Chapter 38
THIRTY-EIGHT
GRAYSON
My father’s office has always felt like a mausoleum. Sterile, imposing, suffocating. Glass, steel, and polished wood arranged with ruthless precision. I always hated this room.
A laptop is open in front of me. Another inbox filling up with contracts and briefing notes.
Things I need to read but can’t bring myself even to open.
My phone buzzes again, vibrating against the surface of the desk, and somewhere outside the door my assistant’s phone has been ringing nonstop since I arrived at dawn.
The last twenty-four hours have been a blur of airports, calls with members of the board, hushed conversations, and decisions no one should have to make when they haven’t slept.
I saw my father in the hospital last night.
He was unconscious. Tubes in his arms. Machines breathing rhythm into a body that has always seemed indestructible.
He looked smaller than I’ve ever seen him.
Weak. And that’s exactly what he was all along.
Only a weak man could take pleasure in destroying others the way he did.
This was the man who took sport in pressing my buttons.
The same man who would rather put his own daughter’s life at risk than see her succeed.
My mother sat beside him, fingers wrapped around his limp hand, her eyes rimmed red with an emotion I’d never seen in her before.
I wondered if she really loved him or was just playing her part as the distraught wife.
His surgery is today. They’ve warned us the odds aren’t in his favor.
That we should prepare ourselves. I stood there while the doctor listed risks and percentages and probabilities, and I searched for something inside me.
Grief. Fear. Even anger. But there was nothing.
No surge of love. Not even a whisper. And I won’t pretend otherwise.
I’m exhausted, running on caffeine and adrenaline and the familiar, dangerous instinct to sacrifice myself if it means holding everything else together.
Fix it. Save it. Carry it. That’s always been my role.
It’s why I’m here, even if doubt roils in my stomach and a small insistent voice in my thoughts asks me if this is really what I want.
The answer doesn’t matter. Want doesn’t come into it.
This is what I’m choosing. It’s the right thing to do.
Even if the hollow ache in my chest has grown louder since I left Denver and Flic at the hospital when all I wanted to do was sit beside her and comfort her.
I hope Izzy and the baby are OK. I hope Flic is OK, too.
I don’t need you, Grayson.
The words still cut deep, but they’ve taken on a new meaning in the hours since.
She wasn’t saying them to hurt me or push me away.
She was saying them to reassure me. She was reminding me that she’s strong enough to stand on her own.
She was telling me I don’t have to split myself in two and be everything for everyone, for her.
Because she knows me. She knows I will never walk away when I can help.
And Flic will never ask me to change. Instead, she was letting me go.
Giving me permission to be exactly who I am.
No fight. No pleading. No begging me to be someone I’m not.
Just understanding, support, and trust. And I love her so much for that. For everything she is.
I pick up my phone again, thumb hovering over her name.
I want to call her. I want to hear her voice and pretend, for a moment, that I didn’t walk away.
But I don’t. It’s not fair to her or to me.
I can’t be in Denver now. And Flic has always been clear.
She wouldn’t ask me to change my life for her.
And she wouldn’t change hers for me. I can’t ask her to come to New York and carry on standing beside me.
So why does doing the right thing suddenly feel so wrong? Why does every breath feel emptier without her?
I glance at the clock on the wall. The board meeting starts in ten minutes.
The vote to make me CEO is a formality. Locked in before I even set foot back in New York.
It shouldn’t even be me. I walked away from this firm over a decade ago.
Barely spent more than a few months working here before I realized change from within was impossible.
Helena was the one who stayed. She knew everything there was to know about Ashborne Holdings.
If my father’s heart attack had happened six years ago, it would be Helena sitting here right now.
No contest. But just like I can’t ask Flic to change her life for me and come to New York, I can’t ask Helena to take the CEO position of Ashborne Holdings, either.
My father didn’t just destroy her career when he married her off to a wife-beater.
My father, and that man, destroyed not only Helena’s confidence and her worth, they destroyed a part of her soul that will never heal.
When the dust settles here, I’ll ask her again if she’ll join Grayson Global.
We’ll need her there more than ever now I’m taking on this role.
Her reluctance to join me was always around not antagonizing our father.
If that’s no longer an issue, I hope she’ll accept.
But I’d never push her to come back to Ashborne Holdings after what happened the last time.
And she’d be the only other person I’d trust to run this company. If I walk away, someone else will step into this office. Someone who didn’t grow up watching our father destroy lives. Someone who might run Ashborne Holdings exactly the way he did. Which leaves me.
I sink back into the chair behind the desk, the weight of it all pressing down on me, making it hard to breathe. Ten minutes. And the rest of my life.
My phone buzzes again. My heart leaps, hope flaring before I can stop it. For half a second, I think it’s Flic. Instead, Donny’s name appears.
DONNY: The paperwork’s ready. Gotta ask one more time—are you sure about this?
Another message follows almost immediately.
DONNY: Answer my calls. I get what you’re doing, but I want to make sure you’re OK.
I stare at the screen, throat tight. Donny’s concern hits harder than the board’s expectations ever could. Before I can reply, the door to the office swings open, and Helena strides in. She’s wearing an immaculate gray suit, looking every inch the businesswoman.
“This whole old boys’ club thing is getting seriously boring,” she says, folding her arms and raising her eyebrows.
“Six years ago, I was practically running this company alongside our dear father while you were building skyscrapers in Dubai. And yet, who do they ask to run Ashborne Holdings now? You.”
I stare back at my sister. It’s exactly the thought I had minutes ago, but it still throws me. “I didn’t think you wanted anything to do with Ashborne Holdings anymore.”
She scoffs. “I didn’t want to work with him anymore.
” Her eyes flash. “You think you’re the only one who wants to change the Ashborne legacy?
” She steps closer, voice lowering, but gaining force.
“I want to do good with this company, Grayson. I want to rebuild communities. Protect struggling businesses the way you do with Grayson Global. And yeah, a big part of my motivation is because I’m going to really enjoy how much it will piss our father off from his death bed, or from the grave, and quite frankly I don’t care which, but it’s also the right thing to do, and I want to do the right thing. ”
I rub a hand over my face, exhausted even as my pulse is thundering. “You want to be CEO of Ashborne Holdings?”
“Yes.”
“You know if it was down to me, I’d want you to run this place too. But the board—”
She laughs. “Sorry, Grayson. I guess I didn’t make myself clear.
I don’t just want to be the CEO of Ashborne Holdings.
I will be the next CEO. All your friends and spies in this company are actually my friends.
I still have leverage on the board,” she replies coolly.
“I need one more vote to swing it my way.”
The floor feels like it drops out from under me. I never thought Helena would want this, but of course she does. This is more her legacy than it’s ever been mine.
“One more vote?” I ask slowly. “As in mine?”
She smirks. “Only if you’re OK to let someone else be the hero for a change.”
I study her face, searching for doubt and finding none. “It’s yours,” I say. “If you’re sure. I can stay and help however you need.”
She rolls her eyes. “All I need is for you to get out of my chair.”
A light exhale of laughter escapes me, and I stand, legs weak with relief.
I gesture at the desk as she moves past me to claim it, already at home in the space.
I grab my phone and my jacket. For the first time since I got her call yesterday, I feel like I can breathe.
Helena’s the right person to do this. I’m more than OK with letting someone else save the day.
For years, I thought I was on my own. That only I could save the day.
But I’ve been hiding behind doing good, pushing myself to fix everyone and everything, because it’s easier than slowing down and thinking about what I want.
Choosing myself. That’s what Flic has done to me.
She stood by my side without hesitation.
Without needing anything from me. And it turns out that’s exactly what I needed to finally put on the brakes and think. Breathe.
And what I want—what I need—is in Denver.