Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 473(@300wpm)
Ever.
“That was the running joke, right?” Lucas asked his father over his shoulder, fully aware that Ronald’s hands formed fists overtop of his keyboard at the question. “It’s what Grandad told anybody who ever asked—what are you planning to do, die in that brewery, Mitchel?”
Ronald’s jaws clenched.
Lucas went right ahead with the rest of the story. Or rather, how it had always gone whenever it left his grandfather’s lips. “Whatever, but it’s never going to Ronald.”
Never Ronald became the slogan employees whispered mockingly behind Ronald’s back for years at the brewery. What had been said as a joke by Mitchel actually held a lot of weight behind the private walls of their family homes over the decades. Lucas had never quite understood what changed his grandfather’s mind—why that seventy-five percent ownership of the brewery transferred to Ronald after Mitchel died—but it couldn’t be a coincidence that the first twenty-five percent changed hands from father to son shortly after Jacob had been born.
Lucas remembered that period in his childhood well.
For a time, while their faces were in the papers and a journalist had been penning how the family business would continue on, the Dalton men had got along. His parents had also fought less often, and life seemed happy.
Or that was the pretense, anyway.
It didn’t last long.
“I took his bullshit and abuse for years,” Ronald hissed from across the office. “Do you know how many times he called me down to the plant just to shout at me in front of everyone he could get to watch? He got a kick out of humiliating me every damn chance he could. I worked my ass off to give that man what he wanted, and that’s all he ever gave me in return. Nothing. I got to be the fucking joke, Lucas. Well,” his father said, haughty and pleased as he leaned back in his chair to widen his arms at the room, “who is laughing now?”
“You don’t see the parallel, do you?” Lucas asked.
Ronald blinked at the question. “What are you talking about?”
“That it’s generational. The way we hate each other—it’s an ingrained trait in this family. Passed on and on. He couldn’t talk about his father without getting red in the face, and there you sit, ready to jump across the desk because of how he let it bleed into you, too. I guess that just leaves me,” Lucas added, turning around to face his father again, “and you. Is how you treated your sons any different?”
“I think you’ve got it pretty good here, actually.”
“Really?”
Ronald smacked the desk with his palms, already annoyed at being questioned. “I’d say so—you practically come and go as you please. You haven’t had to answer to me or anyone else in the last couple of years, and hell, you still had a parking space to roll your car into when you showed up to work this morning after fucking off for two weeks, so—”
“My brother is dead. Don’t use my time off because of that as something to throw in my face. I mean, it’s not exactly beneath you, Dad, but it’s a sore subject.”
That was Ronald’s one warning.
Lucas dared his father to cross it.
No surprise, the asshole did.
In fact, Ronald leaped over it, saying, “Lucas, I couldn’t give a damn if you mother keeled over and you just got the call before you walked into this office—and frankly, I’m glad your brother’s dead. It’s one less thing to concern myself with, and if you had even a lick of sense, you would see it the same way. Take it as a blessing, and move the hell on. It’s not like we don’t have enough to focus on here between the upcoming tax deadline and the changes to the call center home office in Fredericton. Also, you need a desk for your office. I suggest you get on that.”
“I already told you, I won’t need it. “
Ronald, shifting his chair back in front of his screen, hadn’t even been listening. “And tell that woman out there taking all your calls to have her desk cleaned off by the end of my day. My new secretary starts tomorrow.”
“I only came here to tell you I quit.”
Finally, he had his father’s attention.
Ronald’s dark eyes nailed into Lucas from across the room. “Come again?”
“I quit.”
“Lucas, I’m not sure that you understand how this goes. Your grandfather left you a twenty-five percent share of ownership in this brewery. A resignation means you’ll be forced to give up or sell those shares.”
“To a buyer of my choosing,” Lucas returned, unbothered. The kicker that would throw a wrench into every plan his father might try to work out in retaliation for the choice Lucas had every right to make for himself. “And there isn’t a time limit.”
“It’ll be within reason, or the goddamn courts will make you.”