CHAPTER TWO
ALEXANDER
My grandfather is dying.
No one uses that word around Edmund Thorne, although it is present in every hastily convened meeting, every call from his doctors, and every glance exchanged between board members when they think he is not paying attention.
The specialists talk about the progression of his condition.
Richard prefers frailty, as though my grandfather’s body has become a piece of porcelain everyone must handle with care.
The board discusses leadership continuity, a particularly elegant way of planning what happens after a man dies while he is still breathing.
I call it dying because giving the inevitable a more palatable name does not make it less real.
Edmund Thorne is eighty-four years old, has had his chest opened twice, and remains convinced that doctors are highly paid professionals whose chief purpose is to interrupt his cigars, confiscate his alcohol, and prevent him from enjoying whatever time he has left.
He received his latest diagnosis the way he receives an unfavorable market forecast: he listened in silence, asked three questions, and dismissed every attempt at sympathy.
When I enter his study, I find him behind the old mahogany desk in a suit and tie despite it being Saturday.
His nurse has left the tablets he is supposed to take after lunch on a sideboard, and the quiet presence of the bottles looks out of place against walls covered with portraits of the men who built the family fortune.
My uncle Richard occupies one of the armchairs opposite the desk.
Edmund looks at his watch. “You’re late.”
“Three minutes.”
“At my age, three minutes represent a significant percentage of the future.”
I close the door and cross to the empty chair. “That would be more moving if you hadn’t just spent twenty minutes arguing with your nurse because she confiscated your brandy.”
My grandfather raises an eyebrow toward the door through which she left. “Traitor.”
“She was hired to keep you alive.”
“We all need to recognize the limits of our profession.”
I sit, and Richard greets me with his usual cordial smile.
I have never liked that smile. There is no particular reason for it, which should probably make me question my own judgment.
Richard has always been polite to me, attentive to my progress, and almost paternal since my father died.
When I first started working at Thorne Holdings, he was the one who taught me which members of the board needed to believe an idea had been theirs before they would support it.
Perhaps it is precisely the lack of any concrete reason that bothers me. Men who work too hard to appear harmless are usually hiding their teeth.
“How is Isabella?” Edmund asks. “Is she coming to dinner tomorrow?”
“If you promise not to show her the album where I’m naked in a fountain again.”
Richard suppresses a laugh, so I clarify, “I was three.”
“Two years and eight months,” Edmund corrects. “And it was a very respectable Italian fountain.”
“That improves the story considerably.”
“Isabella thought it was funny.”
“Isabella is kind to the elderly.”
Richard settles one arm along his chair. “She’s good for you.”
My attention shifts to him. “Isabella?”
“You’ve looked less miserable since you met her.”
“Touching. Perhaps you can include that in the wedding speech.”
“I’m serious.” He crosses one leg over the other, still smiling. “I never imagined you getting married.”
“Neither did I.”
Edmund makes an impatient sound. “That is because both of you confuse an unpleasant personality with destiny.”
“You never married again either,” I point out.
“Because no woman ever had the terrible judgment to say yes. It does not mean I stopped asking.”
Before I can reply, my grandfather pushes a thick file across the desk. I recognize the seal of the family solicitors and understand why I was actually summoned here.
The Thorne family turns everything into paperwork. Births generate changes to trusts, marriages require agreements, and illness produces succession meetings. Even death has to wait for lawyers to determine which signatures should accompany it.
I open the file.
“Amendments to the family settlement,” Edmund says.
I skim the first pages while he explains changes I could understand without assistance. Certain assets have been consolidated, two trustees will be replaced, and the voting rules for a secondary holding company have been adjusted. None of it justifies dragging me here on a Saturday.
Then I reach the descendants clause.
It remains exactly as it was.
My great-grandfather was obsessed with bloodlines, continuity, and preventing any one branch of the family from controlling all the others indefinitely. Eighteen percent of the voting shares are therefore held in a separate trust until an eligible biological descendant of the new generation exists.
If I had a child, those shares would ultimately pass to them.
Since I will not, they will one day go to the first eligible descendant from Richard’s branch. Most likely Marcus, although my cousin currently appears more interested in spending the family money than understanding where it comes from.
It does not trouble me. I already control enough of the company without those shares, and I have never wasted time considering how I might claim an inheritance through a child who cannot exist.
“This part hasn’t changed,” I say.
Edmund watches me over his spectacles. “No.”
“It could have.”
“It could.”
I wait a few seconds. “So why hasn’t it?”
“Because I don’t want to change it.”
I close the file with more force than necessary. “Then why are we discussing the clause?”
“Because you’re getting married.”
“One has nothing to do with the other.”
The silence lasts a second too long. Richard lowers his eyes to his own copy of the document as though he has suddenly discovered something fascinating in the footer.
I know that silence. It is the same one that follows whenever someone asks whether Isabella and I intend to have children and remembers, too late, about my diagnosis.
I despise pity, especially when it comes disguised as tact.
“I don’t need another conversation about fertility,” I say.
Edmund drums his fingers on the desk. “I wasn’t offering one.”
“Good.”
“I was thinking about adoption.”
My hand stills on the file. “What?”
“You heard me.” He leans back in his chair, breathing a little more heavily than he would like either of us to notice.
“If you and Isabella ever adopt a child, I want to make certain that child is protected through other family assets. I cannot alter the conditions of that trust without starting a war, but I can make sure that any child raised by the two of you is never treated as less of a Thorne because of blood.”
Richard shifts almost imperceptibly.
It is a small movement, perhaps only discomfort, but I notice it.
“You don’t need to do that,” I say.
“I know.”
“Isabella doesn’t expect money from the family.”
“I’m not doing it for Isabella.”
“Then who are you doing it for?”
My grandfather holds my gaze. “For whichever child is unfortunate enough to call you father one day.”
I almost smile. “Moving.”
“You’re unbearable.”
“It’s genetic.”
Edmund inclines his head, conceding the point.
Beneath the sarcasm, I understand what he is offering.
In our family, money is rarely just money.
It is protection, recognition, and quite often a weapon.
He wants to ensure that a child we choose never has to spend a lifetime justifying the right to sit at our table.
My mind returns to a conversation Isabella and I had months ago. We were lying in the dark when she asked whether I still meant what I had said about adoption. I told her I did and felt her body relax beside mine, as though she had been afraid I might have changed my mind.
We never set a timetable. First the wedding, then some time for ourselves, and sometime in the future, when we were ready, we would contact an agency and begin the process.
The word father still feels as though it belongs to someone else, to a man with more patience, fewer commitments, and the ability to answer questions without turning them into interrogations.
Isabella believes I would learn. I have my doubts, but I have also learned to trust her ability to see things in me that I cannot always recognize myself.
“Perhaps it could still happen naturally,” Richard says.
My body goes rigid before I can stop it.
He notices and lifts one hand. “I didn’t mean—”
“The tests were conclusive.”
“Of course. I only meant that medicine makes mistakes too.”
“Not in this case.”
Richard raises both hands in surrender. “All right.”
Edmund gives him an irritated look. I understand the feeling.
Azoospermia.
Three samples analyzed, two specialists consulted, and a clinic Richard himself recommended years ago when I finally decided to investigate the possible long-term consequences of the accident that nearly killed me at twenty-three.
St. Aldwyn Reproductive Centre.
The name appeared at the top of three separate reports, followed by results that left no room for interpretation: complete absence of sperm. The injuries from the accident had caused irreversible damage, and none of the doctors tried to soften the diagnosis with false hope.
There are facts a man has to accept because fighting them would only become another form of humiliation. This is one of mine.
“I don’t need biological children to have a family,” I say.
Edmund smiles, and there is something tired but satisfied in his face. “You’re finally learning something.”
I think of Isabella as I left her that morning, barefoot in the kitchen, laughing at the strawberries I had cut.
She tried to hide that she felt unwell and failed.
My first instinct had been to call a doctor immediately, but Isabella hates it when I turn discomfort into an emergency operation, so I agreed to leave only after she promised to rest before meeting the decorator.
In twenty-three days, she will be my wife.