Corrupt (Devil's Night 1)

“I’m a professional athlete,” I responded. “I’ve been in more magazines than you.”

He snickered. “This isn’t about making better choices, Michael. This is about you consistently defying me. Whatever I want, you do the opposite.”

He stood up from his chair and took his glass of what I assumed was his usual Scotch and stood next to his floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city. “As you grew up and became a man, I thought you’d be more agreeable, but you haven’t stopped. At every turn of the hand, you—”

“Back on topic,” I cut in, straightening my back. “My future.”

We’d had this conversation—or fight—several times. I didn’t need a rehash.

“Fine,” he allowed. “What do you want?”

“You were right,” I admitted, swallowing the bitterness in my mouth. “In ten—fifteen—years I’ll be looking for college coaching positions, and as I look ahead, my career loses its luster. It doesn’t have a future.”

He inhaled a deep breath, looking as if he liked the sound of that. “I’m listening.”

“Let me try something on for size,” I suggested. “Let’s see what I can do with some of your interests.”

“Like what?”

I shrugged, pretending to be thinking, as if I hadn’t come in here with plan. “How about Delcour and fifty thousand shares of Ferro?”

He laughed as my audacity, which is exactly what I wanted. I knew he wouldn’t go for it.

“Fifty thousand shares would make you a partner,” he pointed out, setting down his glass and taking a seat again. “Son or no son, you don’t get those kinds of perks just handed to you.”

He fanned out his suit jacket, leaning back in his seat and pinning me with a stare. “And not in Meridian City,” he demanded. “If you embarrass me, I’d like it less visible.”

“Fine.” I nodded. “What about…FANE then?”

Rika’s family had given their jewelry store the family name when it’d been opened years before she was born.

He pinched his eyebrows together, looking suspicious. “FANE?”

Shit. I’d moved too fast. He was going to say no.

I shrugged, trying to downplay it. “Everything is tucked away in Thunder Bay, isn’t it? Out of sight? Let’s see what I can do with the shop, the house, and the Fane’s holdings.”

“Absolutely not,” he answered. “All of that will be your brother’s someday.”

I stilled. Trevor’s? Not Rika’s?

In his will, Schrader Fane had named his daughter as his sole heir. Rika would inherit everything upon either, her graduation from college, or her twenty-fifth birthday, whichever came first. Mr. Fane had named my father, Rika’s godfather, the trustee until that time, which had been just fine with Rika’s mother. She took no interest in business, nor was she capable of even running her own household, let alone a multi-million dollar estate.

If everything went to Trevor, though, that meant—

“You must realize by now that they will eventually be married,” my father told me when I didn’t say anything.

Married.

My muscles ached, every single fucking one tight as I stared at my father and fought not to lose my shit.

What did I car

e anyway? She and Trevor deserved each other, and I was sure we’d be more than done with her by then.

“Makes sense,” I agreed trying to unknot my stomach.

“It’ll be sometime after they both graduate,” he told me. “We can’t have her spreading her wings too wide and taking off. He’ll marry her, put a Crist baby in her, and everything Fane will be ours, including Little Rika. That’s the plan.”