Page 3 of Where I Should’ve Been

“Get real, Logan. What did you expect me to be doing? Waiting around to babysit your inheritance?”

His jaw slackens enough to ruin his bad-boy, devil-may-care persona, and I know the waterworks are coming soon. Oh Breezy, you can’t do this to me. How am I supposed to do this and Hollywood? Wah, wah, wah.

“Don’t.” My voice is sharp as cut glass. “Don’t act like this is some big shock. And definitely don’t act like you’re some kind of fucking victim in this. Dad left everything to you, Logan. Even though you haven’t done shit for Bishop Galleries, you’re the owner now. I guess congratulations are in order, huh?” A harsh laugh contrasts with my burning eyes. “So happy for you, bro. So fucking happy for you.”

Look at that. I found the color shaded fuck.

This hurts. I want to cry, but I wouldn’t dare.

Not with this audience.

My entire life has been wrapped up in my family’s galleries. This location—Chelsea—and Brooklyn were mine. But Chicago, Miami, and Paris were my father’s brilliant ideas, which meant they were half disasters that took a hell of a lot of work to build up and keep thriving, but I did it. Me. Not Logan, not Bennett, not my father or his much younger girlfriend-turned-wife Serena.

The only other Bishop who ever cared as much was my grandfather Harold, who founded it all. If he’d have been alive to see how cavalier my father was about his brainchild, I’d have found out about the diabolical twist in daddy dearest’s will a long time ago.

For nearly twenty years, I’ve been the pulse that’s kept Bishop Galleries alive, and my father’s way of repaying me was to give the galleries to the man who’s never worked a single exhibition.

“He didn’t leave everything to me, Breeze,” Logan retorts. “Just the galleries.”

Just the galleries. Just the galleries.

“I didn’t want anything but the galleries, Logan,” I toss out. “Dad can take the twenty million dollars he pity-lobbed at Bennett and me and shove it straight up his dead, cold ass.”

I still don’t know why my father didn’t leave the galleries to me after the astounding number of conversations we had assuring me he would, but I shouldn’t be surprised. Henry Bishop was prideful and egotistical, and he used people like pawns in his everlasting game of greed and money.

I witnessed the way he treated his own father when he was on his deathbed—not as a fountain of knowledge or a visionary to be thanked, but as a cash cow headed for slaughter. And when it came time to divide the Bishop fortune with his brother, he flat-out refused. He always took full credit for Bishop Galleries’ success instead of acknowledging his daughter’s hard work, but I guess I thought the ego of a man died with him.

I never expected him to slice me open from the grave.

“I get you’re angry. I do, Breeze. But how about we take a breath here before we do anything impulsive,” he says cajolingly. “Because this all feels a little crazy to have you just up and fucking quitting on me on a random Monday.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry for throwing this on you so suddenly, Logan. What a surprising inconvenience.” I shove the last box toward the rest of the pile, and it skids across the marble floor. “Dad leaving everything to you after what it’s cost me to keep these fuckers alive and thriving?” I shake my head. “If anything, you should be shocked I’m not already gone by now.”

“Breezy, trust me, I was shocked too when he told me about the will.”

I pause menacingly, turning to face him with my hands on my hips. “What do you mean, when he told you about the will? You talked to Dad about his will?”

Logan sighs and runs a hand through his silky hair. “It’s not a big deal, Breeze. It was, like, six months ago.”

“You and Dad talked about his will six months ago?” My heart pounds wildly in my chest, and I think I might throw up. This keeps getting worse. “What was said? What was decided, Logan? Did you know he was giving you the galleries?”

His long, dagger-shaped silence is all the admission I need.

“Are you fucking kidding me, Lo?” My bottom lip quivers traitorously until I dig my top teeth into it so hard I taste blood. “You knew about me getting cut out of the galleries before Dad died, and you didn’t tell me?”

My brother Bennett might not have a relationship with Logan, but I always have. I’ve defended him, gone to bat for him, loved him despite all the trouble he causes. But this? It’s duplicitous. It’s deceitful. It’s fucking treason of the highest order.

“It’s not how you’re imagining it.”

“Then how about you tell me how it went,” I demand. “Because I can tell you, from where I’m standing, you’re looking more and more like the biggest asshole on the planet than you ever have.”

“You know how Dad was, Breezy.”

“No, actually, I don’t. Clearly. Not like you. Because if I did, this wouldn’t be nearly the shock that it is. So, why don’t you tell me how Dad was? Why don’t you tell me why he cut me out of my life’s work without so much as a warning?”

Logan sighs again. “He was a macho prick. You know this. He wanted the galleries to go to one of his sons.”

“And so, what? You stepped up and decided to fill those shoes for him to win the merit badge of macho-prickdom for yourself?”