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large wooden box sitting on a table in front of the window. “Thanks.” He knew this den like the back of his hand, and the box hadn’t been there when he’d left for Princeton last September. “Is that a humidor?” he asked, pointing.
    Clayton glanced in the direction Christian was pointing. “Yes.”
    “When did you start smoking cigars? I thought you hated them.”
    “I do. It’s a gift from a friend in Cuba. I’m not supposed to keep those things, but, well, it was just so pretty.”
    Christian watched his father sink seven balls in a row, tapping the butt end of his cue on the floor faster and faster, harder and harder, until the eight disappeared, too. “Damn,” he muttered.
    Clayton rose up as the black ball dropped and smiled from behind the pipe. “One down, one to go. This is going to be easy.”
    But Christian won the second game, and the third was hard fought. Finally, there were just three balls left on the tan felt—the cue, the eight, and a stripe—Clayton’s. Christian smiled. His father was blocked. The striped ball lay directly on the opposite side of the eight from the cue, and his father couldn’t use the eight in a combination.
    Clayton grimaced. “Tough leave, huh? Nowhere for me to go.”
    Christian nodded, trying to mask the smile. His father had to do something, and the odds were good that once the cue ball came to rest, he’d have an easy next shot to win. The streak was almost over. He could feel it.
    But Clayton did the impossible. He made the cue ball jump the eight and into the stripe, knocking the stripe cleanly into a far pocket. The cue ball caromed off two sides of the table and came to rest near the eight. Clayton dropped it into a side pocket easily for the win.
    Christian just shook his head as Clayton replaced his cue stick in the rack on the wall and came around the table. He’d been so close.
    “I know how you hate to lose,” Clayton said, placing his hands on Christian’s shoulders. “You’re so much like me,” he murmured, smiling. “So much.”
    “Christian.”
    Gillette heard the voice but didn’t react. He was still far away, still in his father’s study, wishing he could have an evening like that just once more. After pool, they’d talked until two in the morning. But there’d never be another evening like that. Six months later, Clayton was gone.
    “Christian!”
    Gillette finally looked up. Faraday was standing in his office doorway. “What is it, Nigel?”
    “It’s time for the meeting,” Faraday replied, tapping his wristwatch. He cocked his head to one side. “You okay?”
     
    “ LET’S GO, ” Faraday snapped at the stragglers. “You’re four minutes late.”
    The two managing directors hustled to their seats at the far end of the conference room table.
    This was the Everest managers meeting: Gillette, four managing partners, eight managing directors, and Debbie; attendance required. The only exception—Gillette. If he needed to be elsewhere, Faraday was in charge.
    Gillette ran the meeting from the head of the table, while the other managers sat down the sides in descending order of seniority. Debbie sat at the far end of the table, taking minutes. Donovan had never allowed anyone but the partners into this meeting, but Gillette had a different management style. He believed in open communication—most of the time, anyway.
    “Everyone’s here, Christian,” Faraday reported. He sat immediately to Gillette’s right.
    Gillette had been reviewing a memo and glanced up into two rows of hungry eyes. They reminded him of a wolf pack. “A couple of updates,” he began. “Nigel finished raising Everest Eight this morning. We now have fifteen billion dollars of signed commitments.”
    Everyone rapped the table with their knuckles—the customary show of approval. The news about Everest Eight had spread like wildfire this morning, so the announcement was just a formality.
    “Nigel deserves more than that, people,” Gillette urged as