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I mean I was good. Just not that good.

Besides, my brain was always going to make me more money than my body. Granddad knew it, too.

Didn't stop us from dreaming.

“One day,” he'd said.

I can hear his voice as clearly as if he's standing behind me.

“One day, Mitch, we'll have our own team.”

I snorted at him. I was seventeen and knew fucking everything.

“Sure, Granddad.”

“I'm serious.”

“You gonna buy some major league rugby to come play in the states?”

“No, I can’t afford it.” He'd grinned at me. “But you will. You're gonna take what we have and get filthy rich.”

Cocky old bastard.

Turns out he was right. I look around my office.

The view. The art. The absurd amount of square footage one man absolutely does not require.

Filthy rich might actually be underselling it.

“You couldn't stick around to see it, huh?”

The words come out before I can stop them. Silence answers.

Naturally.

I swallow around the sudden fucking boulder in my throat.

Christ.

I hate this part.

The emotions. The memories.

All that messy shit you can't organize into columns or solve with an algorithm.

Give me a hostile takeover any day.

Numbers make sense.

People? Not so much. Dead people are even worse.

I rub my thumb across the edge of the photograph.

“Well, old man. We did it.”

We. Because I can own every goddamn share on paper, but the Carolina Rovers will never belong entirely to me.

A piece belongs to him.