Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Shawn
It felt wrong to walk away from my omega when so much was going on.
That was the problem, though. So much was going on.
If I didn’t deal with the recalcitrant donor for the event, then that could cause problems down the road.
It would be a nightmare if one bad apple spoiled the entire bunch, ruining this event and potentially future events as well.
What sucked even more was that the very fact that one of the companies who had originally donated their services but was now reconsidering because they wanted to be paid.
It sucked because it just proved everything my dad had just said about the wealthy people we’d spent our whole life around being fickle, touchy, and unreliable.
At least some of them. I knew from my philanthropic experience that there were a lot of good people out there, too, but that didn’t mean Dad was wrong about the awful ones.
“I was given to understand that the local and regional press would be covering this event,” Bob Meyer, the head of License Incorporated, complained to me as we stood in front of their booth inside the event hall.
“We need the optics of this for our annual report. Shareholder confidence is down after we had that little slip earlier this summer, and we need to turn it around.”
I had to marshal my patience. “That little slip” in the summer was one of their top executives being caught falsifying profits while skimming off the top. There had been a shake-up in management and I’d thought I could trust the new CEO, but now I was having second thoughts.
I was having second thoughts about everything.
“This is still a wonderful opportunity for you and your shareholders,” Papa said, his disgust with Bob practically oozing from him. “Or were you hoping for a bunch of photos with emaciated children smiling as you handed them a teddy bear? Is that what Christmas is all about to you? Optics?”
“It’s nothing like that,” Bob sputtered, rushing to save face.
“Whatever the problems License Incorporated has had over the last year,” I said, “you guys offer solid, entry level employment opportunities. Someone down the ladder did your entire company a huge favor by setting up one of the best on the job training programs of any industry in the tri-state area. That’s why you were invited here, not so we could scratch your back while you scratch ours. ”
Bob looked taken aback by my blunt statements. “The very least we could ask in return is compensation,” he said. He glanced past me, then brightened a little as he said, “Tristan, back me up here.”
My heart bounced up to my throat as I turned and saw my dad striding across the event hall. He looked like he should be leaving footprints of flame on the linoleum where he stepped. Worse still, neither Enzo nor Walt were with him.
“What sort of trouble are you causing, Bob?” Dad asked without a hint of irony.
Bob flapped his jaw for a moment as he tried to figure out whose side my dad was on.
Finally, he said, “Maybe we could come to some sort of arrangement to trade services. My people will continue to appear and interview people at this job-fair-slash-Christmas-supper you’ve got going on and in the new year, you could—”
“You signed a contract to provide employment services at my son’s event free of charge, and you will be held to that contract,” Dad said without an inch of room for negotiation in his tone.
“I suggest you tend to your employees and make certain your booth is displayed attractively before the invitees arrive or I’ll have to have our legal team take a look at the fine print of your contract to see if you are in breach of it. ”
“Come on, Tristan,” Bob said, laughing nervously.
Dad just stared at him.
“Alright,” Bob said at last. He turned away, muttering, “What a bunch of cold bastards, the entire family.”
I wouldn’t have cared about those words one way or another, but in that moment, they hit me hard.
Bob was right. We were a bunch of cold bastards.
We always had been. This whole time, I’d thought I was being good and working to please my parents, but in fact, I was turning into someone as cold as they were. I didn’t want that anymore.
“That’s the end of that,” Dad said, like he’d been solely responsible for getting Bob in line.
I didn’t care if he took credit for the entire supper event. I knew what was important to me, and he wasn’t there, by my side, where he should have been.
“Where are Enzo and Walt?” I asked, standing taller as I faced my father.
“You don’t have to worry about them, they’re taken care of,” Dad said.
Something told me he meant that phrase very differently for Enzo than he did for Walt.
“I do worry,” I told him, crossing my arms the way Papa usually did when he was irritated by something. “Enzo is my omega.”
Dad made an annoyed sound. “He’s a low-class grifter who tried to wheedle his way into our family on his back. I’ll make certain he’s compensated for the baby, of course. We cannot allow one of our own to be raised adrift in the world.”
His words made me feel sick to my stomach. “Are you even listening to yourself?” I demanded. “That’s my baby you’re talking about, not some unfortunate error that might cost the company money.”
“Son, I know that you think you’re in love with that omega,” Dad started.
“I don’t think it, I am in love with him,” I cut him off.
I glanced to Papa to make certain he knew he was included in what I was about to say as I went on.
“Enzo came into my life completely by accident. If you must know, we were set up by some mutual friends.” That much was true enough, and I still hadn’t had time to thank Caden and Hamish properly.
“These are friends I trust. Enzo isn’t someone who came out of nowhere. ”
“I don’t know who he is,” Dad said, like that was all-important.
I shook my head. “You don’t know a lot of people, Dad, and the ones you do know are mostly terrible people. I’m sorry that you’ve always been as stuck in the world you’re trying to protect me and Walt from as Walt and I feel we are now, but at some point, the cycle has to be broken.”
“What cycle?” Dad said scoffingly. “There is no cycle. It’s the way the world is, whether we like it or not.”
“Do you like it?” I asked, the sudden, painful thought that my parents were as trapped in the cycle of competition and merit-seeking as Walt and I had been hitting me.
“No, of course I don’t like it,” Dad said. “I hate waking up every day into a job and a world where I have to do battle just to hold my head up high.”
“Why do you care so much about holding your head up high to a bunch of people who would rather see you cut down than given a seat at the table?” I asked, throwing my arm out to the tables throughout the event hall that the Pullman Center’s staff were rushing to set up.
“What’s the point in tailoring everything we do, including our personal lives, to some idea of high society that doesn’t give a fuck about us? ”
“Language, Shawn,” Papa said, though I had the distinct feeling from the way he leaned slightly toward me that he agreed with every word I was saying.
“Sorry, Papa,” I said, softening my tone.
“But that’s what Enzo has taught me. I think that’s why we started bonding so fast, too.
You don’t know what Enzo has been through in his life.
His father is a deadbeat, his brother disappeared on him, and he had to put his own promise and ambition aside to care for his dying papa.
His papa hasn’t even been gone for a year yet, but instead of mourning, he’s here, helping us.
And how have you treated him in return?”
“The world is full of sharks who will try to take what you have,” Dad said, his certainty slipping by the moment. “As an alpha, it’s your job to protect what is yours and to shield those you love from everyone who wants to bring them down.”
“I don’t care if I’m brought down,” I said, letting out a heavy breath as so many things became clear to me.
“I don’t care if I have a million dollars or five.
Living in a penthouse apartment means nothing.
I could live in a grubby, one-bedroom apartment in a seedy neighborhood if it meant I could be with Enzo. ”
“That omega has poisoned your mind,” Dad said.
“No, he has not, Tristan,” Papa stepped in to defend me.
Both Dad and I were surprised, especially when Papa went on with, “I’ve worked with Enzo on this project.
I’ve seen just how clever he is. I didn’t know about his papa or his family,” Papa said, turning to me and looking sad.
“I wish I had. I’d have been nicer to him, I think.
Less suspicious.” He turned back to Dad.
“Enzo isn’t the one who poisoned minds. You know as well as I do, Tristan, that our parents and the people we grew up around were the most venomous of them all. ”
“Are you taking his side?” Dad asked, though strangely, he didn’t look angry or offended. He looked lost, actually.
Papa stepped forward, taking Dad’s hands.
“I know that all you’ve wanted for all of us from the beginning is for us to be happy,” he said, gazing up at him.
“You’ve been fighting for our family since that Christmas Eve night when you climbed up to my bedroom window and kidnapped me so my father wouldn’t force me to marry George Blunt in the morning. ”
My eyebrows shot up. That was a story I’d never heard before. But why not?
“I couldn’t let that oaf lay a hand on you,” Dad said, caressing the side of Papa’s face tenderly. “You were mine. You have always been mine since the day we first met.”
“Shawn feels the same way about Enzo,” Papa said, resting his hand over Dad’s on his face. “I can see it in them both. They’ve already started to bond. The child Enzo is carrying was made out of love, I just know it.”