“Stop.” I swallow my disgust and follow him down the short flight of steps lowered from the plane. “I don’t want to know what your foreman thinks about women.”
“Like you don’t get your dick wet,” he says, his voice caustic.
“Oh, I love women. Too much to disrespect them.”
“I should have known better than to send you to Berkeley,” Dad mutters, climbing into the back seat of the black Escalade that’s waiting for us. “Damn sissy school’s made you soft.”
“You didn’t send me anywhere.” I look out the window, watching the desert landscape rushing past as we leave the airfield. “And having actual principles isn’t the same as being soft.”
“You know what your problem is, Maxim?”
“I’m sure you’ll tell me.”
“You aren’t ruthless enough. You think your brother won that Senate seat worrying about some reservation water supply or burial ground?” Before I can reply, he charges on. “Damn right he didn’t. Politics requires balls of steel, and Owen’s got ’em.”
“Glad you’re pleased with one of us,” I say through tight lips.
“If you’re not a ‘fit’ for the family business and your delicate constitution isn’t suited to politics, what do you plan to do?”
He’s not ready to hear what I plan to do, and I’m not sure I want to tell him. I’ll let my actions speak for themselves. For me.
“How’s Mom?” I ask, shamelessly shifting conversational gears because this line of discussion is going nowhere.
His face softens, the hard planes yielding to what is maybe his one redeeming quality. He adores my mother. It may be the only undefiled thing left about him.
“She’s good.” He clears his throat and studies the passing landscape as I did, retreating to the scene beyond the window. “Misses you.”
“I’ll make sure to see her soon.”
“It hurt her when you didn’t come home for the holidays.”
“As much as seeing you and I at each other’s throats would have hurt her?”
I regret the words immediately. So much for redirecting our conversation. No matter what I do, it always comes back to this—to me not measuring up, me not pleasing my father, me failing. Him disappointed. Him leveraging money to twist my arm and trying to bend me to his will.
Well I won’t be bent. If he thinks I’m not ruthless, he hasn’t been paying attention. Head to head, I’d bury my brother. Owen gobbled up every crumb our father dropped, leading him down the prescribed path. Balls of steel? Fuck that. My father practically bought Owen that seat in the Senate. If I want to make my own way, I’ll have to pay my own way.
And that’s fine with me.
“God, Maxim,” my father says, his voice low and loaded with frustration. “I thought this trip might . . .” He shakes his head, letting whatever he hoped for trail off with the unspoken words. ?
?What happened to you? What happened to us, son? We used to hunt together.” He chuckles and flashes me a reminiscent grin. “Hell, you’re a crack shot. You can shoot the wings off a flea. And fly fishing in Big Horn River.”
We cooked our haul over an open fire that night. I silently complete the memory, still tasting the fish and the laughter, the camaraderie that came so easily then.
“And remember that week we broke in Thunder?” he asks.
“That horse was half Arabian, half demon,” I recall with a short bark of laughter.
“He was no match for us, though. Between you and me, we broke him in.”
An image sears my mind. Thunder, with rolling eyes and a bucking back, his neighing a battle cry. We took turns, Dad and I, that week on our Montana ranch, riding the horse, bridling him, training and taming him until my father could lead him around a fenced circle by a rope, the horse’s spirit as subdued as his light trot.
Docile. Broken.
And that’s how my father wants me. Trotting obediently, my neck draped with the reins of his power.
“That horse was no match for the two of us. We can do anything together,” Dad continues. “Come run Cade Energy with me, Max.”