Page 4 of Price of Victory
What she meant was: stop playing games and join the family empire before your father has another heart attack from stress.
The Michigan team had never warmed up to me, not really. They’d been professional enough, but I’d caught the comments when they thought I wasn’t listening. Something about Whitmore Entertainment’s coverage of environmental protests, how we’d spun a story about activists to make them look like extremists. One of my teammates had muttered something about me “playing hockey like I’m out to end democracy,” which was both creative and deeply unfair.
I hadn’t written those stories. I’d barely paid attention to them. But my last name meant I was guilty by association, just like it always had been.
I picked up my phone before I could change my mind, but instead of calling my father, I scrolled to my mother’s number. She’d be at her book club now, which meant I could get information without having to actually talk to anyone.
She answered on the second ring. “Aiden? Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just wanted to check in about Dad.”
“Oh.” There was relief in her voice. “He’s doing much better. The doctors are pleased with his progress, and he’s been asking about you.”
Of course he had been. Richard Whitmore never asked about anything without an agenda.
“That’s great to hear. I’m sorry I haven’t called. The transfer has been crazy, getting settled and everything.”
“I understand, sweetheart. But you know he’d love to see you. Maybe this weekend?”
“I wish I could, but practice starts Monday, and I need to get oriented with the team. Maybe next week?”
It was a bullshit excuse, and we both knew it, but my mother was too polite to call me on it.
“Of course. You know how proud we are of you, don’t you? Coming back to Chicago, being closer to family.”
The guilt hit me square in the chest. She thought I’d transferred to be near them, to finally accept my place in the family business. She had no idea that the only reason I was here was because I’d been too scared to stay away, too terrified that my father might die while I was pretending we didn’t need each other.
“I love you, Mom,” I said, which wasn’t exactly a lie but wasn’t the whole truth, either.
“I love you, too, sweetheart. Take care of yourself.”
After I hung up, I sat on the leather couch that had probably cost more than most people’s cars and stared at my reflection in the black screen of the massive TV. The apartment was completely silent except for the hum of the air-conditioning and the distant sound of traffic forty floors below.
This was my life now. Expensive and empty and echoing with all the things I couldn’t say.
I thought about my teammates at Michigan, how they’d looked at me like I was some kind of corporate villain in hockey pads. I thought about my father, lying in a hospital bed and probably planning my future in the media business. I thought about the Westmont team I’d be meeting on Monday, who had no idea that Richard Whitmore’s son was about to walk into their locker room.
I wondered if they’d heard of Morrison Media Group. I wondered if they knew about the rivalry, the corporate warfare that had been going on since before I was born. I wondered if Rhett Morrison was still the self-righteous prick I rememberedfrom those tedious business events our parents had dragged us to as kids.
Probably. Rich boys like that never changed. They just got better at hiding their superiority complexes behind false modesty and scholarships they didn’t need.
But that was a problem for Monday. Tonight, I was just going to sit here in my perfect, empty apartment and try to forget that I’d moved back to a city that felt like a gorgeous, glittering cage.
I reached for the remote and turned on the TV, flipping through channels until I found a hockey game. It was some matchup I didn’t care about, but the familiar sound of skates on ice and the crack of stick against puck was soothing in a way that nothing else ever was.
This was what I was good at. Not corporate strategy or media manipulation or living up to family expectations. Hockey. The one thing in my life that was clean and honest and mine.
I just had to figure out how to keep it that way.
The game played on, and I let myself sink into the couch and pretend that everything was simple. That I was just another college hockey player looking forward to his senior season, not the heir to a media empire who was slowly suffocating under the weight of expectations he’d never asked for.
On the TV, someone scored a goal, and the crowd erupted in celebration. For a moment, I could almost imagine I was there, on the ice, in the game, part of something bigger than boardrooms and stock prices and family legacies that felt more like prison sentences.
But the moment passed, like they always did, and I was back to being Aiden Whitmore in his empty apartment, counting down the hours until I had to face whatever came next.
THREE
RHETT
