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 care 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.”
And I’d bet everything I had that she wasn’t aware of any of this, either. Sure, we all knew the family had been trying to push Rika and Trevor together, even though she’d broken it off.
But there was only so much a person could take. They’d continue to pressure her, including Trevor, and Rika would eventually fold.
“She doesn’t love him,” I pointed out, wanting to burst his little bubble.
He raised his eyes, meeting my challenge. “She’ll take him back, and she’ll marry him.”
“And what if he can’t get a baby in her?” I argued.
Rika didn’t want Trevor. They may get her down the aisle, but there was no guarantee she’d be pliable in the bedroom.
“If he can’t,” he said, looking at me pointedly, “then maybe you will. As long as it’s a Crist, I don’t really care.”
He tipped up his glass, taking another sip. “Hell,” he continued, a hint of a grin on his face, “I’ll do it if I have to.”
Motherfucker. Her life was already as good as over.
I fixed him with a sarcastic smile. “So you need me then.”
“Yeah, but I don’t trust you,” he retorted.
“But I am your son,” I shot back. “And I know that scares you, because you can’t control me, but you know why that is? Because we are exactly the same.” I tipped my chin down, challenging him as I stood my ground. “The same qualities you hate in me are the ones you prize in yourself. And whether or not you want to admit it, you respect me a lot more than you do Trevor.”
Pushing off the wall, I kept my arms folded across my chest as I approached his desk.
“It’s time I joined the family business,” I stated. “I’ll keep nothing. FANE belongs to Rika, as well as her property and finances, when she graduates college. That’s in her father’s will and can’t be changed. Let me manage it until she and Trevor are ready.”
He narrowed his eyes, turning it over in his head.
What did he have to lose? I couldn’t keep anything. The law protected Rika. And as far as my father knew, I had no reason to mismanage her estate. Why would I want to seize her house, close down the business, freeze her assets…?
“FANE,” he said, finally coming to terms with the idea.
“And the house and all their other holdings,” I reminded him. “And if I do well, I get Delcour and the fifty thousand shares.”