“If I didn’t push them to a career they’d do exactly that... sit on their asses. When I’m gone, I bet most stop working and blow through my hard-earned money.”
“If they do, they do,” he said. “Why does it matter if you aren’t around to see it?”
“It probably doesn’t any more than it’d drive me insane.”
“Maybe if you didn’t control everyone so much over the years and let them do what they wanted they wouldn’t resent things so much to want to do that.”
“Stop pacing and sit down next to me.” He pulled the chair away from the wall and sat next to his grandfather. He wanted to reach for his hand but held back. His emotions were too heightened right now. “How much of your only trust fund installment do you have left?”
“All of it,” he said. “The check is no good now, but if you want it, I’ll have it wired over in an hour.”
“I don’t want it.” His grandfather shook his head. “I never did. It’s yours. Along with the other three draws you should have gotten by now.”
“I don’t want it,” he said. “I’ve got my own money. I made my own name. I don’t like the strings that come with it. I don’t need it in my life. Neither does Jonah.”
“I know that. Tell me this. How much did you make off of that first installment? I know it’s not just sitting in an accountwaiting for me to take it. You’ve been investing it all along, haven’t you?”
“It’s worth five times as much,” he said. “I suppose you want interest on that.” He was grinning when he said that, his grandfather doing the same.
“No. It’s your money. Your other three draws have been sitting in an investment account in your name. Along with a fund set up for Jonah.”
“What?” he asked.
“I knew you wouldn’t take it. But it’s yours. Jonah is my blood. Whether or not you want him to know about me, that’s your decision, but he’s still a part of this family.”
“Keep it,” he said. “I don’t need any other family members on my case that they are getting less because I’ve got a kid.”
“I don’t give a shit what they think. It’s my money. I can stop contributing to their trust any time I want. I can drain them too.”
He laughed. “I don’t want to be around if it happens.”
“My point is, it’s there. It’s yours. It’s not going anywhere. It’s all completely in your name. No one can touch it.”
This was just blowing his mind.
“I don’t understand any of this.”
“Does it really matter at this point?”
“It’s a control thing with you. To know you still got your way and dropped your money on me. Almost as if it’s guilt that when I’m spending it I’ll think of you.”
“No different from you controlling who knows what about you,” his grandfather said.
He sucked a breath in. “That’s low.”
“We’re alike, Dean. Not as much as I’d like, but in some ways you just can’t change.” His grandfather’s hand came out for him to take. He did because he had to. Not because he was told but because he remembered when he was a kid and how much time he spent with the old man and how much he looked up to him.
That was before everything changed.
Before he was molded into a person he didn’t want to become.
“I don’t suppose I can.”
“And if I don’t make it tomorrow I want you to know that I’m proud of you. All the rest of them are money-grabbing whores. But you, you did your own thing. You stood up to me when no one else would. And you’re the only one I wanted to talk to before my surgery tomorrow.”
“You’re too stubborn to die and you know it.”
“And if I do, you’re named the executor of my will.”
