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The doorbell rang when Aldo was soaking in the tub, trying to ward away the feeling of decay and sweat from his skin. The last three months hadn’t been easy. Clement’s death wasn’t necessarily a surprise — Aldo had been with him in the hospital visits, he knew first hand that he was nearing the end. Hell, he even ensured that Clement was able to write his last will and testament by his own hand and his own lawyer.
But it was still hard. Losing a husband is hard, even if theirs was a marriage of convenience (thank you Cuomo, the only good thing you have ever done in your life). There was a kind of love there. Clement was his mentor first and foremost, the man who believed in that scrappy little thing from Harlem who had a fast talking mouth and a quick mind, who pulled him out of gang violence and decaying buildings, and who Aldo was willing to do nearly anything for, especially if it meant he could continue doing what he loved. A golden band for a visa and the right hand position at the Wall Street table. A decade and some change of a mariage blanc and probably illegal consulting. Hell, he lost his job anyways because of his sexuality — they claim it was insider trading, but Aldo knew how Benedict looked at him, that hypocrite, and how the board acted in those years, and they needed an easy scapegoat — might as well use it to spite those bastards.
That led to a ten year run as The Husband, a title he wore with as much pride as he wore his professorship and his board seat. It was actually kinda funny and a little sad how much people told him when they just thought he was the trophy. Made his job easier though.
Didn’t really make the funeral easy, though, and after all the ones he went to in his 20s it still hurt to bury a dear friend. Call him bloodless all you’d like, there was always still more to bleed. The funeral, and then the grieving period, and then the voting for the new CEO; it was a blur. It's been two months since then, two months of being alone, and it still doesn’t feel real. People were either avoiding him like he had the stench of death on him or trying to goad him this way and that, swaying his vote for whatever pet cause they had.
Aldo heard the Ring alert ping on his phone as he was throwing back a glass of wine. He groaned. It better not be any more well-wishers, he could smell the bullshit a mile away. When he checked, he smiled once he recognized who was already opening the door. He turned off his phone and leaned back, straining to hear some familiar footsteps.
“You better be here to tell me how the voting went,” Aldo shouted through the apartment when he heard his front door shut.
“Thats classified!” A familiar British voice yelled back, his keys jiggling as he threw them in the key bowl next to the door.
“Of course, dear,” Aldo replied, smiling. Classified to some, but not to him. He may have been removed from the board and cut off from all communiques (For your own health, Trembley said, you need time to grieve, we don’t want to force you to stay! We can handle it from here, take some time for yourself, etc etc. There was something up with that slimy bastard, and while technically he was the next in line as CFO, Aldo prayed that the board had enough sense to keep him away from the reins) but he was still a core member of it all. Clement’s loyal secretary would continue Clement’s history of ensuring Aldo was kept updated. He and Thomas knew each other for decades at this point, they knew each other probably better than their own families, and knew how important the work they did was for the company. Aldo liked to think they were important to each other, but there was only so far he was willing to push that line. He was a married man, after all. Or well. A widowed one, now.
Anyways, it looked like Aldo’s bath was done and he had to be human once more. It was nice while it lasted. He grabbed his phone as he got out, texting the owner of the bodega a few streets over a quick order. Once he got the thumbs up, he slipped into something more comfortable. At home, he wore what was comfortable, and in the repressed world of finance that was apparently quite revealing. It's his house, he can be a little slutty if he wanted to. Granted, a tight black shirt and loose sleep shorts wasn’t really slutty, but he’s seen the way some of the delivery runners look at him when it's after hours, he wasn’t blind.
Aldo grabbed the bottle of red — a fruity Shiraz, a guilty pleasure — and his glass and waltz out of the room, humming to himself as he made his way into the kitchen.
The kitchen was a grand thing bathed in warm light with Polish tiles from when a childhood friend of his retired from the restaurant business and took them with him, and dark oak cabinets. He wanted it to be homey; the kitchen was always the heart of the house and he refused to have it be a minimal hell. Aldo hated minimalism, that was one of the points he fought Clement on the hardest. The old man liked things simple, but Aldo refused to stay in an apartment that looked like the asylum they committed him to, and thus everything was decorated with at least something. Usually gifts or paintings or photos from their travels, more often things acquired over their long, confusing lives.
At the island table was Thomas and a man with long, dark hair, heads together and talking in whispered voices. On one hand, strange. Thomas wasn’t exactly a loner, but he rarely brought other people over, even less often without giving Aldo a heads up. On the other, good. Thomas needed more friends and while Aldo can be possessive, he wasn’t an asshole. His best friend needed more than a depressed widower on his side.
“Two months without a word and you waltz in like you own the place,” Aldo announced his presence with a quirk of his lips, gliding over to the blond and swinging his arm over his shoulder. “And not even a hello! What happened to those high-browed manners of yours?”
“Hello, Aldo,” Thomas said, looking up at him with that half-smile on his face. It looks like he’s been doing well, the bags under his eyes Aldo saw during the funeral have faded, and he has a new glow. Aldo knows Thomas has been meaning to retire, always holding out for one reason or another, and it looks like he’s found another reason to stay. Whoever the new CEO is is lucky to have him. “It’s delightful to see you again.”
Aldo bumped into him, way too happy to see him again. “And who's our new friend here?”
Thomas started talking but as the dark haired man looked up– oh. Oh wait, Aldo does know this man. So that means… “Mr. Benitez.”
“Bellini,” the man replied, equally smooth and equally cutting Thomas off, looking up with those bright eyes of his that made him seem to be able to see every fact and flaw.
“You were called for the vote, I assume?” Aldo asked as he poured another glass of his wine, ignoring Thomas’s questioning look. This night was going to be a long one, he could tell already.
“Ah, yes,” Benitez replied, turning to fully face him. “I will say I was shocked to not see you there.”
Aldo frowned deeply at that, taking a sip of his wine. “So was I. Board politics is a delight, isn’t it?”
At Vincent’s furrowed eyebrows, Aldo passed the glass to Thomas. “Trembley— Joseph Trembley, the Canadian, you probably met him–”
“Oh yes, unfortunately,” Benitez muttered darkly, a deep set to his eyes that made Aldo desperate to know what happened during the vote.
“— yes, he’s quite unfortunate, anyways, he had the authority to remove me from the Board because he technically outranked me as CFO,” Aldo took a swig from the bottle. “I would love to know why, but–”
“Aldo, be serious,” Thomas butted in, swirling his glass of wine and looking at him as though he had lost his mind. “You were the obvious choice to be CEO. He was culling the herd with whatever tactics he could.”
Aldo made a noise of disagreement. “Sure, if we only counted it by association, but may I remind you I cannot be CEO. Benedict made sure of that, the dickwad.”
“I am sure the board would have been more than willing to make an exception for someone who has served diligently for nearly a decade,” Thomas insisted.
“Its not the board that would have needed convincing,” Aldo pointed out, “it would be the SEC and whoever decided they wanted to pitch a fit in Albany.”
Thomas raised an eyebrow, entirely unconvinced that Aldo could not have done just that.
“Anyways,” Aldo rolls his eyes. His friend greatly overestimates Aldo's capabilities, often. Aldo just wished he could accept that and stop feeling as though he was letting him down every time he asked. “Benitez. Do you like cannolis?”
“Oh?” Why was it so cute when he furrowed his eyebrows, this was unfair. “Yes, I do, why–?”
The doorbell interrupted him. Aldo took a swig from the bottle. “Because if we are going to discuss the future, I need a pick-me-up.”
Carlito was at the door; he was the son of the owner of the bodega, bright kid, likes art history and old buildings. He was a senior in High School, going through the fall semester ringer, but was enlisted to help at the store all the same. And in his hands was what was going to keep Aldo from going insane tonight.
“Hey bossman,” somehow the kid was able to hold everything in one hand, holding out the other for a fist bump.
“Carlito,” Aldo chuckled, knocking knuckles and standing off to the side. “Could you drop it all off in the kitchen? I have to go grab my wallet.”
He heard Carlito say hello to their guests as he walked back to his office. When he got back, Carlito and Benitez had struck up a conversation about Liga MX that Aldo did not have the bandwidth to translate.
“Alright, alright, don’t you have homework to get to?” Aldo cut them off as they started getting into goals and player numbers.
Carlito stuck his tongue out. “Thanksgiving break can’t get here fast enough I swear.”
Aldo whacked him with the stack of papers. “Get to it, I don’t want Sergio yelling at me again.”
“Oh come on,” Carlito grabbed the papers with a confused face. “Like hell Da would– wait, are these the…?”
“Fresh off the press,” Aldo said. He wasn’t as close with the history faculty as he was with the business one, but he knew how to pull some strings. “Now go, we have an adult conversations to have.”
Carlito nodded, half distracted by the articles on skyscraper construction and masonry in the late 19th century, nearly forgetting to collect the delivery money.
When Aldo got back, Thomas had taken the collection of fruit and a case of canned tonic water out of the bag and laid it out with the box of cannoli. Aldo waved for them to dig in as he got an extra pair of wine glasses and small plates.
“So,” Aldo started. “Talk to me. How did it go?”
“Oh Aldo I wish you were there,” Thomas started, resting his head in his hands and rubbing at his eyes. “It was, pardon my language, a shit show.”
Aldo could feel his eyebrows trying to leave his head. Oh no. When the low noble started swearing, things didn’t go as planned. He went ahead and gave Benitez a plate, and made one for Thomas, who looked like he was trying to peel something out from behind his eyes.
“That’s putting it politely,” Benitez said, picking at his cannoli.
“I don’t want to hear it from you, Mr. Vincent Benitez,” Thomas side-eyed him. “You appeared out of nowhere to start all of it. And that was before all the voting even began; while I understand why the whole board and major investors are supposed to be there for the CEO vote, if I ever have to see all of them again in one place again I am putting Ray in charge and escaping to the Adirondacks.”
Aldo snorted. Thomas had been threatening to do that for years, they even picked out a house with enough land to have a small winery and a church in a little town right off of the Finger Lakes.
“So I am assuming catering and all went well?”
“Oh Agnes was wonderful as always,” Thomas waved his hand, “But as I came to find out, Clement really likes sticking his hands in every little thing.”
“You were there at the will reading,” Aldo said as he bit into his cannoli. It was quite detailed. There were dossiers.
“Yes, well, flying a poor woman out from Nigeria to ensure a scandal doesn’t stay hidden is different than donation percentages,” Thomas glared up at his old friend as Aldo did a highly undignified spit take.
“What?” he tried to say, coughing up his lungs and accepting a napkin from where Benitez handed one to him.
“Do you remember the front runners list?”
Homobonus had a unique system for electing a CEO. As one of the oldest continuously ran firms on Wall Street, their idiocentricaries were baked in from the colonial years. That included a secret ballot that needed a two-thirds vote of all able members of the board and majority stakeholders, and a continuous vote until that majority was reached. So not only was it one of the closest followed company elections in the financial world, it was one of the most speculated on. Aldo knew he was on there, as a favorite and a legal longshot; Thomas was a well, as the loyal secretary with decades of experience; there was Joseph Trembley as the CFO; and from the international branches, Joshua Adeyami, the head of the Central African branch, was considered a front runner on the Keynesians side, and Goffredo Tedesco, one of the heads from the European branch, was considered a front runner on the classical economics side. He tried to not pay too close attention to it, every time he saw CEO and Homobonus in the same sentence there was a crater in his chest.
“Trembley, Adeyami, Tedesco, and you, right?” Aldo poured another glass for Benitez, pushing the box of strawberries his way.
“Yes, well,” Thomas started rubbing at his temple. “To say they all abdicated gracefully would be…”
“Far too generous,” Benitez added.
“Oooo, this sounds fun,” Aldo muttered.
“Yes, so, that thing I mentioned with Agnes? Apparently, Adeyemi had a history of repeated coverups of sexual abuse scandles, up to and including having impregnated an intern back in the 90s. So needless to say, the board didn’t want that following us around.”
Aldo felt his face freeze. Ah. This was why Clement had him find that poor girl.
“Also,” Thomas rested his hands on the tabletop, staring into Aldo’s eyes. “Don’t get mad at me.”
Aldo cocked an eyebrow. “Why.”
“I…” Aldo saw Thomas’s Adam's apple bob. “I had to go into Clement’s office.”
Aldo’s blinked. “Ah.”
Thomas looked at him. “Ah?”
Another one of Homobonus’s idiocentricaries was the sealing of the CEO’s office until the next one would take it over. Aldo had complicated feelings over it. He needed to get things from that office, he wanted to clean it before the next CEO got to it, but it was sealed and inaccessible.
But apparently not.
Aldo swallowed, trying to keep the wave of grief and anger from overwhelming him. “Why?”
“Trembley had threatened Janusz–”
“What,” Aldo's voice was just under shouting (He did have neighbors, unfortunately.) Janusz Wozniak had been Clement’s personal assistant from his years in the European office, who followed his superior to the United States and who is a close friend and long-term confidant to Aldo. After the funeral, Aldo tried to get Janusz to stay with him; if the death was hard for him, Aldo was sure it was worse for Janusz — Aldo firmly believes that if the opportunities were different, Clement would have been married to him instead. But he seemed more jittery than usual, more solemn. Aldo first thought it was how he dealt with grief, like Aldo, he needed time and space and room to think. So– “What happened.”
“Janusz had started drinking to deal with his grief,” Thomas continued. “Apparently Trembley tried to use it to pressure him into destroying some documents before the room was sealed. But he came to me instead.”
Aldo couldn’t believe it. He should have tried harder, got to Janusz faster, talked to him more, done something. How could he have been so blind? Trembley had never liked Janusz, for reasons Aldo could not comprehend, but with Clement gone and Aldo off the board that meant that Janusz had lost most of his connections, that he would have been just as unmoored as Aldo was, God, how could he have been so selfish–
“Aldo,” a rough hand grabbed onto his forearms. Aldo hadn’t even noticed he started shaking in tension. “Can you breathe for me?”
“What?” Aldo tried to focus. It was Benitez, his kind face firm and looking at him with concern. Why? Aldo could handle it, he just needed to–
“Breathe for me,” he repeated. “Whats done is done. We were able to get him to some family in, uh–”
“Fryderyk and Joasia? Brooklyn?” His cousin and brother-in-law, they had moved there in the 80s. Aldo has spent Epiphany with them for the last decade after Janzus realized he was Catholic too.
“Yes, Aldo, he’s doing well now,” and now Thomas was cradling Aldo’s hands in his own. It was ridiculous, he shouldn’t need this kind of comfort for what was essentially his own fuck up, but he could agonize over it later. Right now their warm hands were grounding. “I was able to find the documents Trembley so wanted destroyed.”
“And?” Aldo was nearly surprised at the bitterness in his voice, it felt too little for the emotions he was feeling.
‘He is currently under investigation by the IRS for money laundering,” Thomas said with finality. “There was enough evidence in Clement’s file that I am assuming it will be a quick trial. He was promptly removed from the board and all holdings have been revoked.”
Aldo wanted to laugh. That was surprisingly fast and effective for the board, but then again there were probably enough people whom Trembley has slighted to make the process a bit smoother.
So that leaves… “I assume Tedesco is now in charge?” There goes any hope of him returning.
The other two chuckled, hands not leaving Aldo. He furrowed his brows. “What? Why are you two laughing?”
“Well,” Benitez started, a sly look in his eyes. “When I heard he was a bull, I did not think people meant it literally.”
Aldo squinted, glancing at Thomas. His old friend elaborated: “Guess who couldn’t keep their mouth shut and imploded his campaign.”
“Ah,” Aldo chuckled a little wetly, still coming down from the emotional waves of the Janzus revelation. “That sounds like that old asshole.” But then he cocked his head. “So, then, who is CEO? Because you look way too happy, Thomas, so I know for a fact it isn’t you.”
“No, no,” Thomas looked down at where their hands joined. “Not me. But, ah…”
Aldo followed his gaze to the youngest man. Then the dots connected.
“Vincent Benitez is the new CEO?” Aldo could hardly contain his surprise.
“Is that a surprise?” The man in question shot back, eyebrows raised.
“You’re what, 54?” Aldo calculated. “That makes you the youngest head of this company… I think, ever. So yes, forgive me for being surprised in our colleagues' decision making, they tend to shoot old and hope for another vote.”
Aldo did not feel like interrogating why his chest warmed at making the younger man laugh unexpectedly, especially as Thomas looked at him oddly. “What?”
“How did you know that?”
“Know what?”
“His age.” Thomas looked at him the way he looked at a puzzle that was particularly difficult, one where he knew the answer was close but needed a few more pokes or prods at. “He flew under the staff radar, I didn’t even know he was coming until he was at the vote and Ray had to go into the archives to find his official file.”
Oh. Right. “Clement had told me a few years ago about a man he was keeping an eye on in Mexico. I just so happened to be in charge of making sure he stayed… alive feels dramatic, but considering how much we threw you around the world, it seems appropriate.”
Benitez looked at his glass as though some things were sliding into place. Thomas, on the other hand, looked even more confused.
Aldo withdrew his hand from the comfortable hold, ensuring that the arm that the other two were touching didn’t move an inch. On his free hand, he started counting, “Mexico City to Manila on the Manila Stock Market, Manila back to Mexico City on the BMV to start the Youth Business Outreach project, Mexico City to Cairo on the Egyptian Exchange and started the Francis Fund’s North African branch and the Camillus de Lellis Fund, then the Saudi Office as the Manager of Outreach and Phillotropic programs. Active member of the international board since… 2018, if I remember right? Plus all the in-person meetings and briefings here in New York. Lots of frequent flyer miles, I can tell you that much.”
Benitez chuckled. “So he wasn’t kidding, you really are the brains of this company.”
Aldo raised an eyebrow. Benitez wasn’t a flatterer – every meeting he had with Clement was practical and to the point, and what would often border on insolence if Beinitz wasn’t such a soothsayer with the markets. So commentary like that seemed out of the blue.
“High praise,” he comments, staring directly into the eyes of the younger man.
He didn’t waiver. “From Clement. ‘Neurotic, but brilliant,’ he called you,” and wasn’t that a typical backhand from the old man, but Benitez continued, “‘No one controls this vipers nest better than him.’”
“Charming,” Aldo muttered, smiling to himself as a memory comes unbidden from a conversation that felt lifetimes ago, when there was a late night discussion about sending a bright young man from Mexico to Cairo. “And no longer naive."
Benitez seemed to have not heard him, and sat up straighter in his chair. “Due to the fallout from Clement’s death and the fraud accusations, we knew we couldn’t keep you on the board in a typical way. We’ve discussed different methods, and have found the best way of keeping you in the loop.”
“You two?” Aldo barely kept the surprise from his voice. They’ve known each other, what, two months? How could they have come up with any reasonable plan in that short of a time.
“And Clement,” Thomas added, softly. He slid a small black leather box toward Aldo’s elbow.
Aldo looked at it, his heart ringing in his ears. “What’s this?”
“Something I wish I did years ago,” Thomas said carefully, “and now I have a dead man’s quite… explicit permission.”
And while Aldo desperately wanted to know what that was about, he couldn’t take his eyes off of the box. There was a dream he used to have, back when he shared a flat with an infuriating brilliant blond man during a study abroad at Oxford, of a life far away from the city and the money. Where they could live in a townhouse, be teachers or researchers or something, and come home to cats and English tea. It was a pipe dream, then and since.
So what was this?
“Its not going to bite you, you know,” Thomas tried to joke, but Aldo could see the stiffness in his shoulders that only came about when he’s made a risky choice and unsure of the outcome.
“Are we sure?” Aldo ribbed by, voice suddenly tight. He felt like he was out of his body, a foot above and a few inches to the left, watching as his hand closed around the box, cracking it open to a ring. To a ring that was obviously a wedding band.
Aldo couldn’t breathe. His head spun, for the umpteenth time that night, looking wide eyed at the delicate piece of jewelry. He tried to find some reasonable explanation for this, for their supposed plan, and the only thing he could come up with was…
“Am I marrying you both?” Aldo asked, voice dry, eyebrow raised.
“Technically no,” Thomas said with a meek expression. “New York doesn’t allow polygamous marriage. I checked. But legally, you would be bound to Vincent. Just… my husband, as well. If you would like it.”
“This is very Mormon, for a bunch of Catholics,” Aldo muttered.
Thomas chuckled at that. Aldo glanced across the table at Vincent, who was oddly still during this whole exchange. Covering his hand, and in a soft tone Aldo didn’t realize he could still do, he asked, “are you sure you’re ok with this?”
Benitez looked up, a far away look in his eye. Aldo knew that look. He had seen it often enough. This was a man who had weighed all the possible avenues and came to a conclusion he did not like but knew he must do. It was funny, how familiar this all felt to Aldo. Benitez smiled, a small, professional thing that Aldo knew hid something, and nodded. “As God wills it.”
Aldo had a thing or two to say about God, as he did with most things, but they can make it work. He couldn’t help himself, though, commenting, “You know, the dating usually comes before the wedding.”
“Oh, is that still in fashion?” Benitez quipped back, making Aldo and Thomas laugh.
“Well, I expect a pretty one, if you ever fall in love,” Aldo says offhandily, slipping the ring on. As it glinted in the light, his mind spun. He would have to call his lawyer, and Clements. And also his buddy in the New York State Senate, see what legal limitations they have for this and how they can avoid the claims of black widows and golddiggers. Actually, he’ll call a friend on the New Yorker and the Journal, that’ll be easier. They’ll need to get Benitez a lawyer too, not just Thomas, who can make a Will and NDA and break down the limits of spousal jurisdiction. Oh, and also what is still under a dead man’s privacy and what the widow had access to. Aldo’ll also have to go to the bank to figure out how to get all the stock holdings back, what prices they were currently at and what they really were, and access the vault; knowing Clement there's something in there they will need and he’ll have to figure out what has been transferred to his name already and how he can transfer that to Benitez. Then there's the situation with his position on the board, but Thomas can help with that.
The diamond was a delicate thing, maybe a carat in size and clear to the naked eye, embedded in a brushed gold band. There was a thin rose gold slit through the middle, drawing a soft smile to Aldo’s face as he remembered that very silly discussion they had years ago. It was so very Thomas. And maybe, once he got to know the man better, very Benitez. Maybe even very Vincent.
“Well then,” Aldo said, putting his hand down and his working face on. “Let's get to work, shall we?”
(It took about a year for him to find out. He was right, in the end. Vincent’s ring was also a simple, beautiful thing.)