Page 62 of Knocked Up by My Fake Fiancé
Dad raises an eyebrow. "No?"
"You heard me. Since when has George expressed any real interest in the business? He's always wanted to do his own thing. You trained me for this since I was a little boy. Now I'm supposed to teach him everything?"
"I wasn't uninterested in the family business," George snaps, oddly defensive for someone who looks like he's about to faint. "I just wasn't as ambitious as you are."
"You mean you preferred gambling dens and whorehouses to an honest day's work. What changed?"
"Maybe I did have a misspent youth, Grayson. We can't all be angels. But those days are over. You want to know what changed me? It's a who, not a what. Marina—that's who changed me. She made me grow up. She made me responsible."
I feel bile rise, momentary and hot. Marina. The name still tastes like rust. He gestures towards Dad with a look of gratitude I want to punch off his face.
"I think Dad's right," he says with an annoying mixture of earnestness and triumph. "I think the position should go to whoever has children first, and it looks like it will be me." He swallows. "In fact, we weren't going to tell anyone for a few more days, but Marina's pregnant."
They both wait for the explosion. They expect pain, tears, rage. I let them. I watch their faces. I had braced myself for a hot, fresh spike of betrayal, the sharpness of the original wound reopened. Instead there's a cold dullness—an irritation—because the conversation has been reduced to uterus and timing rather than competence and duty.
So that's what Marina called to tell me; that explains the missed call. She'd wanted me to hear it from her. My thumb hovered over the screen and then I ignored it. I hadn't thought there was anything she could say worth my time. Turns out—apparently—I was wrong about that too.
"Whoever isn't the CEO gets to oversee the European branch," Dad says with the clumsy enticement of a man expecting his sons to be flattered by consolation prizes.
"No," I say. "I'm not teaching him shit. If you want to hand the reins to him, be my guest, but he'd better learn everything the hard way, exactly like I did." I stand. "Oh, and the second George is elected CEO, I'm leaving the company."
"What?" Dad's face drops in shock.
"Yeah. The very second, and I'll make it clear why."
"Are you that petty, Grayson?"
"It's not about being petty." I meet his eyes and let the accusation land. "I've worked my ass off for this firm. I'm not going to sit and watch it flounder under someone who doesn't have the right knowledge or backbone. If you hand a role that belongs to me to my less-competent brother, I'm gone." I turn and head for the door.
"Grayson," my father calls after me. "Come back. Let's talk this through."
I keep walking. George sits there like a well-meaning, bewildered child. That's precisely why he shouldn't be CEO; the buck cannot stop with someone who freezes at the first sign of friction. It's laughable—would be, if it weren't the future of a company I built my life around.
Outside, mid-morning Brooklyn is a sunlit grind of taxis and suits. The air tastes of exhaust and pretension. I let the noise swallow me while I try to remember why I threatened to walk away. I meant it. I meant every word. Pride is a currency that buys you clarity at times like this. If they want a CEO who'll be a puppet for lineage and old resentments, fine. Let them have it. I won't.
I spend the rest of the day in the office, choosing work as an antidote to thought. When the sky goes dim and the floors clear, I finally lock the door and drive home. The house is too quiet. Yesterday there had been laughter in the hallway, the sound of towels on tiles, the muted rush of the jacuzzi. Tonight there is nothing.
I go to the jacuzzi because habit is a kind of superstition—if I arrive and it's full and warm, then everything will be okay. If it's empty, then maybe the world is as empty as my chest feels. I push the door, and the water lies silver and still. No bubbles. No displaced towels. The silence presses.
I close my eyes and picture Jenna: the way she moved around the tub, the soft, dangerous way she'd let herself enjoy a private thing. She was reckless. Present. She is the opposite of everything my family stands for—honest, messy, incandescent. The picture wedges under my ribs and I close my hands into fists.
Why am I angry? At her? At Marina? At Dad? At myself for ever being foolish enough to imagine the people who raised me might play fair?
Probably all of it.
I sit on the couch and take out my phone. There's nothing to do but replay the fragments of the day like some ugly opera that will not end. I pick at my thoughts like a scab until the memory becomes a want. The want, when it arrives, isn't a neat thing. It's a slow burn: the memory of Jenna's mouth, the sound she makes when she thinks no one is listening, soft and private. It coaxes like a hand on my thigh. It nags. It aches.
When I hear her car pull up, something fierce and sudden flips inside me. A small, mean smile corners my lips. Payback—that thought appears, unsolicited and childish, but it feels like fuel. Not payback for humiliation, but a reminder: I can make myself feel better. I can take back the territory they've started redividing without me.
CHAPTER 19
Jenna
As I pull into Grayson's underground parking lot, I breathe deeply, bracing myself for whatever awaits in the penthouse above. He's not the type to take humiliation lying down. Ever since the jacuzzi fiasco, he's had time to plot his revenge, and I'm sure he has something devious ready. What he has planned I do not know, but I guess I'll be finding out shortly.
I can hear it already—that teasing lilt at the end of his sentences. He'll either do something to rile me or ask for something unhinged to appease his even more unhinged family. Whatever the details, God only knows, but humiliation for me is probably part of it.
I sigh and close my eyes. Steph's story about Marina changed how I see him. Knowing what he's been through, I see the hurt under the armor. His parents have a lot to answer for, as does his brother, and Marina most of all. What a bitch. To take up with Grayson's brother George, after all that time together with Grayson… that's low. Very low. How can I possiblynotfeel for the guy?
