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“Yes, we are.”
I match him stance for stance. He may be my father, but age isn’t doing him any favours, and his seventy years compared to my thirty is no contest. I even move around the table, going straight for the minibar in the room because I know where this is going. Bourbon won’t even soften the blow, but it’s a good start.
“What do you want me to do? Go and fall on his grave? Cry over his gravestone? Be beside myself?” My father rolls his eyes with derision. “Yes, Nicolas and I were friends for a very long time, and yes, I valued him more like family than anything else, but emotions get you nowhere, Beckett.”
“I’m not asking you to be an emotional wreck, but pay some fucking respect.”
A hand comes to the back of my neck, the grasp strong, pressing onto the nerves around my spine. Slowly, I set the tumbler down, crystal clinking with metal as I do so. I know this stance. I’ve been held in my father’s grip too many times in my life to forget.
Except now, he forgets our roles are reversed.
With great power comes great responsibility. Lesson three.
“Get your hands off me.”
“You listen here, boy,” he chides, uttering the nickname he always used to belittle me. His grip tightens, arthritis beginning to steal his full strength. “You have no right to speak to me the way you do, and if it continues, I’ll-”
“Remember, you’re beneath me now!”
My words come as I buck against his grip, forcing him to let go. It does little to deter him, but nothing ever did scare Alistair Knight when he was feeling threatened. My motion is enough to allow me to turn on my spot, face him with composure, my eyes taking the same glare he used on me a time or two before.
“I got you where you are, boy, and don’t think I’ll even think twice about pulling you down from that damn pedestal I placed you on!”
I snigger, having waited for this moment since Nicolas died.
“Ah, there it is… the threat at how expendable I am.” My voice is almost upheld with glee, taking great amusement from my father proving me right. “Took you long enough to use it.”
Suddenly and all at once, my father sighs and deflates. All prior anger leaves his body, and a frown creases his brow. He never liked when I called him out for his actions, and sometimes he forgets I’m not the small child who would cower from him.
“Look, I know you loved him. I did, too.” His voice is low. That statement was meant for my ears only. “I miss Nicolas every single day, but we can’t stop and mourn when there is an entire business to run. That’s why the changing of the boss happens so quickly. The Company without a leader is one that can be brought down. We have too many enemies to sit and mourn.”
In truth, I know this.
We’ll wear black for the coming month. We’ll pay our respects in that time too, but when that month is over, we move on. Emotions rule me more than rationale over this because Nicolas was a second father to me. Hell, I think I was closer to him than my own.
When Natalia fled, we were all the other had. He was dealing with losing his daughter, and I was dealing with losing the love of my life. I had my entire life ripped away from me, and he had the last of his family taken.
We both shared the same culprit.
“Mourn him and let me do my job.”
“I can’t,” he admits, and his cold eyes drag across my face. “It’s hard to see The Company change hands.”
To the naked eye, no one would have caught it.
To me, Alistair’s son, I saw the flicker of concern. He’s worried that while she’s out there, still breathing, there’s a threat to our position.
“No. It’s harder for you to accept because you know it’s not my place to take.”
He laughs mirthlessly. “Natalia Abernathy is as good as dead to everyone in this damn building, even more so to London. She wouldn’t dare show her face again.”
“I know it’s been seven years, but you do remember the girl that used to run around here?” I ask, more rhetorically, because there is no forgetting a woman like Natalia. “Because if I remember it correctly, Dad, she had more say in anything than you and Nicolas put together. What’s to stop everyone eating out of the palm of her hand again?”
A small grin starts to form on his face.
“You.”
Chapter Five
