I planned on using the money in my trust fund and that I’d inherited to separate myself from my father for good.
Mortimer stared at me over steepled fingers, a band of tension pulling taut between us.
“You’re a failure.”
“Mortimer,” I said, walking over to the significantly smaller chair in front of his desk. “Stop it. You’re making me tear up.” I gripped the back of the chair and sent him my signature shit-eating grin. It was the one thing I did that annoyed him more than anything else—not giving a shit about his disapproval.
But my father didn’t go red in the face or slam his fists on the desks today. He offered me a small, tight smile. “The next month is going to be the most important one of your life. If you make the right choices, you will reap the rewards, but if you continue failing as I know you will… well, then—” He cut off and picked up the phone on his desk. He pressed a button on its sleek black platform. “Melanie? Is he here yet?” A pause. “Then send him.”
I was intrigued for once. I was used to my father’s idle, bullshit threats, but this was different. Was he calling in a companion to try to shame me? It wouldn’t work.
The office door opened, and my brother entered. Seth was the older of my two brothers, but younger than me. Blonde, blue-eyed, similar in height and stature to my father—a successful pilot, still wearing his uniform.
“Father,” he said, walking over to the desk. He put out a hand, and they shook. “It’s good to see you.” Seth turned to me and gave me a brotherly hug. I grinned and patted his back.
“Good to see you, bro.” It had been too long, but all three of us had been busy the past couple years.
“It’s been too long.”
“That’s enough,” Mortimer said. “I didn’t call you both here for a reunion.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Here I was thinking you were about to break out the barbecue and beers.”
“I’m retiring.”
Silence range through the room.
“Father…”
Mortimer lifted his palm, forestalling my brother. “I want a replacement as CEO of Woods Enterprises. Someone who the board of directors will approve of. Naturally, Damien would be the natural choice if he actually applied himself to the work we did here instead of flitting around with women in foreign countries.”
I laughed. “You were the one who sent me to France.”
“The board doesn’t approve of him. They’ll need proof that he’s settled down. Put his wasteful, playboy ways in the past.”
“Do they want my nutsack too?” I asked.
Seth snorted.
“If you want to prove yourself to the board and to me, you will find a wife within the next thirty days. I’ve set a date for a meeting of the board of directors then. They’ll expect you to turn up married and settled,” Mortimer said.
The humor was sucked out of my soul.
“Or I’ll cut you off,” my father continued, “completely. No more trust fund. No more salary. No inheritance. No property. You’re out. You’re done. That’s it.”
I blinked.
“Dad.” Seth didn’t follow it up with anything. He was just as speechless as I was.
My dad had never swung the big dick gavel down on me before. Well, once, but that was years ago.
“And if you don’t find a woman to marry, to prove that you are someone I can support, someone that this company can get behind, Seth will become the CEO instead.”
“Father,” Seth said, louder this time. “I have a career. I can’t—I don’t know the first thing—”
“Regardless, you will do your duty.” Mortimer turned cold eyes on me. “If your brother here can’t do what’s right, then you will have to do it instead.”
Seth would do it too. He’d let Mortimer get away with this because this was family to him.
“This is fucked,” I replied. “You’re insane.”
“You’ll do it.” He didn’t have to say the “or else.”
It was already in the air—or else Seth would be punished, or else I would lose everything, or else the business I’d been building would be over before it’d begun.
“You’re dismissed,” Mortimer said, flicking his fingers at us.
I grabbed the screen from his desk and flung it across the room. It smashed into the wall and shattered into pieces. “You don’t fucking control me,” I thundered.
“Don’t.” Seth grabbed my forearm.
“Fuck you!” I pointed at Mortimer. “Fuck you!”
My father stared at me, expressionless. “Get out, and come back when you’ve done what I want.”
I pulled my arm from Seth’s grasp, my fist balled up. Hatred sprang from years past, from the treatment of my mother, of me, and it bubbled at the surface, threatening to spill over.
“It’s not worth it,” Seth said.
“He’s not worth it.” I walked out, but I already knew what would come next. I would do what my father wanted. The alternative was losing what I’d worked toward for years.
4 Hazel
I’d lost my mind. That or I’d just let my sister twist my arm again.
Kara had begged and pleaded and moaned and groaned until I finally agreed to meet her at her favorite club—the Velvet Rope. It was one of the most exclusive places to be in Chicago, and it made my stomach turn.
I so wasn’t a party girl. The tight dresses, the sweaty bodies rubbing up against each other on the dance floor, the copious amounts of drinking, and heaven knew what else… it was nothing but a bad memory waiting to happen.
I’d squeezed into the only acceptable outfit I had—a slinky black number Kara had bought me for my birthday last year—and tottered over to the club to celebrate her successful audition. She’d gotten a callback for a toothpaste commercial. That was more than she’d achieved in two years, and I was all about celebrating her successes after ages of her being let down and depressed.
The line of waiting hopefuls stretched from the front door of the Velvet Rope and around the block, and
