Chapter 2: Orientation on Mount Olympus, Dress Code Enforced

The orientation packet was forty-two pages long and smelled like money.

Not metaphorically. Perry had worked enough copy jobs to know what premium paper stock cost per ream, and whatever Olympian Capital's print vendor was charging for this particular shade of cream-weighted cardstock with the firm's crest embossed in gold leaf on the cover, it was more than his monthly rent. He sat in the forty-third-floor conference room and turned the packet over in his hands while eleven other interns arranged themselves around the table with the practiced ease of people who had been sitting in rooms like this their whole lives and knew exactly how to make a chair look like a throne.

He'd counted them twice, because counting was what he did when he was nervous. Twelve total, including him. The other eleven were in varying shades of charcoal, navy, and the particular shade of bone-white that Perry had always associated with people whose parents owned boats. Their suits fit. Their watches were analog. Three of them already knew each other by name, and the way they used the names — relaxed, unhurried, the way you say something you've said a thousand times — told Perry these were prep school friendships, the kind forged over lacrosse seasons and family ski trips and summers in places that didn't have zip codes you could Google.