CHAPTER 2 #2
“Why are the stipulations of your inheritance not being met with haste?” He cocks his head to the side, slowly blinking for dramatic effect.
“When we read your inheritance two weeks ago, you and those other two you call a pack were front and center, so I know you recall what those stipulations were.”
“Yes, father. I do,” I say through clenched teeth.
“Well, then, please tell me why they are not being met.”
“They are,” I say in return. It’s taking everything inside of me to remain passive when all I want to do is wring his neck.
He tuts. “Oh, but they’re not.”
“How so?” I ask, furrowing my brow in concentration as I think over the entirety of that meeting. I am doing everything in that stupid contract, all the way up to running this nightclub how he wants it run.
He holds up a finger, shaking it back and forth in a negative motion. “You see, addendum 2c is not being met.”
“Oh, really?” I cock a brow and tilt my head to the side. Fake it until I make it. I have no fucking idea what addendum 2c is.
He leans up on the edge of the couch, his eyes alight with pleasure. He takes great satisfaction in my discomfort. A father shouldn’t be like that. A real father wouldn’t do half the things this man has done to me.
Since my mother and other fathers left when I was eight, I’ve had to deal with his cruelty. They never explained why they left me. I don’t know where they are now. All I know is they escaped my father and never looked back—not even for me.
I watched my mother and my other two fathers leave that day. I saw them back out of the driveway, hoping one of them would look at me, but none did. They left me with a monster. By leaving, they sent me to my own kind of death.
That was the first moment I understood what people meant by abandonment: not an idea, but a physical feeling. It’s something that completely encompasses your body. It’s like a hand closing around your ribs and squeezing.
“What have I always told you, son?” he asks, and I know what he’s looking for.
Through a tight throat, I reply, “Strength is survival.”
“The second thing …”
“Weakness is punished.”
He laughs, a cruel sound, and leans forward with rapt attention at my pain. “The third?”
I growl, closing my eyes and trying to keep my emotions at bay. I reopen them and fix them on him with a glare. “Love is conditional.”
“That’s right, boy. You go by those three things, and you’ll go far.” He stands up, straightening his suit jacket and cufflinks. “Now, about this addendum. Did you catch that tiny part of it?”
If I say no, he’ll do something to punish me. But if I say yes, and I don’t really know what it is, he will know I lied to him and punish me anyway. There is no winning this. The only thing I can do is beat him in his own game.
I smile cruelly at him, which takes him off guard for a split second.
“No need to worry about that. You always say to look ahead, not behind, so I was working through that entire meeting, trying to build the nightclub into something bigger and better. When the inheritance stipulations were read the other day, Finian was there. Finian is my pack’s legal liaison, so it is his job to go through the contract, and he is working on it even as we speak. ”
If I feign that I was working, my father will not question if I was listening. The only way out of this is to lie and say that I was creating something to make him even more money in the end. Otherwise, he’ll try his best to eat me alive and shit me out.
I might act cautiously around him, but I’m not weak. When I get my inheritance, everything changes. I’ll take pride in tearing his empire down.
My father must be happy with my explanation because he nods, saying, “Very good. Then I suspect there will be news within the coming weeks.”
I nod. “Have no doubt. You will have word.”
My father nods once. He then gets up from the couch and makes his way toward the office door. He doesn’t shuffle his feet or anything like that. He walks with purpose, a destination in mind. He’s so self-sure and such a fucking prick. He expects everyone to part for him like the Red Sea.
He’s nothing.
I can’t wait until he sees just how far he’s fallen.
When he gets to the door, he opens it. But before he leaves, he turns back to look over his shoulder at me. “I look forward to meeting your heir in the coming months.”
He shuts the door behind him with a quiet snick.
An heir?
What the fuck?
Who the …
I grab my phone out of my pocket and quickly dial Finian. He picks up on the second ring, and I let it all flow.
“What the fuck is this about an addendum 2C to get my inheritance?”
Finian cusses like a sailor, and I hear paper in the background shuffling around. “Okay. Here’s the contract.”
“What’s it say?” I hurriedly ask, starting to walk back and forth with nervous energy.
I can hear him lightly reading under his breath before a “What the fuck?!” comes barreling through the line. It’s loud, it’s frantic, and it’s most unlike Finian to react like this.
“Your father turned you into a stud! If you don’t produce an heir before your thirty-second birthday, then you will forfeit all rights to the money and Luscious.”
I quickly count how long I have left. “That’s just in a little over a year.”
“There’s more …” His words are ominous and not reassuring.
“What the fuck is it now?”
“It must be with our mate, and she has to be from a very well-off family that runs within your father’s circle.”
“He can’t just force a mating and an heir on us.”
“Yes, he can. It’s up to you whether your inheritance is worth it or not,” he says with a sigh, like he’s bone-tired.