2. 2
It sounds like there’s a party in the room above me.
I’m tempted to go check it out, but dealing with dear old Dad is the priority.
According to him, anyway.
“I don’t understand why you left the negotiations,” Dalton Steele demands, his voice as cold as—you guessed it—steel as he rages at me across the country, via my cell phone.
“I told you.” I keep a firm grasp on my patience because getting upset will only get me another lecture about my continual immaturity and what he considers insubordination, resulting in threats of kicking me out of the company and the possibility of disinheritance.
Both sound pretty damn good right now.
“I’m leaving for Turks and Caicos tomorrow for Marcus’s wedding,” I explain to my father. “And Patel wasn’t able to accommodate my requests to finish this today because of family commitments.”
“We’re offering him a quarter of a billion dollars to accommodate your requests,” Dalton rages.
“He had a funeral,” I tell him, a hint of scorn edging my tone. “Celebrating the deceased trumps business for him. It’s not a bad thing.”
“Enough of your rudeness,” my father snaps.
That wasn’t rude. Rude would be to tell my father to take a running fucking leap off the shortest pier Aarush Patel owns on one of the islands he’s sitting on in Muskoka.
An island my father desperately wants to buy to redevelop into the latest Sandflower Resort.
It looks good on paper—five sweet little one-acre islands around a monster fifteen acres of God’s country in the middle of Lake Joseph. Dad wants to build the next Sandflower Resort on the big one and cottages on the little ones, so guests will have the private island experience.
People would pay a lot for that.
People pay a lot to stay at a Sandflower property.
And because Dad was needed in British Columbia to deal with a construction snafu in Kelowna, he sent me to the negotiation table with Patel.
I can tell he regretted it as soon as he sent the request to get there and get it done.
It’s not my fault Mr. Patel’s uncle died. Or that my best friend Marcus Walker-White would pick this weekend to elope.
Technically, it’s not an elopement, since he invited his nearest and dearest, but Marcus only gave us a week’s notice, so it feels like one.
“I’m due back there on Monday morning,” I report. “By mid-morning, it’ll all be finalized.”
“You’re guaranteeing this?”
“As much as I can guarantee anything. It looks all good.” I do my best to reassure my father, but I can never tell if he’s buying it. “I’m not concerned.”
“Maybe that’s the problem,” he says ominously. “You’re never concerned about the deal, or what happens it if it falls through.”
Because it’s not my company, and if you have your way, it never will be.
Because I can’t even sign my name to anything without checking with you first.
Because the world sees me as nothing but your errand boy.
But I wisely bite my tongue.
“Maximus, I need this deal finished. We’ve spent too much time and energy wooing Patel, not to mention a lot of money. See that it’s done, or there will be some serious concerns about your future with this company.”
And with that threat, he hangs up.
Was that actually a threat? I’ll fire your ass if you don’t get it done. That’s a threat.
My having serious concerns about my future with the company is a fact, and not the way my father considers it.
I’ve been debating leaving for a while now, but haven’t made a move because of two things: one, I have no idea what else I can do that would keep me in the lifestyle I’ve been enjoying for all of my thirty-two years; and two, I have a really bad feeling that if I leave, I’ll do so after telling off Dad. And that will most likely result in me getting disinherited.
Note the part about the lifestyle I’ve been enjoying for all of my thirty-two years.
I work really hard as a member of the Sandflower team, but I like to play hard too.
And that gets expensive.
I glance around the room. Tate Continental is never a cheap place to stay, but it’s my first choice if there’s no Sandflower around. What can I say? I’m used to luxury. At least it’s only tonight, somewhere to crash before I fly out tomorrow afternoon.
On the company plane.
I’d miss that too.