Chapter 7
WREN
I watch Darcy as he works, and like every day I’ve been in the office this week, I try to picture me in his role. I can’t.
“And you’ve tuned out again.” He sounds more amused than defeated. I think he’s long past defeated.
“It’s the suit.” I shift and pull at my collar. “It makes it impossible to think when I feel like I should be doing tricks and pulling bunnies out of hats.”
“Maybe it’s that you’ve worn the same suit every day. They’re not like shoes. You don’t have to break it in.”
“It’s the only suit I own, and my mom bought it for me.”
Surprise crosses Darcy’s face. “Ah. So that’s why it doesn’t fit right. You should go to your tailor.”
“I work in construction. I don’t have a tailor.”
“Oh. Then you should definitely get a tailor. I can give you the name of mine.”
Of course he has a tailor. He has a forty-second-floor office, a helicopter on the roof, enough money to buy his own island somewhere. He has everything, and I have …
Well, I don’t have nothing. I have enough.
And I’ve always thought I was fine with that.
But the more time I spend with Darcy, the more I question it.
Even with all those dollars I’m set to inherit, none of it feels real.
I’m still so disconnected from all of this.
It’s not that I want money or the material shit he has.
It’s that he has something I never will—a sense of belonging.
I lean back in my seat. “What was it like?”
“What was what like?”
“Growing up as Warren Ritcherson’s heir. The golden child.”
“Ooh, we’re not going to open that can of worms, are we?”
If I’m honest, I’ve been itching to all week, but I haven’t been sure if I’m ready or willing to hear the answer. I still don’t know if I am. But I need to.
“If you need me to pay attention, I have to stop getting distracted.”
Darcy averts his gaze as he asks, “Distracted with what exactly?”
“I want the truth. About what your life has been like. I don’t want you to tell me it was terrible because you think it’ll make me feel better that I missed out. I need …”
“You need to let go of the what-ifs.” Darcy stands from his desk.
He’s tall and lean. Looks powerful in a suit but seems so much softer than Junior and Tobias.
It kills me to say, but I think it’s his eyes.
He doesn’t look at me like a piece of shit.
He looks at me like … like he’s sorry. Like he actually cares.
“Where are you going?”
“Not far.” He opens one of his cabinets along the back wall of his office and pulls out two glasses and a bottle of whiskey. “If we’re going to torture each other with what could have been, we’re going to need this.”
He pours us each a nip and passes one over to me.
I haven’t even lifted the glass to my lips before he swallows his down. “So, rich people can just get drunk at work?”
“Yep.” He pours himself some more.
I down mine to catch up, and then I get a refill too.
“You go,” Darcy says. “Your childhood. What was it like?”
“I asked first.”
“Little brothers are the worst.” He lifts his drink to his mouth again.
I watch him swallow; I don’t know why. I haven’t been able to stop staring at him since I agreed to learn the business.
Little brother seems so weird coming from his mouth.
I know that’s what we are, technically, but Remy is so much more family to me than he is, and I can’t see that ever changing.
Even after a week together, Darcy is still a stranger to me.
Big brother ? I can’t see him that way. It’s uncomfortable.
I’m hoping this conversation will help my brain move beyond the questions.
The wondering. The disconnect. Scrutinizing every detail of Darcy’s life.
His physique. Why he got his mom’s features when the rest of us are all Warren.
Why genes work the way they do. If I wouldn’t be as fit and muscular as I am if Warren had chosen me.
Darcy slumps in his seat, lifts his feet and rests them on his desk, and leans back. The most casual I’ve seen him yet. “You’re not going to like what I have to say.”
“Probably not, but …”
“You need to know. I get it.” He hesitates before saying, “The relationship I had with our father was a good one.”
He’s right. I don’t like it.
“Don’t get me wrong, from the moment I was born, my life had been mapped out.
There has been pressure. A lot of pressure.
And while Warren Ritcherson might have seemed cold or greedy to people on the outside, he was a really good dad.
” He huffs. “I mean, there was this one phase we went through when …”
“When what?”
Darcy licks his lips. “When Junior came along. Then, he had to split his time between me and my annoying little brother. Apparently, I didn’t like that. Acted out. Even bit a kid in kindergarten.”
“Trouble child,” I snark.
“By the time Tobias was born, I’d apparently been scolded enough about my jealous streak that I made sure to show I loved him.”
“Or maybe you’ve been an excellent judge of character since you were in kindergarten and knew Junior would grow up to be … whatever he is.”
Darcy pours us more drinks. “The chip on Junior’s shoulder deserves its own separate conversation.”
“Okay, so happy little Darcy is happy until he gets siblings. Then what?”
“When we were teenagers—I was about fourteen—I started questioning who I was.”
I nod. “The gay thing.”
“Yep, but … but not just that. I questioned where I belonged in the family. I got the distinct impression that I was the, uh, business transaction baby. My brothers were Father’s pride and joy.
I was his mentee. And there’s nothing he particularly did or didn’t do.
We were always given affection freely. But for me …
my life had all these strings attached. This company had to be my number one priority from the beginning.
They got to be kids.” He wears a sad smile.
“Have to be honest, when I found out about you, I wished we could swap places.” His voice cracks.
“Things were rough for a year or two. I hated that there was only a few weeks between my future and your fate.”
I’m trying to feel sorry for him, and a small part of me does, but the bigger, selfish part of me wants to scream, “ How do you think I felt when I found out about you? ”
Instead, I say, “I had those thoughts myself in my early twenties when I found out who my dad was. What if he’d chosen my mother? What if I was in your position? Who would I be? Where would I be?”
“Probably married to émile Cromwell.”
“Who?”
“He’s a friend. Only a friend. But his family is prominent, and our families’ matriarchs wanted us to wed because it would be good for business. His family owns the biggest shipping company in the US. Ours runs the media. We were going to take over the world!”
“Aww, no love?”
He lets out a loud “Pfft. Love doesn’t matter when it comes to marriage. Not in this family. You of all people should know that.”
“Why me?” Though I have a feeling I know what he’s getting at.
This is the most candid Darcy’s been since I’ve met him, and while one part of me thinks a few shots of whiskey loosened him up, the other gets the impression Darcy has wanted to talk about this with someone for years and couldn’t. I know the feeling.
“Come on. We can question all we like—what would’ve happened if things were different? But it was never going to be different. Our father was set to marry my mother, even though he was in love with yours.”
I shake my head. “Who does arranged marriages these days? That’s insane. And you obviously got out of yours.”
“Yeah, because my husband-to-be ran off and married a Broadway dancer. His family were horrified, and I was bloody relieved. Thank fuck émile Cromwell is a thousand times the man I am. I would have married him without argument. And I would have been miserable doing it.”
Okay, so maybe his upbringing wasn’t all sunshine and roses. And it’s not like I can complain about my life. I might not have had a father, but I had family. Family who loved me, supported me, and never made me do something I didn’t want to do.
“And now?” I ask. “How’s your life now?”
He glances around the office, a proud look on his face. “I’m where I’ve fought to be. Where I feel like I belong.”
There’s a long-lasting silence between us until his gray eyes meet mine.
The words fall out of my mouth without permission. “I wish I could say the same.”
I don’t belong here.
But I also don’t think I belong in construction.
I’m a rich poor man. A walking contradiction.
I was wrong. This conversation hasn’t helped me. It’s only made me more lost.