‘Dude.’ Nailed it, I commended myself as Emmett cleared his throat.
“Nothing. Just work stuff.”
“What’s work stuff?” I uncapped my water and leaned across the opposite side of the counter. “I still don’t even know what you do for a living. What exactly is your job?”
“I just do stuff here and there,” Emmett answered so vaguely I had to grin, weirdly tantalized by his secretiveness.
“Holy shit, Emmett. What do you do for a living?” I pressed. “What are you – a hitman? A male stripper?”
He cocked an eyebrow. “You think I could be a male stripper?”
He laughed as I blushed. And just like that, he had the upper hand again.
“Long story short, I invest in whatever stocks or properties Julian invests in,” Emmett finally said, his answer so normal my shoulders kind of slumped.
“Oh.” Nothing sketchy after all. “Good move though. Julian’s always been a genius, hasn’t he?”
“Pretty much. And now he owns the Empires. I’m sure you heard.”
“Uh, yeah, my dad basically flipped out the day that happened,” I snorted as I remembered the day.
My dad rarely called but he called me that day to literally scream into the phone that Julian Hoult – “Emmett’s older brother, and the same Julian you grew up going to Empires games with every Sunday” – had just bought “the whole goddamned team.” It was pretty big news in my family, and I was obviously excited, but I remembered feeling a deep dread as well.
Dad’s fixation with the entire Hoult family had finally waned over the years, but I knew that Julian’s purchase of our favorite baseball team would pretty much serve as new fuel for Dad’s Hoult-obsessed fire.
Which it did.
“Yeah, I can probably imagine your dad’s reaction,” Emmett chuckled with a wary glance at me. Clearing his throat, he changed the subject. “What about you though? How’s your spin-off going?”
“My spin-off?”
“Your restaurant. I figured you opened it to drive business back to the warehouse,” Emmett said. I cocked an eyebrow.
“Yes. That’s… exactly why I opened it, actually. Thank you for getting that. My parents were so upset that I didn’t just dunk all my money into sprucing up the warehouse.”
Before I opened up Stanton Family Market, there was just Stanton Family Seafood. It was one of the city’s prominent seafood wholesalers since my grandfather founded the company in 1941, and since I was a kid, its headquarters was a big, un-glamorous, viciously salty-smelling warehouse in Red Hook, Brooklyn. When my grandfather passed, my dad inherited the business, and for awhile, he continued selling seafood like shrimp and fish and lobster to the local restaurants that had been loyal to the company for decades.
But by the time I was in middle school, the business was struggling. New management at restaurants switched to new wholesalers. Old regulars started scaling back the size of their orders. Money was tight. I pretended not to know, but Dad borrowed cash from Emmett’s father twice when I was in high school – just to keep us and the business barely afloat.
“Yeah, I remember the warehouse doing… not so great for awhile,” Emmett admitted with a hint of guilt in his voice. “I used to overhear my dad talking to yours on the phone.”
“It’s okay. Everyone knew we were struggling. They were just merciful and pretended not to,” I shrugged, trying to look blithe though my face was burning for my dad.
He always tried so desperately to keep up with the Hoults. I actually didn’t find out till too late that all my childhood vacations to the Hamptons with Emmett’s family were damned near bankrupting Dad. He didn’t have the money they had, but he still tried so hard to keep that glamorous image.
It was no surprise that it eventually all fell through.
Dad couldn’t keep up with the Hoults’ lavish lifestyle, and after Emmett’s dad passed ten years ago, he no longer cared to try. He did, however, hold onto his dying company till about four years ago.
“So four years ago. That was when he finally bit the bullet?” Emmett asked.
“Yeah, he knew he had to sell, but he hated knowing he’d be selling to a competitor. He was like, ‘They won’t keep the name and we’ll just get wiped from history,’” I snorted, shaking my head. “So dramatic.”
“Well, that company was his pride and joy. Even I remember.”
“Yeah. His pride, his joy – the bane of his whole existence. I mean I did get it. I knew it hurt most because he wanted to make my grandpa proud and keep our family name alive.”
“So you bought the company to keep it going,” Emmett said, a faint smile touching the corner of his lips.