Katie Billingsley shifted in the hard, uncomfortable chair. It had been hours since she had eaten, and she was exhausted from the sleep-deprived night. Nothing she had been through could ever have prepared herself for this torture. She was beside herself. What could have gone wrong? She asked herself this question over and over, pointlessly.
“Mrs. Billingsley, the president will see you now,” the young, buxom receptionist sneered, not bothering to look up from her computer screen.
“Th-thank you,” Katie stammered, inching her way to the gargantuan set of walnut doors that enclosed the decorative entrance hall to the office of Forrester Davison, the richest man in Mulvane County, Tennessee.
Davison had grown up in the same, small town as Katie, but had never gone to the local schools. His father, Tyler Davison, was a violent snob and had sent young Forrester away to school at an early age. While his massive wealth would have been enough to ostracize Forrester from the rest of the town of Bigelow, his unrelenting stutter, shy demeanor, weight and skin problems, and sheer physical absence from the area guaranteed him the position of the town outcast.
Following the death of his father, Forrester had returned to Bigelow to purchase all three of the county’s savings and loans. The small, geographically-obtuse acquisition was a source of irritation to the board members of Davison Magnafunds, the nationwide chain of financial institutions that the man now commandeered as a CEO. It mystified Wall Street and the financial press as to why a man of wealth and Ivy League education would choose to not only purchase a few rural farming banks, but also decide to --- god forbid --- live in Tennessee.
After traveling down the long wood-paneled corridor, Katie found herself in an ostentatiously palatial office, nearly twice the size of her


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