“You work fast.” He leaned against the door he’d just closed. The thirty-sixth floor offices were soundproofed and what he had to say to his father had to stay between the two of them.
“You signed the papers. I told you what would happen if you did.”
“You had a spy at the bank?” Why the thought hadn’t occurred to him before then, he didn’t know. Walter was ruthless.
And Liam felt stupid. Thinking he was going to walk right in and announce to his father that he’d refused to give in to his threat. And then deliver the speech he’d been rehashing for years. The one where he told his father how much he respected and admired him, told him that he’d continue to serve him, but that he also had to have a life, a mind, of his own.
Building up to the part where he told him that while he still planned to give forty-plus hours a week to Connelly Investments, he was also going to more seriously pursue a career in journalism. Pointing out the benefits to the firm if he continued to rise to success in a world of internet information delivery.
“A spy, Liam? You think we’re playing some kind of game here? Grow up, man.”
He listened for the disappointment hiding in the derision in his father’s voice. The seemingly imperceptible note of fear.
And missed them both.
“I want to know about the conversation I overheard in George’s office this morning.” Liam stuck to his plan to fight aggression with aggression if he had to. If reason didn’t work. “Why would our head counsel promise someone an impossible investment return? Even at its best, the holding he mentioned didn’t promise those kinds of returns.”
Liam had overheard just a small bit of the conversation, but enough to know that something didn’t add up. He gave his father the particulars.
George had been on the phone and hadn’t heard Liam wander in. It had been before seven, before office staff started to arrive. Just before Walter had called Liam into his private sanctum to issue yet another threat—the one where he’d be cut off if he went through with the Arapahoe deal.
Otherwise Liam would have asked the question earlier that morning.
“That investment will not be impossible to meet.” Walter’s words were quiet. Deadening. “And you are no longer welcome here.”
Steel could not have been stronger. Or more cold.
“I heard what George said. I know that account. There’s no way it’s going to make that kind of return. I deserve to know what’s going on.”
“How dare you practice duplicity and then stand here and demand answers?”
Liam checked himself against the accusation of duplicity. The pause allowed his father to move in for the kill.
“I thought you’d learned your lesson freshman year, Liam. Today you have proven that you did not. We cannot be a team, you and I. I can no longer trust you. If you will go behind my back, keeping pertinent information from me because your two harlots call your name, there is no end to the possibilities of other ways you could betray me.”
“Buying that building had nothing to do with you, or with Connelly Investments. It wasn’t a lucrative purchase. Or a building you’d have any interest in. And they are not my, or anyone else’s, harlots. As I’ve told you before, they are family to me.”
More family to him than Walter was.
“You moved trust monies behind my back.”
“My trust money. I’m a man, Dad. I have to be able to do some things on my own.”
“But not behind my back. That trust money was yours, but it was family money.”
“From my mother’s family.” Walter had met Margaret, Liam’s mother, after he’d scratched and clawed his way to his first million. She’d been born into the privileged life.
“It was our money, your mother’s and mine, when we opened that trust for you.”
Technically. It had been given to them at his maternal grandfather’s death, with the express wish that if they didn’t need it to secure their own futures it be put in trust for Liam.
“If I’d told you about the building, you’d have done everything in your power to block that sale.”
“It’s a stupid purchase. Those old folks are paying far below average rent. You’ll never be able to turn a decent profit.”
“They’re paying all they can afford on fixed incomes.” Liam stated the more pertinent truth. “And we aren’t going to lose money on the deal. We didn’t go into it with an eye to support ourselves. Marie has her coffee shop. Gabrielle’s a lawyer. I told you that.”
“And you, Liam? While you’re so busy exerting your manhood, you still expect me to support you?”