The old man had told him to take the bus. All the way to Denver, though she hadn’t yet known that part.
“So I still have a job?” he’d asked. Not daunted by the more than an hour-long public commute each way.
According to Gabrielle, when he’d asked that question, instead of fighting about having to take the bus, he’d won her admiration and friendship.
“You’re my son. You will work in the family business and earn your keep.”
“Fine.”
His father had slammed out of his room, and five minutes later Gabrielle and Marie had knocked on his door. When he’d answered, they’d both just looked at him, as though they could see right into him.
Just like they were doing now.
“I won two thousand dollars,” he said. Which told them he hadn’t been playing with the college boys.
Marie’s hissed intake of breath, the worry shining in her eyes, were his penance. The reason he’d come to them...
He’d remember their disapproval the next time he was tempted to rebel against his father and do something stupid.
Gabrielle didn’t lift her chin from her hands as she asked, “You going to report it to the IRS?”
He hadn’t thought that far. “Yeah.” He played by the books.
“You know you’re going to get yourself in trouble if you keep this up.” Gabrielle again.
He did. Which was why he was in their dorm room instead of home in bed. Why, every time, in his quest for freedom from manipulation over the past three years, he’d run his antics by them first before carrying anything out. But not this time.
“You’re winning now, bu
t it won’t last,” Marie added. They knew his life story. Knew where and how to turn the screws. If he’d played cards that night just because he’d wanted a game of chance, then so be it. But he hadn’t. He’d played because he’d been looking for a way to slap the old man in the face. His son gambling would do it.
The heir to his fortune, caught up in the excitement of the win...
An excitement that had almost cost Walter everything. Liam had heard the story from his mother. And had repeated it to the girls on the anniversary of her death. Walter had earned his first million, married and had Liam. His whole life had been filled with the excitement of getting the carrot dangling in front of him. And suddenly, he’d been content. He had all he’d needed or ever wanted.
That’s when his father-in-law had invited him to sit in on a game of cards. A game that had taken him to Atlantic City and then to Las Vegas, where he’d squandered away his own million and had started dipping into his wife’s money.
The second chance she’d given him had been enough, though. Connelly Investments was healthy and Walter made back all he’d lost plus an extra billion or so. He never touched a card again. And had ordered his son never to do so.
“You’ve been drinking.” Gabrielle, the practical one of the two, broke into his reverie. She didn’t ask. She told. Annoying thing was, she was usually right.
“Yeah.”
She didn’t react. “What did he do this time?”
“I was dropping off a folder to the legal department today.” Liam’s current position in Connelly Investments was as liaison between upper management and the lower echelons. A fancy way of saying he was an interoffice mail boy. So, his father had justified, he could have a presence in every department. See how they all worked. Get to know everyone.
It was a step up from sorting the incoming mail, which was what he’d been doing the previous year. His first year of college, after thwarting his father’s living arrangement plan, he’d been employed as a night janitor.
Marie pulled her knees up to her ample chest, wrapping her arms around herself. “And?”
“I overheard the head counsel, my father’s second in command, making overly optimistic return promises to a potential investor on land that we don’t own.”
The facts sounded even worse out loud than they had rambling through his mind all night.
Gabrielle, a prelaw student who lived life in black-and-white, sat up. “That’s illegal.”
He shouldn’t have said anything. Shouldn’t have betrayed his father. He’d let his fear get the better of him.