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“Have a seat, would you,” I offer, and he stiffens as if he’ll argue with me about it. “I’d like to get to know you better. After all, we’re brothers.”
His features and composure are serious like Lyle’s had been. He doesn’t offer anything and I attempt to erase the awkwardness between us. “In the will, Dad mentioned you reached out to him a year ago?”
“That’s right. My mom had passed away, and she left me documents that led me to our father. I was shocked, I’m assuming it was similar to how you felt at the reading of the will.”
“And did Dad accept it right away?”
He lets out a sardonic laugh, and I can’t read it as fury or amusement. His smile splits the middle of his lips but he cracks his knuckles at the same time. “One look at me, he couldn’t deny it. It was how I was able to book an appointment with him, and the fact that I mentioned my mother, who apparently wasn’t like all the women he banged on the side. He told me he loved her. They were together for two years and one day she ended it. And I was born nine months later. He swore he didn’t know.”
“And your mother?” I can’t fault the woman, though she had to have known he was married. “My mother was Veronica Peters. They met at a bar one night. My mom never made excuses that our father was a married man. She told me you couldn’t help who you fell in love with, but when she found out about me, she understood I had to come first. She didn’t want me to be a contention in your parents’ marriage because I would feel it. She didn’t want your mom hating me, or her. She wanted to raise me with unconditional love. We didn’t have much, but my mother loved me without measure. And it’s why she changed the last name, using my grandma’s maiden name of Starling for both of us. So, we’d be more difficult to find.”
“I’m sorry you lost your mother,” I offer.
His eyes and demeanor are still cold and I wonder how I’ve offended him, except for having a useless father my whole life, where I would have been fine to only have my mother.
He gives me a nod of his head and doesn’t return the sentiment.
Fuck, he looks just like our father.
“Nick, this isn’t going as planned. I feel like I’ve done something to offend you, when I found out about you just a week ago. I had to come to terms with the idea, but I knew I needed to meet you in person. Am I reading you wrong?”
He leans forward, his elbows on his knees. “It’s Nicholas, and no, you’re not reading me wrong at all. What can I say, I’m a little put off by you. You had this wonderful life, and my mother had to scrape and skimp to get by. I don’t begrudge her that, but here you are in your ivory tower, beckoning me at your whim. Knowing of me, it still was on your timetable. I won’t ever have what you have.”
I wait in order to ensure his tirade has ended. “Did you know our father well? Did you have an inside to the kind of man he was?”
“He wasn’t perfect, I already knew this. You don’t get through business school without studying the great Lyle Lynol. Who knew when I wrote my thesis on him for graduate school, it was my father I was researching.”
I let out a laugh but it’s not meant to be funny. Nothing is funny about this situation. Especially since my brother is the clone of our father. “Our father was a bastard. Nothing I did was ever good enough. He had several affairs throughout the years. He blackmailed my mom and had my boyfriend sent off to London because he wasn’t good enough for me. I may have had things you didn’t have, which I’m sorry for, I truly am, but maybe you were given a break from a life of utter despair not being raised by the bastard.”
His eyes darken, as my father’s would when he grew angry. “Easy to say from your ivory tower, big brother. When my mom collected aluminum cans so she could buy a bag of beans that lasted us three to four days, you had your filet mignon and a warm bed to sleep in.”
I hold up my arms. “Okay, you’re right, I don’t know what it’s like to not have your basic needs met, and I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry? He had promised me half of the company. Did you know that? Can you imagine the shock and the betrayal I felt when I only got twenty percent of it?”
“That’s still millions of dollars,” I offer but when his hand comes down on my desk, apparently it was the wrong thing to say.
“It’s not about the money, it’s about respect, him seeing me as his son, his equal son.”
Maybe he’d felt a moral dilemma since the company was financed with my mother’s family money. I don’t mention it because more of Lyle Lynol that apparently lives in my half-brother will surface, and I don’t want that.
“You are in accounting, correct?” I ask, changing the subject drastically.
“Yes, accounts receivable.”
“Okay, I’ll get with your boss. Let’s start off with one day a week while I’m in the New York office and three days once a month when I’m in Minnesota. I’ll set you up with an apartment there and a car. As your understanding of the business grows, we can talk about moving you to the executive level, but you’ll begin receiving royalty checks that are retroactive to the day our father died.”
He stands, and with such force, his chair falls backward. “Are you telling me our dad wants you to show me the ropes and you’re going to be easing me into it?”
I had hoped he’d be a little more accepting of me. I can’t work daily with a man who hates me solely due to my birthright.
“I’d hoped we could form a relationship, Nicolas. I truly had. And I’m open to it, but it’s in your hands. You’ve been nothing but hostile since you walked in the room. This company was started off the shoulders of my maternal grandfather’s money. I want to run it the way he would have. But, you’ve been mean, rude, and never have you given me condolences for the loss of my mother. Now, you’re dismissed. I will go through your boss to set the schedule. You can shut the door behind you.”
He stands, walks to the door, and slams it so hard the frame shakes, but not before muttering something that’s a kin tofigures, rich bastard.
I want to fire the man. He’ll be difficult, without a doubt, and of course my father would leave the spawn of Satan to make up for his own absence in my life.
I can barely catch my breath from the run-in with my brother when my forensic accountant calls me and gives me the news I’ve been waiting for.
