His father glanced briefly towards Cameron’s office. “Discussing that would get us nowhere.”
“You know what, Dad? It would actually get us somewhere. The fact you looked straight toward Cameron’s office tells me everything I need to know. He’s desperate to discredit me, to position himself as your only reliable replacement.” The only question remaining was how did Cameron find out?
This time his father studied the adjoining wall between their offices. “At least Cameron knows what it means to be loyal after all these years.”
Connor huffed and shook his head. “You’ve always confused his self-serving actions with loyalty because he’s always been able to spin them in a way that appealed to you. He knows I would fire him in a heartbeat and replace him with a capable CFO. And he would do anything to make sure his paycheck was safe.”
“And I come back to the point you’re just pissed off that I decided to stay on for another five years.”
Connor stood. “Am I pissed that yet again, Cameron influenced you to make a move that protects him? Yes. Am I pissed off that he talked you into staying on for another five years? Yes. We’ve had this conversation already. This is old news.”
Donovan walked toward him. “And what have you done, Connor?”
“Done?” Connor asked. “I studied hard to meet your expectations of me. I went to the school you wanted me to go to, even though you reminded me a million times a semester that the tuition was so high. When I told you I’d pay, you balked at what your friends might say. I came to work for you because that was what you expected as repayment, and thanks to my input, there’s been a meaningful change on every single business metric.”
“And yet still you found the time to fuck the daughter of an enemy whose company we wanted to purchase at a knockdown price. Were you screwing her or screwing me? Or was it both?”
Connor’s fists clenched, his jaw flexed. He was a heartbeat away from laying out his old man on company property. “Don’t,” he hissed. “Don’t ever talk about Emerson like that. Like she means nothing.”
“SHE IS NOTHING!” Donovan yelled. “Any which way I look at this, you acted unscrupulously at best, unprofessionally at worst. Did you start this relationship to get information for us? Or did you start the relationship to spite me? Neither shows you in a good light.”
He thought back to his first meetings with Emerson. He’d been curious about the Dyer family and the woman, about why they held such sway over his father. And yes, there had been a time, a small window when he’d considered owning the distillery as much as he’d been interested in Emerson. But something shifted the night he’d visited her at the distillery, and suddenly she was the only thing that really mattered.
Connor shook his head. “I need to get out of here before I say something unrecoverable. I’m going to work from home tomorrow, and I’ll be back on Wednesday. We’ll talk then when we’ve both had time to calm down.”
“I need your pass,” his father said, holding out his hand.
“Are you firing me?” Connor said, aghast his father would take it that far.
“Not firing…reviewing. I’m putting you on notice that your behavior is unacceptable to the business, putting our longer-term strategy at risk, and we’ll both need a period to review. In the short term, you need to break things off with the Dyer woman.”
The years he’d put in waiting for the chance to lead this company, to sit at the very desk his father was now leaning against flashed before his eyes.
Was Emerson worth giving up everything he’d worked for?
Fuck.
It was the easiest yes in the world. Connor unclipped his pass from his suit trousers. He’d need to go back to his office to collect his jacket, laptop, and car keys, but he could exit the building without it.
“I can’t believe it’s come to this, Connor.”
“I can’t believe you’re going to let a decades-long grudge against a dead man come between you and me. And for the record, Dyer’s is never going to sell to you, whether I’m here or not. I’ve gotten to know a thing or two about them, and I’ll tell you this, I envy them. I envy their relationship with each other. They’re builders, not buyers, and that distillery brings the three Dyer siblings together in a way that I couldn’t imagine until I met them.”
Regret seemed to flood his father’s features, and for a moment, there was a waver of doubt. Whether it was for him or the loss of a potential asset, Connor wasn’t sure.
The door swung open, and Cameron popped his head inside. “We’re ready to take you through the projected year-end performance and Christmas sales expectations,” he said.
Connor bit down on his tongue. Hard. There was so much he wanted to say, but with his father already against him, adding Cameron to the fire would be like adding accelerant.
“Will you be joining us, Connor?” Cameron said, his voice thick with disdain.
“I’m pretty certain you already know the answer to that.” Connor headed toward the door.
“I’ll get Cameron to send you a copy,” his father said. “You can look at the numbers at home and let me know—”
Connor brushed past Cameron. “Don’t bother. Seeing as you trust Cameron’s advice so much, let him make the decisions.”
He jogged back down to his office, and while he wanted to slam his laptop shut and leave, there were several people waiting on things from him and his team. And if he’d learned one thing from Emerson, it was that the people who worked for him deserved better than the treatment his father handed out.
His father and Cameron would be in the financial performance review for hours, so he had time to finish what he needed before they were out of there. He called each of his team leads
