Chapter 4 #2
“And there it is,” Owen muttered.
“Is big brother finally getting his shiny new scepter?” Ronan added from where he now stood next to Liam. “Should we have a commencement ceremony? Are we movin’ on up?”
“Christ, Rone, can you just stop?” Liam muttered, though he, along with everyone else in the room, seemed interested in his mother’s response.
Because everyone, including myself, knew what Liza was here to say.
I just needed to let her do it without the peanut gallery cutting in.
“Sure,” I said. “We can talk in the hall.”
“I’ll start planning your graduation party!” Ronan called as we stepped out.
“Do you really think he’s going to be okay?” Liza asked once we had reached the reception area by the nurses’ station.
I had to give it to her. She was as hard as nails, but she’d been with my dad through thick and thin. There had to be a part of her that cared a little.
“Your guess is as good as mine.” I shrugged. “It was a double bypass, and the doctor said he’s done hundreds of them. But Dad’s eighty-two, eats like shit, and who knows when the next one will be? He might not be so lucky.”
“Right. Well.” Her brown eyes met mine with purpose. “I know this is sensitive, Brendan. And I hate to have this conversation now. But I’d be remiss as CFO if I didn’t state the obvious.”
“Just say it, then.”
“It’s time. I’ve called an emergency board meeting for tomorrow, and I’m going to nominate you as interim CEO.”
I shoved a hand over my face. I knew this was coming, but it didn’t make it any less jarring. “It might not be necessary. He could wake up any moment.”
“Even so, he’ll be incapacitated for some time, won’t he?
I know you have to think of your father, but it’s my job to think of this company’s financial future.
Right now, the press has no idea that he’s here.
But the clock is ticking. We have to report this to shareholders, and when we do, share values are going to plummet. ”
“I know, but—”
“But nothing.” Liza’s expression was direct and unforgiving.
“The expectation has always been that it would be you. He was going to announce his retirement anyway, and we all know he was leaning toward you, so it’s better if our report about his health comes with a plan. This is the most natural transition.”
In the open door to Dad’s room, my siblings were transparently trying to eavesdrop. Owen was grinding a fist into his other palm. Maybe he couldn’t hear us, but I had no doubt he knew what we were saying.
I turned back. “Do it, then. What needs to happen?”
For the first time in a long time, Liza appeared uneasy. It was almost as alarming as seeing Dad unconscious.
“What?” I demanded. “What’s wrong now?”
She pressed her lips together, making the tiny lines around them disappear. “Well…there are questions. Rumors.”
I frowned. “About me?”
“About your lifestyle.”
“My ‘lifestyle?’” In my head, Ronan was making ten more insensitive jokes about body jewelry and polyamory. “What do they think I do in my spare time? Run around on a dog collar and have weekend orgies?”
To her credit, Liza didn’t even blink. “No. But they do talk about your ability to commit. Or lack of ability, as it were.”
Was she kidding? “You think I can’t commit to running my family’s business after twenty fucking years?”
“It’s not me. But the board is mostly comprised of your father’s peers, who, as you know, are somewhat conservative.”
“Yeah, but they aren’t crazy. I’ve given my life to this company.
Out of everyone in that room, I’m the only one who hasn’t ever taken a fuckin’ minute to myself.
No gap years or disappearing acts for me.
No Marine tours like Owen. No blackout weekends like Ronan or constant vacations like Shea.
Since I could walk, I’ve been that old man’s shadow, learning Blackguard from the inside out.
No one is more dedicated to this company than me. ”
Liza’s mouth pressed into that line again. She was looking at me like I wasn’t almost forty but still that gangly fifteen-year-old who would barge into her office after Dad’s and my latest shouting match.
I opened my mouth, wanting to go off again.
But I wasn’t that kid anymore.
I took a deep breath, then expelled it forcefully. “Fine. Why do they think I can’t commit?”
Liza shrugged. “Think about it. They just see you from the outside, and what does that look like?”
“A workaholic who is married to his job?”
“Perhaps. But maybe that isn’t a good thing. When’s the last time you had a girlfriend? Most men your age have settled down. Been married at least once.”
I rolled my eyes. “Plenty of men aren’t married by thirty-nine. And what the fuck does that matter? Maybe I am married to this company.”
Part of me understood her point. I knew these men (and two women), most of whom had started out on the ground floor with Dad.
Blackguard was founded by some of the most staunchly Irish Catholic men in Boston.
At least two board members had ten kids each, simply because they didn’t believe in birth control.
It was a belief system from a different time, but apparently, it was in mine now too.
But it was Dad too. How many times had we heard him rant about the fact that he was eighty-two with four children and no future heirs in sight?
Despite having torched two marriages and doing whatever he was doing with his third, he still expected the rest of us to create a gaggle of heirs like we were off the boat in the nineteenth century.
And apparently, his cronies felt the same way.
“The board wonders whether you can commit to a job if you’ve never committed to a woman,” Liza replied. “They’re also wondering if you’ll throw everything away once you do, in fact, meet the right person.”
A pair of bright blue eyes flashed through my mind.
That warm smile.
Those rose-kissed cheeks.
I shook the image away. “I don’t get it. Do they want me to be in a relationship or not?”
“They want to know that any relationship will be business as usual. Appearance and image matter. You want to project a solid image, and to these people, solidity means a house, a wife, a family that you only give as much attention as you absolutely must, if you catch my drift.”
“I’d be a much better CEO if I wasn’t distracted by all of that image shit.” I rubbed a hand through my hair and yanked. Hard. This was ridiculous. These people literally wanted me to create a family just to neglect it for the company’s benefit? What in the actual the fuck?
“I know that, and you know that,” Liza agreed. “But the board is…old-fashioned. And so is your father.”
“You sound like him.”
“He hired me for a reason.” Liza gave my arm a friendly pat.
“Look, I just wanted to mention it. But if you just happened to acquire a new, completely harmless girlfriend by tomorrow’s board meeting, that may help your case.
And if she looks nice in pictures and is willing to sign a prenuptial agreement, that might help you too. ”
The more she spoke, the more I wanted to tear my hair out. Then I wanted to go into Dad’s room and shake the bastard awake just to tell him to stay out of my personal life.
Because this was just like him, wasn’t it? There was always one more thing we had to do to get the carrot. First, it was school. Grades. Becoming the perfect, ruthless businessman, just like him.
Now it was this.
Nothing was ever going to be enough.
“I’ve got to get back. I’ll have Olaf start drafting an announcement to the board and a press release,” Liza said. “Let me know when he wakes up.”
I nodded farewell but remained in the hall while I absorbed the conversation.
CEO, first interim and then possibly permanent. If I could get my shit together and be the family man a Black heir approaching his forties was supposed to be.
Goddamn it.
From my dad’s room, I could hear my siblings bickering. Dad’s coma, the length of Shea’s skirt, Ronan’s latest affair. The chaos of the Black family was nothing new. Love and kindness were not ingredients in this particular cocktail. Every interaction was laced with arsenic and spite.
It was difficult to handle most days. Today, it was unbearable.
I headed back down the hallway, passing Liza, who was moving slowly, deep in a conversation on her cell phone.
“Brendan,” she called, but I ignored her as I took a hard right for the exit.
Unwilling to wait for the elevator, I followed the signs for the stairwell, then went down, down, down until an exit dumped me outside.
From there, I bolted across the thoroughfare, ignoring the horns blaring at me, and walked until I found the overpass that would take me to the park overlooking the Charles River.
I needed fresh air. I needed space. I needed to be anywhere but in this concrete jail, surrounded by family members scenting blood like jackals.
I collapsed on a bench overlooking the water. A few people walked on the path that ran alongside the river. Doctors taking a minute. People running during their lunch breaks. Nannies pushing prams that held the next generation of wealthy New Englanders.
As the son of Niall Black, a man with too many enemies to count, I’d never been allowed to play anywhere as public as this.
Some form of bodyguard had followed my siblings and me everywhere when we were growing up.
Either Dad’s thugs on the streets of Southie, then a team of nannies until we were old enough for boarding school.
Then the teachers and headmasters took over.
Children were accessories in our family, and being the offspring of Niall Black made us targets. We were expected to keep quiet and out of sight until we were required equipment. Like a shoe or a hat. Or a gun.
Come to think of it, that wasn’t much different from how Dad treated his wives, either. They were there to make him look good, pink feathers and all.
I leaned back on my bench and blinked up at the sunlight, harsh and cold despite it being late spring.
That’s what he wanted for me too. A family as an accessories closet. Maybe I’d known it from the beginning, and maybe that was at least partly why neither I nor any of my siblings had taken any steps in that direction.
I wasn’t a good man. Not even remotely close.
But even I had limits. Subjecting a child to the world I’d grown up in was one of them.
A fully grown, consenting woman, though?
Someone, as Liza put it, who was agreeable and willing to sign a whole lot of paperwork to gild her cage?
I yanked at my hair again.
I’d never been attracted to a woman who would do something like that.
But maybe that didn’t matter. Not now.
“Are you all right?”
I opened my eyes and was ninety-nine percent sure I was hallucinating her face.
The candy striper.
The angel.
“Mr. Black?” The girl leaned over me, her blond hair shining in the sun like an actual halo.
I blinked and sat up. “I—hello, um…”
She had changed from those ridiculous-looking scrubs into jeans and a gray coat that hid her petite curves. Her clothes didn’t, however, hide the way her caramel-colored hair fell over one shoulder or how her blue eyes matched the river behind her.
“Simone, remember?” That smile made my chest feel odd.
Maybe I needed a checkup too. Apparently, heart disease ran in the family.
“I saw you run over here just as I was leaving for the day.” She took a seat on the bench. “How are you holding up?”
Her soft voice was lyrical and light.
This wasn’t Liza asking that question out of necessity. Or Violeta playing a part. Or my brothers being dicks. This was just a random person asking with nothing but kindness.
Since when did simple compassion have the ability to stab?
Probably since I’d forgotten what it looked like.
“I’m fine,” I managed to get out without my voice cracking. “I—sorry for snapping at you earlier.”
Another apology.
“Oh, gosh, no worries. No one is themselves when a loved one is in danger. I’ve seen much worse.” She twisted her mouth into an adorably lopsided smile. “Plus, I know how tough siblings can be. Mine is…difficult.”
I growled. I actually fuckin’ growled. It was innate and startling, but the idea of anyone treating this girl with anything less than respect made me feral.
Jesus.
“Yeah, I guess so,” I admitted once I’d managed to swallow back the impulse to hunt down the perpetrator and show them what real disrespect looked like.
“Would you like me to sit with you for a minute?” She checked her watch. “I have a little bit of time.”
How about forever? I almost asked.
She wasn’t touching me anymore, but just her presence brought me back from that sudden ledge. My breathing grew steadier. My thoughts cleared.
“No,” I murmured. “That’s all right. I won’t keep you.”
She stood, and it took everything I had not to grab her hand and pull her back down beside me.
“Best wishes to your father,” Simone said softly before turning to leave.
I watched her walk back to Charles Street and disappear onto a bus heading downtown, but her glow seemed to remain on the bench beside me.
When I closed my eyes again, her face reappeared with that shy smile, beckoning follow.
I didn’t move, though.
I had a sneaking feeling that if I did start to chase Simone Bishop, I wouldn’t be able to stop.
And that wasn’t a distraction I could afford right now. It wasn’t a luxury I could allow myself.
Not now.
Not ever.