Page 71 of The Lost Heiress
Bass sighed, struggling to remain in control of his temper. He looked at Ransom, but Ransom said nothing.
“I know you feel that way now, but in time, you may come to regret that decision,” Bass said, turning his attention back to Saoirse. “We’re trying to protect you from making a life-altering mistake.”
“I would gladly welcome a mistake—a regret—if it were my own,” Saoirse said. “What I cannot live with is going contrary to what I believe is right, to live in opposition to my own beliefs.”
“This is not just about you!” Bass snapped.
Saoirse sat back in her chair, startled.
“I’m sorry,” Bass said. He sighed heavily again and looked pointedly at Ransom. “Do you want to jump in here?” Bass asked, irritated.
Saoirse looked at her brother. She couldn’t figure out what was going on between the two of them. Usually, Bass and Ransom were in lockstep. But today, she could feel the silent tension simmering between them.
Ransom took a deep breath and said evenly, “If you divest all of your shares at once, Saoirse, it could be catastrophic for Bass Corp. It could cause the price of shares to free-fall. I don’t know that the company would survive it.”
“This is not just my legacy,” Bass said. “Your father helped me start this company, to build it into what it is today. You talk about being true to your beliefs, and I understand that—admire it, even. But what of family and loyalty? Do you not believe in those too?”
Saoirse couldn’t breathe. It felt like someone had wrapped their hand around her throat and was slowly constricting it. In her mind’s eye, she saw her father’s face—how he had looked the last time she had seen him. She was thirteen, sprawled out on the couch in the living room, watching something on TV. He had come in to say goodbye—he and her mother were going to Catalina for the weekend. She’d been so preoccupied with her show that she hadn’t even initially looked up. He’d leaned over the couch, kissed her forehead. It was only then that Saoirse glanced up at him. She could see a spot on his neck, just below his chin, where he had nicked himself while shaving that morning and stuck a piece of tissue to stop the bleeding. He must have forgotten about it. She reached up and brushed off the tissue.
“You’re a mess,” she said.
“What would I do without you?” he asked.
“Walk around with tissue on your face, probably.”
“I love you,” he said. “Be good.”
Be good.The last thing her father had ever said to her. Such seemingly simple instructions, and yet they weren’t.
What didbe goodmean in this context? What was the “good” thing to be done? Was it to follow her conscience? Or to protect those she loved? Both of those things in themselves seemed good, but what if they were at odds with one another? What then?
Ransom cleared his throat. “There comes a time for all of us, Saoirse, when we have to lay aside our own desires and self-interests and think of what’s best for the family,” he said. “We all have to make sacrifices.”
Sacrifices. What sacrifice had Ransom made in this? What sacrifice had Bass made?
“Stop,” Saoirse said. “Just stop. Both of you.”
Saoirse couldn’t help but feel that she was being manipulated. It boiled her blood, the hypocrisy of it, for both of them to sit there and preach about how wrong it was for her to act in her own self-interest, when they had clearly only thought about themselves when putting this plan together. Their strategy had not been to give her what she had asked for while looking out for her financial well-being. No. It had been to give her as little as possible—just enough to make it look like they were placating her—while still protecting their own interests.
“Don’t sit here and try and use my own father to—to emotionally coerce me into doing something that only serves you,” Saoirse said. “I said I would listen to your plan, and I have. But I cannot in good conscience follow it. And I think if Daddy were here, he would—he would be on my side in this.”
“Saoirse—” Bass said.
“No,” Saoirse said, cutting him off. She’d done her fair share of listening, and now it was time for both of them to listen to her. “I’m going to divest my shares in Bass Corp. when I turn eighteen. All of them. And as quickly as possible,” Saoirse said. She stood and depositedthe portfolio where it belonged—into the trash can next to Ransom’s desk—as both men watched.
The sad truth, Saoirse thought, was that if either of them had shown any consideration for her and her feelings in this plan, then maybe she would have done the same for them. But they hadn’t.
And maybe that was the problem—they didn’t know what it felt like for someone else to make a decision on their behalf that greatly impacted them, one that they themselves had no say in. One that they couldn’t do anything about.
But it was certainly time that they learned.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
August 1982
Well,” Ransom said after Saoirse had stormed out, “that could have gone better.”
He was used to seeing his sister upset by now. The past two years had been especially hard, full of loss and disappointment, isolation and restraint—and she had obviously taken this financial plan that he and Bass had carefully drawn up for her as yet another blow, even though it hadn’t been meant that way in the slightest. It irked Ransom, burrowed under his skin, that even though everything he’d ever done was to protect her, Saoirse seemed determined to interpret it as some kind of punishment.
