Chapter Two

Gabriel

"I'm sorry, I don't think I heard you right."

"Yes, you did, Gabriel."

I looked across the polished mahogany desk that I had found outlandish from the time I was old enough to visit my father at work. My plan had always been that as soon as I took over the corporate empire my father had built, and this became my office, that desk would be the first thing to go. Maybe I would take a sledgehammer to it and use the pieces to construct a dog house. I didn't have a dog, but from an early age, my father had instilled in me the importance of planning for the future.

Now it seemed that he had done some planning of his own that involved taking a fairly slash-and-burn approach to my future.

"I've expected to inherit this business my entire life," I pointed out.

"Exactly," he said. "You've expected it. You felt entitled to it."

"I'm your only child."

"So, you think that you deserve to live off all of the hard work that I did and my father before me and his father before him and his father before him."

"Yes, I know, and Benjamin begat Bale and they were your next-door neighbors."

"That's exactly what I'm talking about, Gabriel."

My father's hands were tightly clenched on top of his desk and he was glaring at me, anger in his eyes, across the gaudy, shining surface.

"It was a joke," I said.

"That's what you always do. You joke. You don't take anything seriously, including this company. You've always just assumed that it was going to be waiting for you, so you went about living whatever kind of life you wanted. I'm sick and tired of it. I don't approve of the behavior you've shown, especially in the last couple of years. I've told you time and time again to stop and reflect on your actions, and how they represent this company, but it hasn't seemed to sink in. Instead, you grow wilder and wilder. You have been completely irresponsible and haven't shown any interest in this company as anything more than a meal ticket. What’s worse is that you expect me to turn a blind eye to it. But I'm not going to any longer. Your behavior has been an insult to me and an embarrassment to this business. I can't, at least, not in good conscience, leave my life’s work, my legacy, to you."

"So that's it?" I asked. "I'm supposed to just accept that you want me to be unemployed? Destitute?"

"Don't be so dramatic. You're far from poor and you're not going to be unemployed. You have plenty money of your own and you will maintain your positions with headquarters and keep the offices you are responsible for. You will have a title and will be salaried at a level that is appropriate for your position."

"Salaried at a level that is appropriate for the position?" I repeated incredulously. The words were almost as much of an insult as his decision to cut me out of my inheritance and the family business. He wasn't only denying me my birthright. He was relegating me to nothing more than a name on the company payroll. "What are you going to do with the company now? You are long past the age when you should have retired. Is your plan to just continue working into eternity?"

"When and whether I retire is no concern of yours," my father snapped. "Besides, I have been planning for and making provisions for my eventual separation with the company for years. As you so delicately pointed out, I am getting on in age and there is no denying the health issues that run in the men of our family."

"Your father died at ninety-eight-years-old because he decided to go ‘reconnect’ to his childhood and stay in his family's lakeside log cabin in the middle of the winter and his space heater malfunctioned. After he went swimming in the half-frozen pond."

I had always felt a strong camaraderie with my grandfather. Despite my father's waxing poetic about the long line of men who had worked so hard to build this business, my grandfather's hard work had been well-tempered with eccentricity. The fact that he and my grandmother may or may not have been married when my father came along, was a well-kept family secret, and slight scandal back in the day. There's just that right amount of fuzziness around my dad’s birth and school records that make them slightly suspicious. It doesn’t help that the Justice of the Peace went to school with my grandfather.

"Be that as it may, Gabriel, I have always been very aware of my mortality and the fact that I have to make the decisions that are right for this business moving forward. It is that awareness and sense of responsibility that has brought me to the conclusion that what is right for this business is not having you at the helm. I have made arrangements to have control of the company divided up and evenly distributed among members of a committee made up of senior executives. They will be instructed to operate as a single entity and run the company in the way they know I would."

"You're going to divide up power? Leave it to random executives?" I asked, getting angrier by the moment. "You have always lectured me about how this company has never been run by anyone but members of our family. No shareholders. Sole proprietorship. And now you want to end all of that? You might not like the choices that I've made, but that shouldn't stop you from letting me maintain the family legacy."

"The family legacy?" my father said.

Something had changed in his voice. He leaned back in his chair, his hands coming to rest over his stomach, his elbows propped on the arms beside him. The expression on his face had changed in an instant and now he was looking at me in the way I had seen countless times before. It was the expression he wore every time he had just discovered a bargaining chip and negotiations were about to shift in his favor.

"Yes," I said. "If you don't leave the company to me, the legacy will be over."

"You know, Gabriel, I think you're right. I'll reconsider my decision to not pass the company on to you."

I smiled.

"I think you're making the right decision. I –"

"When you have a child."

I could feel every muscle in my face fall in disappointment.

"Excuse me?"

"The family line ends with you. There doesn't seem much logic in continuing a legacy that has a dead end. I want to know that the company will continue on. When you have a family to pass the legacy along to, I will consider retiring and leaving you in control."

I blinked a few times.

"You want me to have a baby?"

"Yes," he said, standing and walking over to the bar he always kept fully stocked. "With the exception of the first Reed who established this company, every man who has come into power has done so after he already had his heir, his successor. Let's keep up with that tradition, shall we? For now, I won't say anything about my plans to the board. Things will continue on exactly as they have been. For one year. If you are on your way to a family by then, I'll reconsider."

"One year?" I asked in disbelief.

"Yes, Gabriel. One year. You are thirty years old now. Surely, you've met women who might be relationship worthy in all this time. At the very least, you should know how to make these connections by now."

I couldn't wrap my head around the concept of having a baby just so that I could inherit what was rightfully mine to begin with. I thought about what my father had said about the women I knew, and my mind went immediately to the pair of panties I found in my car a few days earlier. Bright purple mesh with black cheetah print and tiny purple bows on the hips, the panties had been balled up and shoved down into the passenger seat. They weren't leftovers from any recent dalliance that might have happened in the car itself. Instead, they were from my most recent fling wriggling out of them when I wasn't paying attention and shoving them there like she was marking her territory. It had made me angry when I first found them, but after thinking about it, I realized just how pathetic it really was. I pitied her for being desperate enough to think that she had some kind of hold over me. In truth, however, that one ridiculous move had been the closest to being tied down by any woman that I had ever been before.

I didn't do relationships. I never had. A woman might keep my bed warm for a few hours, but that was it. If she was really entertaining, I might even go for a second helping. I had a reliable selection of women from good families who I could bring as a date to galas and other events, but I was careful to keep them at a certain distance. Each group of women fulfilled a specific need that I had, and that system had always worked out for me nicely. I knew that my choices weren't necessarily considered seemly for a man of my family's wealth and prominence. Honestly, I didn’t care much about what society thought of me or my choice of dates. Nine years ago, I watched my best friend die and the impact had thrown my life into chaos. I have never been the same.

Now my father wanted me to give him a grandchild to prove that I had put that unseemly life behind me and was serious about taking over and making the company my number one priority. As he stood there pouring bourbon from his brilliant crystal decanter into his tumbler, I knew the conversation was over. I had lost. I didn't have any other choice but to accept this as my reality and decide on my next move.