Chapter Two
Talon
It's been five years and the old man is still controlling us from beyond the fucking grave.
I grabbed an apple out of the cut crystal bowl that sat in the middle of the table and bit into it. As far as I knew I was the only one of the four brothers who actually ate the fruit that our cook put in the bowl. I wouldn't be surprised if they thought that it was just a decoration and that it magically changed every few days just to keep things interesting around the house.
"Why don't you try to show a little bit of respect?" Jackson asked. "He was our father."
"I'm aware," I said. "Remember, I knew him longer than you did."
"Only because you were born before me," he said.
"Exactly," I said. "So I have years on you when it comes to being pissed off at him."
"Are you seriously getting into this again?" Lucas asked as he came into the room.
Jackson and I looked up at our brother.
"And I suppose you're going to say that none of this bothers you at all?" I said.
"Of course, it bothers me," he said. "It pisses me off as much as it does either of you, but there's no point in us arguing about it. It's not like we can change it. We can't go pry dad out of his casket in the mausoleum and expect him to change his will."
"Well, that's a lovely way to start my morning. Thank you so much for that visual."
Aiden, the fourth brother, and the one who was still young enough that most people considered his sarcasm charming, ambled into the room. His hair was tousled and he had a decidedly lazy smile on his face. I know exactly what that meant.
"Aren't you going to ask her to stay for breakfast?" I asked.
Aiden dropped down into one of the other empty chairs at the table and shook his head, folding his fingers behind it as he leaned back.
"No need," he said. "She got quite the belly full last night."
Just then I heard the front door open and close. It was the hurried maneuver of a dismissed one nightstand trying to slip out of the house before any of us noticed that she was there. That told me that she was probably one that another of the three of us had already brought home and who was trying to avoid what she perceived would be an awkward encounter. The truth was that none of us would have cared. In fact, it was more likely that we wouldn't have even recognized her, or been able to pinpoint when she had been warming our bed rather than our brother's, than it was that we would feel even slightly uncomfortable. We weren't exactly known for being chaste. Most of the women who made their way into the house were already fully aware that the four of us shared women much more readily than we had shared toys when we were children. The best women were the ones who not only knew that we liked to share, but were willing to indulge in some playtime with some or even all of us. The worst were the ones who somehow managed to avoid knowing about our reputation and became clingy on any one of us, expecting to be showered with attention the next morning or even beyond. Somewhere in the middle were the daughters of other prominent families trying to be a little bit rebellious or the members of the staff at the Club who we scooped up at events, who not only understood that they were nothing more than our entertainment for the night, but that when they walked into the house they were more or less auditioning for the other brothers as well.
"When's he supposed to be here?" Jackson asked.
"Who?" Aiden asked.
I resisted the urge to chuck the apple at his head if for no other reason than to shake his brain out of the post-fucking fog and actually get him involved in reality.
"Dad," I said sarcastically. "We can't go pop him out of his casket, but when he feels like it he's planning on making an appearance. Unfortunately, he couldn't time it so that he'd be able to be here for my birthday, but you know how busy the afterlife can get around this time of year."
He blinked at me a few times.
Before he could say anything else, Lucas looked at him.
"Mr. Dandridge is supposed to come over this morning," he said. "So, of course, that means that Talon and Jackson are arguing about Dad again."
"We're not arguing about Dad," I said.
I knew that was bullshit. It was the same argument that had bubbled up every few weeks in the five years since our father's death. His death has been unfortunately expected. His illness had hit him quickly and within a matter of weeks had completely ravaged him until the bold, vibrant man who raised us was reduced to skin and bones, barely able to interact with us from the hospital bed that we set up in his bedroom at home. That was something that we had promised him. When the time came that the doctors knew there was nothing more that could be done, we wouldn't leave him in some cold, impersonal hospital. Instead, we would bring him home so that he could live out whatever time he had left surrounded by the luxury and comfort to which he was accustomed and by the four sons who he had worked hard to provide for.
What hadn't been expected was what we discovered when the will was read two weeks after we closed the mausoleum doors. We fully anticipated, as did everyone else who knew anything about our family, that the four of us would inherit everything that our father had. He did work extremely hard his entire life, but the reality was that he could have never worked a single day and still would have been able to provide for all four of us with nothing less than abundance and excess. The family's money had been established long before he was even born, but he had done spectacularly well at growing it even further. He had been the only child of his parents and had been the only grandchild to those parents. Our mother had died when Aiden was just a baby, which meant that we were the only ones left in the family. That meant that we fully expected that we would inherit everything. We would get the money, control over the businesses, the real estate, and the house that we all still lived. Along with that would come the power and prestige that my father had enjoyed and that had only rubbed off on us.
When the will was read, however, we quickly learned that that wasn't going to be the case. The first thing that our father had noted was that we did immediately inherit possession of the house. It would be equally divided among the four of us, which worked perfectly in our perception. The house itself had been modified and developed over the years to fit in with our family's needs. While the center of the house was still the mansion that our great-grandparents lived in, additions and expansions had been added onto it until each of us brothers had our own wing that was fully customized and the rest of the home had been properly outfitted with features and technology that appealed to our lifestyle. It had been crafted around us and it would be equally divided among us. That, however, was where the simplicity of our inheritance ended.
The will stated that we would receive access to one of the vacation homes and a fund that contained a portion of my father's fortune. It was plenty for us to continue to live off of in luxury, but not anywhere near all of what he was worth. We would also be in control of the business, but would not officially own it and with the exception of our salaries, the proceeds from the business would be funneled into a trust account. The lawyer had been given instructions that the rest of the inheritance would remain controlled by the remaining portion of the will that would be read, if necessary, on the thirtieth birthday of the oldest son. That meant my thirtieth birthday, but when we asked the lawyer what it meant by "if necessary", he wouldn't reveal it. He said that he was under strict confidentiality agreements with my father and was bound to them until the final execution of the will.
Now my birthday was drawing close and the lawyer was coming to the house. I could only assume that he was going to tell us whether that final reading of the will was going to be necessary or if we would finally get access to the rest of the inheritance and come under full control of the business.
"What do you think he's going to say?" Lucas asked.
I shrugged.
"It's been so long now, I don't know what to think."
"He could at least tell us why we had to wait until your birthday," Aiden said.
"The will said that we had to wait until then if it was necessary. Obviously, that means that there was something that could happen that would make it so that we didn't have to wait."
"But is that a good thing or a bad thing?" Jackson asked.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Is the fact that we've had to wait this long a good thing or a bad thing? Did 'if necessary' mean that there was something specific that if we did it would disqualify us from the rest of the inheritance?"
"I hope that if that was the case, our father would be decent enough to actually tell us rather than just letting us kick ourselves in the ass without realizing it."
Even as I said it, I wasn't entirely sure. I knew what my brothers were thinking because I was thinking the same thing. We weren't exactly the poster boys for moral, upstanding gentlemen. In fact, we were known for being wild, with our family name being the only thing that guarded us from consequences that anyone else would face if they pulled the stunts that we did. It was entirely possible our father had put specifications into place that would ensure if we continued to carry on the way that we had, our family legacy would go to someone else. While I couldn't imagine who he would choose, there was nothing that I would put past him. Henry Griffin was usually a kind, compassionate, and generous man, but he was also not above a quick temper and sticking to decisions that he made with a steadfast stubbornness that bordered on cantankerousness. If he decided that he was going to block us from a portion of what was rightfully ours because of something that we did, there was nothing that would shake him from it. We might have already eliminated ourselves.
In the front portion of the house, we heard the deep tone of the doorbell ringing and knew that Mr. Dandridge had arrived. We exchanged glances and stood, walking toward the study like a chain gang. The butler was showing the lawyer into the room as we stepped in and he looked at each of us with an indecipherable expression on his face. He wasn't giving away anything. We took our places around the study, each of us deliberately avoiding sitting in the massive green leather chair behind the desk. No one had sat in that chair in the five years since our father had died.
The lawyer walked up to the desk and placed his briefcase on it. He popped open the brass clasps and pulled out the thick sheaf of paper that I recognized as my father's will. I felt an unexpected quickening of my breath. He looked at the papers in his hand, using a small blue flag to open the papers to a specific point. I watched as his eyes scanned over the document, moving back up to the top and down to the bottom several times as if he were trying to make a dramatic presentation of his review of the terms of the will. Finally, he closed the papers and returned them to the briefcase. He lowered the lid and then looked over at us.
"I'm sure that you remember at the initial reading of your father's will there was a special circumstances clause in place that ensured the four of you only received a portion of your inheritance, with the rest to be held in trust until such time that it was decided whether you were eligible to inherit it or not."
The tone of his voice was much the same as the expression on his face. He was monotonous and rehearsed, sounding almost as though he had scooped the words off of the page that he had just read and was repeating them to us.
"Yes, of course," I said. "We remember. You said that we would hear the rest of the will on my thirtieth birthday if it were necessary."
"But you didn't tell us what would make it necessary," Aiden said.
Mr. Dandridge looked at each of us and then nodded.
"That is still the specification that is in place," he said. "Now that your birthday is only a matter of days away, it has become clear to me that the secondary reading of the will, will be necessary. I came here today to tell you that."
I stared at the lawyer angrily.
"You made such a big deal out of coming all the way out here just so that you can tell us that you're going to come back and read the rest of the well?" I asked.
"Well, yes," the lawyer said. "I thought that it would be in the best interests of everyone involved if I made an appointment now so that the proper plans could be made to ensure that the reading is carried out as was specified by your father."
It was instantly clear that he was trying to dance around saying he wanted to make sure that we weren't drunk or having a little party of our own with whatever country club bunnies we brought home.
"We've been waiting five years to hear why our father decided he needed to be so damn mysterious. I assure you we will be ready when you come."
Mr. Dandridge gave a sharp nod and snapped his briefcase closed. He grabbed it by the handle and yanked it off the desk as if putting an exclamation on the end of the meeting.
"Then I will see the four of you gentlemen on Wednesday morning."
He walked out of the study without another word and the four of us sat silently for a few long seconds. Now that we had confirmation that we would be hearing the rest of the will, it seemed that there was new tension around us. Soon we would either learn when we would get the rest of our inheritance, or what we had done to lose it.
Aiden
I should have stayed in bed. I should have just fucking stayed in bed.
I was angry when the lawyer left and didn't feel like being in the room with my brothers anymore. I got up and walked out of the room, heading back to my wing of the house where I could be alone until I went into the office. I could take the day off and stay at the house if I felt like it. It's not like anybody would say anything to me about it. Except maybe Talon. He wasn't a stranger to taking the forceful father role with me in the years since our father died. I was just a teenager then, and I felt like I knew him in a different way than the other three. Though we were close together in age, those few years sometimes weighed heavily. It was that distance between us that made the experience of Dad dying different for me than it was for them.
The first three sons born to my mother and father were born extremely close together. Only a year parted Talon and Jackson, and there were just ten months between Jackson and Lucas. They had then waited five more years before having me. I had no memories of my mother, though I often looked at the pictures of her holding me and tried to remember anything that I could. Sometimes I would smell a certain perfume or hear a certain lullaby and I got a feeling like I had experienced it before and would wonder if that was an impression of my mother deep within me, somewhere where I couldn't quite touch. It was comforting to think that it was, that even if I couldn't really remember looking into her face or hearing her say my name, she was still with me and I had been affected by her.
Her death so early in my life meant more than just that I didn't have the opportunity to grow up with her the way that my brothers did. It also meant that the relationship that I formed with our father and the memories that I had of him were different. My brothers, especially Talon, remembered my father when he was much younger. He remembered what he was like when he was with my mother and was really happy. It wasn't that I never knew my father to be happy. People loved being around him because he was social and funny, but there were many times when he was smiling but the expression didn't reach his eyes. It was like the happiness was only one layer of him, and deeper down there was still an emptiness and a sadness that had existed there since the day that he lost my mother.
I had looked at pictures and home videos of my parents from before I was born and I could see that he was different. Talon had mentioned a few times that the older he got, the more frequently and more easily he got angry, and the longer he would hold on to that anger. He was never cruel or abusive to us, but I did remember the anger. I remembered being young and hearing the way that he would yell at my older brothers, infuriated at them for one thing or another. Most of the time I didn't really understand what he was so angry about, but as I got older I knew that he hated the way my brothers behaved. He wanted them to be more responsible, to stop burning their way through the girls in our social circle, to straighten up and start living up to their name.
But it was his illness that hit me the hardest. All of my brothers coped with their reaction to finding out that our father was terminally ill, but during that difficult time, I often felt like I was separated from them. It wasn't just the fewer years that bonded them closer together while we watched him get sicker and fade away. They had so many more memories of him. Before our mother died, our father was much more invested in his sons, but her loss seemed to make it harder for him to even look at us. The older I got, the more time that he was spending in the office or at the Club, and the more the staff was taking care of me. I had good memories of my father and the times that we spent together, but they were fewer and farther apart than the ones that Talon, Jackson, and Lucas had. Those memories made it somehow easier for them as he got sicker and then after he died. They could find solace in them and would often reminisce about those times together like the more they talked about him and laughed, the less room that they had inside of them to feel the pain of him being gone. While they were doing that, though, I was just reminded of all that had been taken from me. His sickness became the most looming memory and I felt like I had so little to soften it.
Even after five years, our father's death felt raw and unresolved to me. The other three brothers had been aggravated by the will, but I felt like it was an insult. He had left me behind when I was still so young, when I needed my father the most. I somehow felt like him holding back some of the inheritance was just another way that he was letting me down. He knew that he was dying. The doctors had never tried to sugarcoat that or pretend like there was any other option. By the time that he was diagnosed, he was already on a downward slide and they knew that there was nothing that they could do to bring him back. It was just a matter of time before the illness claimed the entirety of his mind and his body. Rather than taking those last months and weeks to make sure that we made as many memories as we could and that his sons were prepared to move forward in life without him, he used them to ensure his will kept us controlled and under his thumb even from beyond the grave.
I took a shower and got dressed, resolving to go to the office and distract myself with my work. There were only a few hours left in the workday, anyway. The office ran itself well in our absence and those who were there everyday knew that they could easily reach any of us if something serious happened. Being there when there wasn't a major meeting or project was primarily a formality, and one that I didn't frequently fulfill. My brothers were much more committed to the work and it was more unusual to have them still at home this late in the day, but I assumed Talon wanted the lawyer to come over as soon as he was able and had ensured that all of us would be home at that specific time to make sure if something had changed, we would all know together.
My brothers were in various states of getting ready to go to the office when I walked through the house and headed toward my car.
"I'm driving myself into the office today," I called to them.
"Are you alright?" Jackson asked.
He knew that I usually had the driver bring me to work and to virtually anywhere else that I wanted to go. I only ever drove myself when I really wanted some time to think.
"I'm fine," I called back. "I just haven't driven in a while."
"Don't forget that we have to go to the Club tonight," Lucas said. "We have to start making plans for the gala."
I groaned as I walked outside.
Fantastic.