Eric’s face flamed. He was determined to keep his cool when he arrived, but he should have known better. Grandmother took sadistic pleasure in getting under people’s skin.
So instead he rose. “I think that’s enough.” Without a backwards glance, he started out of the room, not giving two shits whether or not his sneakers left tracks on her precious floors.
“Eric, stop right there!” Her voice rang out, though it was quickly swallowed by the thick Aubusson carpets. And damn it, there was something in it that made Eric obey once again. A terror. A weakness he’d never heard before. Not coming from her.
Slowly, he turned around but remained in the doorway.
“I’ll be gone in six months,” Grandmother said. “And just who do you think is going to get all of this?”
She meant the opulence around them. The de Vries fortune was older than Manhattan, having started with a New Amsterdam shipping company that became one of the biggest conglomerates in the world. The name was on containers and boats worldwide, although no de Vries had done more than sit on the board of directors for nearly a hundred years. But money made money, and the de Vries family had more than just about anyone.
Not that Eric wanted a goddamn cent.
He crossed his arms and glared. “I’m not going to help you play inheritance games with your kids, Grandmother. You want Mother and Aunt Violet to jump through hoops, you talk to them about it. Or talk to Nina, your other grandchild. The one who actually speaks to you.”
“That would be all fine and good if I intended them to have it, but I don’t.” Grandmother paused to take a long siphon of oxygen, then offered a smile that could only be described as sickly sweet. “It’s for you, Eric. All of it.”
Eric’s heart stopped. Completely. He was dead for at least two full seconds.
“What?” he finally croaked. “But that’s…you have one other child. Who is alive, I might add.”
“Violet is not a de Vries,” Grandmother said. “And therefore, neither is Nina. Now, before you say anything, they’ve always known that’s how it would go. Girls can’t continue the family name, Eric. Astors and Gardners can’t own a company called De Vries Shipping. But you can, my boy. You’re the last one.”
It was true: Eric was, in fact, the last in a long line of de Vries men. His father was the only son of Jonathan de Vries, Grandmother’s husband. They were both gone—Grandfather to lung cancer well before he was born, and Father to a freak sailing accident when Eric was just a child. It wouldn’t have mattered if his mother married again or had other children. None of them would have been de Vries. They wouldn’t have had pure blood. Eric was the one and only man in the family who still bore the name.
“I don’t want it,” he said finally. “I don’t need this family’s money or the company. I meant it when I said I was done with all of you.”
Again, Grandmother just snorted. “You have no idea what you’re saying. That’s a seventeen-billion-dollar corporation you’re tossing away like old crudité. You’d attend board meetings as chairman—a controlling shareholder, that’s all—and let the money do its work.” She snapped her papery fingers. “Simple.”
Eric’s jaw opened and closed like one of those nutcrackers that always adorned the massive Christmas tree Grandmother set up every year in the ballroom. He knew his family’s net worth was estimated to be high by Forbes, but never as high as that. Seventeen billion dollars?
“Why me?” he asked thickly. “Just because of a stupid name? Have one of the cousins change theirs if it means that much to you. Nina went to business school, for Christ’s sake, and she’s just as much a de Vries as I am, even if her last name is Gardner now. And she always did bend over backwards to please you. This family is everything to you. Why would you hand seventeen billion dollars over to someone who turned his back on it?”
But Grandmother just quirked an eyebrow and shrugged—an oddly casual movement for her. “Tradition was important to your grandfather. And your father too. So was strength of character, and you appear to be the only one in this family who has it besides me. I’ve watched you over the years. You’re a force in corporate law now, which would be a boon for the company. Your father would be proud.”
It was the only guilt trip that ever worked on Eric—the invocation of his dead father. He knew the pictures on the mantle by heart. The clean-cut man who always showed his teeth when he smiled. Who did things like sail across the Atlantic and learn to fly prop planes. Who swept Eric’s mother off her feet with random trips to Paris or obscenely expensive jewelry. The man had swagger. He was everything that, as a boy, Eric wanted to be. Everything that, as a man, he was not.
Well, except for the swagger, maybe.
“Of course, I’m not just going to hand it to you.” Grandmother shook Eric out of his memories.
And there it was: the caveat. There was always one.
Eric clenched his jaw. “Let’s have it.”
She took another gulp of oxygen, intentionally drawing out the conversation. “I want to know the de Vries name will go on,” she said. “It’s what they both would have wanted; therefore, it’s also my dying wish.”
Eric’s mouth dropped again. “Are you for real? Is this a joke out of some Thomas Hardy novel? Dying wish?”
Grandmother grinned again. It was alarming. She’d lost some teeth, and others were badly decayed, likely from the chemo. A woman like her wouldn’t go without a decent set of veneers or dentures with any company whatsoever. She must have really been in pain.
“I assure you it’s very real,” she said. “Marry, Eric. Within six months. And stay married for at least five years, long enough to produce an heir, if you can. Should
