Ryder
Ryder spent the rest of the day moping in his office, berating himself and staring off into empty space. This is why she doesn’t want you, he thought as he lobbed another pencil across the room, smacking it in the middle of the previously pristine painted wall. Because in a crisis, you fall apart. You crash down. You become weak. She wants a real man. A strong man. Maybe she did want my dad, even if they never hooked up.
He knew he was being ridiculous, pitying himself into total inactivity, letting the sun sink down around him without ever accomplishing anything beyond losing his assistant. But he figured he deserved at least a few hours to himself, seeing as how everybody else was busy preparing for the funeral tomorrow.
After enough hours passed by, Ryder’s growling stomach finally convinced him to head home to his penthouse where he had Yuri bring him comfort food along with a ton of wine. He drank himself into a stupor and then collapsed onto his bed, memories of his time in the playroom with Adriana bouncing around in his head as he slipped off into dark, dreamless sleep.
The next morning, he barely woke up in time to jump into his suit and tie and have his driver take him over to the cemetery, just in time for the priest to make a speech over his father’s dead body.
Ryder zoned out the whole time, staring off into the distance and ignoring the cracked, overdone sobs that emitted from his mother’s mouth. He knew she wasn’t really that upset. Especially now that Adriana was gone, she had nobody left to threaten her place as the woman in the family. He should have known better than to hope that it would ever be any different.
His mother held the power, especially now that his father was gone. It was going to be this way until they all died; until there was nobody left in the world that obeyed the Rainieri family. Maybe it’d be better that way, Ryder thought as they lowered Paolo Rainieri into the dirt. Maybe we should all go this way, take our evil, fucked-up, twisted ways out of this world. Stay away from people like Adriana who deserve better.
The family rode in limousines back to Mama Rainieri’s house while roughly half of the funeral’s attendees followed to partake in the “after-party” in celebration of Paolo’s life. Ryder kept his sunglasses on the whole time, even as he stepped into his mother’s dimly lit house, just so people wouldn’t be able to tell how hungover he was.
He didn’t need to make a bad impression on anybody. He still wanted to be the leader, even if he couldn’t dominate Adriana anymore. After all, he’d need to find some other way to exorcise his aggression, and he figured he might as well sublimate all his rage and loneliness into boardroom strategies.
“Excuse me, excuse me!” his mother yelled about thirty minutes into the after-party, lightly tapping on a glass of champagne to get the attention of everyone in the crowded banquet hall. “Would all members of Rainieri Incorporated please follow me across the hall for a short discussion on business matters? It’ll only last a few minutes, and then we can get back to drinking and enjoying Paolo’s memory!” She smiled brightly, but Ryder still felt his muscles tense up under his skin, his body preparing for a fight-or-flight response as if a physical danger was about to be dropped onto his path.
Still, he forced himself to move to the room she pointed out, forcing his way through the crowd so that he was at the front of the group and going to stand by his mother when she moved to the center of the room. Giovanni was there, too, on the other side of Mama Rainieri. They had to show a united front, even if behind closed doors they were at each other’s throats, emotionally speaking.
“I’m so happy you’re all here, celebrating the life of my late husband. It means so much to me,” Ryder’s mother said, smiling warmly and turning to address a different man in the room on every other word.
The crowd mumbled in response, all the enforcers and legal workers and administrative aids all smiling and nodding back at Mama Rainieri, encouraging her to go on.
“We are at a crossroads. Not just the immediate family of Paolo Rainieri, but everybody in the larger, capital-F family, if you will. All of us here in this organization who have sacrificed so much time and energy and effort into making our business run smoothly. I want to thank you so much for all that you have done for us, and at the same time, I hope that you will join me in the effort to make sure that the organization continues to function as it has for the past twenty years.”
Again, there was a low, awkward wave of mumbling in the room, signifying the general consensus that the crowd agreed with Mama Rainieri’s sentiment.
“So, for that reason, I believe it’s crucial that we take a vote. Here. Now. Not wasting any more time. We need to vote for an executive officer of this company!” She grinned again, lifting her glass in the air before bending her head back to take a deep drink.
“Wait, what?” Ryder said as soon as he realized what his mother just said. “What are you talking about? We already have an executive officer.”
“Hmm, what, dear?” Mama Rainieri said as she finished taking a sip of her champagne, looking like she was celebrating at a wedding rather than the aftermath of a funeral. “Oh, yes, we have an interim executive officer, and that’s you. You’ve done a fine job holding down the fort the last couple of days, but now the time has come to look to the future.”
“Interim? That’s not what Dad wanted, Ma,” Ryder protested, helplessly looking around the room in hopes of finding a friendly face. “He named me as his successor. Not the temporary one but the permanent one. So why are we even talking about this?”
“Hmm,” Mama Rainieri murmured before handing her drink over to the nearest servant in the room. “I’d hoped we could avoid a public confrontation like this. But I’m afraid we have no choice. Honey, you’re a very smart man. So talented.” She paused, smiling at him in an unnatural, almost saccharine way that had him cringing back from her. “But this job isn’t right for you. We need somebody who’s a thinker, not just a doer. We need to have strategies in place for the new age of the Rainieri Family, and the man who can form them is… well, he’s standing on the other side of me.”
Giovanni’s head appeared behind his mother’s shoulder. “Hey, brother,” Giovanni whispered.
Ryder flinched back from him, but he had no intention of leaving the room. He had to face his little brother, who grinned at him as though he’d finally won.
“I just want you to know that we’ve really enjoyed having you around the past couple of days. Really,” Giovanni added. “We want to see more of you. But… in a different position, maybe.”
“Fuck you,” Ryder spat out automatically, his anger getting the better of him.
“All right, then, I guess we’ve got to take it to a vote!” Mama Rainieri announced, lifting her arms in the air until all the mumbling in the room came to a halt. “All in favor of displacing Ryder in favor of Giovanni for the head executive position of this organization, please say aye—”
Several people lifted their arms in the air to vote, but Ryder shook his head and yelled out, “Bullshit! This is fucking bullshit! You can’t conduct an official vote here. Half of the members of the board aren’t even here!”
Mama Rainieri shrugged. “Well, dear, if they’ve chosen not to come to the funeral, doesn’t that say it all about their loyalty to this family and to this business?”
Ryder was stumped for an answer, his mind scrambling for an explanation as to why all the senior members who liked him were missing from the room. There had to be a reason. There just had to be. They wouldn’t all skip out on the same day like this unless…
Unless Giovanni and Mama pulled something together behind my back, Ryder realized with a cold, unbreakable certainty. He knew it happened as soon as the possibility occurred to him. He’d been betrayed. The company was being stolen right out from under him.
But, for the moment, he couldn’t come up with a way to consider the other men in the room of that fact. Instead, Mama Rainieri called for a vote again, and this time, Ryder was all out of words, stumped for a solution as one after one after one, the board members voted to replace him with Giovanni.
“That does it! Giovanni is the new head of the Rainieri organization. Congratulations, son!” Mama Rainieri said, clapping her hands together until the other people in the room caught onto the idea and gave a round of applause for Ryder’s little brother.
Ryder, feeling his stomach turn over like he was about to be sick, tried to shove his way through the crowd to head toward the nearest bathroom, but before he could get away, a hand came down on his shoulders, stopping him from moving. He turned around to face Giovanni, who was positively beaming at him, shining like he’d swallowed a handful of stars. “Aren’t you going to congratulate me, man? This is what I’ve always dreamed of!”
More like what Mother’s always plotted out, Ryder thought silently, glaring at his little brother, whose happiness couldn’t be dampened.
Giovanni kept talking, reaching over to take two glasses of champagne off a passing waiter’s tray. The room had cleared out a little in the aftermath of the vote, but Ryder still felt rooted to the spot, like some part of him insisted on receiving punishment for his failure to keep the company. He deserved this, feeling this powerless. He’d wasted crucial time—all because he was hung up on some girl he only fucked once. He was pathetic.
When Ryder’s brain zoned back in, refocusing on the words coming out of Giovanni’s mouth, he heard his brother say, “Anyway, things will be better now. I’ll be easier on you than Dad ever was, that’s for sure. Hey, I can even undo whatever Mama did yesterday. That’d be nice, huh?”
“What?” Ryder asked, furrowing his brow in confusion. His mother hadn’t done anything to him yesterday, except make thinly veiled threats about this sudden coup.
“I just mean,” Giovanni started to say before stopping himself, looking around and over his shoulder before he stepped closer to Ryder and dropped his voice as he resumed speaking, “you know, about that hot piece of ass you’re nailing. I know Mama intimidated you into firing her or whatever. We all noticed that she left the compound crying yesterday.”
“What?” Ryder said again, seemingly incapable of coming up with any other word at the moment. Adriana left crying? What the hell?
Giovanni shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t stop her to ask or anything, but I just assumed Mama handled it. I know she hates her. But look—” He paused to clap Ryder on the back. “Mama won’t care anymore now that I’m in charge. She’s already told me she’s going to Paris soon, and she won’t even be around to notice if Adriana is working there. I know you like her, so go ahead and hire her back.”
“Mama… did something?” Ryder forced out, the wheels in his brain slowly turning, his thoughts coalescing as he processed the information.
“I guess so,” Giovanni said with a shrug, clearly losing interest in the conversation. “I saw Mama coming out of your office when Adriana was in there alone, right before I stopped by to say hi. I guess she must have convinced her to quit. Look, I’ll talk to you later, okay? Just let me know what you decide about your most recent fuck-toy, and I’ll help you out, all right?” Giovanni disappeared into the crowd the next second, going to hobnob with various old friends of Paolo.
Ryder was frozen to the spot for at least several seconds, staring blankly ahead as multiple people attempted to politely talk to him. He ignored all of them, his brain abuzz with static as he absorbed the reality that his mother coerced his new lover into leaving him behind.
“Ha! That’s good!” Mama Rainieri’s laughter rang out from the other room. She was clearly feeling the champagne, in addition to the victory she’d accomplished over her eldest son and the will of her late husband.
Ryder felt his stomach broil over in rage, feeling like huge flames were licking the inside of his body, making his blood pump furiously through his veins, urging him into motion.
He didn’t know where he was going, except that he had to get out of his mother’s house. If he stayed here any longer, he couldn’t be confident that he could restrain himself from flying across the room and pulling his mother’s beautiful, brilliant chandelier from the ceiling. And he couldn’t afford to fuck up anymore. God knew that he’d done that a thousand times over the past couple of days. Right now, he had to follow his instincts. He had to find Adriana.