Chapter 12
Cade
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I knew pressing the elevator key four times wouldn’t make the elevator arrive faster, but I couldn’t help myself.
Kyle’s office was on the nineteenth floor, and to add insult to injury, I had exactly fifteen minutes to drop the legal papers for his attorney, pick him up, and get us back to my office for the board meeting.
We both had worked late the night before on his business plan which we were to present to the board, and between hanging from the ceiling in a tutu in the mornings and advising a fourteen year old on the proportions needed to paint a mural in the evenings, I had enough hours during the day to keep the business running.
Just smooth enough to not raise any eyebrows.
I was only getting a few hours of sleep each night, but I was happy.
At the end of day, I was driving home, eager to do it all again the next day.
Not because it was easy. Because at the end of it, somewhere in all of that, I was making Maple’s life a little lighter.
I was watching River take his anger and pour it into something on a wall that was becoming, honestly, one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen built by a fourteen-year-old who didn’t know yet how talented he was.
That was worth every squeezing inch of the leotard.
The elevator doors opened on nineteen and I nodded at Jenny, Kyle’s secretary, who was on the phone but waved at me with her free hand.
“Mr. Sonnenberg,” she said, covering the receiver. “He’s in his office.”
“Thanks, Jenny. I’ll just be a minute.”
“There’s coffee—“
“No time, but thank you.”
I was already moving down the hall toward Kyle’s office. The door was slightly open. I could hear him on the phone.
I was about to push the door open when I heard Maple’s name.
Kyle was talking to someone about Maple.
I stopped. I stood in the hallway outside the office and I listened.
“She was never going to fit in.” Kyle said. “Cade knows this.”
Silence.
“Don’t worry. They will not get back together.”
Another pause.
“Come on, Saph.”
Saph.
Sapphire.
“I’ve already done what I could do. The rest of it will happen on its own.
Maple will not forgive him after what he said.
” A pause. “Sure, we did set up the situation for him. And yeah, I pushed him too far that night. You may have sent her upstairs. But what came out of Cade’s mouth?
That was Cade’s doing. All the way through. ”
I put my hand flat on the wall next to the door.
“I don’t know, Saph. If he doesn’t like you, what can I do? I can’t make him fall in love with you.” Another pause. “I have to go. Cade’s coming to pick me up. I’ll talk to you later.”
He hung up.
I stood in the hallway, trying to comprehend the words I had just heard.
And what I should have seen a long time ago became suddenly, unavoidably clear.
As I pushed open the door, Kyle looked up from his desk. For one half second, something moved across his face. Then it was gone and he was smiling. The easy, warm, thirty-six-years-of-friendship smile that I now understood differently than I had five minutes ago.
“Hey,” he said. “What’s up?”
I smiled back.
“Ready to go?” I said.
“So, for a twenty-seven point eight million dollar funding from Sonnenberg Industries, the estimated return on investment for the project will be at least triple in the next two years.”
Kyle clicked off his last slide.
Seven senior members of the Sonnenberg Industries board applauded politely. And then all eyes were on me. Because whatever I said in the next two minutes would determine whether this happened or not.
Kyle looked at me too. He had been looking at me with increasing uncertainty since the elevator ride down from his office, during which I had talked about the weather and the traffic and absolutely nothing else.
I stood up.
“Kyle has been my best friend since I was three years old,” I said.
Kyle relaxed slightly.
“He is a terrific businessman.” I looked at the board.
“We worked hard together on these projections. Kyle has a great business instinct. He has been through genuinely difficult times — his company went through a rough period, as you all know — but he fought his way back. When he came to me with this plan, I backed him immediately. I gave him my full support.”
I locked eyes with Kyle.
He smiled at me. Grateful and warm and completely unsuspecting.
I smiled back.
I turned to the board.
“He is a promising businessman,” I said.
“But he is a backstabbing, lying, and deeply untrustworthy friend.” I kept my voice completely level.
“He is also a selfish man who is willing to go to whatever lengths he needs to in order to get what he wants. He can manipulate anyone. His best friend. The woman his best friend loves. And if given the chance, the people in this room who are considering funding his business.”
The room went very quiet.
Kyle’s chair scraped back slightly. “Cade — what are you—“
“I’m talking about you,” I said. I turned to face him directly.
“I’m talking about you and your sister engineering a situation to benefit yourselves.
Orchestrating situations, pressing every button I had about my parents and their expectations and the Sonnenberg name, one after another, until you had me saying exactly what you needed me to say.
” I looked at him. “And then making sure the only woman who has ever mattered to me was standing on the other side of the door to hear it.”
Kyle’s face had gone red. “Cade, let’s talk about this later—“
“I think now is fine.”
“This is not — you don’t understand—“
“I understand exactly.” I kept my voice even. “You did it so I would end things with Maple. You did it so I would turn to Sapphire. And you did it because if I married Sapphire, you would get a larger connection to my father’s business and my company.” I tilted my head. “Did I miss anything?”
“That is not — Cade, come on, you know I would never—“
“I heard you on the phone, Kyle.”
Kyle closed his mouth.
The room was completely silent.
I turned back to the board.
“As managing director of Sonnenberg Industries,” I said, “I am advising against funding this project.” I looked at each of them in turn.
“My father built this company on one principle above everything else. Integrity. Not profit. Not growth projections. That is what this company’s name means in this town and in this country.
And I will not attach that name to a man who does not have it. ”
I sat down.
There was a long pause.
One of the oldest members of the board — Wilfred, who had been with my father since the beginning and who I had known my entire life — looked at Kyle.
“I think,” Wilfred said pleasantly, “that you should leave.”
Kyle looked at me one more time, picked up his laptop and walked out. The door closed behind him.
Wilfred turned to me.
“Whether you had said any of what you just said or not,” he began, “I want you to know that this board was already deeply uncertain about this project.” He placed his hand on the table.
“Kyle Griffin has a reputation in business circles that precedes him. Untrustworthy is the word I have heard most often. Your whole family has stood by the Griffins through some genuinely difficult years. We are aware of that. The board has always respected the loyalty.” He paused.
“But we are not compelled to fund a bad investment out of loyalty to a family friend.
And after what you have told us today about what he did to you personally—“ He shook his head. “That will not be overlooked.”
I nodded.
“The answer was going to be no regardless,” Wilfred said simply.
The other board members murmured their agreement.
Wilfred looked at me. His voice dropped slightly, away from the formal register. “I hope you’re alright, son. I’m sorry that someone you trusted for that long used that trust the way he did.”
I looked at the table for a moment.
“Thank you,” I said. “But what he did to me is the smaller part of this. What I said to the only woman I’ve ever loved — that’s on me. He set the stage. I said the words. Nobody put those words in my mouth.”
I was the asshole, and I’ll do everything to become worthy of Maple. Including wearing an orange tutu and dangling by crotch in front of the entire town.
With my parents in the front row.
***