to pick you up a scarf while I’m in Rome, Mum?” I ask as I flick the coffee machine on in her kitchen.
Despite having my own house, I like coming back here for breakfast. Dad suggested that their housekeeper start earlier, but Mum insists that she likes to make Dad breakfast herself before he goes to work each morning.
I lean against the marble counter as she whisks eggs in a bowl. Forty years of marriage and they’re still the most in love couple I’ve ever seen. I’ve never known them to argue. It’s the classic rags to riches story. Dad met Mum at a local dance hall at seventeen, spent months courting her, then they married when they turned eighteen. Not a penny to either of their names. But Dad’s stubborn, and he promised my mother he would build her a palace and treat her like a queen. And that’s exactly what he did.
Long hours working two jobs so he could fund his degree in design and engineering, plus some dumb luck when he landed a job with a big car engine manufacturer has led him to this—the owner of the country’s largest luxury engine design company. The business produces modern engines for sports cars, super yachts, and private jets. And now, the new project I’m working on with him is for an environmentally friendly bio-fuel rocket engine. Most engines can only operate with a partial biofuel mix rather than one hundred percent biofuel. But we’ve designed aircraft engines that use it at one hundred percent. And now we’re working on one for rockets, aiming to work with NASA once we have a tested prototype. It’s ground-breaking.
I have to pinch myself, because even living and breathing it every day as we’ve been doing the past six months, it still sounds damn cool.
“No.” Mum laughs. “Your father keeps buying them. I told him I only have one neck. I can’t wear twenty at once.”
“Can’t wear twenty what?” Dad walks into the room, fastening his tie. “All right, son?” He pats me on the back, then walks over to Mum.
She places the whisk down in the bowl and fixes his tie for him and folds his collar down. “You don’t look so good. How much sleep did you get?”
Dad sighs before kissing her on the forehead. “I’m fine.”
“Len.”
Dad runs a hand around the back of his neck and his shoulders sag. Today, he looks downtrodden, beaten… drained.
“I woke up at two AM and you still weren’t in bed,” Mum continues.
Dad’s eyes lack their usual glint. “I came to bed late. Work. You know how it is.”
Mum holds his eyes. “Tell me.”
“Dad?” I ask, ignoring the flashing green light on the coffee machine indicating that it’s ready.
I’ve spent time in and out of the family business over the years. My friend, Dax, who runs a distillery, needed my help. And I persuaded Dad it was a good idea for me to experience working with other companies before joining him permanently. But now I’m firmly back in the family business. If something is going on, then I should know about it.
“Sit down. Both of you.”
Mum’s worried expression matches the increasing tightness in my chest.
“What’s wrong? Are you sick?” I sit at the shiny glass kitchen table and wait for him to say something.
“No. Not sick.” Dad laughs, even though nothing about the sudden tension in the air tells me that what he’s about to say is funny.
“Len?” Mum’s questioning gaze from the seat next to his matches my own as we stare at my father, the most capable man I’ve ever known.
Dad exhales slowly as he looks around the room. “This.” He holds his palms up and gestures at the luxury marble kitchen they had designed and installed last year. “We built this. Our family, the Riches. Years of hard graft. But what we have, the business, the houses, the jet… Everything… It’s ours. We built this together as a family. I couldn’t have done it without you both.”
His eyes shine as he reaches out and clasps Mum’s hand.
Fuck, he is sick. He must be. This is a dying man’s speech.
“And we must do whatever it takes to protect it.” His eyes meet mine, a new determination filling in them. “Whatever it takes.”
“Of course we will, Dad. This new project, it’s—”
“A drain on resources.” He drops his gaze to the side like he can’t bring himself to meet my eyes.
My head spins. “It’s just getting started. We have investors. I’m going to Italy to secure more funding. You’re worrying over nothing. We’ve got this. We—”
“We haven’t got anything,” he snaps with an uncharacteristic anger that makes Mum gasp. “This project, brilliant as it might be on paper, son, could ruin us. It is ruining us.”
“Dad.” I can’t help the laugh that fires from my chest at the bizarreness of this conversation. He’s a multi-billionaire. My family owns houses around the world, a fleet of luxury cars and a private jet. My thirtieth birthday present was my own private fucking island.
“This isn’t a laughing matter,” Dad bellows.
Mum clasps a hand over her mouth and weeps.
Leonard Rich never shouts. Not when a tree crashed into our house during a storm last year and caused half a million pounds of damage. Not when Mum lost her six-carat engagement ring while swimming in the sea on vacation, and he had to replace it. Not when I was caught joyriding in a stolen car with Drew when we were sixteen.
But now he looks like his head might explode from the mix of rage and fear in his eyes.
He takes a deep breath, threading his fingers together on the table in front of him and fixating on them. “We need to ensure the future success of the business… of the family.”
“I’ll get more investors on my trip. Get them to bring higher buy-ins,” I say.
I know I can do it. I’ve already brought in millions from investors.
“It’s not enough.” Dad hangs his head. “It’s time we made choices for the family.”
Why are the hairs on the back of my neck pricking to attention at the sound of where this is headed?
“You’re thirty-four in six months, son.”
“And?”
He raises his eyes to meet mine and the look in them makes my mouth dry up.
“You need to do things for the family. The same as I have over the years. A union that strengthens the business, strengthens our family.”
A union?
Oh.
“You want me to get married? Hey, I’m working on it.”
I’ve been using dating apps for months. Work is so busy that I’ll never meet anyone without them. I mean, sure it’s been more for random hook-ups. A guy has needs. But in the long-term, I always saw myself getting married and having kids. One day.
“I’ll take dating a little more seriously, I’ll—”
Dad snorts, and even Mum’s weeping halts as she gives me a pointed look.
Okay, so my track record isn’t great. Most people don’t meet and fall in love at seventeen like my parents did. You’ve got to experience what life has to offer, and the right one comes along when they’re good and ready. Tanner and Dax are living examples. Neither were saints growing up, and yet both are now pussy-whipped and grinning all the time. Although Drew is like me and hasn’t joined that camp yet. But I know he has his eye on some hot-shot lawyer he met ages ago. She was my blind date from a double date I went on with Drew. But it was obvious there was no connection there. Drew’s blind date was much more my type… Incredible tits.
“I saw Spencer last week. His manufacturing business is doing well. But he’s still undercut by overseas labor sometimes,” Dad says.
“That’s his company’s strength, though. That it’s all British designed and manufactured,” I say.
Dad’s friend, Spencer North, has a similar story. Both are self-made men. Both built their businesses from the ground up. Both are strong family men.
“Being the best isn’t enough anymore, son. You have a thousand wolves snapping at your heels, ready to take what’s yours given the chance.” His chest sags as though it pains him to say it. “Strong business unions are what’s needed. Exclusive contracts will give Spencer’s company an edge. Something competitors won’t have. He’s going to talk with Gabrielle about it. I’m confident she’ll see that this is what’s best for both families.”
“Gabrielle? Dad—?”
Gabrielle is Spencer’s only daughter. We know one another from all the time our parents spent together as we were growing up. But I haven’t seen her in a few years. Last I heard, she was in Nigeria, working as a UN aid doctor. She’s worked overseas ever since her mother passed away. She didn’t want to take over the family business, which caused a lot of upset for Spencer. I recall him spending many late nights here, talking with my father in his office about it.
“Len, what have you done?” Mum gasps.
“I did what was needed.”
My eyes flick between the two as realization dawns, settling low in my gut before my father’s words reach my ears.
“You’re marrying Gabrielle, son.”
“Fuck.” Dax exhales, leaning back in his seat and clasping the back of his head between his hands. The dark ink of the tattoos covering both of his arms seems even darker in the corner of the bar we’re sat in to dissect the shitstorm that is my life. I stare at the flowered vines wrapping around his forearms and wish they could slap me around the face. Wake me up from this nightmare.
“He’s got it all planned, huh?” Drew runs a hand around his jaw.
“Hell, man,” Tanner agrees, swirling the deep amber whiskey in his glass and frowning at it.
“Gabrielle North,” Drew muses, brushing his hair out of his eyes as he tilts his head to the side and meets my eyes. “She’s a nice girl.”
I shrug. What can I say? She’s smart and beautiful, and stood up to her father about becoming a doctor and not working for him. So I expect she’ll stand up to him regarding this ludicrous notion of the two of us getting married. Dad told me that she’s planning to come back to the UK permanently. Spencer sees it as a sign of her being ready to settle down and thinks it’s divine timing from the universe or some shit.
When I left, Mum was still weeping and pleading with Dad to think about what he was asking. He thinks I’ll come around. He’s betting on it. Leonard Rich is stubborn. But unfortunately for him, I inherited all his stubbornness… and then some.
“Beautiful too,” Drew adds, watching me carefully.
I glare at him.
“I practically grew up with her. It’d be like…” I knock my drink back, savoring the burn in my throat as I cast my eyes around the table. “It’d be like me marrying Mads.”
“Maddy,” Drew corrects. “You know she hates you calling her Mads.”
I ignore him and look at Tanner. He’s the married one. He married his soulmate, Rachel. They’ve got two kids and a third on the way, and the fucker looks an equal mix of exhausted and deliriously happy each time I see him.
He lifts a shoulder. “You can’t force it. But maybe, you know, if you spent more time with her, then things might develop, they might—”
“Fuck off, man.”
“Ease up. He’s only thinking like that because Rachel hated his guts when they first met,” Dax says.
“When they second met, you mean?” Drew snorts. “She can barely remember the first time they met. Tan left that much of an impression on her.”
“Wankers,” Tanner fires out as the two throw back their heads and roar with laughter.
“I’m glad you bastards can find things to laugh about while my life is being torn to shreds.” I reach for the whiskey and refill my glass.
The table falls silent.
“He’s worried about money, right?” Tanner says thoughtfully.
Out of all the guys, he’s the second richest out of us. Like Dad, he built his company from nothing except his own blood, sweat, and determination. If anyone can understand my father’s logic behind this decision, then it’s Tanner.
“Yeah.” I eye him over my glass.
“Then get it from elsewhere. Do whatever the fuck magic it is that you do that’s gotten you all the funding in the past. And do it tenfold. No, make that a billion-fold.”
“Yeah. Talk the shit out of the investors on your trip and come back with money pouring from your ears. You won’t need any company merging crap then,” Drew says.
This is my thought process. But something about Dad’s finality in the way he told me we can discuss wedding venues upon my return has doubt clawing at me. Niggling like an old sore that hasn’t healed. One scratch and it’ll bleed once more. Weak to infection.
I’m missing something. I must be.
“Better delete the dating apps,” Dax throws in with a raised brow. “No more choosing your next date based upon the size of her rack. Jasmin will be impressed.”
I flip him the middle finger. Dax’s sister, Jasmin, has been going on at me for months to delete the app, saying I’m wasting my time. We grew close when Dax went to jail and I helped her keep their business running. Helping out friends’ sisters seems to be my calling. Maybe because I have no siblings of my own. I don’t know. Where Jasmin and I became friends, Maddy and I are more like… sparring partners.
The thought of her getting all worked up at her office when she saw me is almost enough to thaw my mood. I made that line between her brows deep.
The guys continue laughing around me, so I turn my palms up, tuning back into our conversation.
“I like tits, so what? It’s ingrained into humans. It’s a basic survival instinct that a baby knows how to suck a nipple. I’m human. Which is more than I can say for you assholes.”
Their eyes all cast around the table between one another before they throw their heads back and laugh again. This time, Tanner joins in.
“Yeah, laugh at the poor sucker who’s having their life dictated to them,” I grumble.
But despite the earlier shock of Dad’s bombshell, my spirits lift. The guys are right. I can bring more money into the company. It’s only the Vex project that needs extra funding. Our other lines are running like usual, bringing in huge revenue. Our airline contracts being the largest. Those alone keep our company in billions of profits per year. The rest could all go to shit, and they would keep us afloat. Project Vex is ambitious. But it’s not impossible. Dad and I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but that it’d be worth it.
It was only when I came back to work with Dad full time that we put plans into motion. I respect Dad for having complete faith in what started as merely a spark of an idea. He’s been behind me every step of the way, working on the design with me, bringing in specialists, project managers, a whole team of the best minds to develop it. And we are so close. We need more funding and then we can begin testing the prototype. The amount it’ll cost is huge. But it’ll be worth it. Once this engine works, even a hundred billion pounds will seem like a speck compared to what we’ll make.
Drew wraps an arm around my shoulders, and I manage a smile and soft jab to his middle as he ruffles my hair.
Dad’s overreacting. Our company is worth billions, for fuck’s sake. And our reputation will bring in the extra investors we need to uphold the project.
I don’t need to marry Gabrielle North any more than a bear needs to stop shitting in the woods.
It just won’t happen.
