Chapter Fifty-Three Damion
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
“There’s always time to get off your ass and fix your shit. So do it already.”
—Remington
Damion
I knew what I had to do.
“Hi, Damion,” Beverly said when I walked into the offices of Rutledge Investments. “I haven’t seen you around in a while.”
Beverly had worked for my father and his colleagues as an executive assistant for longer than I’d been alive.
“Your dad’s on a call right now,” she said.
“Okay,” I said, infused with such a sense of purpose that I was ready to break down the damn door. “In his office?”
“Yes, sir. I can let him know—”
“No,” I said, a fake smile on my lips. “He knows I’m coming. Thank you.”
I cruised past her, grabbing the doorknob and knocking as I entered. My dad looked up, not on a call, sitting like a king in his high-backed desk chair.
“Damion,” he said, looking shocked to see me. “What are you doing here?”
“I need to talk to you,” I said.
“Well, it’s not a great time,” my dad said, his eyes narrowing in measurement. He’d gotten far on his intuition, his ability to read people, and I saw in his face that he knew he wasn’t going to like whatever this was.
“You need to drop the suit against the Lowells,” I said.
“Oh, now come on, Damion,” my dad said, shaking his head and looking like he was beyond frustrated with my unwillingness to let this go. “Let’s not—”
“No, seriously,” I said, talking over him. “This isn’t—”
“I know exactly what this is. This is you wanting to defend the girl you like,” my dad interrupted. “Even if it means rolling over on your family.”
“You’re wrong. Actually,” I said, “you might’ve been right a day ago, but I got a letter from Remi.”
He looked at me confused. “A letter? How?”
“He left me a letter that he wanted me to open on my eighteenth birthday,” I explained.
My dad took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Do I want to know this?” he asked quietly.
“I think it’s important that you know this,” I said.
I handed over the letter and said, “There’s stuff in here you won’t like, but it’s absolute proof that the Lowells didn’t do anything. Just read it.”
“Fine, fine,” my dad said impatiently.
He started reading the letter.
“Damion Rutledge, DVM,” my dad muttered under his breath. “God help me.”
I watched his face as he read, and I wondered how he felt, if Remi’s words about my family and money bothered him at all. The letter wasn’t complimentary, but was my dad capable of even caring?
He read the entire thing and then calmly folded it up. Set it on the desk.
“This doesn’t prove anything,” he said, sitting back in his chair and steepling his fingers in front of him. “We don’t know that Remi actually wrote this.”
“Bernard brought it over and said that he did,” I said. “And it’s his handwriting.”
“Well, Damion, we don’t know that this wasn’t dictated to him by the Lowells, do we? Not only that, but no one but you and Bernard know that this questionable letter exists. In my opinion, nothing has changed.”
I stared at the man who’d taught me to ski, the guy who’d never missed one of my school events and had donated millions to charity, and I wondered how he could lie so easily.
“But what about right and wrong, Dad?” I asked. “Regardless of whether or not we can proceed after seeing this letter, what about the morality here? What about the fact that we shouldn’t?”
My dad looked at me for a long second, like he was considering my words. And as his eyes moved over my face, for the briefest of seconds I almost felt like he felt bad about the chasm between us.
“Listen, Damion,” he said. “I know we butt heads a lot, and I do care about right and wrong. But that doesn’t change the fact that sometimes in business, you have to do the responsible, intelligent thing.
You have to weigh the overarching evidence, the overarching facts, and make a smart decision.
The unknowns regarding this letter are greater than what’s written on the paper. ”
“Dad, please.” I could hear my voice break as his eyes stayed locked on mine. For the first time in a while, it felt like he was really looking at me.
“I know you miss him, Dame,” he said. “This must’ve been hard to read, hearing his voice again.”
My dad was being surprisingly soft, and it made me wonder, for the first time.
Shit, did my dad miss him too?
“But I worry you may be acting on your emotions right now.”
“That’s not true,” I said, clenching my fists because it was so fucking wrong that this wasn’t going to work.
My dad leaned back in his chair. He looked like he was battling his own thoughts. God, maybe I was getting to him.
“Please, Dad. Please. Drop the suit. If I learned anything from Uncle Remi, it’s that life is about doing the right thing, even if it isn’t what you want to do.”
It was about family, and even if my family sucked, her family didn’t.
“And I’ll go to Dartmouth,” I said. “I’ll go to Dartmouth and study business.”
“You will,” my dad said, watching me like he wasn’t sure if I was telling the truth or not.
“I promise,” I said. “I’ll sign a legal document or whatever you want. Just don’t do this to them. I’ll go to Dartmouth and be a good boy. Just let them have this. We have enough.”
And for the second time that day, I felt like crying.
But I wouldn’t.
Not over this.
The disappointment was what made me feel devastated, but there was enough anger to offset that.
I could feel my dad’s eyes burning into me. Studying me. “You’d do that? For her?”
“For what’s right. And for him.” I said, pointing to Remi’s letter. He sighed deeply, his eyes running over Remi’s swirling handwriting.
God, he does miss him. And for a split second I wondered if everything my dad was doing against the Lowells was because he believed he was doing what was right.
“You know, Damion,” my dad said, standing up and walking toward me. “Your mother mentioned that Cornell, in addition to having a good business school, also has some other programs you could study as a minor.” He was having trouble making eye contact. As if he was… nervous. Uncomfortable.
What is he saying? Remi and I had spent so much time looking at colleges that I knew Cornell had one of the best veterinary schools in the country.
But he couldn’t be suggesting that, could he?
“You’d still need to get your degree in the appropriate field to take your place in the family business, but if you work hard, I don’t see why you couldn’t take classes in animal medicine or whatever it is your stubborn brain has latched onto. It may not be Dartmouth, but it is Ivy.”
There it was. A compromise.
My dad was definitely telling me that I wasn’t allowed to study what I wanted to study, but he was also giving me the option of taking classes in something I was passionate about.
For him, that was a lot.
My dad trying to compromise felt like the closest thing to something fatherly he’d done in a very long time.
“Deal,” I said.
My father extended his hand, and I took it. But it felt like more than a handshake in that moment. It felt like maybe the beginning of something.
An understanding between us, maybe.
Some sort of a start.
A few minutes later, Jeffrey came into the room with a legal document that tied up all the loose ends. My father and I had reached an agreement, and in turn he was dropping any and all suits or interests in Remington’s estate.
“I’ll send a courier over to Riverside Manor, letting the Lowells know the estate is theirs, free and clear,” my father said.
“No,” I said. “Can I tell them?”
“This really isn’t all about the girl, Damion?” my dad asked, sounding curious.
“Not at all,” I said truthfully, my gut burning as I pictured her face. “She moved back to Nebraska, and I’ll probably never see her again. This is about me wanting to be the one to let them know that the Rutledges are doing the right thing.”
My dad handed me the document and the letter, and though he wasn’t smiling, there was something warm in his eyes when he said, “Whatever you say, kid.”