Page 1 of The Show

Prologue

No one likes a Tuesday. That is a well-known fact. Or at least it’s well known among the Tuesday Club members, anyway. All three of them.

The reasons were solid.

Tuesday was the day Murray came home to find a baby on his doorstep with a note saying she was his. Although that one turned out good in the end, it was fairly harrowing for the first week or so.

Tuesday was the day Rafe had been corralled by his mother into representing her friend in a divorce case, one which he later discovered had pitted him against his law school nemesis, and the bane of his existence, Beulah Holmes. That one also turned out alright in the end, but again things were fairly harrowing for a while.

And Tuesday was the day Penn found out his eldest sister had gone behind his back, and pushed him out of the job he’d worked his entire adult life preparing for. It didn’t help that it coincided with a dramatic and embarrassing loss for The Yankees against The Red Sox.

It was that precise moment which had Penn reinforcing the club rules, the ones which had existed since its inception at their Beacon Hill brownstone; no girls, no drama, no injuries.

And that’s all fine and dandy; except when the first rule is broken, the others aren’t going to be too far behind…

1

Penn

Do you know what it’s like to have your world implode? Where everything you thought you knew was ripped away from you in the blink of an eye, and nothing makes sense anymore?

It’s happened to me twice.

First, the day my dad died.

I was eleven, and he was on his way from a meeting to watch me play Little League when he had a massive heart attack. I’d hit three home runs before I noticed my nanny waiting in the stands next to our coach, her eyes glistening.

Growing up in a household with four older sisters, my father had been my best friend. My buddy. We’d sneak away from the squabbling girls and head somewhere quieter, just the two of us boys. We spent our time together watching baseball, or he’d take me out to the backyard and play catch - it didn’t matter as long as baseball was involved.

It wasourthing.

He instilled in me a passion for the game, and most importantly, a love for his favorite team – the mighty New York Yankees. During the season, we’d go to watch them every chance we’d get. Sometimes if I’d finished my homework in time, we’d go to the stadium during the week, and he’d sit me on his knee and romance about the magic we were going to witness; which players to watch, the teams we needed to fight hardest against. And then he’d tell me how one day he was going to buy it.

That one day we would own The Yankees.

Even now, for the first minute I enter Yankee Stadium – inhale that musky scent of the ballpark clashing with the freshly cut grass, or hear that first crack of the ball – I’m transported back to our seats, to my dad’s knee, and my chest tightens until my breath catches… and I miss my dad so fucking much it’s tangible.

Which leads me to my second implosion. Prepare to be outraged.

Let me set the scene…

When my dad died, I took his place as the next male heir to my grandfather’s conglomerate. My dad was his only son from his four kids, and out of his eleven grandchildren, I am the only grandson.

Yep, surrounded by women.

My grandfather, Lucian Shepherd, is one of the most formidable businessmen in the world.

He started out helping his father - my great grandfather - in the small publishing company he owned, moving paper from the printers to the binding machines. He spent two hours there every day after school, and three hours each weekend for an entire year while he was finishing his studies, before going to work full time as a manager.

It took him twelve years to turn it into the number one publishing house, globally.

While he was doing that, he started investing. He invested in anything he could get his hands on – failing businesses, start-ups, property, tech, healthcare, food and beverage companies, textiles, aerospace and automotive – you name it, and my grandfather will likely own it.

And any company he doesn’t wholly own, he probably owns part of.

By the time my father died, Shepherd Holdings Inc. was number one on the Fortune 500 list, and my grandfather was one of the richest businessmen in the world, worth circa one hundred and fifty billion dollars.

Neither has lost their spot since.

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