Chapter 21
Lucas
The rest of the day was a painful circus of bullshit.
Richard and I got some food to help me sober up, then started making the arrangements.
I quickly discovered that I hated the whole system of taking care of a dead family member. Between the medical examiner, the funeral director, getting the death certificate and planning the wake, there was no time to grieve.
How did they expect anyone to do all this?
It was like trying to plan a birthday party after just getting stabbed in the heart. The whole thing was fucking insane!
At the end of the day—that felt like a month— Richard and I drank beers in Dad’s garage. He sat in the Aston Martin and I sat next to him in the nineteen-sixty-six Shelby Cobra. The tops were down in each car making it easy to talk to one another.
“What a fucking zoo,” Richard said, popping the top on a cold beer.
I did a double take at him. Richard never swore. That polished, professional exterior was finally breaking down enough that someone might mistake him for an actual person.
“Is what’s her face coming to the funeral?” We decided to keep the wake small and private. Family was flying in from all over the world. The rest of the week was going to be hell. Richard gave me a questioning look that needed clarification. “Uh... Madeline? You know the one who looked like the blonde Terminator robot from that movie.”
“Madison.” Richard chuckled. “No, she’s long gone.”
“Good. I didn’t like her. You really aught to call the dark-haired girl though, you smiled more while you were with her.”
“So people tell me…” He blew out his air, shaking his head, then took another sip. “That’s over too. You talk to Molly?”
“She won’t see me either.” I pressed the perspiring can into my forehead, letting the condensation cool my skin. It was a balmy, awful night and I still felt like shit from the week long bender. “We’re really bad at this whole falling in love thing.”
“Amen to that.” Richard tipped his beer slightly in a mock toast.
“I didn’t knock anyone up.” I turned to him and asked, “You?”
“Nope. I have no idea what’s going to happen to his inheritance now that he’s gone. My lawyers are looking over the will, but with the way he was acting these past few months it’s anyone’s guess.”
“If there’s a historical society of puns and bad jokes—” I said flippantly. “He probably donated it all to them.”
Richard laughed.
We reminisced about old funny memories involving our parents and even some of the hard ones. Most of it was positive though, and talking to Richard felt good. For the first time in a long time, we were completely on equal footing. We were two parentless children sharing our loss with one another.
It was a very brotherly thing to do.
Some time passed, and a familiar buzzed feeling washed over me. It helped me draw up the courage to ask something I never thought I would.
“Why did you hate me so much?”
“I never hated you, Lucas. If anything I was jealous.”
“Jealous?” I chuckled, getting caught by surprise. “What the fuck for? I’m not even biologically a King.”
“That never mattered to me. We were close long before either of us knew about your adoption. I was jealous at how easily you figured things out.”
“You’re crazy. You got way better grades than me.”
“That’s only because you didn’t try. Remember that catapult I made for science class?”
“The one that exploded?” I laughed, remembering the look on his teacher’s face when it hurled the rubber band ball in the opposite direction, then fell apart like in an old cartoon.
“Yup. Once we found all the pieces, you had that thing reassembled in no time. When we tried it again, it doubled the distance of any other catapult. I still have the first place ribbon somewhere.
“My point is had you just focused your natural talents you’d have been a force to be reckoned with. You could’ve done great things for the family company.”
“I always loved the family, even during the dark times when I had to go live with the Morenas. I just couldn’t do the grad school and college thing, man. My passion wasn’t in any of it. I wasn’t cut out for a life of business.”
“That’s why you didn’t accept the partnership offer at my company when you left the Morenas.” It slowly started to dawn on him. “Dad thought the deal had voided years earlier, so that day they came knocking took us all by surprise.”
“I should’ve handled that better, I’m sorry.” I said, finally seeing how poorly I handled the whole situation back in the day. I basically told him to go fuck himself. “I didn’t mean to blow you off like that. I was still all fucked up from the deal dad made to adopt me. I guess I wasn’t feeling much like a part of the family at the time.”
“You were the golden son; smart, ruthless and always in a rush. You followed perfectly in Dad’s footsteps; the quintessential high-powered corporate executive. You were exactly what our father wanted an ideal son to be.”
My voice cracked at several parts, the words I said raked the bottom of my very soul. I usually wore my emotions on my sleeve, but this shit was all buried down deep. In an already emotional day, this stuff was hard to get out.
“I was suddenly the one that didn’t fit in,” I finished, looking away. Facing any one after admitting all that was tough, let alone the man I hated for years.
Richard got out of his car and sat next to me in the Shelby. He opened a beer and gave it to me.
“It didn’t matter who your real father was, as far as we were all concerned you were always one of us.” Richard let the words float in the air for a long while.
What did I say to that?
With the news of what happened to Dad and the shit show that was literally everything else in my life, I honestly didn’t know how to feel. After I found out I was adopted I put up these barriers between me and the rest of the family. It was like I was keeping them all at arms reach so I wouldn’t get hurt again.
“For as much of a pain in the ass as you are, you’re always going to be my little brother.” Richard put his arm around my shoulders and hugged me.
I never dreamed Richard and I would have a heart-to-heart, we were just so different… I felt so heavy yet so light at the same time. Even through the sadness surrounding my Dad’s death, a massive burden had been lifted. I had my brother back.
I didn’t have to keep it together any longer.
For several long minutes the tough, in-charge King brothers wept like only those in mourning can. We lowered our guards and let ourselves openly cope with not only the grief of loss, but also the realization that we were siblings that didn’t have to hate each other.
We could choose a different path.
“We’ve been acting like real assholes, huh?” I was so tired of fucking things up and making things worse all the time. There had to be a way to fix things.
“It’s the King way after all. If you ignore your problems they’ll probably go away.”
“Or they’ll blow up in your fucking face,” I said. The sudden exhaustion of redlining these past few days hit me like a speeding train. I didn’t know how much bonding I had left in me before I just passed out. I wouldn’t leave just yet, this was all too important.
“I don’t know why dad put that clause in the inheritance, but he was right about one thing,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“He said we’d never be able to find better women in the world than the ones here.”
“There are two women out there we can’t live without.” Richard nodded thoughtfully, then his eyes narrowed dangerously. I knew right away that an idea just popped into his head when he started rubbing his cufflinks. It was a habit he never out grew. “I’ve got a new proposition for you.”
I looked at him sideways. “Another competition?”
That’s just what we needed…
“No,” he said, waving his beer back and forth, shunning the idea. “Look where that’s gotten us. I propose we work together and actually help each other.”
“What about the inheritance?” This didn’t seem like him at all. It was the opposite of pragmatism. Help the other get all the money?
“We don’t even know if there is an inheritance anymore.” He looked at me with hard blue eyes, that were so similar to my own it was almost like looking into a mirror. “Can you honestly tell me that money is more important to you than getting Molly back?”
There was any doubt in my mind. Molly was more important to me than all the money this world had to offer.
“What do you have in mind?”