Chapter 36
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SIX
SCOTT
“ Y ou look like shit,” Kendra said when I met her in the lobby of my great-aunt’s Upper East Side apartment building.
Peering from behind the dark lenses of my aviators, I frowned at her, which pretty much meant I kept the same expression I’d been wearing on my face all week and pointed it in her direction. “Thank you. Much appreciated.”
She bit back a smile. “Anytime.”
Wordlessly, we checked in with the doorman and climbed into the elevator, my head throbbing with every step I took. I probably shouldn’t have drunk as much as I had the night before. Or the night before that. Or the night before that. I was a walking picture of hashtag regrets.
The copious amounts of alcohol definitely contributed to my ragged appearance, but the excessive drinking wasn’t the only bad behavior I’d engaged in over the six days since I’d last seen Tess. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I’d managed to make it to the office, only to lock myself behind my door and ignore all the work on my desk. Instead, I’d been making phone calls. Hours upon hours of phone calls, reaching out to every high-powered business contact I had, trying to find a suitable company to sponsor the DRF in SIC’s place. Surprisingly, a few of them nibbled, but not a one was willing to contribute anything near the dollar amount that I’d gotten my father to agree to.
By Friday, I’d been too despondent to even try.
That was the day I broke down and ended up in front of Tessa’s door. I’d called first—I’d been calling all week. Texting too. She hadn’t answered any of my attempts at communication, which should have been a goddamned hint, but I was miserable and missing her, so to Jersey City I went. When neither her nor Teyana answered the door, I made myself at home in her hallway. That lasted all of seventeen hours before the landlord had me kicked out.
So then I spent the next day and a half parked in my car outside her building. Another reason I was looking so haggard.
Add to it that I was feeling immense guilt for bringing Kendra to Ida’s birthday party when I’d told Tess I wouldn’t. I hadn’t planned to come at all until my father had called and demanded I show up with my fiancée on my arm.
Tess was right. It would never end with my father. It would be one thing and then another thing and then another. I would always be under his thumb.
“Why am I doing this again?”
I’d meant the muttering for myself, but since she was standing right next to me, Kendra answered. “Because we want the DRF to be funded.”
The elevator opened on Ida’s floor. As soon as we got out, I turned to her. “Tess said you sat on this foundation for more than a year. If you care so much about it now, why didn’t you pitch it before? And don’t say because you were worried about our relationship because that doesn’t explain why you didn’t pitch it elsewhere.”
“I did pitch it elsewhere. I pitched it everywhere .”
She likely couldn’t see my brow furrow since I had yet to take off my sunglasses. “Tess didn’t seem?—”
“I didn’t tell Tess,” she said, answering before I could fully ask. “And before you ask why, none of your business. We can play lovebirds as much as we need to in order to make this go through, but I get to keep my secrets.”
I was definitely curious, but fair enough. If I was going to press her on anything, her personal shit wasn’t at the top of my list. “Uh, I stopped by her apartment a few times, and she was never there. Any idea…?”
“Yeah, I heard you broke up,” she said.
“Temporarily.”
“Is she aware that it’s temporary?”
She’d better be aware.
But I wasn’t going to dig into the whole thing with Kendra. “Do I get to play the none-of-your-business card too?”
“Cute.” Her feigned smile disappeared. “She asked for the week off to visit her mother upstate.”
“Ah. Good. I wondered.” I felt better knowing she was somewhere safe and with someone supportive. “Did Teyana go with her? She was never home either.”
Kendra fiddled with the strand of pearls around her neck. “She wasn’t? Weird. Tey and I don’t really, um, you know. So I couldn’t tell you.”
What was weird was how Kendra’s eyes shifted everywhere at the question, though maybe that was just due to feeling uncomfortable about the fallout in her friendship with Teyana. Tess hadn’t told me a whole lot about it but enough to know things between them were awkward.
“Anyway,” she said. “Are we going to keep standing in the hall, or are we going to go do this thing?”
“Hold on. One more thing.” I pulled the flask out from inside my jacket pocket and took a swig before offering it to her. She considered briefly, then declined, so I tucked it back where it came from. “Okay. I’m ready.”
The scene inside Ida’s apartment was as tedious as I’d imagined it would be. Several generations of the Sebastian family were scattered throughout her three-thousand-square-foot penthouse—siblings and cousins and aunts and uncles—and I was in the mood to be around exactly none of them.
Of course, the two people I least wanted to see were the two who found me within five minutes of our arrival.
“Kendra, you look lovely,” my mother said, her scrutinizing gaze taking in every inch of my bride-to-be before turning her attention to me.
She immediately frowned. “Lose the sunglasses, Scott.”
“It’s family, Mom. No one cares.”
“He’s hungover,” my father said, guessing correctly.
“You’re thirty-five, Scott. Too old to be acting like a college frat boy.”
“I’m thirty-five, Mom. Too old to be lectured by my mother about how to behave.”
She pursed her lips, and I sensed her debating about whether or not to continue with her scolding. Finally, she turned to her husband. “He’s yours. I’ll take Kendra around for introductions.”
Kendra gave me a helpless look as my mother towed her off, but if she was hoping I’d save her, she obviously hadn’t learned yet that there was no rescue from Margo Sebastian.
She’d figure it out soon enough.
Being left with just my father made things easier. He’d bartered enough of my life from me. Like hell he was getting any more.
“I showed up with my fiancée,” I said before he could start in on me. “That’s all you get.” I started to walk away but turned back to add, “And not sure you can call it hungover when I’m pretty sure I’m still drunk.”
Or would be soon enough. In front of him, I took another swig from my flask. Then with a smirk, I set off to find a quiet spot in the apartment so I could sulk.
Finding privacy at a Sebastian gathering was never easy. Fortunately, we’d arrived just in time for the cake to be served, and everyone swarmed toward the dining area to sing to the ninety-year-old birthday girl. I took the opportunity to commandeer the billiard table in the back room, shutting the room’s french doors behind me in hopes it would deter anyone from joining me.
I managed to sink a handful of balls before I heard the doors push open. I didn’t bother looking to see who it was. They closed again before the newcomer addressed me. “I’ve been looking for you.”
I glanced up to find Brett rolling up one shirt sleeve. “I don’t want any cake. You can give my slice to Cousin Berta, if she’s asking for it.”
He rolled up his other sleeve. “Not what I’m here for.”
I didn’t really care, but since I was sure he was going to tell me anyway, I stood and looked at him expectantly. “Then what are you here for?”
“I’m here to give you what you deserve. I just can’t decide if that’s a punch to the gut or a punch to the face. After what you did to Tess, you probably deserve both.”
Ah. Yes. I’d seemed to have forgotten their little friendship.
“Which thing I did to Tess, exactly, are you wanting to punish me for?” I was pretty sure my list of bad deeds was longer than his.
He looked at me like I was stupid to not know. “For stringing her along while you’re engaged to someone else, you asshole.”
“Technically, I wasn’t engaged when she and I started dating.”
“I don’t fucking care about semantics.”
I studied him, wondering if he’d have the nerve to actually hit me. “Tell you what.” I nodded to the billiards table. “I’ll play you for it. I win, I’ll give you two shots, anywhere you want to strike me.”
“If you win?” he asked suspiciously. “Then what do I get if I win?”
“If you win, I’ll pay someone to beat me up in your place. You won’t even have to get your hands dirty.”
“Sounds like a win-win to me.”
“Sounds like a win-win to me too.” Actually, since I wasn’t confident that Brett would put his all into punching me if he actually got the chance, I was considering throwing the game.
Because he was right—I deserved it. I deserved to be beaten to a bloody pulp. I deserved to be black and blue.
And honestly, feeling as shitty as I did, it wasn’t like I could possibly feel any worse.
“Lag for the opening shot?” he asked, grabbing a stick from the cue rack.
“Nah. You can have it.” While he racked the balls, I took off my jacket, making sure to pull out my flask before rolling up my own shirt sleeves. “Pub pool rules?”
“Works for me.”
Taking a long swig, I watched as he took the opening break shot, in which he pocketed both a striped and solid ball.
“Colors,” he called, then set up his next shot. He was just about to strike it when the doors pushed open again.
Never any privacy at a Sebastian gathering.
“There you are,” Grandpa Irving said, looking at me.
Nothing like feeling popular when I most wanted to be ignored. “Here I am,” I sighed.
“The question is, where is she ?”
“If you mean Kendra, I don’t really know, Grandpa, and honestly, I don’t really care.” I tipped the flask back again. It was starting to feel light. Too light.
Grandpa shut the doors behind him and came toward me, an accusing look in his eyes that made me pretty sure he wasn’t after my alcohol. “I’m not talking about her . I’m talking about Tess.”
Brett stood up, abandoning his shot. “He knows about Tess?”
I ignored my cousin’s question. “She’s not here. She broke up with me, if you must know.”
“Good for her,” Brett said, his commentary quite unnecessary in my opinion.
At the same time, the elder man said, “As she should!”
Grandpa’s opinion stung a bit more. Not that he wasn’t wrong.
“Couldn’t agree more.” I swallowed back most of the remaining whiskey. Hopefully, Great-Aunt Ida had a decent liquor collection I could dip into because the mimosas and bloody marys the caterers were serving were not going to do it.
Grandpa swiped the flask out of my hand. “And that’s what you want?”
“Of course, it’s not what I want. I told you how I feel about her. But it’s what it is because she doesn’t deserve to be treated like a...what were your words? A sidepiece.”
“When I said that, you were talking about getting out of your engagement, not the other way around. What the hell are you doing showing up with the Kendra girl? Announcing you’re marrying her to the press? You said that wasn’t going to happen.”
“It’s…” My eyes shifted to Brett, and I hesitated, not wanting to say too much with someone in the room who could potentially blow my ruse to my father. “It’s complicated. Let’s just leave it at that.”
He threw my near-empty flask to the ground. “Complicated my ass. Didn’t you hear anything I said when I told you about sacrifice?”
“I did sacrifice,” I said, ripping off my sunglasses so I could look him in the eye. “That’s why I’m not here with Tess, Grandpa, because you said if I loved her I would sacrifice, and so that’s exactly what I did. I gave her up so she could have the thing that was most important to her.”
“I think you’re wrong about that, buddy, because I’m pretty damn sure the thing most important to her is you.”
“Her foundation. The sponsorship she wanted. Remember?” It was silly how much it hurt to acknowledge out loud that I hadn’t been at the top of her list, even though we’d both been there when she’d said it.
Grandpa looked puzzled. “Your father used it as a bargaining chip?”
“Wouldn’t sign unless I married the ‘right’ girl. So here I am.”
“Wait.” Brett took a step in our direction, reminding me of his presence. “Your dad said you had to marry Kendra if you wanted the DRF to go through?”
My eyes darted toward him but landed back on Grandpa who asked, “That was your version of sacrifice?”
Seriously? I was fucking torn to shreds inside, and he was minimizing what I’d done to get like that? “Pretty big sacrifice, if you ask me,” I said, slipping my sunglasses in my breast pocket with one hand, the other still clutching the cue stick.
He nodded toward the latter. “Can I have that?”
“Uh, sure.” I handed him the stick.
Only to have the end of it slammed forcefully on my foot. “Ow!” Immediately, he slammed it down again. “Fuck, Grandpa. What the hell?” For an old man, he had a good deal of strength.
“That’s not what I meant when I told you to sacrifice, you idiot.”
“Then what did you mean? Give up the sponsorship she wants instead? Because that doesn’t seem like a great way to prove I love her.”
He scowled at me, and I stepped away instinctively, afraid he was about to attack me again with the stick.
Instead, he just attacked me with words. “I didn’t know dick about this sponsorship thing you’re talking about. I was talking about you, Scottie. Your life. What you want from your life versus the life your father thinks you should have. Stop letting him boss you around. You don’t have to be what he wants you to be just because he decrees it.”
“He is my boss. I kind of can’t get around that.”
“He doesn’t have to stay your boss.”
I blinked, partly because the room still felt awfully bright without my sunglasses, but also because his words were taking a minute to register, which might have been because I was more than a little inebriated. “So what are you saying?” I asked after a beat. “I should quit SIC?”
He shrugged in that, yeah, obviously way.
“You want me to leave the family company? The place you built? The place I’ve spent all my life preparing to work at?”
“Ding, ding, ding,” he said, holding the cue stick up like he was ringing a bell. “It wouldn’t be a sacrifice if it didn’t feel a little impossible to even imagine.”
More than a little impossible to imagine. The idea of not working for Sebastian Industrial was like being told that gravity didn’t exist. It turned my world upside down just to think of it.
I leaned my ass against the billiard table, vaguely aware that Brett was witnessing all of this, and fuck it, I’d probably said too much in front of him already. I didn’t have the bandwidth to be concerned because every bit of my brain power was trying to wrap around Grandpa’s outlandish suggestion. “But. What would I even do?”
“Anything! You’re smart. A hundred companies would give you a job. Hell, I bet a dozen would give you a spot on their board in a heartbeat in the mere hopes of ferreting out at least one useful Sebastian secret from you.”
More blinking. More stretching my mind. “But that’s. I just.” And then suddenly, I could see it, and since he’d given me the permission to see, I felt free to imagine it bigger. Like a hundred doors that had been closed to me all my life had sprung open all at once, and behind them was possibility after possibility after possibility. “Huh.”
“Now you’re thinking,” Grandpa said, nodding, a gleam in his eye. “Not even that big of a sacrifice when you give yourself freedom to really dream it. You have your trust fund. You’ll get your inheritance from me when I die, whether you’re working for Henry or not. Think of all you could do.”
“All I could do?” I asked, still a bit dazed by the prospect.
“Anything,” he said. “You could do anything .”
Anything.
Something that didn’t involve spending all my time covering my father’s ass. Something that didn’t have me always worrying about his approval. Something that I enjoyed and was good at. Something that had nothing to do with Henry Sebastian and had everything to do with me.
I ran my hand over my beard, feeling like an unkempt man just released from prison. As amazing as it was to be set free, it was also fucking terrifying. Walking back into my cell would be a thousand times easier.
I looked intently at my grandfather. “This is really what you want? You want me to leave your empire? Don’t you want your legacy to continue?”
Didn’t he consider me to be a part of that legacy?
He extended his free hand out and rested it on my upper arm. “It’s not my empire, Scottie. Not anymore. And my legacy is you. All of you. Every single one of you that wears my name. You’re what I care about. Your happiness is what I want.”
My throat felt tight. “Thank you, Grandpa. I appreciate you saying that.”
“I mean it.”
“I know you do. I know you do.” I put my hand over his and let it linger for several seconds.
Then I dropped it and straightened to my full height, letting his hand fall off my shoulder as I did. “Like I said, I appreciate it. I know you want the best for me. And I want to take your advice—I should have taken it years ago, probably—but now it wouldn’t help me if I did. If I left SIC, Dad would definitely pull the sponsorship, and Tessa would be devastated.”
The door of my cell was already closing, the freedom I’d felt moments before drifting away like a fleeting dream.
Grandpa wrinkled his brow. “You really think she cares more about a foundation than you?”
“Not more, but it’s important to her. And it’s bigger than us. Neither of us could live with ourselves if we chose to turn our backs on the opportunity.”
But Grandpa Irving was the kind of man who didn’t understand words like can’t or impossible . A man who’d never spent a day of his life living chained or fettered. “Then don’t. Find another option. Get another business to back her foundation. You have connections.”
“None as big as I need them to be. Nothing competes with Sebastian money.” It was a truth that I’d always known, but it had never felt like a bad thing before.
“I can’t feel guilty about that,” Grandpa said with a sad smile.
“Nor should you. You expected big, and you got it.”
We stood silently, both of us accepting the reality of who we were and what he’d accomplished.
Then, from behind us, Brett said, “There’s more than one corporation run by Sebastians.”
There was more than one. Because what Grandpa had built had been so big that it had long ago been split in two.
Both Grandpa and I looked at Brett. Then we looked at each other. Could Brett be on to something?
Grandpa’s sly smile said he thought Brett might. “I like this kid,” he said, pointing to my cousin. “He’s a smart one.”
“Yeah, he is,” I agreed, the idea he’d sparked growing and expanding like wildfire. This might actually be possible. And with Grandpa on my side, this could be better than I’d even thought to imagine.
Brett took the compliments in stride. “But do I still get to kick your ass?”
“Nope. But I think you’ll be happy with what you’re going to get instead. Are you in?”
He pretended to deliberate, or maybe he really did need to consider it before giving up the idea of beating me up, which was understandable. “I’m in. But if you fuck it up?—”
“I’ll hire two guys to kick my ass,” I promised. But I expected it wouldn’t be necessary.