Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 101147 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 506(@200wpm)___ 405(@250wpm)___ 337(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101147 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 506(@200wpm)___ 405(@250wpm)___ 337(@300wpm)
“We’re breaking up?” Cian asks, sounding disappointed. “But I wanted to watch the episode where all the women yell at each other. It’s my favorite part. I still can’t believe they found twenty females who would actually fight each other to date Dante.”
His lovely wife takes his hand. She seems to understand that the evening has taken a distinctly bad turn. “Come on, baby. We’ll watch it in our room.”
Beckett stands with them. I can’t miss the way he slides his hand playfully across his wife’s curves. Beckett Finn is a happy man. Beckett Finn is a man who isn’t about to get his ass chewed out.
I sigh as the Finns leave, and I’m alone with my father. The room, which was alive and full moments before, is now as quiet as a tomb. Someone has been smart enough to turn off the sound, but the video is still running. It plays pictures of me and the women I turned down one after another.
Yep. That’s never going away.
My stomach sinks as I look at my dad. I love the man, I truly do. But I don’t understand him most of the time. Donald Dellacourt took Dellacorp from a small-time cattle farm to one of the largest conglomerates on the plane. A few years back, he handed over the daily operations to Susan. I don’t blame him. Susan is a better CEO. I wish my father could see that I have something to provide, too.
Like tabloid scandals and a constant stream of mistresses.
“This is the end, son.” My father doesn’t yell. It’s a bad sign. Donald Dellacourt is a larger-than-life man. He yells. He screams. It almost never means anything. When he’s quiet, that’s when I know I’m in trouble.
“The end of what?” I hear the irritation in my voice. It’s a typical reaction. I’ve never been one to take punishment well. “I’m thirty years old, Dad. You can’t send me to my room.”
“I can kick you out of your room.”
I swallow once, and then twice. He’s joking. He isn’t actually going to kick me out of my home. This is beyond bad. “You can’t be serious.”
My father pours a couple of fingers of Scotch and takes a long swallow. “I am deadly serious. By your age, I had already founded a company, married your mother, and we had Susan. I’ve given you all the time you need to mature, and you keep acting like an idiot. Tomorrow morning, you’re going to be utterly reviled in the press.”
He’s worried about that? I’ve weathered many a scandal. “They’ll find a new story the day after. It’s not a problem, Dad. I’ll go down to the surface and pose with poor children. I’ll donate some meal pills to the homeless shelters. It’ll blow over.”
My father brings his fist down on the bar, making the crystal shake. “It will not blow over! It won’t blow over for me or your mother or your sister. All of your life you’ve had everything given to you. You went to the best schools. You’ve always had the best money could buy. You never have to go to the surface for anything but a photo op. I lived on the surface, son. It’s harsh, but it makes a man out of you. If I don’t do something about it, you’ll stay a boy the rest of your life. I don’t want that for you.”
I don’t like where this conversation is going. I have plans, big plans. Plans that do not involve getting cut off from my inheritance.
Six months before, something amazing fell into my lap, and I’m close to a major breakthrough. “Dad, give me three more months. The sunscreen Meg brought back is going to sell like gangbusters. The bio-med guys almost have it reverse engineered. There are some compounds in it that don’t naturally occur on this plane, but we’ll make it work.”
My father sighs. He suddenly looks wearier than I can ever remember seeing him. “I have no doubt that the chemists can make it work. Don’t try to sell this as some big job. Meggie gave you the sunscreen, and you passed it off to the bio-med team. It doesn’t make you a businessman. You spend far more time partying than you do in the office.”
Humiliation flashes through my system. Everyone discounts me. Even my own family. “How about all the marketing research I’ve done? I can sell this. I can make this our biggest seller within a year. I’ve done the financials. Sunscreen tech can be the most profitable arm of Dellacorp within five years. Bio-med has been our weak point. I can make us a leader in the market.”
My father looks far past his sixty-five years as he shakes his head. His anger seems spent, replaced with something I can only term as disappointment. “No. You’re off the sunscreen project. You’ll bring too much bad publicity. It’s best if you take a break. I’ll make you a deal. Get married, and I’ll let you back in. A wedding would mollify the stockholders. They’ll think you’re finally settling down. Look what happened to Malone Corp when JT married his consort. Might I add, she was pregnant at the time and it wasn’t his kid. Poor thing got hauled off the Earth plane in a delicate condition and JT stepped up to the plate and made his family proud. Got some great PR, too. You know the more I think about it, the more I like this plan.”