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The man I admire more than anyone, helleveryone, meets my gaze. No denying we’re related. His hazel eyes are so similar to my own. We also share the same square chin and high cheekbones along with the height and width that can support our broad shoulders.
And we’ve saddled them with a lot.
The Grayson Group, the conglomerate my grandfather started when he turned eighteen, is no simple task to run. It takes stamina, dedication, and ruthlessness to see things through.
Luckily, I possess more than my share of all three traits. But nothing can help me now. Not with what he is proposing.
“Why do you want me to get married?” I ask, willing my voice not to quave.
Gramps waves his glass in the air and I watch the brown liquid slosh the sides. “A wife from excellent stock will settle you. Keep you grounded.” He turns and walks a few steps to the window. When he faces me, regret has made a home in his eyes. “I want to make sure you, as my future heir, don’t turn out to be as worthless as my son.” He shakes his head. Thick, white hair sweeps his brow. It used to be jet-black, like mine. My father and his antics gave him all the salt and left none of the pepper.
Gramps continues, unaware of my musings. “Your father was an idiot. Instead of working for me in some mid-level job, he could have had the whole she-bang.” Another head shake. “Damn sad he threw his life away because of his weakness.”
I agree. My fatherwasweak. Drugs and alcohol had already taken a foothold in him even before my mom died of an aneurysm when I was four. My father couldn’t live with the loss, so he hit the bottle...and me.
Both as often as he could.
I learned early on to hide when my father’s rages took hold of him. At least until he put me in the hospital. That was why I didn’t shed a tear when I learned he had wrapped his car around an old oak.
There had been a rainstorm that night. Three inches had come down within an hour. Slick roads had gotten the blame instead of the fifth of whiskey found at the scene. Gramps—Mr. Robert Grayson to everyone else—kept his son’s name out of the papers with threats of lawsuits or worse... broken bones.
From then on, I knew Gramps had power. And he’s never used it on me until now.
He must really want this.
I test the waters, making sure he is serious. “What happens if I refuse?”
“You will no longer be my heir.” Gramps waves his free hand as if all I’ve ever wanted... all I’ve ever worked for, is no big deal. “You will immediately lose your position as acting CEO of The Grayson Group and I’ll have Thomas take over.”
“Not while I’m breathing,” I mutter.
Thomas is the son of Gramps’s much younger brother, and the only other relative in the business.
Not that there are many of us. My Grandma died before I was born and we have a few cousins floating around down south somewhere and that’s all I know of.
Sometimes I wish Thomas was floating in the ocean, a thousand miles from shore.
Prick gives me hell as the Grayson Group CFO, and to say we butt heads is an understatement. If he isn’t arguing with me about decreasing the budget, he’s fighting with me to increase it. One of the best perks I’m looking forward to when I become the permanent CEO will be to boot my cousin’s narrow-ass out onto the street.
Well... I might. Thomas is damn good at what he does. I’m not such a dick that I can’t recognize his worth.
Gramps loses his grin to give me a stern expression. “Do you really want to give up the challenge of running one of the most prestigious companies in America?” He lets me mull over his question as he takes a sip of fine liquor. After smacking his lips in satisfaction, he adds, “You’ll have to give up your call girls if you do.”
It doesn’t faze me that Gramps knows of my proclivities. If I were a bitter man, I’d blame him for them. He initiated me into the world of sex by sending a prostitute to the house two years before I turned eighteen.
“Listen here,” I say, with a hint of rancor. “I’m not giving up anything. I want to know the stakes.”
“The stakes are that three months from now, if you don’t have a ring on your finger, your lifestyle will drastically change. I’ll see to it.”
He would.
There are many instances I can recall when Gramps wielded his sword of revenge. The first one I came to know about happened soon after I came to live with him.
The VP of Operations in Europe had gotten greedy and offered to sell some of our technology to a foreign government.
Somehow, Gramps found out.
Within three months, the VP had become a social pariah. His wife and kids wanted nothing to do with him and he lost all his material possessions. Not long after, someone from the company saw him in New Jersey—living under a bridge.
