Scott #2
“Good for her,” Brett said, his commentary quite unnecessary in my opinion.
At the same time, the elder man said, “As she should!”
Grandpa’s opinion stung a bit more. Not that he wasn’t wrong.
“Couldn’t agree more.” I swallowed back most of the remaining whiskey. Hopefully, Great-Aunt Ida had a decent liquor collection I could dip into because the mimosas and bloody marys the caterers were serving were not going to do it.
Grandpa swiped the flask out of my hand. “And that’s what you want?”
“Of course, it’s not what I want. I told you how I feel about her. But it’s what it is because she doesn’t deserve to be treated like a...what were your words? A sidepiece.”
“When I said that, you were talking about getting out of your engagement, not the other way around. What the hell are you doing showing up with the Kendra girl? Announcing you’re marrying her to the press? You said that wasn’t going to happen.”
“It’s…” My eyes shifted to Brett, and I hesitated, not wanting to say too much with someone in the room who could potentially blow my ruse to my father. “It’s complicated. Let’s just leave it at that.”
He threw my near-empty flask to the ground. “Complicated my ass. Didn’t you hear anything I said when I told you about sacrifice?”
“I did sacrifice,” I said, ripping off my sunglasses so I could look him in the eye. “That’s why I’m not here with Tess, Grandpa, because you said if I loved her I would sacrifice, and so that’s exactly what I did. I gave her up so she could have the thing that was most important to her.”
“I think you’re wrong about that, buddy, because I’m pretty damn sure the thing most important to her is you.”
“Her foundation. The sponsorship she wanted. Remember?” It was silly how much it hurt to acknowledge out loud that I hadn’t been at the top of her list, even though we’d both been there when she’d said it.
Grandpa looked puzzled. “Your father used it as a bargaining chip?”
“Wouldn’t sign unless I married the ‘right’ girl. So here I am.”
“Wait.” Brett took a step in our direction, reminding me of his presence. “Your dad said you had to marry Kendra if you wanted the DRF to go through?”
My eyes darted toward him but landed back on Grandpa who asked, “That was your version of sacrifice?”
Seriously? I was fucking torn to shreds inside, and he was minimizing what I’d done to get like that? “Pretty big sacrifice, if you ask me,” I said, slipping my sunglasses in my breast pocket with one hand, the other still clutching the cue stick.
He nodded toward the latter. “Can I have that?”
“Uh, sure.” I handed him the stick.
Only to have the end of it slammed forcefully on my foot. “Ow!” Immediately, he slammed it down again. “Fuck, Grandpa. What the hell?” For an old man, he had a good deal of strength.
“That’s not what I meant when I told you to sacrifice, you idiot.”
“Then what did you mean? Give up the sponsorship she wants instead? Because that doesn’t seem like a great way to prove I love her.”
He scowled at me, and I stepped away instinctively, afraid he was about to attack me again with the stick.
Instead, he just attacked me with words.
“I didn’t know dick about this sponsorship thing you’re talking about.
I was talking about you, Scottie. Your life.
What you want from your life versus the life your father thinks you should have.
Stop letting him boss you around. You don’t have to be what he wants you to be just because he decrees it. ”
“He is my boss. I kind of can’t get around that.”
“He doesn’t have to stay your boss.”
I blinked, partly because the room still felt awfully bright without my sunglasses, but also because his words were taking a minute to register, which might have been because I was more than a little inebriated. “So what are you saying?” I asked after a beat. “I should quit SIC?”
He shrugged in that, yeah, obviously way.
“You want me to leave the family company? The place you built? The place I’ve spent all my life preparing to work at?”
“Ding, ding, ding,” he said, holding the cue stick up like he was ringing a bell. “It wouldn’t be a sacrifice if it didn’t feel a little impossible to even imagine.”
More than a little impossible to imagine. The idea of not working for Sebastian Industrial was like being told that gravity didn’t exist. It turned my world upside down just to think of it.
I leaned my ass against the billiard table, vaguely aware that Brett was witnessing all of this, and fuck it, I’d probably said too much in front of him already.
I didn’t have the bandwidth to be concerned because every bit of my brain power was trying to wrap around Grandpa’s outlandish suggestion. “But. What would I even do?”
“Anything! You’re smart. A hundred companies would give you a job. Hell, I bet a dozen would give you a spot on their board in a heartbeat in the mere hopes of ferreting out at least one useful Sebastian secret from you.”
More blinking. More stretching my mind. “But that’s.
I just.” And then suddenly, I could see it, and since he’d given me the permission to see, I felt free to imagine it bigger.
Like a hundred doors that had been closed to me all my life had sprung open all at once, and behind them was possibility after possibility after possibility. “Huh.”
“Now you’re thinking,” Grandpa said, nodding, a gleam in his eye. “Not even that big of a sacrifice when you give yourself freedom to really dream it. You have your trust fund. You’ll get your inheritance from me when I die, whether you’re working for Henry or not. Think of all you could do.”
“All I could do?” I asked, still a bit dazed by the prospect.
“Anything,” he said. “You could do anything.”
Anything.
Something that didn’t involve spending all my time covering my father’s ass. Something that didn’t have me always worrying about his approval. Something that I enjoyed and was good at. Something that had nothing to do with Henry Sebastian and had everything to do with me.
I ran my hand over my beard, feeling like an unkempt man just released from prison. As amazing as it was to be set free, it was also fucking terrifying. Walking back into my cell would be a thousand times easier.
I looked intently at my grandfather. “This is really what you want? You want me to leave your empire? Don’t you want your legacy to continue?”
Didn’t he consider me to be a part of that legacy?
He extended his free hand out and rested it on my upper arm. “It’s not my empire, Scottie. Not anymore. And my legacy is you. All of you. Every single one of you that wears my name. You’re what I care about. Your happiness is what I want.”
My throat felt tight. “Thank you, Grandpa. I appreciate you saying that.”
“I mean it.”
“I know you do. I know you do.” I put my hand over his and let it linger for several seconds.
Then I dropped it and straightened to my full height, letting his hand fall off my shoulder as I did.
“Like I said, I appreciate it. I know you want the best for me. And I want to take your advice—I should have taken it years ago, probably—but now it wouldn’t help me if I did.
If I left SIC, Dad would definitely pull the sponsorship, and Tessa would be devastated. ”
The door of my cell was already closing, the freedom I’d felt moments before drifting away like a fleeting dream.
Grandpa wrinkled his brow. “You really think she cares more about a foundation than you?”
“Not more, but it’s important to her. And it’s bigger than us. Neither of us could live with ourselves if we chose to turn our backs on the opportunity.”
But Grandpa Irving was the kind of man who didn’t understand words like can’t or impossible. A man who’d never spent a day of his life living chained or fettered. “Then don’t. Find another option. Get another business to back her foundation. You have connections.”
“None as big as I need them to be. Nothing competes with Sebastian money.” It was a truth that I’d always known, but it had never felt like a bad thing before.
“I can’t feel guilty about that,” Grandpa said with a sad smile.
“Nor should you. You expected big, and you got it.”
We stood silently, both of us accepting the reality of who we were and what he’d accomplished.
Then, from behind us, Brett said, “There’s more than one corporation run by Sebastians.”
There was more than one. Because what Grandpa had built had been so big that it had long ago been split in two.
Both Grandpa and I looked at Brett. Then we looked at each other. Could Brett be on to something?
Grandpa’s sly smile said he thought Brett might. “I like this kid,” he said, pointing to my cousin. “He’s a smart one.”
“Yeah, he is,” I agreed, the idea he’d sparked growing and expanding like wildfire. This might actually be possible. And with Grandpa on my side, this could be better than I’d even thought to imagine.
Brett took the compliments in stride. “But do I still get to kick your ass?”
“Nope. But I think you’ll be happy with what you’re going to get instead. Are you in?”
He pretended to deliberate, or maybe he really did need to consider it before giving up the idea of beating me up, which was understandable. “I’m in. But if you fuck it up—”
“I’ll hire two guys to kick my ass,” I promised. But I expected it wouldn’t be necessary.