Page 81 of Long Story Short

I stop pacing. “Five hundred thousand?”

He laughs. “No, son, million. You can afford it.”

I try not to cringe at the condescending way he calls me son. I used to soak it in. Somehow, it used to feel like a compliment when he’d call me that. Now, it’s the furthest thing from it. “That isn’t the point,” I finally respond, wishing I’d never answered this call.

“It is to me. I need the money, and you have it. It’s my money to begin with. I wouldn’t need it if you hadn’t stolen my company from me and forced your mother to leave me and take me for everything I’m worth.”

“What’s it for?” I ask, running a hand through my hair as I can feel the familiar tension of unease building in my chest.

“You don’t get to ask me that,” he snaps.

“I do when you’re asking me for five hundred million dollars.”

He doesn’t say anything to that. The silence between us is long. So long that I pull the phone away from my ear and double-check that the call is still connected.

Finally, he clears his throat. “You owe me for stealing my company from me.”

The words land like a punch to the gut. A clean hit—or maybe a dirty one, coming from him.

I close my eyes. “You don’t get to use that against me,” I respond, my voice quieter than I’d like it to be when speaking to him.

“I built that company and gave you everything you needed to take it.”

“You were running it into the ground, limiting the success it could have because of a silly grudge.”

“You wouldn’t have it if it weren’t for me.”

“I wouldn’t have had to fix it if it weren’t for you. If you hadn’t gotten so greedy and blinded by a decades-old feud that you couldn’t look into the future.”

He lets out another sinister laugh that makes my skin crawl. “Oh, you think you’re better than me.”

Of course I’m better than him. He doesn’t set the bar very high, but I don’t say that out loud. There’s no reason to. Instead, I focus on the facts of what happened between us.

“I made the call you couldn’t,” I finally get out, my words true. He was so blinded by the hate he had for Archer’s family that he was limiting the growth the family company could have. I took the proof of what we could be to the board, and they decided they liked my vision—along with Archer and Winnie’s—more than my father’s.

He’s quiet for a few moments. I don’t think I like his silence, my stomach uneasy about what he could be coming up with. “If you don’t help me,” he finally begins, “I might have to get creative.”

My jaw tightens, and my spine straightens. I swear the blood drains from my face at his words. “What does that mean?”

“I still know the deals you’re trying to get done. I still hear things. You guys have a lot riding on them. A lot of people trusting you to keep things stable.” There’s a coldness to his tone. “It’d be a shame if someone started asking the wrong questions.”

There it is.

A threat.

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” I respond, hoping my tone remains confident and composed. I don’t know what he’s referring to, but I don’t want to find out. No matter how hard Archer and I try to lead the company completely by the book, we still inherited them from our fathers. When we took over the company, we realized that a lot of things were done off the books; there were many details about certain deals and accounts we weren’t privy to. Since we took over, we’ve tried to clean it up and make everything legitimate, but there still could be things we never discovered or loose ends we didn’t tie up. Whatever those may be, they could still hurt future deals, and I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if they came back to affect the company.

“You’re not part of this anymore,” I add on.

“That doesn’t mean I don’t know things investors might be interested in. Things the board might not love.”

My head falls backward. “You’d tank your own company for…what? To prove a point because I wouldn’t pay you when you should still have all the money in the world?”

He lets out a bitter laugh. “That company stopped being mine the second you and your pathetic sister took it from me.”

My jaw tightens as I see red at the way he talks about Winnie. She’s his daughter. I’m disgusted he could ever call her that. He’s no father to either of us.

He doesn’t seem to care that I don’t respond to him. “Five hundred,” he repeats. “And then I’ll disappear and leave you to run the company you never would’ve had if it weren’t for me.”