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)
His gaze swung to beyond the corner of the house where he’d previously come up from the front. In the backdrop, he could see where Ronald had parked his Escalade. Only the front of the white vehicle was visible to him but the fact that it was there at all proved someone else had arrived, too.
The night, already fallen high in the sky, darkened around Lucas for an entirely different reason. Strange how that bullshit worked.
“Dalton! Lucas! I thought that was you, friend!”
Leaning over the railing to find the voice down below, Lucas genuinely grinned at who waved back. Standing next to the table where the children could get hot chocolate in foam cups, a familiar man laughed. The youngest of the three Alcott brothers, and a friend of Jacob’s as they were the same age, Griffin wagged a finger in Lucas’ direction.
“I’ll be right up—don’t move, man.”
Lucas laughed. “Yeah, sure.”
He’d always thought Jacob and Griffin got along well because the two had a lot in common besides just their age. Both being the babies of their families—with generational gaps between them and their brothers—made for an experience only they would truly understand.
He had personal reasons beyond just his father’s expectations for not refusing this evening. Their families had brushed shoulders over the years, mostly aided by Jacob and Griffin’s friendship. Of course, the boys’ fathers ran in the same circles of prominent men in the city, too.
A smiling Griffin welcomed Lucas with a hard smack to his back after a tight hug. “I suppose I don’t need to ask where Jacob is, huh?”
Lucas nodded off that comment. “Anywhere but here, you know?”
Griffin waved the news away, unfazed, as he stepped back from Lucas. “Yeah, well …”
What could a person say?
Some family secrets were actually raw, open wounds that people just refused to treat. The obvious estrangement between the remaining Dalton relatives, his father had been an only child and most of Ronald’s extended family were dead, was clear to the people who knew the family. At least beyond their family’s name stamped on popular beer bottles and emblazoned on the trailers of eighteen-wheelers all across the country.
A company of values, they toted on job listings. Family values, in fact. It worked because their fifteen-hundred employees across the province and country held strong. The core values of the Dalton Brewery’s work culture tried to reflect that by ensuring every employee felt appreciated and respected, like one might do for a family member, but the experience didn’t carry on at the top of the tier.
There, they were just broken.
A living, breathing lie.
Lucas had gotten a little tired of it.
“How’ve you been?” Griffin asked, leaning sideways against the deck rail.
“Do you want an honest answer?”
Griffin’s shoulder bobbed enthusiastically. “If it helps, go for it.”
Lucas chuckled. “Nothing does, that’s the point. I’ve tried everything to make myself give a shit about anything and not a bit of it has worked.”
Boxing on the weekend for his anger. Church on Sundays because he thought God might be able to teach him about patience and forgiveness. None of it made much of a difference, and he was worried that his detachment from it all meant he was turning into the spitting image of his father—and not just physically, like he already did. The face in the mirror every morning reminded him of Ronald’s lingering genes, but Lucas had stopped letting that affect more than just an annoyance he had to deal with being the bastard’s son.
Well …
Lucas ran a hand through his new haircut.
Mostly.
No, inside in heart, he was turning into someone who didn’t care. That hit different.
“Oh, it’s that kind of mood, huh?” Griffin asked after a moment of awkward silence.
“It’s been a rough couple of years,” Lucas admitted, glancing out over the rolling hills that were perfectly manicured lawns in the warmer months. “Dad’s left me with a lot, and Jacob’s finishing his last bit of college, so—”
“He told me you pay for his tuition and give him an allowance,” Griffin blurted out. “Last time we talked, I mean. I didn’t think things had gotten that bad with him and your guys’ dad. I didn’t even bother to ask him if he was coming tonight, or not.”
“Already knew,” he muttered.
“Yeah, sorry.”
“Listen …” Lucas shoved his hands into the pockets of his tweed coat to hide the way he had to flex the tension out of his fists. “Don’t take what he told you to anybody—we’re handling the family stuff in the family, you know what I mean?”
How would that affect the employees of their company to know the family-owned business responsible for their weekly pay and future retirement funds was a shouting match away from crumbling in the worst way?
They didn’t deserve that, either.
Griffin scoffed under his breath. “I know what you mean. I get how that kind of stuff starts in families like ours, though. Dad told Sloane if he didn’t give up the painting shit and get a wife before he turned forty that he’d be out of the estate entirely.”