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"Look on the bright side," Covington continued, undeterred. "You'll have a quite healthy salary as CEO of your charitable foundations and can live any way you wish, anywhere you wish. Once you get married, you'll have access to much much more."
"That sucks," David said disgustedly. "That's bribery."
Covington shrugged. "Some people would be happy with these terms. You're all good-looking young men with your own very successful careers. I imagine you'll have lots of potential mates who would line up at the chance to marry you. Surely one of them would be a good spouse."
Nash chimed in. "I've been dating since I was seventeen and let me tell you, if the right woman is out there, I haven't met her."
"Your father could have given all his money to charity if he had wanted. As it is, he set aside half in trust funds, but he wanted to ensure you did something with your lives to earn it. Namely have a family, the way he did. Besides, chances are very strong that you will all marry eventually anyway."
"That's not necessarily true," I replied, remembering a statistic I'd read about GenX not marrying until much later, if at all, compared to my father's generation of baby boomers. "Our generation is less likely to marry and we marry at a later age."
Covington turned to me. "Considering you were ready to marry only a few months ago, Joshua, I'd think you'd understand."
An awkward silence passed as we all probably thought about my failed engagement only six months earlier. I'd been engaged until my fiancée, Christie, whom I'd thought was the love of my life, decided that she preferred the company of her boss, Clint Watson, one of my underlings in the publishing business I managed as part of my father's empire.
What really sucked was that I couldn't blame it on Clint being richer or more powerful than me. He wasn't. In fact, he wasn't even close to my income or influence. She loved him.
She wanted me for my money.
It kind of soured me on the whole get-married-and-have-a-family thing. Frankly, I just didn't believe there was a Mrs. Joshua Macintyre out there for me. Sure, I had lots of sex partners. They were easy enough to find. But a wife?
Someone who could love me for me, and not for my wealth and power?
No.
Christie soured me on that possibility.
"Is there no way to contest this?" David asked. "I mean, don't we have a right to a share as his children?"
Covington shook his head. "No. In America, you do not have an automatic right to inherit your parent's wealth. It is entirely up to them how to distribute their property upon death."
"It's completely unfair."
"It's the law," Covington replied.
"Well," David said, "the law is an ass."
Covington raised his eyebrows. "Regardless, when each of the requirements has been satisfied, you will receive the first disbursements of your trust fund. Is there anything else?"
"What's happening to my father's penthouse? And his other properties?"
"Please refer to Appendix A. It details the division of property amongst the beneficiaries." Covington distributed several documents to us.
We all flipped to the appropriate appendix. In a list of my father's properties, I saw my name beside the beach house in the Hamptons. My father knew it was my favorite place to spend the summer. At least he had been nice enough to give me that without any strings attached.
Christian got the penthouse overlooking Central Park. Michael got the family mansion in upstate New York; Nash got the Florida estate; and David got the beachfront property in New Hampshire.
"There must be some kind of law against forced marriage..." David frowned as he read over the appendix.
"You aren't being forced to marry anyone. You can choose to remain single for as long as you want."
"He cou
ld have trusted us to want to marry and have a family and just given us the money," Christian said. "I could use ten million right now to fund my campaign for the state legislature." He leaned back, a disgruntled expression on his face.
"On your first wedding anniversary, you'll get it. You better started finding the love of your life sooner rather than later. Joshua," he said and turned to me. "You're the oldest of the brothers. You're now the head of the family. You take over as CEO of MBC. You'll get a salary as head of the corporation."
MBC, better known as Macintyre Broadcasting Corporation, was the business my father started from scratch. Originally a local television station, it grew into a huge media conglomerate with a publishing arm including print, television and radio.
