Dear Father
Jake
“ . . . I’ve been damaged too much to be perfect . . .”
I hate myself.
For making her clean up after my mess. Again. For pushing her away, for making her cry – yes, I saw the tears.
Pushing her away was the second thing on my mind when I drove away after that kiss. The first thought was to turn the car around and take her to bed.
Because the best thing for the both of us is to stay away from each other. She needed to stay away from me for her own sake because it has never ended well for those in the receiving end of my stupid obsessions.
That coupled with my urge to detach myself from my object of obsession when it’s over is more than enough reason for her to stay away from me.
But I pushed too far. I hurt her. And now I am the bad guy.
“… and with you acting like a jerk all the time I’m sure as hell that it isn’t gonna be you.”
I don’t want her to choose me. But it wasn’t a good feeling watching her tear up because of something I did.
My father’s secretary announced my entrance before I enter but I don’t wait for permission before striding in.
He is sitting in his study, a glass of whiskey in his hand and a small cigarette in the other.
He coughs slightly when he sees me. “You couldn’t wait for me to hide the cigarette?” he croaks, “you’re not supposed to see it.”
I pull out a chair and slump on it. “You’re actions doesn’t influence me dad.”
He crushed the butt of the cigarette on a silver ashtray. “Bad morning?”
Oh you have no idea father.
“No,” I reply him curtly, “you know why I am here.”
Just like me, my father is a tall man, brown hair with sprinkles of white and a physique most men will kill for. I look so much like father – same dark hair, same height, same facial features, but he has the light brown eyes of Adam and Mia and their knack for being intrusive.
He stands and does a little stretch thing before he sits back down. “Doctor said to do that every twenty minutes,” he point to his back, “stressed bones.”
He pours whiskey in a glass and passed it on to me, “Here, it’s like I say, for men to have a conversation, there must be a glass in hand.”
I provide a lopsided smile at his words because my father has a way of turning serious conversations to a child’s play.
I take a sip of the whisky, feeling the burn in my throat. “You made Adam the COO.”
“And I heard you haven’t introduced him yet,” he leans back on his chair.
“There’s no need to,” I tell him, “the seat doesn’t belong to him.”
“You want to revoke the appointment.”
“I am revoking the appointment.”
“You can,” my father shrugs.
I am taken aback. The man has never been one to back down first. “Just like that?”
“It’s your company. All of it. It has always been. I was only … guarding it for you. I made you CEO because I trust your judgment son.”
I tilt my head. “Where is the catch? If you trusted my judgment you would have filled me in first before you appointed a COO.”
My father is a strong-willed man, always the last to back down from a competition, always the first to win. He is one track minded, determined and has the wisdom of a man who gained as much wealth as he did in a very young age.
That’s why I was taken aback when I heard he was making Adam the COO.
“It’s Adam.”
“He is a dick.”
“He is.”
“He is gonna destroy everything in his path I can't let that happen to something,” – and someone – “I care about.”
“It was the only thing I can do, son,” my father takes a sip of his whisky, “I tried everything with Adam. He wouldn’t stop destroying everything. I could only make the choice to give him some responsibility –”
“In my company?”
“Make him a silent executive then. Hard to bring it all crashing down when he is invisible.”
“I want him out, not invisible. You of all people know how hard it is to keep Adam in the reigns.”
If there’s anyone who suffered the brunt of Adam’s waywardness it is my father. If he didn’t work as much as he does, he would’ve been bankrupt ten, twenty years ago.
“Okay,” my father pulls on his dealing face and leans forward, his hands clasped in front of him in a businesslike manner, “I’ll make you a deal, Jake,” he smirks, “keep Adam and you get to own the New Orleans project.”
“What?”
The New Orleans project is a new project my father is building from the scratch and if he does it right – something I have no doubt about – it is going to be the next big thing in the business world. The project is huge, promising and I spent a lot of months planning just the perfect ideas for the project.
“You’re just going to drop that on my lap?”
“It comes with an ultimatum,” he leans back, looking extremely satisfied with himself.
I mull it over but I don’t even need to. The New Orleans project is a once in a lifetime opportunity. That compared to keeping Adam in the company is like getting gold in trade for cocoa. Adam being an invisible executive means keeping him away from Anastasia and keeping him out of reach enough to fire him if I wanted to without causing much of a fuss.
A win-win for me.
“Fine,” I tell him, “a silent executive it is.”
The satisfying look on the older Keaton’s face tells me I made the right decision.
“I always knew I raised you right.”
On my way out of the study I almost bump into Mia heading past the door. She looks up at me, a shocked expression morphing her features.
“You’re home?” she cries.
“Apparently you are either.”
“Don’t sound so disappointed,” she pouts, “the Paris trip was cut short.”
“Unfortunately.”
I stride past her to the giant doors. My family has always preferred the big houses to small ones so every building we ever owned were architecturally structured to be huge and massive to our taste.
Mia follows me outside. “And the girl?” she asks me.
“What about her?”
“Fired her yet?”
At this point Anastasia might run away herself thanks to how bad I’ve been treating her.
“I’m not going to fire her.”
“Yeah I was going to talk to you about that,” Mia mumbles, “you probably shouldn’t.”
I give her a look. “You’re the one who called me out on my stupid obsession.”
“I was wrong okay?” she balances her weight from foot to foot, “if she makes you happy, then—”
“Too fucking late, Mia,” I tell her, before getting into my car and zooming off.