Page 22 of Always Salty

Always keeping me in the dark because they thought I was too fragile to learn the truth.

“Are you there?” Cutter asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Are you all right?”

“We’re fine.” He sighed. “I’m sorry for the secrecy.”

I hummed. “What was the secrecy about?”

There was a pause and then, “Can’t talk about it over the phone.”

Meaning, he’d done something illegal, and he needed to make sure he didn’t say anything over an unsecured line.

“Okie dokie, smokie,” I said. “What did you call for then? I’m not ready to go to the board meeting yet, or I would’ve called.”

The ‘board meeting’ was something that I did once a month.

The board that the meeting was for was my father’s brainchild, Castanon Enterprises.

When my mom married my dad, he’d been a Castanon, and he’d owned a multi-million dollar real estate empire in the middle of Dallas. He’d been the top of the top and had made his business into one of the world’s largest companies that bought and sold both residential and business real estate.

When he’d died, Granddad had taken over the day-to-day crap until I’d graduated college. When I was done, he’d transferred all of his shares—both his and my dad’s—to me for safe keeping.

I’d vehemently refused at first.

Should’ve kept refusing to be completely honest.

But my brothers and my granddad forced my hand.

God, I couldn’t wait until I could put that board and the Castanon empire behind me.

The day that Copper got out, that vile place was all his.

When he’d been younger, our ‘father’ had started grooming Copper to take the whole thing over one day—when he was very old and couldn’t cognitively run it anymore because God forbid he give it up earlier than he had to.

The rest of the family—Chevy, Cutter, and I—hadn’t once been asked to join him when doling out that knowledge. Which had caused us all to not want anything to do with it.

They’d—my well-meaning family—said that I deserved it. That I could either run it into the ground or make it even better.

According to them, I was going to get the money from that stupid place, and I was going to live happily ever after with it.

What they didn’t know was that I hadn’t touched that fucking money. None of it.

It felt dirty to me.

Like a consolation prize for my father’s abuse.

But, in the beginning, the reason I’d agreed was twofold.

One, I would make sure this stupid business was thriving and ready to go for when Copper got out and could take it off my hands.

Second, it was because of my father’s aide, Alexander Pettigrew.

Alexander Pettigrew would’ve taken it all over had I not taken it.

He was on the fast track to taking it right out of my grandfather’s hands because he was ‘too old’ according to the company’s by-laws.

And he’d have flourished in the position.

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