Chapter 1. Maxim
MAXIM
FOUR YEARS LATER
I am my father’s son.
I’m the spitting image of Warren Cade. Dark, russet-streaked hair with a slight wave just like his.
Identical light-green eyes. Same wide stretch of back and shoulders.
Toe to toe, nose to nose, we both stand six feet, three and a quarter inches.
Notwithstanding the striking physical similarities, beneath our skin, inside our bones—we’re the same.
Considering my father is one of the most ruthless sons of a bitch you’ll ever meet, that should scare me.
“Why am I here, Dad?” I sink into a buttery-leather seat on his company’s private jet. “What was so important you had to pull me off campus into this mile-high meeting?”
He glances up from the file on the table in front of him. “Would it kill you to spend a little time with your old man?”
It could kill us both if the last few years are any indication of how we’ll get along on this trip.
Our clashes are epic. As a kid, I was my father’s shadow.
“Hero worship” would be a mild term for the way I viewed him.
We were inseparable, but as I got older and formed my own opinions, found my own will, the chasm between us grew wider.
My father rules our family with the same iron fist with which he runs Cade Energy, the family business.
When he tries to rule me …it doesn’t go as well.
“It’s an awkward time,” I reply with a shrug. “I’m finishing my thesis and—”
“Why you even wasted your time with that master’s program, I’ll never know.”
I bite back any reply to defend my decision.
It made sense when I double majored in business and energy resources engineering for undergrad.
That fell in line with his plan for me. Going on to pursue my master’s at Berkeley made no sense.
According to his timetable, I should have been leading a division in our company by now.
“Let’s not go there,” I finally say, running an agitated hand through my hair, overlong and almost to my shoulders.
“You need a haircut,” Dad says abruptly, shifting his attention back to his file. “Like I was saying, you’ll be done with graduate school soon. Time to get back on track.”
“I am on track.” I clear my throat and don’t meet his eyes. “And I’m not sure what I’ll do next.”
A lie. I know exactly what I’ll do next. A PhD in climate science, but I’m in no mood to fight. I haven’t seen him in a long time. I’d rather talk about the Cowboys’ playoff hopes. The Longhorns. His golf swing. Anything other than my career—than our opposing views on what I should do.
Dad’s eyes snap up and narrow on my face. “What the hell do you mean you aren’t sure what you’ll do next? Now that Owen’s in the Senate, we need you running our West Coast office, Maxim. You know that.”
The note of pride in his voice when he mentions my older brother Owen grates a little. Pride hasn’t been in his voice for me in a long time. Disapproval. Disgust. Frustration. That’s all I’ve gotten since I told him I’d be going to Berkeley for my master’s instead of starting at Cade Energy.
“Dad, I don’t know that I’m…” I hesitate. The next words could set off a bomb I’m not sure we should detonate this high in the air. “Maybe I’m not the right fit for the job.”
“Not the right fit?” He flips the file closed and glares at me. “You’re a Cade. You were literally born for the job.”
“Let’s talk about this later.”
“No. Now. I want to know why the company four generations of Cades spent building from the ground isn’t good enough for you.”
“I didn’t say that. I’m just not sure I’m the best person to run a company producing oil and gas. I question the sustainability of fossil fuels as this country’s primary energy source. I believe we should be aggressively transitioning to clean energy—solar, wind, electric.”
Shocked silence follows my words that are essentially a rebel yell to one of America’s most powerful oil barons.
“What the ever-loving fuck are you talking about, boy?” he bellows, his voice bouncing off the walls, trapped in the luxurious cabin.
“You’ll finish that damn useless master’s degree and start in our California office as soon as possible.
I got no time for this wind and air and whatever tree-hugger horseshit nonsense they’ve been teaching you at Berkeley. ”
“Nonsense is believing this planet will run forever on poison. If you’d just listen to my ideas about transitioning to clean energy—”
“Oil was clean enough when it was paying for your fancy education, huh? And your trips and cars and clothes. It wasn’t poison then, was it?”
“I wouldn’t expect you to notice, but I paid my own tuition,” I correct him softly.
Before he can verbally express the disdain on his face, a uniformed attendant peers through the curtain.
“We’re here, Mr. Cade,” she says.
When my father stands, his knee knocks the table. The file falls, spilling a flurry of papers onto the thick-pile carpet. I bend to retrieve them, stuffing a few back into the folder. Certain words blare from the top page.
Pipeline. Army Corps of Engineers. Ancestral burial grounds. Water rights. Environmental impact.
“Dad.” I force myself to look up from the page long enough to catch and hold his gaze. “Where are we, and what are we doing here?”
He doesn’t answer for a moment but extends his hand until I reluctantly give him the file.
“We’re in Arizona.” He grabs his suit jacket from a hook on the wall and slips it on.
He’s still fit and trim, and that suit costs enough to take ten years off any man.
“Laying a new gas pipeline, and let’s just say the, uh, natives are getting restless.
” He smirks at his own joke but sobers when he sees I’m not laughing.
“That memo referenced the Apache,” I say with a frown.
“Until you man up and actually run something in Cade Energy, that memo’s none of your damn business, but that’s why I’m here. If they think their little protest will stop my pipeline, they can think again.”
“We’re laying a pipeline that disturbs sacred burial grounds?” Outrage and anger almost choke me. Shame, too, that my name is attached to something so heinous. “Will this endanger their water supply?”
“We’re laying a natural gas pipeline that will transport half a million barrels a day and create thousands of jobs.”
“So no thought for the environmental impact?”
“What about the economic impact?” he counters harshly.
“If you did something other than sit at a computer all day studying , you’d know what it’s like to be responsible for thousands of families.
Thousands of livelihoods. To have shareholders demanding a profit.
And they care even less about some river on a reservation than I do. It’s my job, Maxim.”
“Your job should also be ensuring that pipeline doesn’t contaminate other people’s water.”
“I don’t have time to argue with you.” He heads for the exit. “You can stay here while I handle this or get off for all I care. The worksite’s near a reservation, and according to our foreman, those Indian women got some of the best pu—”
“Stop.” I swallow my disgust and follow him down the short flight of steps lowered from the plane. “I don’t want to know what your foreman thinks about women.”
“Like you don’t get your dick wet,” he says, his voice caustic.
“Oh, I love women. Too much to disrespect them.”
“I should have known better than to send you to Berkeley,” Dad mutters, climbing into the back seat of the black Escalade that’s waiting for us. “Damn sissy school’s made you soft.”
“You didn’t send me anywhere.” I look out the window, watching the desert landscape rushing past as we leave the airfield. “And having actual principles isn’t the same as being soft.”
“You know what your problem is, Maxim?”
“I’m sure you’ll tell me.”
“You aren’t ruthless enough. You think your brother won that Senate seat worrying about some reservation water supply or burial ground?” Before I can reply, he charges on. “Damn right he didn’t. Politics requires balls of steel, and Owen’s got ’em.”
“Glad you’re pleased with one of us,” I say through tight lips.
“If you’re not a ‘fit’ for the family business and your delicate constitution isn’t suited to politics, what do you plan to do?”
He’s not ready to hear what I plan to do, and I’m not sure I want to tell him. I’ll let my actions speak for themselves. For me.
“How’s Mom?” I ask, shamelessly shifting conversational gears because this line of discussion is going nowhere.
His face softens, the hard planes yielding to what is maybe his one redeeming quality. He adores my mother. It may be the only undefiled thing left about him.
“She’s good.” He clears his throat and studies the passing landscape as I did, retreating to the scene beyond the window. “Misses you.”
“I’ll make sure to see her soon.”
“It hurt her when you didn’t come home for the holidays.”
“As much as seeing you and me at each other’s throats would have hurt her?”
I regret the words immediately. So much for redirecting our conversation. No matter what I do, it always comes back to this—to me not measuring up, me not pleasing my father, me failing. Him disappointed. Him leveraging money to twist my arm and trying to bend me to his will.
Well, I won’t be bent. If he thinks I’m not ruthless, he hasn’t been paying attention.
Head-to-head, I’d bury my brother. Owen gobbled up every crumb our father dropped, leading him down the prescribed path.
Balls of steel? Fuck that. My father practically bought Owen that seat in the Senate.
If I want to make my own way, I’ll have to pay my own way.
And that’s fine with me.