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Remy makes a gesture, like he’s being perfectly reasonable. "Look, twelve months to put a grandchild in front of me. Perhaps eighteen months, if you really have to try." He gives me and my brother a cold smile. "You shouldn’t have to. When I married your grandmother, she was pregnant within a month."
"If we don’t follow through with your orders?" I find myself asking. "What if we have trouble?"
He sits back in his chair, regarding the room with pursed lips. "Well, then I would have to start looking outside the family. Maybe even selling the company and giving the proceeds to charity when I die." He leans forward suddenly, almost seeming as though he is going to fall out of his chair. He stops himself on the edge of his desk, peering around the room as if issuing a challenge. "Don’t make me give the money I worked so hard for away. Bring me a grandchild, both of you."
"Don’t you mean a great-grandchild?” my dad asks.
"God dammit, Tripp!" My granddad wheezes. "I am skipping a generation, obviously. Now, if you don’t mind, I would like you all to get the fuck out of my office. Burn and Dare have some sweet-talking to do. And the rest of you can get out of the way of men who were actually working."
I stand here, completely shell-shocked by my grandfather’s demand.
A family? Kids? Marriage? My whole life, my grandfather has always been so staunchly pro-money, pro-capitalist, and anti-charity. And now this sudden threat to give away everything he worked so hard for?
My Uncle Felix stands up, pointing a finger at Remy. "You’re unwell, Dad. You sound like a madman."
My grandfather smacks his lips, giving Felix a heavy dose of side eye. "You. You’re the worst one in the whole family. You’re a leech and a money grubber. In my will, you get one hundred thousand dollars and not a cent more. Not a cemetery plot, not a vacation house, not the deed to this mansion. You can rot for all I care."
Trembling with fury, Felix glares at his father.
"If I am fucked up, it’s only because of the way that you raised me. Look at me. Look at Tripp. Is that the way that you want your own kids to be?"
"As far as I’m concerned, Burn and Dare are my only sons. You were an aberration. I love your grandmother, but she definitely raised you wrong."
"We’ll sue you. Right, Tripp?" He looks at my dad, and my dad gives a weary sigh.
"I don’t know. Whatever."
Remy chuckles. "If you know what’s good for you, Felix, you will toe the line and pretend to be a doting son in hopes that I have a fucking change of heart. Who knows, perhaps on my deathbed I will reconsider."
Felix shakes his head, trembling with his rage. He whirls and stomps out of the room, leaving the rest of us to look after his retreating figure.
"Well? Go on then. Get the fuck out." Remy gestures, shooing us out of his office. “Except Dare and Burn. I have something to tell you.”
I glance at Burn, wondering what it could possibly be. He arches his eyebrows but doesn’t say anything as the men leave us.
Clive is there to close the doors to Remy’s study behind us, leaving Burn, Remy, and me. Remy rocks back in his chair, his lips thinning.
“Since you two are in the running for CEO, I figured you are ready to hear all the news about Morgan Oil, the bad along with the good.”
I furrow my brow, trying to figure out what good news Remy gave us. But Burn gives Remy a complacent smile, returning to his favorite perch on the corner of Remy’s desk.
“We’re all ears, Remy.”
Remy looks at him tartly and then opens a drawer in his desk, pulling out a thick dark binder. He waves it at us and then drops it on his desk with a thud.
“You have a decision to make. Our family money is funded through… let’s say less than clean sources. Namely smuggling heroin into the country from Canada.”
My jaw drops. Burn’s expression is one of puzzlement.
“I’m sorry, did you sayheroin?” I clarify. Remy must mean something else and I’m struggling to understand right now.
Surely that is it.
Remy looks at both of us with a smug smile. “What, did you think that I built this whole empire on some oil fields? No. I’m handing down what my father and his father worked their whole lives to build. Our family has always done very well because we’ve always been able to smuggle in anything we wanted. Heroin, cocaine, girls… I’ve made a lot of money loan sharking, too.”
I choke a little. “Girls? You mean…”
“Like prostitutes?” Burn asks, his tone accusatory. “Loan sharks? What are you talking about, Remy? Are you feeling all right?”
