Seventeen
Samuel had often felt it was his father’s back, not face, he would be able to pick out of a crowd.
Parker Kane’s lectures always began this way. With his father staring out of some window, hands clasped behind his suit jacket, silence radiating from him like an arctic wind as he gazed contemplatively into the middle distance.
When he was a boy, Samuel had assumed it was because his father was so disappointed in whatever it was he had done or failed to do that he needed time to search for the words to describe it.
Now he recognized it for exactly what it was.
A tactic to further unnerve him.
He had been summoned to his father’s office by a text from Charlotte at 6:00 a.m.
Your father would like to see you this morning.
Samuel had known it was coming, but it didn’t stop his stomach from knotting all the same. When he’d arrived at his father’s office at precisely eight o’clock, Charlotte had looked at him with the kind of pitying, hangdog expression usually reserved for people being marched to the gallows.
One look at his father’s desk confirmed that was his fate.
Next to a large manila envelope was what appeared to be a print copy of an article on the PhillyGossip website.
“Sex, Lies, and Candy! Not-so-Sweet Scandal at Kane Foods,” the title screamed.
He quickly scanned it, his eyes snagging on a series of words that painted the whole, lurid picture. “A source close to the Kanes” had not only confirmed Arlie’s recent involvement in a “devastating corporate espionage case,” but hinted that her romantic involvement with the CEO of Kane Foods International may not be “purely romantic” in nature. An unstated, but heavily implied, suggestion that Samuel, and Kane Foods by extension, was guilty of shady business practices.
He had no doubt that the “source” was Taegan but given this context, realized Arlie had never been the true target.
“I’ve often wondered,” his father said, not bothering to face him, “exactly what kind of pleasure you derive from humiliating me.”
Samuel’s jaw clenched, his teeth grinding together.
There was no correct answer to this question. It wasn’t even a question, really. It was an accusation. A verdict.
One Samuel had let stand in so many of these conversations.
“None whatsoever.” Samuel dropped into one of the chairs reserved for inferiors who were required to address him across the moat of his desk. “But then, I don’t consider a sensationalized story on a gossip website cause for humiliation.”
“Henry had mentioned that you’d been rather...distracted on the yacht. It seems he’s having some misgivings about continuing with his investment,” his father continued. “Of course, at the time, I reassured him that you are fully committed to our partnership.
“Which makes me look even more foolish. That I wouldn’t know that my own son was consorting with a woman accused of corporate espionage.” His father tapped the pads of his thumbs together, still addressing his remarks to the Philadelphia skyline. The morning sun had crept high enough on the horizon to film the skyscraper windows with molten gold. “At least she had the decency to resign.”
A leaden weight gathered in Samuel’s stomach. Losing the confidence of an investor was one thing.
Losing Arlie Banks was another entirely.
But then, he hadn’t lost her.
He had never had her to begin with.
She had failed to answer any of his texts, or return any of his many calls. Not that he knew what he would say if she had. And in the end, when it came to Arlie, he had never known what to say.
“Of course, I’ve reached out to our media contacts about distancing Kane Foods from her.”
Samuel’s hands tightened on the wooden arms of the chair. “Whatever you decide where I’m concerned, you will leave Arlie Banks out of it.”
At last, his father turned to him. “Do you honestly think you’re in any kind of position to make those kinds of demands?”
“I think I’m in the perfect position to do so.” He met his father’s icy glare. “You forget that I’ve been on the back end of every deal that Kane Foods has negotiated. I know every secret, every cut corner, every oiled palm. However unpleasant you find your current circumstances, I can promise that if I decide to talk to the gossip rags, or any media outlet, for that matter, the Kane family name will be on the lips of those leeches for years to come.”
His father’s tight, parsimonious smile melted into corrosive sneer. “I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that you would so easily turn your back on your family. After all, when Arlie’s mother stole—”
“No!” Samuel’s fist came down hard enough on the desk to make his father’s pen jump. He had no memory of standing, no consciousness of anything other than the blood thundering in his ears. “Your pathetic acolytes may have accepted your accusation without question, but Mom told me the real reason you got rid of Margaret Banks.”
His father’s face looked like a punctured balloon.
“Mom was going to leave you.” Speaking these words out loud filled him with savage satisfaction. “She was going to leave you, and Margaret was going to help. And you know what? I wish she had. At least then she would have had a few precious months of freedom before she died.”
Despite his best efforts, Samuel’s voice grew harsh with emotion at these last words.
Eight days.
Eight days had transpired between the time Arlie’s mother had been fired and his mother learning she had stage three breast cancer. Whatever plans she’d had for an escape had taken a rapid back seat to the endless parade of doctors and specialists who’d made their way to Fair Weather Hall.
His father’s laugh was as thin and dry as rice paper. “With all those books you read, it’s no wonder you imagine your life to be a gothic tragedy.”
Samuel ignored the comment. “You ruined an innocent woman, but you will not do the same to her daughter.”
“But is she innocent?” His father lazily brushed the paper on his desk, a gesture deliberately designed to let Samuel know just how unmoved he’d been by his display of temper. “It seems she’s managed to make a good deal of trouble for herself. And many others.”
“You have no idea what really happened.”