I close my eyes. “I know the sum—I don’tcareabout the money.” Stand up. Breathe. Don’t scream. Don’t throw the stapler through the window. Don’t assault Dell. “Short answer, please, Quentin: is there any way to go around this? To get me Dell’s share, right here, right now?”
“I…no. I’m afraid not. He was very clear. You have to work together.”
“There’s no…end run?”
A shake of his head. “No, Miss McKenna. He made sure there wasn’t.”
I nod, eyes closed. “Okay, then.” I turn and leave. “I’ll be at the office. I have work to do.” I leave, and I don’t look back. “See that Mother gets home, please.” I say this to no one in particular.
I get to the office—my office. Dad’s office, the big corner one, which has been mine for months. I have a nameplate and everything: Delia McKenna, President and CEO.
There’s a button that tints the windows opaque, both the exterior ones and the windows into the rest of the office. I tint them black. Shut off the lights.
Pull Dad’sotherbottle of emergency get-your-shit-together-and-deal-with-it whiskey out, and drink it.
I get very, very, very drunk.
Chapter Five
Matthais
“It’s fucking stupid,”Dell says, for the tenth time in as many minutes. “I don’twanthalf the fucking company! I never did! You’d think the fact that I have stayed as far away from McKenna Construction as possible over the years would be a pretty significant clue thatI’m not fucking interested. But no. Ohhhhh no—” He tosses back a shot of scotch; I think he’s setting to break some kind of speed-drinking record, especially considering we’re drinking very expensive, very old, very rare scotch. “What does the dumb old goat do? Fucking ups anddies, and leaves me half the goddamn company. And Ihaveto take it or I don’t get my fucking inheritance. What kind of an inheritance comes with a condition?”
“The kind for lazy rich boys who haven’t done a single hard day’s work in his life?” I sip my double on the rocks, smirking at him.
“Much better?” he parrots, then repeats it with emphasis. “Much better? Bitch, you’re worse.”
I’m not wholly faking the glare I give him. “That may have been true once, but it’s not. It hasn’t been for a long time, Dell. I’m a legit businessman. Do you know my credentials? Econ degree from Yale, internship at Goldman Sachs, business school at Wharton. Thirty million in investments across half a dozen different fields.”
Dell just snorts. “Investments,” he snorts. “How is that work? It’s just spending money, except you don’t get a new toy or anything out of it.”
I groan a laugh. “Dell. It’s an investment. It’s not about an immediate return. I invest money in a company in exchange for shares of that company’s revenue. I invest money, and if they do well, I make money.”
“Cool. Still not work.”
“Is fucking too, douchebag. You have to dig into the company. What’s their business plan? How do they make money? What’s their overhead? What’s their plan for the future? Have they actually made any money? Do they have an actual feasible product? You have to do research.”
Dell eyes me skeptically. “And you,you, Thai Bristow—youhave been doing this? You, who taught me everything I know about how to successfully pimp it as an idle rich influencer. Your idea of work is putting together a photo shoot for your Insta. Shit, Thai, you know less about work than I do.”
I huff. “Dell, for a long, long time, that would have been true.” I shrug, sip scotch. “Like I said, it’s just not true anymore.”
“It’s not?”
I wobble my head side to side. “No, not really.”
I finish my double and order another with a lift of an index finger; the bartender, a cute blonde with a sweet rack and a nice little heart-shaped ass, gives me a flirty grin.
“So what changed?” Dell asks.
I sigh. “I…I dunno, man. I just…I was getting bored, honestly. I mean, I’m thirty. Dad was a multi-millionaire on his own by my age, and Mom was neck-deep in medical school still, at one of the most prestigious universities in the world. So, is there, like, a little pressure to live up to his example? Sure. I’ve resisted it so far, but…like I said, honestly I was just bored out of my fucking skull. Like, with life. I’ve bought all the cool cars, I’ve been everywhere on the planet there is to go that’s fun, because I’m not into mountain climbing or traversing, like, deserts or jungles. I’ve banged hot women and famous women and average women and even a few hit up ugly chicks just for the hell of it—and yeah, even a virgin once. And to that, I say never again. Too much pressure, man. Too much fuckin’ pressure.” I wave a hand in a wild, frustrated gesture. “What am I supposed todo? I don’t have a talent, like music or painting or photography or…I don’t even know. Or somecauseto be all pissed off about all the time. So what am I supposed to do? You can only spend so much time on Instagram and TikTok and shit, and you can only drink so much before even that gets old. Even fucking you can’t do all time, as much as I’d like to. The ol’ wang needs a break, know what I mean?”
“Wang?” He chortles. “Did you really just call your dick a wang?”
“It was ironic.”
“I don’t think that’s what ironic means.”
I flip him off. “Likeyouknow what ironic means? Shit, man,Igraduated from Yale. Ishouldknow. I just wasn’t paying attention. I slurped up all that knowledge, spewed it out for the grade, and promptly forgot it all.”
