed the button on the key fob to start his father’s Mercedes. “I love you both. Talk soon.”
Without giving either of his parents the chance to say anything else, Samuel exited their house and made his way over to the car. His mind was racing. Why would Trident be calling him? What was happening back at the office and why was he needed for it? The seconds it took for his cell to connect to the car felt like hours as Samuel pulled out of the driveway. Once the connection finally showed up on the screen, he hit dial and waited anxiously for the call to connect.
Chapter 12
“Oh come on!”
Samuel thumped the steering wheel with the side of his fist, frustrated by the voicemail message that greeted him again. He’d been trying to get through to Trident ever since leaving his parents’ house and every time he called all he got was voicemail. There was no one manning the phones, no one screening the calls; nothing. Any suspicions he had that the company was still in operation were fading fast.
He hoped his parents would understand what he was doing. He had left in sort of a whirlwind, not fully explaining the rationale behind what he was doing. In truth, he wasn’t really sure what it was that had come over him. But Samuel was loyal without a fault and to see the company he had worked tirelessly for over many years being torn apart on national television had awoken something inside him. If there were people at Trident, then he felt like he needed to be one of them and he needed to be involved. If only someone would answer the phone.
Being back at his parents’ had reminded Samuel of the many life lessons they’d taught him growing up. Both his mother and father came from a long line of family money, never wanting for anything in their lives and being brought together by their social groups and standings. His father was a highly sought-after lawyer, dealing in only the most high-profile cases often with celebrities who had more money than sense. His mother meanwhile owned the majority share in a confectionary company that her great grandfather had founded in his youth. Nowadays she had very little to do with it, having hired enough people to make the decisions for her that she only visited the company perhaps once or twice a year at
