Page 10 of My Forbidden Boss

“Have you ever heard of a groom having more than one best man?”

I shook my head gently as I took a sip of my drink, glancing to where Dad’s gaze was wandering. I felt warm but found a strange hollowness gnawing like hunger within my guts as together we watched where Ryan and Harley, both beaming beautifully, stood welcoming the guests filing forward. The line of people worked their way through the doors, greeting the engaged couple before moving on to find their seats amid the constellation of dining tables.

“No, I can’t say that I have ever heard of it being done that way. Then again, when does Ryan ever do anything that you would consider to be usual or normal?”

He chuckled once, quietly. “That’s true.”

“Let’s see… there’s you, me, and Andy… That’s three… Joe, of course. That’s four… and then Harley’s dad. Five groomsmen, all of them the best man or… best men, I guess you could say. It’s a little weird, for sure, but it does kind of fit him. We all know that if he had to pick just one, it would’ve been you, Dad. There’s no question about it. But, let’s be honest, that would’ve been even more strange. After all, you two have spent most of your time together bickering and arguing or just straight up, not talking.”

My dad’s smile was much more genuine as he laughed louder and longer than before, almost sounding proud in the way his deep vocal cords rang out knowingly. “You’re right, of course. I will admit to that.”

I grinned, happy to see his spirits at least rising a little. “It was probably Harley’s idea, or maybe that of Mrs. Andrews. It’s kind of brilliant, really. This way, we can have a few guys between you and him when we’re all standing up at the altar. Although, it would be pretty amusing to see Harley’s reaction as she walks down the aisle and looks up to find you two completely ignoring her, engrossed in another one of your pointless debates about his company or managing his land or something.”

Dad scoffed with a look of shock and joy, imagining the trouble he and Ryan would get in. Grinning like a twelve-year-old dreaming up the consequences of stealing a cherry pie from a windowsill and later getting caught, the sight seemed more amusing to me than my own jest at their expense.

Whatever glee I was feeling was quickly doused by my father’s next words.

“Speaking of companies… How is yours, Hollis? With everything going on with the wedding… Oh, look at little Lizzy. She looks so happy, as always. I still cannot believe just how much pure happiness that little girl shows on her beautiful little face. And it’s all the time, too. Every time I see it, I can’t help but try and wonder what it’s going to be like when she hits adolescence, but I just cannot begin to see her ever being dour or moody or… Anyway, sorry… How is the business doing with the investment Ryan gave you?”

I gravely turned toward my father but kept observing the procession passing the bride, groom, and their smiling daughter, now two years old and bouncing around, barefoot as always.

“Gave me? … Gave?! Dad, are you serious? Who in the world ever told you that it was a gift? I mean, I guess you could say, ‘So-and-so gave what’s-his-name chlamydia,’ or, ‘So-and-so gave me a bad haircut,’ or, ‘The murderous clown with a sledgehammer gave me the creeps.’ Yeah, none of those sound like gifts, but it sure does when somebody just says, ‘He gave you a big investment to help grow your business.’”

Dad didn’t mean to, but he had touched a nerve that was already raw. The subject was so inflaming that I was already barreling forward, ranting with a bowl of emotions and exhaustion filled to bursting.

“Was it a gift when the Japanese bombed Pearl? Can you really call torpedoes a present, Dad? When we fastened the peace medals that they gave us beforehand to the bombs that we dropped on Tokyo during the Doolittle Raid, was that a gift? Everyone thinks I’m crazy. How could a boatload of money be compared to all that? Because, Dad, if Ryan handed me a gift, as you say he did, when I held that present up to my ear and gave it a little shake, trying to figure out what surprise waited inside, I could only hear that cartoon sounding, ‘tick, tock’… ‘tick, tock’… ‘tick, tock.’ You want to know the truth? Ryan wrapped a noose of money around my neck, clapped me on the back all brotherly-like, then said good luck and shoved me down the trapdoor that he had already taken the time to nail open under my feet. That, ‘tick, tock’… ‘tick, tock’…? That was the sound of a few sticks of dynamite tied together and fused into an alarm clock that is slowly ticking down. That there is a gift that no sane person wants to receive, no matter how fancy the wrapping paper may be. The bastard knew what he was doing, too. He thought it was hilarious!”

“Oh, come on now, you don’t mean that. Hollis, I am sure that…”

“Trust me, Dad. I definitely do. He knew that I wouldn’t take the money if he just offered it, so he did exactly what he did for Mom’s funeral. He did it without anyone knowing… at least, not anybody who could have stopped it. He got my assistant to make the deposit without telling me. Ryan told him that it was a surprise and… I love the poor kid, he’s the best assistant I’ve ever had, but he’s never had more than a thousand bucks to his name at any one time. It never occurred to him that anyone might not want a huge pile of money dropped on their head. Nobody thinks of it that way. Nobody realizes that a bag full of money would keep getting heavier as more and more money gets stuffed into it. People think, ‘Oh, yay! Money! Of course, I want more!’ But once you reach a certain point, the weight of that bag falling on your head… It’ll crush you. It’ll kill you! So, my assistant just listened to Ryan and followed his instructions on how to get the money processed. The kid probably had a huge smile on his face the whole time, too… proud of himself and thinking that I was going to be so grateful to him for making it all happen.”

My dad looked at me strangely. “You some kind of communist now or something? What’s the big deal? It’s not like there was any real money involved, anyway. I’m sure that it was all digital, right?”

I rolled my eyes. “No, Dad. Of course, I like to see things with the company really taking off, but it’s happening so fast, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, and I’m barely keeping my head straight. Just because the money is digital doesn’t mean that the same principle doesn’t apply. It can still literally crush you, just not in the same way. I’m not angry about the money. The whole thing would have been great if I’d been allowed a little warning. Maybe then I could have planned in advance and known where the money would go before it ever came into focus. But that didn’t happen. Ryan knew that he only had one chance to throw as much as he could into the account before I blocked it from happening again in the future. He can’t do it again… I already made that impossible. He would have to cut off my fingers to get my prints and somehow convince my lawyer that he’s me, face-to-face. The lawyer has to be present now for a deposit over a certain amount to be notarized. Anyway, I didn’t have any of that in place before and, once the deposit was confirmed, Ryan knew that I wouldn’t be able to give it back.”

My dad looked confused and a little concerned, thinking that I was referring to some kind of problem that I had with letting go of money once it was in my grasp.

I shook my head, weary with the weight behind the retelling. “No, Dad. It’s because I still would have had to pay the taxes on the money, even if I sent it back. If I am honest, I would have had to work every single one of my restaurants nonstop… twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. I would have to do that for something like six years to pay those taxes off. And that is only if ignored whatever annual or quarterly taxes came up after that, which I obviously can’t do. I would’ve basically had to abandon all of the franchise expansions that I was already investing my own money into.”

“Jesus, seriously?”

I nodded with exhaustion. “Seriously. When I found out, I can’t even explain how mad I was at Ryan. I was livid. I wouldn’t talk to him for… It was at least a month. I told my assistant that I was going to have him imprisoned for fraud. I don’t blame him, of course, and I’ve apologized since then, but honestly, my lawyer basically said, ‘Say the word.’ Based on the amount of money, the poor kid would, on paper, be looking at up to something like eighty thousand years without parole. They don’t actually calculate it that way for sentencing, but that’s how the law classifies the crime… Basically, based on how much he makes in a year’s salary, calculating how long it would have taken him to make the amount of money that he committed fraud against.”

My dad’s eyes widened at the thought, but that was all old news. To help Dad understand, I just kept trudging forward.

“That first night, I just got blackout drunk and ignored the whole thing. Honestly, it was just too big of a number to try and do anything else. Imagine if you woke up the day before the Titanic set sail and somebody showed up to tell you, ‘Congratulations! You have been gifted ownership of the insurance company that provides all of the unsinkable ship’s coverage. Good luck!’ Needless to say, I woke up the next day with the worst headache that I have ever had. I got up, called a bigger accountant out of Sioux Falls, gave them the numbers, and waited for them to tell me how much I could afford to hold on to.”

“Wait, I thought you said you couldn’t afford to get rid of the money?”

“In cash. I needed to know how much I could hold onto in cash.”

Dad looked lost, so I tried to explain. “We set aside the expected tax cost from the total amount Ryan gave me, and we looked at the rest of his investment. If I didn’t do something with everything else, all of the money left after paying this year’s taxes, then I would have to pay an even greater tax rate on the money again next year.”

I glanced at my dad and saw that he was nodding, understanding that payments to the county, state, and federal collectors would not be a one-time fix. He stopped nodding and leaned my way. “Why would it be bigger?”

“Because number one, it will have grown with interest and, number two, there’s a one-year grace period that would no longer be there. This first year, the tax rate is basically halved for investments totaling over six hundred million dollars. If I paid the taxes this year and then left everything else alone, I would turn around and have to pay again. And next time, it will be double. I’m a big believer in smart tax dollars, but Jesus… I think giving the federal government enough money over the course of your lifetime to buy an aircraft carrier is a worthy achievement, let alone in one single tax payment.”

I glanced sideways as Dad’s brow furrowed, trying to understand. “So… You have to…”

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