To my father, to me, to the rest of the world that didn’t mean shit. It was just a guaranteed seat at the head of the table. But on my thirteenth birthday, that all changed. I remembered that day like it was yesterday.
That day, I was sitting on the sofa in Dad’s office, trying to solve a Rubik’s cube while listening to him lecture someone about international trade tax, when his lawyer plopped a file on his desk. The moment Dad had seen what it read, I watched him transform. He’d looked over at me with the most intense hatred in his eyes. Then he stood up, walked across the room, grabbed me by the shirt and slammed me against the wall.
“I bust my ass. I sacrifice time with my family.” He clenched my shirt tighter as he spit his words in my face. “I sold my soul.” He lifted me up then slammed me again. This time my head hit the wall so hard, it cracked the sheetrock. “And all you had to do was exist.” He let go of my shirt, sending me tumbling to the floor. “I’ll make sure you earn that money. You’ll earn every single fucking penny.”
I had no idea what he was talking about, not yet anyway. Common sense told me Dad wasn’t angry atme, but great-grandpa Donahue wasn’t exactly around anymore for him to take it out on. And thirteen year olds didn’t focus on common sense anyway. All I knew was that from that point on, my father was different. I became the son who was also an enemy. He treated me as though I’d stolen from him, so he stole from me. He stole the rest of my childhood by making me work with him instead of hanging out with my friends. He took my innocence by showing me the darkest depths of his world. And he robbed me of my dignity every time he laid his hands on me—until I was finally old enough to start fighting back.
He was right, though.
I’d earned every fucking penny.
It wasn’t until years later, when I was eighteen years old, sitting in an attorney’s office, where I’d been privately summoned—without my father’s knowledge—that I knew exactly what that day had meant.
In 1911, my great-grandfather became this country’s very first billionaire. Twenty years later, he set up a trust.
For me.
Of course, at that time, he had no idea of knowingIwould be me. He’d simply set up a trust for the first-born, fourth-generation Donahue male. Every heir before me, including my father and grandfather, received stock in companies as their trust.
I got cash—a lotof cash.
John R. Donahue had set aside a hefty portion of his financial estate for this very day. While all the males before me had to strategize and manage their share of the Donahue family fortune in order to keep it alive, I just had to cash a check. The only stipulations were: I couldn’t be in jail, I had to be mentally stable, and the trust didn’t mature until my twenty-fifth birthday. My guess was he figured by then I’d either be smart enough to invest it back into the company or fed up enough to get the fuck out. That act alone gave me hope that at least my great gramps was a decent human. Money changed people. I’d seen firsthand how it turned men into monsters and women into whores.
I exited all my tabs and rolled my chair away from my desk. It was twenty minutes until one o’clock—fifty minutes until my meeting with family attorney. His office was on the seventeenth floor of the Roosevelt Tower, which was exactly eleven minutes from here. That gave me thirty-nine minutes to grab a sandwich from the deli downstairs.
“Caspian,” Dad called from his office the minute I stepped into the hall.
I hid my frustration behind a smile as I walked over to his open doorway and leaned against the frame. “I was about to head out for lunch. We’re up to fifteen thousand followers on IG.”
There was no way I was telling him where I was going. I made sure no one would know about this meeting until it was over. No one, including my dad, knew I’d learned about the trust. Our attorney put his life on the line by even telling me it existed. Dad had spent every single day since he discovered the trust making sure I wouldn’t find out what had pushed him over the edge. In his mind, if I didn’t know about it, I wouldn’t cash it in. If I didn’t cash it in, and if for some reason I happened to die before my dad, the money went to him. All he had to do was make sure I checked off all the boxes in order for it to mature. That without a doubt explained why he was so eager to make a deal with Huntington to keep me out of jail. But now the boxes were all checked. I’d made it to twenty-five, and as far as my father was concerned, there was a three-billion-dollar price tag on every breath I took.
He smiled. “That’s great. Come here.” He nodded his head toward his desk. “I want to talk about your next project.”
After today, there would be no moreprojects. In less than an hour, I was no longer a puppet. I would have enough money to cut my own chains and set myself free. The first order of business following that involved a dark-haired ballerina with a smart mouth.
“We’ll have more time to go over it after lunch. I won’t be long.”
His eyes darkened and his smile tightened. “Come on, Son. This will only take a minute.” He tapped the top of his desk.
I took in a deep breath and stepped inside.
His grin widened as he leaned back in his chair.
I ignored his request to sit, walking behind his desk instead. Whatever he needed to tell me, he could say to me while we both looked at his computer screen. I needed to be out of this building within the next fifteen minutes, which didn’t leave time for secondhand explanations. He was already fucking up my chances of getting a sandwich.
He clicked around a few tabs then sat up straight. I followed his gaze as it flew to the television on the wall. Dad always had the news playing in the background, even though he’d already sifted through most of it before it ever hit the air. He grabbed the remote off his desk and turned up the volume. Something had caught his attention.
“Holy shit,” he said as we both stared at the screen.
The blood in my veins heated as bile threatened its way up my throat. I had to clench my teeth to keep from showing any signs of a reaction.
“First responders are on the scene of what looks to be an explosion at the Roosevelt Tower. Officials are still searching for survivors. There is no word yet on what caused the explosion.”
The news anchor’s voice faded out with the ringing in my ears. Smoke and dust smothered the air in the background on the screen. Firefighters and police officers scrambled back and forth amongst the rubble.
Roosevelt Tower.
An explosion.
Well, fuck.