One for the Money

Lizzy snorts. “The last time I asked him where he was going I got a thirty-minute lecture about this endangered deciduous shrub that’s only found in a particular five-hundred square miles in Siberia.”

My father claps his hand on the table. “I don’t know why my son has to go off chasing endangered panda bears when we have a company to run right here in New York City.”

“It was a shrub,” Lizzy says, somewhat mulish.

“Actually, panda bears aren’t endangered anymore.” My brother’s wife, Bianca, wears an earnest expression. Her love for the environment comes up often. “There are over eighteen hundred of them living in the wild thanks to conservation programs in China.”

“Carter is a professor at Oxford,” Sophia says, scrolling on her phone, probably booking luxury villas in all the places we’re mentioning. “Why does he get to have adventures? I thought they were supposed to wear tweed and have gray hair.”

“Put your phone away at the table,” my mother tells her.

“Didn’t your aunt have a panda?” Emerson asks, his expression thoughtful.

Finn winces. “I was hoping no one remembered that.”

“It made quite a stir in the rare collectibles community.”

“Your aunt had a panda?” I ask, afraid to hear it will be a hide or something. I’m not passionate about the environment the way Bianca is, but I still don’t like hunting for sport. Especially when it comes to not-quite-endangered species.

He sighs. “She was having a midlife crisis. She read something about this woman who captured the first baby panda and brought it to America. And decided to try it herself. I found out when an alt-PETA group decided to break into Hughes Industries at night to express their displeasure. It took forever to get the grass stains out of the upholstery.”

“What happened to the baby panda?” Bianca demands to know.

“It was returned safely,” he assures them.

Bianca still looks suspicious, but the conversation moves to Daphne’s wedding, something that my mother never tires of talking about. My father is only interested in the guest list. He wants the most prestigious people to attend. Daphne is fighting for it to stay small, but it definitely runs the risk of turning into a circus.

Or a gladiator ring, as it were.

“How was it returned?” I ask, my voice low.

A soft laugh. “Yes, I had a baby panda in my Lamborghini. No, it didn’t fit in the baby seat. Nor was it precisely a baby. It tried humping my leg while I was driving through New Jersey.”

“Oh my God.”

“I surrendered it at the Central Park Zoo, along with a very large check to keep the animal safe until it could be returned to its home in nature.”

“It’s official. Your family is actually more wild than mine.”

“You didn’t think it was possible, did you?”

Looking around at all the people I love, I huff a laugh. “No, not really.”

Daphne’s voice rises. She tries to assert herself, but she’s a people-pleaser at heart. She’s always struggled with disobeying our parents. Incipient tears thicken her voice. “I said we weren’t inviting more than five hundred people.”

My mother does her magic hand waving thing. “That was an estimate.”

“It was a limit,” Emerson says, his voice hard as steel. He’s obsessed with my sister, which is a point in his favor. But he wouldn’t hesitate to start a fight to defend her. Daphne is near tears, and this particular gladiator ring is about to draw blood if I don’t stop it.

“Seems to me that since we’re paying for this,” my dad says, “we get to decide.”

“We’re paying for it,” Emerson says, as if it’s final.

No one tells my dad what to do. Especially not a man who maybe kidnapped my sister barely six months ago. Sure, he gave her back, but it still leaves him on thin ice. I’ve spent enough time at his modern beachfront home to get to know him. To trust him. Leo makes a point of having Emerson and Daphne over to his house for dinner on a regular basis for the same reason. But over the past six months, other members of my family have considered locking her up in the Morelli mansion until she recovers from Stockholm Syndrome.

“Dad,” I say, my voice loud but calm. “Did you get my email about the foundation’s upcoming gala? I need you to give the keynote address this year.”

“Make Lucian do it,” Sophia says. “He’s the one who runs Morelli Holdings.”

“Thanks for volunteering me,” Lucian says.

The two siblings have a long-standing history of needling each other. Unfortunately, that also raises the tension in the room. After a power struggle at Morelli Holdings, my father lost his position as CEO to his oldest son. He’s never really accepted it.

My father stands up, looking fierce. “We are giving you our daughter’s hand in marriage,” he says to Emerson LeBlanc. “One would think you might be grateful.”