Chapter 32 #2
“Semantics,” he replied cheerfully. “Efficient. Brilliant. Tomato, tomahto.”
Harlan didn’t smile exactly, but there was something approving in his expression. “You committed quickly. Faster than I expected.”
I shrugged. “When you know, you know.”
Sterling snorted. “You sound insufferable.”
“Says you.” Jameson grinned. “He’s married. Of course, he’s insufferable. Have you met yourself since you got Laney to sign on the dotted line?”
Sterling opened his mouth, probably to tell Jameson he was the same, but Harlan held up a hand, silencing the banter before it could get too comfortable. “Dedication aside, the truth of the matter still rings. You should not trust Nora Thayer until she votes like she’s trustworthy.”
That wiped the smile off Douglas’s face and, annoyingly, also put a knot in my stomach, but my uncle continued.
“Let’s not pretend Nora doesn’t have options, gentlemen.
She came from a family with money. She’s lived off her daughter’s trust fund for the past five years. That well doesn’t last forever.”
Sterling sighed. “Lifestyle creep is real.”
“That’s the polite way to put it,” Jameson added unhelpfully.
Harlan looked directly at me. “The idea of a few million coming her way if the company sells, even to us, is going to be hard to ignore. Especially when she’s currently relying on her daughter to fund her lifestyle.”
My jaw clenched. As much as I wanted to believe that the woman would always have her daughter’s back, that just wasn’t true. Jane had told me all about how Nora used to float from lunches to galas, largely ignoring her own children in favor of whatever social engagement tickled her fancy.
Sure, that had been back before her status had been wiped away by her husband’s arrest, but that didn’t mean that selfish streak wasn’t still in there. Shit, she treated Jane less like a daughter and more like infrastructure.
I thought of the house Jane wouldn’t leave. The brother she wouldn’t abandon. The fact that she was married and still couldn’t move in with her husband because she was too worried about her youngest brother.
Parentified didn’t even begin to cover it.
Harlan looked at me like he knew what I was thinking. Considering he knew everything about everyone, he’d probably correctly guessed where my mind had gone. “As it stands, Jane is the adult in that household, and Nora knows it.”
Douglas scoffed. “So what, we assume the worst? That woman has been through a lot and her daughter has stuck by her side. That has to mean something.”
“Does it?” Harlan said evenly. “We’re not assuming the worst. We’re assuming reality, and the reality is that the woman has lost everything, but she stands a chance at getting some of it back, financially at least, if that company sells.”
The very fact that we were discussing this left a bad taste in my mouth.
But only because he was right. Jane’s trust fund was probably well on its way to being obliterated at this point, given how she’d been covering all her family’s expenses and her brothers’ schooling for so long.
Nora would know that, and she’d be worried about where it would leave her once it was gone.
Jameson sighed. “What about the current CEO? Andrew?”
“Alex needs to get face to face with him,” Harlan said. “Apply pressure.”
“No.” Sterling shook his head immediately. “He doesn’t matter. The man is checked out. He never even truly checked in. Your battle isn’t with him. It’s with the board.”
I exhaled. “I know.”
Worried flickered behind his eyes as he held my gaze. “If Jane is going to be CEO, even with you and possibly me taking the vacant board seat and investing to carry a single vote in Jane’s favor, Nora still has to vote with you.”
Harlan finished for him. “Otherwise, you don’t have majority.”
The room went quiet again, but only for a few seconds before Sterling finally nodded. “I’ll invest and take the seat, but I’m not doing this blind. Nora has to be managed. Carefully. Closely.”
Managed. Christ.
My dad rubbed his hands together and stood up out of the armchair he’d been occupying. “This is all very dramatic. Is anyone else hungry?”
I stared at him. “You’re unbelievable.”
“I’m coping,” he said. “It’s how I survive.”
Eventually, after a quick lunch with my cousins and our dads, the conversation wound down.
Harlan clapped me on the shoulder, Sterling promised to follow up with Zach, and Jameson talked about looping Colin in once things were official, but I left my dad’s house with that same bad taste lingering in my mouth, snow crunching under my shoes as I walked to the car.
Jane deserved better than this. Better than a board salivating over a sellout. Better than a mother who might or might not choose her. Better than having to carry everyone else’s weight just because she was capable of doing it.
As I climbed into my car, my phone buzzed and I smiled when her name lit up my screen.
Jane: Wyatt ate all the cereal and put the box back in the cupboard empty. I’m considering pressing charges.
I laughed out loud, my fingers flying across the screen to reply before I turned over my engine.
Me: I’ll have Zach draft the paperwork.
When I drove away from my father’s house, the knot in my stomach finally loosened just a little. I couldn’t fix everything that was wrong in her life. I couldn’t force or buy her mother’s loyalty and I couldn’t go back in time to make the woman be a proper mother either, but Jane had me now.
No matter if it meant navigating mothers, boards, and brothers with all the subtlety of a wrecking ball, I was in. Fully.
And together, somehow, we’d figure it out. At least we could do that now that we knew what might be coming.