Chapter 55
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
I stood in the doorway of my father’s study as rain hammered against the windows overlooking the estate, the smell of whiskey permeating the room as it always did.
He struck the desk with his crystal tumbler, then looked me directly in the eye. “Look at you.”
His tone was filled with disgust, as it usually was, but it became even more pronounced when he was drinking heavily.
My father sat behind his desk, a nearly empty glass of bourbon dangling from his fingers, half-drunk. That usually meant he was about to say exactly what he thought. The dangerous thing about Herbert Hawk wasn’t that he lied… it was that he rarely did.
His eyes moved slowly and disapprovingly over me. “You have your grandfather’s eyes and his soft heart. God help you.”
My lips clenched, sensing where this was headed… again. At sixteen, all my friends envied my life. They dreamed of living in this estate, but that was because they hadn’t seen this side of my father. If they had, they’d be happy with their parents’ apartments and smaller homes.
“Your mother tells me you’ve been helping employees again.”
I didn’t answer him. I’d learned years earlier that defending myself rarely improved these conversations.
His lip curled. “You helped pay a man’s debts and apparently convinced one of the workers to move to California to follow his dreams…”
He smiled in disgust as he took another drink.
“Since when did I raise my son to be a goddamn therapist?”
I clenched my jaw, the room suddenly feeling ten degrees warmer.
“You know what your problem is, Titus?” I stayed silent, and he replied with a humorless laugh. “That’s your first problem,” he said, pointing at me with the glass in his hand. “You’re afraid to speak up.”
He struck his glass against the desk again.
“God damn, you remind me of my father,” he said, taking another drink.
I continued to remain silent, allowing the insult to land exactly as he intended. My grandfather had died years before I was born, yet somehow, he managed to disappoint Herbert Hawk on a regular basis.
He reached for the bourbon, pouring more into his glass. “My weak father actually believed people would do the right thing.” He took a sip. “He believed loyalty mattered.” Another sip. “He believed honesty mattered.”
He slammed the glass back onto the desk. “And look where it got him.” Silence fell over the room, then my father smiled. “Dead.”
Something twisted inside my chest.
“Do you know why I changed our name from Hawkins to Hawk?”
I didn’t answer.
“Answer me, son!” he boomed.
“No, sir,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Because the reputation Lionel Hawkins built under that name was that of a coward. He let people take from him.” He looked over to the windows, then back to me. “That weakling built nothing. Instead, he spent his life doing the right thing and died with less than the men who took advantage of him.”
He took another drink.
“He was a man who waited and then asked permission,” he said. “That’s why I changed our name to Hawk.” The bourbon sloshed against the crystal as his eyes locked onto mine. “Hawks don’t ask permission. Hawks take what they want without regret or remorse.”
A movement near the doorway caught my attention. It was my mom. She watched the drunk asshole with sadness in her eyes, a sadness that hit harder than anything my dad was saying.
He followed my gaze and immediately laughed. “Did you know,” he pointed to where my mom stood, “your mother wanted Spanish names for you boys?” His expression darkened. “Family names. Names that honored her traditions and were filled with sentiment.”
He made it all sound like it was an insult.
“Tell him,” he said, looking at her as if she’d done something terribly wrong. “Tell Titus you wanted my sons named after your fucking family.”
Mom stayed silent, like me. That’s when he took another sip and pointed the glass at me. “I refused,” he said. “Do you know what the name Titus means?”
“No.”
Hearing my name come from him sounded heavy.
“It means a title of honor.” His eyes narrowed. “A man worthy of respect. A leader, a ruler, and a man others willingly follow.” He poured more bourbon into his glass. “Wyatt?” he called, loud enough for both my brothers to leave the other room and report to his office.
“Yes, Papa?” my younger brother answered.
He offered him a slight nod. “Your name means brave in war.” He looked at Colton. “And yours, Colton, means the survivor.” His attention returned to me. “I named my sons for what men are supposed to become.”
“Yes, sir,” Colton acknowledged softly and obediently.
Something cold settled in my stomach because I already knew what was coming.
“But you’ve never earned your name, have you, Titus?”
I remained quiet while my father prepared to lecture me on what a disappointment I was.
He sipped his bourbon. “That’s because you lead with your heart. You hesitate,” he took another drink. “You care and forgive.” His jaw tightened. “Hell, you spend more time fixing problems than creating advantages.”
Thunder rattled the windows as I stood here, feeling like I was in a horror film, listening to this chaos and watching my father drink himself into the grave.
Night after night.
“You think business should be fair, don’t you, son?” His laughter filled the room. “You think people deserve second chances.” He slammed his glass on his desk again. “You actually think integrity matters in this world.”
The room seemed to darken around him.
“And one day, that conscience of yours is going to become the sword you die on,” he said, his words echoing through his office. My father’s smile slowly widened. “Men like me build empires. Men like you inherit them and lose them.”
I stared at him. The man who had spent his life taking whatever he wanted. The man responsible for every problem now threatening to destroy mine. For the first time, I wasn’t looking at my father. I was looking at the reason I’d spent my life trying not to become him.
“Titus.” My mother’s voice broke through the darkness.
I turned to see tears streaming down her face, and then she was gone.
I woke from another nightmare with a sharp intake of breath. For a moment, I didn’t know where I was. The darkness looked wrong, and the mattress felt wrong. Then reality settled over me.
Federal detention.
I sat on the narrow edge of the steel-framed bed, staring through the small reinforced window set into the concrete wall. The sun was barely rising, leaving only the glow of security lights beyond the perimeter fence.
The cell wasn’t large. It contained a bed, a stainless-steel sink-and-toilet combination, and a small desk bolted to the floor, with concrete walls painted a color someone probably called beige.
The irony wasn’t lost on me.
For a man who owned homes on three continents, private islands, hotels, and enough aircraft to cross the globe at a moment’s notice, my entire world currently fit inside a room smaller than one of my guest bathrooms.
The mattress was thin, the pillow somehow thinner, and the blanket felt as if it had been made by sadists.
I had slept anyway, not well, but enough for my subconscious to unearth diabolical nightmares about my father.
I rubbed my face, then glanced down at what I wore.
I saw the gray detention uniform hanging loosely on my six-foot-four frame.
The first morning I’d been handed it, I’d almost laughed.
And it wasn’t because it was funny. I’d spent years having custom suits made in Milan and Paris, only to discover that every man looked exactly the same in federal custody.
Honestly, there was something humbling about that.
If the uniform wasn’t enough to humble me, the meals they served here certainly were. Dinner had been forgettable. Lunch had been forgettable. And breakfast had somehow managed to be even worse.
I had reached the point where I no longer bothered to ask what any of the food was supposed to be. If it was technically edible and didn’t kill me first, it counted as food.
But nothing was more humbling than my goddamn nightmares.
I stared up at the ceiling while my pulse slowly settled.
My father had been dead for years, yet somehow the bastard still found ways to intrude on my life.
Fuck me… another day.
Another day without any answers, being punished for the sins of a dead man.
A bitter laugh almost escaped me.
The irony of that wasn’t lost on me. My entire adult life had been spent cleaning up Herbert Hawk’s messes, the public ones, the private ones, and the forgotten ones.
Every acquisition I’d unwound. Every unethical practice I’d abolished. Every corrupt executive I’d removed. Every fucking policy of his I’d changed… I’d spent years turning Hawk Enterprise into the exact kind of company my father would’ve despised.
And somehow, he still managed to reach through the grave and drag me down beside him. My jaw tightened because the worst part wasn’t the detention center. It wasn’t the investigation or even the possibility of prison.
The worst part was Catalina.
For most of my life, relationships had seemed like liabilities, weaknesses. My father had made sure of that. I’d also watched powerful men lose fortunes, destroy companies, and even compromise themselves over women.
The lesson had been drilled into me long before I was old enough to understand it.
Love made men vulnerable, and vulnerable men lost. So, I built walls around that emotion, and no one got through them. Then Catalina Veléz walked into my life and told me she wasn’t interested.
A smile tugged at the corner of my mouth. Even in here, the memory affected me in a wonderful way. Almost every woman I’d met had been impressed by me and my lifestyle. Catalina had simply been annoyed by it.
Most people treated me like Titus Hawk, the billionaire and executive, the brilliant and sexy man on magazine covers.
Catalina treated me like I was a moderately irritating human standing in her way. Somehow, that had been the beginning.
It wasn’t the physical attraction. Christ, I’d been attracted to women before. That wasn’t new. What was new was looking forward to seeing someone, wanting to tell them things, wanting them beside me when something happened, and missing them when they weren’t there.
Every conversation with her left me wanting another. Every argument somehow ended with me smiling. Every challenge made me respect her more. Every rejection only made me more curious.
And somewhere along the way, without realizing it, she’d become my favorite part of each day.
It was almost funny. Forty years of my father’s lessons hadn’t kept me away from her. In the end, it took one of his crimes to do what his lessons couldn’t.
I knew Catalina was everything that man never wanted me to know or feel in this world. And good. I hoped he had a decent view of me from hell. Because for the first time in my life, I knew with absolute certainty which one of us had been right.
I’d been in here a week, and there still wasn’t a damn thing giving me hope they could prove I had no knowledge of my father’s transgressions.
“Hawk!” a voice boomed from the other side of the small window of the door.
“Yes.”
“You have a visitor.”
It wasn’t hard to guess who it could be. Either my attorneys or my brothers.
“Who?” I gave my usual reply.
“Catalina Veléz.”