A shake of his head. “No, Miss McKenna. He made sure there wasn’t.”
I nod, eyes closed. “Okay, then.” I turn and leave. “I’ll be at the office. I have work to do.” I leave, and I don’t look back. “See that Mother gets home, please.” I say this to no one in particular.
I get to the office—my office. Dad’s office, the big corner one, which has been mine for months. I have a nameplate and everything: Delia McKenna, President and CEO.
There’s a button that tints the windows opaque, both the exterior ones and the windows into the rest of the office. I tint them black. Shut off the lights.
Pull Dad’s other bottle of emergency get-your-shit-together-and-deal-with-it whiskey out, and drink it.
I get very, very, very drunk.
Chapter Five
Matthais
“It’s fucking stupid,” Dell says, for the tenth time in as many minutes. “I don’t want half the fucking company! I never did! You’d think the fact that I have stayed as far away from McKenna Construction as possible over the years would be a pretty significant clue that I’m not fucking interested. But no. Ohhhhh no—” He tosses back a shot of scotch; I think he’s setting to break some kind of speed-drinking record, especially considering we’re drinking very expensive, very old, very rare scotch. “What does the dumb old goat do? Fucking ups and dies, and leaves me half the goddamn company. And I have to take it or I don’t get my fucking inheritance. What kind of an inheritance comes with a condition?”
“The kind for lazy rich boys who haven’t done a single hard day’s work in his life?” I sip my double on the rocks, smirking at him.
“Much better?” he parrots, then repeats it with emphasis. “Much better? Bitch, you’re worse.”
I’m not wholly faking the glare I give him. “That may have been true once, but it’s not. It hasn’t been for a long time, Dell. I’m a legit businessman. Do you know my credentials? Econ degree from Yale, internship at Goldman Sachs, business school at Wharton. Thirty million in investments across half a dozen different fields.”
Dell just snorts. “Investments,” he snorts. “How is that work? It’s just spending money, except you don’t get a new toy or anything out of it.”
I groan a laugh. “Dell. It’s an investment. It’s not about an immediate return. I invest money in a company in exchange for shares of that company’s revenue. I invest money, and if they do well, I make money.”
“Cool. Still not work.”
“Is fucking too, douchebag. You have to dig into the company. What’s their business plan? How do they make money? What’s their overhead? What’s their plan for the future? Have they actually made any money? Do they have an actual feasible product? You have to do research.”
Dell eyes me skeptically. “And you, you, Thai Bristow—you have been doing this? You, who taught me everything I know about how to successfully pimp it as an idle rich influencer. Your idea of work is putting together a photo shoot for your Insta. Shit, Thai, you know less about work than I do.”
I huff. “Dell, for a long, long time, that would have been true.” I shrug, sip scotch. “Like I said, it’s just not true anymore.”
“It’s not?”
I wobble my head side to side. “No, not really.”
I finish my double and order another with a lift of an index finger; the bartender, a cute blonde with a sweet rack and a nice little heart-shaped ass, gives me a flirty grin.
“So what changed?” Dell asks.
I sigh. “I…I dunno, man. I just…I was getting bored, honestly. I mean, I’m thirty. Dad was a multi-millionaire on his own by my age, and Mom was neck-deep in medical school still, at one of the most prestigious universities in the world. So, is there, like, a little pressure to live up to his example? Sure. I’ve resisted it so far, but…like I said, honestly I was just bored out of my fucking skull. Like, with life. I’ve bought all the cool cars, I’ve been everywhere on the planet there is to go that’s fun, because I’m not into mountain climbing or traversing, like, deserts or jungles. I’ve banged hot women and famous women and average women and even a few hit up ugly chicks just for the hell of it—and yeah, even a virgin once. And to that, I say never again. Too much pressure, man. Too much fuckin’ pressure.” I wave a hand in a wild, frustrated gesture. “What am I supposed to do? I don’t have a talent, like music or painting or photography or…I don’t even know. Or some cause to be all pissed off about all the time. So what am I supposed to do? You can only spend so much time on Instagram and TikTok and shit, and you can only drink so much before even that gets old. Even fucking you can’t do all time, as much as I’d like to. The ol’ wang needs a break, know what I mean?”
“Wang?” He chortles. “Did you really just call your dick a wang?”
“It was ironic.”
“I don’t think that’s what ironic means.”
I flip him off. “Like you know what ironic means? Shit, man, I graduated from Yale. I should know. I just wasn’t paying attention. I slurped up all that knowledge, spewed it out for the grade, and promptly forgot it all.”
“So you wasted…however fucking much money your parents spent sending you there, is what you’re saying?”
I shrug. “Sure? Not like they care. They shit money, man. Dad had money before he got rich. My trust fund is largely carried over from him. Mom came from money, too. It’s literally stupid. I have actually, literally, factually zero responsibilities. Zero expectations. Nothing to do. I may as well not even fucking exist, Dell.” I blink as I realize what I just said. “Fuck, man. I didn’t…” I frown, wipe my face, and take a slug of fifty-year-old Glenlivet.
Dell is eying me. “Dude, do I have to worry about you?” He’s as serious as he’s capable of getting. “Because I will, If I have to.”
“No. It’s just…it’s true. My parents would be, like, sad. You’d be sad. But that’s…it.” My eyes are wide, shock shuttling through my system. “Fuck, man. It’s true. I may as well not even exist for all the effect I have on the world.”
“Dude, that’s bullshit. If you’re that worried about leaving, like, a legacy, just do what all rich people do when they decide they want to leave a legacy.”
“And that would be what?” I ask with a wry smirk.
“Start one of those charitable foundation things in your name.”
“I’m not talking about a fucking legacy, you fucking knob, I’m talking about purpose.”
“Purpose.”
“Correct.”
“By which you mean purpose other than expensive booze and expensiver women?”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Did you just say…expensiver?”
He tosses back another shot. “Yes, I did. Yes, I know it’s grammatically wrong or whatever the hell. I was being ironical.”
“Again, not what ironic means, I don’t think.”
Dell sighs heavily. “Why are we talking about you, Thai? I’m the one with a crisis, here.”
“Crisis? The thing where you have to work with your sister for six months before you inherit millions of dollars on top of your trust fund? That crisis?”
“Sounds douchey when you put it that way.”
“Because it is douchey.”
“You’re supposed to be on my side here, Thai.” He is genuinely upset, I think.
“I am on your side, Dell,” I say with a sigh. “But as your best friend, I feel obligated to not blow smoke up your ass.”
He’s silent a moment, staring into the depths of his scotch, then takes a sip, brow furrowed. “You think I’m the asshole, here?”
I clap him on the shoulder. “Brother, we’ve always been the assholes. I thought you knew that.”
He shrugs. “I mean, sure, in a funny way. Haha, yeah, I’m a dick, what’re you gonna do about it? But this is different.” He moves the rocks glass in small circles on the bar top, making the amber liquid swirl just beneath the rim. “Thai, I…it’s just not fucking fair. For Delia, or me. She’s the one who wants the company, not me
. She worked for it, not me. And now, instead of giving her what she wanted and what she’s worked for her whole fucking life, he wastes half of it on me. I don’t fucking want it. I don’t give a shit about construction. Maybe I do need to find something else to do with my life, but I can guaran-fucking-tee you it’s not the family business.”
I sip. “So…what are you going to do, Dell?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know. I don’t…I don’t know.” He sips and hisses. More from frustration than because of the burn. “I…Thai, I’m genuinely at a loss. Can I do the work? Yeah. I’m not a dummy, you know? I’m perfectly capable. My issue has always been motivation. The problem here is I just don’t…I can’t do this. I can’t take half off the business from Delia. I don’t want it, I don’t deserve it, and I just…I won’t do it, Thai. I fucking won’t.”
“Then from how you explained it, you don’t get your inheritance.” I frown at him. For the first time, I realize how serious he is about this. For his sister, and not just himself.
He nods. “I know. I just don’t see a way around it.”
“You’re willing to give up…shit, I don’t even know how much it is. Thirty million dollars? Fifty?”
Dell shrugs. “I dunno. Somewhere in there. A fucking lot.”
“And you’re so dead set against working for McKenna Construction that you’re willing to forgo that much cash?”
He nods. “I think I am. I understand what Dad was trying to do, I really do. I’ve been a useless piece of shit. I get that. But this isn’t going to change me in the way he wants. It’s not going to repair my relationship with Delia. If anything, it’s going to make it worse.”
“So…what? You just refuse?” I eye him; I can tell he’s feeling the alcohol, but there’s no humor in him, no levity. He’s more serious than I’ve ever seen him, and I’ve known him literally my whole life.
He blinks rapidly, brows furrowing even deeper, and then he straightens, head tilting, jaw clenching.
“I know that look,” I say. “That’s your lightbulb moment face.”
He turns to face me, scotch forgotten. “Buy me out.”
I cough around a swallow of scotch. When I’m done hacking, I speak my question through a hoarse and raspy throat. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me, bitch. Buy—me—out. I’ll sell it to you for a fucking steal. Nickels on the dime, or whatever the phrase is.”
I ask the obvious question: “Why not just sell to your sister?”
“What’s the fun in that?” he says, chortling. “At least if I sell you to, I’d get some entertainment out of this whole fucked-up situation.” He tosses back another sip, then gestures at me with the tumbler. “Hell, you and Delia might make a great team, if you don’t kill each other first. I mean, all that angst and anger could be redirected into running a business instead of at each other.”
“I need another shot,” I mumble, even though I’m still working on my second double. I glance at him. “You’re serious about this?”
“Hell yes,” he says. “Listen, I know my dad always thought that the business should go to family, but you are family and I think you could do an amazing job of taking the business to the next level. What do you have to lose?” He gestures at me again with his glass. “You’ve been getting all into this ‘I’m a businessman, look at me doing business’ thing, right? Investing, shit like that? Well, what better place to invest than a company you know damned well is a certain success. With Delia at the helm, as president and CEO, you have to know that McKenna Construction is going to not only continue its current success trajectory, but most likely do even better. Dee was born and bred for one thing—to run that business. She couldn’t fail at it if she tried.”
I arch an eyebrow at him. “One problem with your little plan, bud.”
“And that is?”
“There is no one on this planet your sister hates more than me.” I laugh at the idea of showing up at the next board meeting—at how apoplectic she’d be. “It may solve your problem, if you’re willing to give up the millions of dollars you’d get if you just sucked it up for half a year and did the work. And it may be good for me, because yeah, you’re right, McKenna is absolutely the safest bet I can think of, as long as I survive your sister when she finds out what you did. And shit, Dell, we do this, you’d have to go into Witness Protection because your sister would flat out fucking murder you.”
She hates me with damn good reason, something I increasingly find myself regretting and embarrassed about as I get older. I haven’t seen her in a good ten years, but I find myself awake at night, sometimes, thinking with a burning pit of guilt in my stomach about all the horrible things I did and said to her over the years. I teased her mercilessly—about her weight, her appearance, the books she read, the things she said. If she misspoke, I mocked her. If she showed even an ounce of pride in something, I went out of my way to cut her down. Looking back, I’m not even sure why I was the way I was to her. I mean, I was a dick to everyone, because my family had more money than god, I was good-looking and popular, which meant I was an arrogant, entitled, egotistical bastard. But Delia McKenna? I went after her harder than anyone.
Shit, I once destroyed, on purpose, her most prized possession, a mint-condition first edition hardcover of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I took it from her hands and threw it in a mud puddle—it was straight out of Beauty and the Beast, honestly. I did it for no other reason than to make her cry. And I succeeded.
Yeah, me owning half the company would give her an aneurism.
“You once claimed you could get along with her,” Dell says, shaking me from my guilt-ridden line of thought.
“I could.” Assuming she didn’t—rightfully—kick me in the sack, first.
“Prove it.”
I sigh. “Dell, buddy. You don’t understand. It’s not me you have to convince, it’s her.”
“I thought you’re all grown up, Thai.” He’s got me, and he knows it. His shit-eating grin is abominable. “You mean to tell me you can’t do it? You can’t be a mature, responsible businessman around my sister?”
I groan. “This is a bad, bad, bad idea, Dell.”
“Which is why it’s a great idea,” he says, the shit-eating grin spreading even wider. “One last prank.”
“Except this one has lasting, real-world consequences. You’re talking millions of dollars—shit, tens of millions. You’re talking ownership of a company with hundreds, if not thousands, of employees. Their lives. Their careers, their futures. This isn’t something you do on a lark, Dell. Sure, in a lot of ways, I’m still the same old me I’ve always been. But I have grown up, Dell. I genuinely want to start accomplishing things with my life beyond the playboy bullshit. I’m taking it seriously. And if I were to buy you out—and that’s a seriously big if, here—I’d take it seriously. I wouldn’t be a silent investor. I’d be involved. I’d want to be fifty percent of running that company. With your sister. Delia McKenna. The girl whose life I made it my mission to ruin, every single day for eighteen fucking years. When I say she hates me, that’s not an exaggeration.” I lean closer to him. “The day we graduated, that party we threw?”
“When she put a snake down your pants?”
I squirm, remembering. “That snake was inches from biting my dick, man. Still have nightmares about it.” I shudder. “Anyway. Yeah, that. I followed her into the woods, and she fucking…she flat out told me she hoped my plane crashed. And she wasn’t kidding.” I sigh, grimacing. “And I can’t say I blame her. I was kind of a monster.”
“I was right there with you. Thus the fact that we’re basically estranged.”
I wince at the truth that their estrangement is at least partially my fault. “I just don’t know that you and me doing this to Delia is…a good idea. In fact, it’s a terrible idea. It’d be a whole new kind of torture for her.”
“I mean, yeah, I know. Best option for her is for me to take some job in the company where I fulfill the terms of th
e will in such a way that I’m not in her hair, then take my money and run. But…I don’t know, Thai. I’m just…I have this…I don’t know the words.” A long silence, as he considers. “I guess I feel like for the first time in my life, I’m going to take a stand. I do not want half the company. And I’m not going to pretend to fulfill Dad’s intentions by spending six months making fucking copies in the marketing office. Dad wanted Delia and I to make up, to get along. He wanted me to…” He swallows hard. “To man up. To be a better person, I guess. And maybe…maybe this is my way of doing it. I just…I have to find my own way. I’m going to get the real crux of what Dad was trying to do, I’m just…I have to do it my way.”
“And that means selling your half to your sister’s worst enemy?”
A shrug. “Better than some random businessman who doesn’t know or care about the family?” A wave of his hand. “And yeah, I know, selling out to her is the better way. But since when have I ever done anything the easy way or the right way? And I know you’ll have fun. And shit, she may be spitting nails at first, but I think this could be good for her.” A grin with the tumbler at his lips, words echoing into the glass. “Shit, maybe she’ll even thank me, someday.”
I know it’s a bad idea. A really, truly, spectacularly bad idea. She very well might physically assault me. But then…I haven’t actually seen or spoken to her in years. Literally, I haven’t laid eyes on her or heard her voice in…ten years at least. Something like that. Maybe things will be different. Better. Less…antagonistic.
It’s still a bad idea. And I’m not entirely sure what’s motivating me when I hear my own voice: “All right, Dell. I’m in. You sell me your interest in the company, and I become part-owner of McKenna Construction.” I point a finger at him. “But if your sister tries to kill us both, it’s on you.”
He grins. “Deal.”
“For the record, I must protest this decision,” Quentin Albright Quince says, even as he slides a thick contract across the desk to Dell. “It’s a terrible idea. No offense meant to you, Mr. Bristow. And…my understanding of family dynamics leads me to believe Miss McKenna will be…less than thrilled.”