Chapter 48
KENT
I’d been pacing for the better part of an hour.
I was probably wearing a groove in the expensive flooring between my kitchen island and the living room.
Back and forth, back and forth, my mind spinning through the same thoughts on an endless loop.
The weight of what I was considering felt enormous.
It felt like I was standing at the edge of a cliff and contemplating whether to jump.
Hudson sat sprawled across my leather sectional, one leg thrown over the arm of the chair, watching me with the kind of barely contained irritation that came from being summoned to his brother’s apartment when he had better things to do.
“Why did you call me up here, Kent?” he finally said. His impatience was loud and clear. “I have a thousand things to do today. So spit it out.”
I stopped mid-pace, turning to face him. I took a deep breath.
“I want to approach Dad,” I said. “About rewriting the acquisition offer for Northwood.”
Hudson stared at me. His expression cycled through confusion, disbelief, and then something that might have been amusement. Then he started laughing.
“Good one,” he said. “You really had me going there for a second. I thought you were actually serious about that.”
He stopped laughing when I didn’t join him.
“Wait.” His voice went flat. “Seriously?”
I nodded, my throat suddenly dry. “Seriously.”
Hudson sat up straighter, the last traces of humor draining from his expression. “Kent, what the hell happened up there? Did you hit your head on a tree branch or something? Because the brother I know would never even consider that.”
“I spent time with them,” I said, shrugging. “With the people in Northwood. I saw how they live, what they’ve built together. Hudson, they’re rich. Really rich.”
“Rich?” Hudson’s eyebrows shot up. “Did you see their financial statements? Because from what I understand, they’re like three good bottles of scotch away from being homeless.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “Are we really the rich pricks everyone thinks we are?”
“We’re Bancrofts, so yeah, kind of,” my brother said with a shrug. “I don’t think we’re as bad as people say, but we definitely don’t live like regular people.”
“Well, anyway, the Northwoods aren’t rich the way we are.
” I started pacing again, unable to stand still while trying to make him understand something I was still struggling to articulate myself.
“They’re rich in the kinds of things Bancrofts can’t buy.
Community. Tradition. Belonging. It’s taken generations to build. ”
Hudson was looking at me like I’d started speaking in tongues. “Good for them?” he suggested hesitantly.
“And if we buy it?” I continued. “If we go through with Dad’s plan?
We’ll ruin it. We’ll wreck that farm, and the town itself will get replaced with some sanitized, corporate version of main street that looks like everywhere else in this country.
We’ll change the very thing that makes the town valuable in the first place. ”
“Well, it’s the oil that makes it valuable,” Hudson said. “And we make things better. Shinier. More efficient. More profitable.”
I shook my head, frustrated by his inability to see what now seemed so obvious to me. “Not this time. This is different.”
“How is it different?”
“You don’t understand,” I said, then stopped as an idea occurred to me. “But Diana would.”
Hudson’s expression shifted at the mention of his wife’s name, some of the defensiveness giving way to curiosity.
“Think about it,” I pressed on. “Diana grew up in a small town, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Now imagine if I went to her hometown and tried to buy out every business on Main Street. Imagine I wanted to turn Diana’s childhood home into some corporate retreat center or replace the local diner with a Bancroft Burger.”
Hudson smiled. “I almost want to make that a real thing just to see Dane’s head explode. He’d stab us with his Michelin stars.”
“I’m just saying, imagine I wanted to plaster our name over everything her grandparents and their friends had spent their lives building.” I spread my hands. “Diana would hate it, right?”
Hudson was quiet now, really listening for the first time since I’d started talking.
“Would she want that?” I asked. “Would she think that was making things better? Or would she want me to find a way to preserve what made her hometown special in the first place?”
Hudson looked out the window, his jaw working like he was chewing on my words and he wasn’t loving the taste.
“It’s not just about changing the town’s vibe, is it?” Hudson asked. “This sudden attack of conscience?”
I stopped pacing and met his eyes. “What do you mean?”
“Come on, Kent. I’ve known you your whole life.
You’ve never given a shit about preserving anyone’s hometown charm before.
But you spent what, two weeks up there? And now you’re ready to blow up a major acquisition that Dad’s been planning for months?
” He leaned forward, studying my face. “So I’m asking. Did you catch feelings for this girl?”
The question cut right to the heart of everything I’d been trying not to examine too closely.
“It’s not about her,” I said, but even as the words left my mouth, they felt like a lie.
“Bullshit.” Hudson’s voice was flat. “I can see it written all over your face, man. You fell for her.”
I ran my hands through my hair, suddenly feeling exhausted. “Maybe I did. But that’s not why I’m here, Hudson. I’m not asking Dad to change the deal because I want to get laid again.”
“Then why?”
I sank into the chair across from him, trying to find the words to explain something I barely understood myself.
“Because I saw how much our plans would hurt these people. Sylvie’s family, the people who work for them, the whole damn town, they’ve built something together that is actually worth preserving. ”
Hudson was watching me skeptically. “I think I need to visit this place.”
“You should see the way they take care of each other,” I said. “The way they show up for each other when things get tough. The way they’ve kept this place going even when it would have been easier to give up. That’s not something you can just recreate somewhere else with a big enough check.”
“And you think Dad’s going to care about any of that?”
I laughed. “No. I think Dad’s going to tell me I’ve lost my mind and that sentiment doesn’t pay the bills. But I have to try.”
Hudson was quiet for a long moment. Then he shook his head slowly. “Dad’s going to eat you alive.”
“Probably.”
“He might cut you off completely.”
“I know.”
“And you’re willing to give it all up for a woman?”
“Yes.” I didn’t even have to think about it.
“There’s one person you should talk to before you even think about trying to revise Dad’s offer.”
I waited, though I had a sinking feeling I already knew where this was headed.
“Austin.”
I hadn’t spoken to my brother in forever, not since he had his spectacular falling out with Dad and cut himself off from the family entirely. He got pissed at Dad and walked away from all of us.
“Absolutely not,” I said. “Hudson, you know Austin wants nothing to do with any of us. He made that crystal clear when he left.”
“Which is exactly why you need to talk to him,” Hudson said, standing up from the couch.
“Because if you’re planning to challenge Dad on this Northwood deal, you need to understand what you’re up against. And Austin is the only one of us who’s ever stood up to Armand Bancroft and lived to tell about it. ”
He headed toward the door, then paused with his hand on the handle. “Good luck, dude.”
After he left, I stood alone in my apartment, surrounded by the kind of luxury that most people could only dream of, feeling poorer than I’d ever felt in my life.
Nobody knew the full story about what happened between our father and Austin. Dad refused to talk about it, and Hudson had only been there for the tail end of the explosion. All I knew was that Austin had done something Dad considered unforgivable.
But maybe that was exactly what I needed to understand.
Against my better judgment, I pulled out my phone and scrolled through my contacts until I found Austin’s number. I’d kept it all this time, though I couldn’t say why. Some misguided hope that maybe someday we’d find our way back to being brothers instead of strangers with the same last name.
The phone rang once, twice, three times. Then Austin’s voicemail kicked in. I heard that familiar voice that was confident to the point of cockiness, with just enough charm to make you forgive him for it. It was kind of a thing in the Bancroft family.
Dammit, we really are rich pricks.
“You’ve reached Austin Bancroft. I’m probably off somewhere having more fun than you are. Leave a message if you think it’s important enough to interrupt my good time.”
The beep sounded, and I found myself speechless. What could I possibly say?
I hung up without saying anything.
The silence in my apartment felt deafening. I walked to the windows and stared out at the city below. I could see some Christmas lights twinkle in windows and doorways across Manhattan. I felt disconnected from any of that warmth.
The city looked beautiful from this height, but it was a cold beauty. All surface, no soul. No one here knew each other. No one made sure their neighbor got home after a drunken tirade at a Christmas party. No one saved you from a ditch without getting something in return.
I found myself thinking about Northwood. The lodge. The way Sylvie’s apartment had felt like a real home, lived in and loved, every mismatched piece of furniture telling a story about the person who’d chosen it.
I thought about the night she’d taken me outside to look at the sky. I turned my head and tried to see the stars. The light pollution here made it impossible to see more than a handful of stars, even on the clearest nights.
What was Sylvie doing right now? She was probably at the lodge with her family talking shit about me.
Or was she thinking about me at all?
I couldn’t decide if I wanted to be the subject of conversation or want them to forget me altogether. Did she hate me? She had every right to. I’d lied to her, used her, made her look like a fool in front of her father. I’d taken her trust and twisted it into something ugly and manipulative.
But even if she did hate me, did it matter anymore?
The answer surprised me with its clarity.
Yes. It mattered more than anything else.
I didn’t want her to hate me. I didn’t want any of them to hate me.
I truly respected them. They would never believe me if I told them I liked them.
That I admired what they had built. They had something truly special, and it wasn’t just the property. It was the family unit.
I wanted to apologize and make them believe it.
Not because I thought I could fix what I’d broken. Not because I thought she’d ever forgive me or look at me the way she had before everything went sideways. But because she’d shown me something I’d never seen before.
Sylvie Winters cared about people. Really cared, in a way that made her willing to fight for them even when the odds were impossible. She found joy in simple things. Sylvie belonged to that land. It was her heart and soul.
I had never belonged anywhere. Not really. I’d spent my whole life trying to earn a place at tables where I was already supposed to have a seat, trying to prove myself worthy of a name I’d been born with. My life had been spent trying to become someone my father might actually be proud of.
And where had it gotten me? Standing alone in a hundred-million-dollar apartment staring at a city full of strangers and wondering if I’d ever felt genuinely happy a single day in my life.
The realization was both crushing and liberating. Crushing because it meant acknowledging how empty my life had become. Liberating because it meant I could choose to change it.
I pulled out my phone again and pulled up Austin’s number. This time, when the voicemail picked up, I didn’t hang up.
“Austin, it’s Kent. I know we haven’t talked in forever, and I know you probably don’t want to hear from me. But I need to ask you something, and you’re the only person who might have an answer.”
I paused, looking out at the glittering city below.
“How do you walk away from everything you’ve ever known when you realize it’s destroying you? How do you choose to do the right thing when it means disappointing everyone who’s ever mattered to you?”
Another pause.
“I’m in trouble, Austin. Not the kind Dad can fix with money or lawyers. The kind where I’m finally seeing myself clearly, and I don’t like what I see. So if you get this, call me back. Please.”