Bigger and Badder: A Billionaire Romance

by Jackson Kane

  Richard crossed his arms and nodded gravely. “What about the inheritance?”

  “This whole thing is fucking crazy. Maybe we can talk this over and come up with another solution.”

  The sound of shattering glass rang out before Richard could answer. We immediately shelved the conversation and rushed back into the dining room. Thoughts of Dad falling out of his chair or cutting himself, or a million other things raced through my mind.

  Fortunately it wasn’t Dad. He wasn’t in the room at all. He’d probably been taken by the nurse to the bathroom or to take medicine.

  Madison sat calmly in her chair, wearing an expression of slight embarrassment. It was the look someone had when they accidentally spoiled a surprise party on purpose. And Molly?

  Molly. Was. Pissed.

  Molly stepped over the broken wine glass at her feet and stormed over to me.

  “What happened? Is everything—” The words were slapped out of my mouth.

  “You fucking asshole!” Molly didn’t exactly scream the words, but her voice and pitch gradually rose to the point that if she said anything more it would be said at the top of her lungs.

  Molly tore off the bracelet I’d given her and dropped it like it burned her hand.

  “Molly…”

  “Y’know, this time I really thought it was going to be different. I actually thought you came back for me. How fucking stupid am I, huh?” Molly shoved me; the tears rolling down her cheeks ruined her mascara.

  With one look of utter betrayal, I felt my whole world crumbling apart like a sand castle under a heavy boot.

  Oh, no…

  I waited too long. Why could I not stop fucking things up!

  “All of this was just to beat Richard?” Molly went to slap me again, but couldn’t muster the hatred through all that sadness. “Goddamn you, Luke.”

  When she left, I lurched forward as if she had a thread wrapped around my heart. Once she was far enough away, the imaginary line snapped taught and it ripped my heart right out of my chest.

  I was too stunned to move, to think, to breathe. After everything that happened, could it really end this way?

  “Luke, I…” Richard started, then stopped, not able to find the words he was looking for.

  The sound of his voice was like a cheese grater on my soul. I turned to face my half brother with eyes on fire. I mirrored Molly’s feelings of betrayal and anger. I was a fool for not telling her the truth when I had the chance, but I was a bigger fool for trusting Richard not to fuck me over when he had the chance.

  “We had a truce, you mother fucker!” I didn’t even realize I hit him until he was bleeding on the floor. He wasn’t knocked out or anything. I cocked my fist to hit him again but he didn’t raise his arms in defense. Why would he?

  It wouldn’t matter if I beat him to a pulp. He was a ruthless, cutthroat business man and he’d already got what he wanted.

  He’d already won.

  “For a second there…” I said, unclenching my hands and letting my arms lower to my sides. “I almost thought you were my brother.”

  I left the happy couple to their hollow victory and chased after Molly. She’d have already asked one of the valets to drive her home, but I had to at least try to reach her. Try to apologize. Anything!

  “What?” I heard Madison ask in her reptilian voice right before I rounded the corner that would take me out of the house. “You wanted to win, didn’t you?”

  Chapter 19

  Richard

  It was barely daybreak and Black Rocket Records was busier than I’d ever seen, but not with customers, although they were here too. Half the store bustled about urgently with renovations. Was this all for that band’s album release concert?

  The executive side of me quickly calculated the cost of the manpower, the materials and the temporary loss of revenue due to the construction. This wasn’t something a small store could afford easily. A pit formed in my stomach.

  If this concert didn’t go exactly as planned the Rocket might not be able to make its next bank payment. That’s when bad things started happening.

  I spotted Gloria immediately. She was barking orders at half a dozen workers nearly twice her size. Gloria wore a black, ragged top t-shirt and ripped jeans. She was sweaty from coordinating, moving things and also taking care of customers that were brave enough to enter.

  Where was Judy in all this?

  I walked in, idly rubbing my silver cufflinks. The last few weeks had been an avalanche of mistakes, and I was tumbling hard down the wrong path.

  I canceled my engagement with Madison the night of the dinner. She unsurprisingly threatened legal action for a breach of our agreement. Fortunately nothing was signed yet so she didn’t have a leg to stand on.

  In a lot of ways, walking into that coffee shop felt like I was back at square one. I had just arrived to town with no attachments and was looking to accomplish a goal. That goal had changed though. It wasn’t about the inheritance anymore.

  It was about Gloria.

  This time I was going to do it all the right way.

  “Look what the cat dragged in.” Gloria wiped the sweat from her eyes with the back of her arm. Her shock of black hair was both matted to the side of her face and also stuck up at random angles.

  “Must’ve been a big cat,” I replied, with a half smirk. The joke went over like lead balloon. Gloria wasn’t pleased to see me.

  “I don’t have time for games.” She swept a hand at the men working on the stage and rearranging the store to fit the coming crowd. “There’s still a lot of shit that needs to be done before Friday.”

  I switched to plan B.

  “I was going to bring flowers…” I held up the bottle of fine whiskey, I’d brought for her. It was a bottle of Glenlivet vintage nineteen-sixty-four. Only a hundred bottles were ever produced. It arrived from Ireland this morning. “But I figured this was more your speed.”

  “Yeah, thanks,” Gloria said, unimpressed. She lifted a cardboard box full of extension cords and walked toward the stage. “Leave it behind the bar.”

  I frowned, setting the liquor on the floor and snatched the box out of her arms. Gloria sighed, realizing that I wasn’t going to let her carry it while I was standing here, then pointed to the stage. One of the workers grabbed the box when I got close.

  “Let me help.” I set the bottle of expensive whiskey on the shelf beneath the cash register. Walking back to her, I took off my jacket off and tossed it on a nearby chair. “Looks like you could use an extra hand.”

  “I don’t want you to wreck your thousand dollar loafers,” she smiled bitterly and without humor. Her icy tone stopped me from rolling up my second sleeve.

  “Where’s Judy?” I asked, keeping the conversation light. I was trying to create the right atmosphere for an apology. It didn’t matter how sorry I was, if she wasn’t ready to hear it, then it would just fall on deaf ears.

  “Probably draining the rest of our fucking bank account to pay for all this,” Gloria muttered under her breath. Then in a louder voice she said, “I don’t know. Not here. Which is exactly where you should be.”

  “Wait.” I gritted my teeth; this wasn’t how I anticipated this meeting would go. “About that letter—”

  “That letter was awfully clear. You don’t want to be with me. I get it. I’m sure you and Business Barbie will make a great couple.” Gloria left to help a customer.

  She poured the girl a coffee, glanced over at me, then asked to see the girl’s ID. Confused, the college girl riffled through her satchel and eventually produced a driver’s license. Gloria carefully read it, then gifted the girl a twenty-five-thousand dollar bottle of liquor. The girl thanked Gloria with a wide, but still confused smile, then went off to the self service station.

  She turned back toward me with a raised eyebrow and a look that said, you can’t buy my affection.

  Gloria was serving a small line of customers when I walked over. I wondered how she was going to spite
me, now that she was out of gifts to give away. In between pouring cups of coffee and taking payment from people, she asked me, “Can’t you see that I’m busy?”

  “Extremely so.”

  “So tell me, Richard…” She slapped the cup down on the glass counter, forcing the customer back a step to avid hot splashing liquid. Gloria turned to me with a mix of anger and hurt floating in her stormy gray eyes. “What is it you want from me?”

  I finally understood how Lucas felt when he’d lost Molly.

  I ran over this conversation in my head hundreds of times. I broke it down into sections, planned it, and practiced it. Realizing I wasn’t going to get the right atmosphere for it, I went for my apology anyways.

  All my practiced lines suddenly felt canned and artificial. They all came from the heart, but they weren’t as passionate they needed to be. I let them dissolve in my mind and went with the only thing that actually felt honest.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Gloria’s stone expression softened at the sincerity in my words, but that only lasted for a moment. Her resolve hardened immediately.

  “I don’t care,” she said. “I want you to go.”

  It was hard for me to wrap my head around her words. They were so… final. There wasn’t room for negotiation or a better offer. Suddenly it hit me. For the first time in my life I’d committed myself to something and I failed. That pit in my stomach became a wide chasm.

  I wasn’t going to win this one.

  I wasn’t going to win her.

  Defeated, I walked out of Black Rocket Records. I hadn’t even bothered to grab my jacket. It didn’t matter.

  “Sir?” James, my driver, asked seeing the disappointment the bore heavy lines on my face. He shook his head opening the car door for me then corrected himself, “Is everything all right, Richard?”

  It was a surprise he remembered our earlier conversations about titles and names. I hadn’t requested his services since the day he first brought me here. I didn’t know what to tell him, so I didn’t tell him anything.

  No, everything was not all right.

  For a long time we simply idled in the car, parked by the side of the road. He’d asked me where I wanted to go, but again I couldn’t answer.

  I wasn’t the kind of man that was ever racked by indecision or hesitation. Whether it was the right call or even occasionally the wrong call, I’d always been able to make it quickly and decisively.

  “Take me to my jet,” I said at length. “I’m done with Caldwell Hope.”

  “Would you like anything from your apartment packed for you?”

  “No,” I said gravely. The full weight of my failure in all things was pushing me into the backseat. Soon I’d disappear into the folds of leather and never be seen again. “There’s nothing left for me here.”

  I’d failed Gloria.

  I’d failed my father.

  I’d even found a way to fail Lucas.

  So what? Dad’s voice said in the back of my mind. I imagined his voice shrugging indifferently somehow. It was only the last failure that mattered; the one that stopped you from trying again.

  I dwelled on those words as we drove in silence. I thought about the whole cryptic conversation we had that first day as we overlooked the town. We talked for such a long time yet so much went unsaid.

  My ringing phone jolted me from memory.

  “Richard speaking,” I said, distractedly. Part of me was still sitting on the bench behind my father’s estate, listening to him talk.

  “Hi Richard. This is Jackie, your father’s nurse. I’m afraid I have some terrible news—”

  My heart sank like a stone in a pond.

  “I’ll be right there,” I said. I knew what she was going to tell me, but I didn’t want her to say the awful, final words out loud.

  Your father is dead.

  Chapter 20

  Lucas

  “Lucas?” a familiar voice in the hallway of my apartment called out.

  I laid on the floor near the couch, plucking at my guitar. Through the haze of dead beer, every once in a while I could smell Molly’s perfume. It racked me with pain to know what I’d lost. Every time one of those dark thoughts threatened to break me I played faster and yelled out the lyrics I had. The song still wasn’t done.

  Why couldn’t I finish this fucking song?!

  I’d been at it for days now and I couldn’t figure the damn thing out! Molly’s song needed another verse and an outro, but every time I wrote one it fucked with something else!

  It was driving me crazy. I didn’t sleep… I didn’t eat… I just wrote and played. Writer’s block had crippled me after the dinner at my father’s place. I tried all week to explain, but Molly wouldn’t see me or return my calls.

  After that I locked myself in this room and threw away the key.

  That’s why I needed to finish her song. I knew—knew— if I could figure it out then everything between us would work out too. It had to…

  “Lucas,” the man repeated. “Are you home?”

  The poet in me poured over all the other meanings of that phrase.

  “Luke’s not home.” Caldwell Hope wasn’t my home anymore. It’s just another place I used to live.

  “Oh good, you’re here.” Richard stepped over the cardboard cases long since emptied of beer. He wore a fine charcoal suit and had a tray of food in his hands.

  After what he did, he was the last person I wanted to see.

  “No one invited you!” I threw the nearest thing I could reach. He didn’t even have to dodge; the empty beer bottle flew wildly off course and shattered against a wall nowhere near him.

  “No one mopes quite like a rock star.” Richard cleared a space on the kitchen counter and put the food down.

  “The fuck do you want, Dick?”

  “I got a call from management. They were worried that you hadn’t been eating and some of the guests have been complaining about loud crashes in the middle of the night.”

  “No one trashes a hotel room like a rock star either.” I raised my warm bottle of beer, then took a sip

  “You’re already drinking?” Richard at least tried to mask his disapproval this time, although I could still hear it in his voice. “It’s eight in the morning.”

  “Eight AM to you maybe.” I finished the bottle, laid it on its side, then rolled it away. Time didn’t matter to me. I had all the time in the world to fuck up now. “How’d you even get in?”

  “I told you, management called me over. They probably thought you were dead and didn’t want to be the ones to stumble across your body.”

  “Well. I’m alive.” I spread my arms out. “Now get the fuck out.”

  Richard sighed, unbuttoning his jacket so he could sit in a chair easily. “I’m not here just for that.”

  “Dad’s dead, isn’t he?” The thought sobered me up immediately.

  Richard looked down and said nothing. That’s when I noticed his red rimmed eyes. He didn’t need to answer, I knew it was true.

  “When?” Nausea bubbled up my throat.

  “A few hours ago. He just never woke up.”

  I didn’t know if it was from the beer or what, but I wasn’t as destroyed as I thought I’d be hearing the news. I’d spent so much time pushing thoughts of his health out of my head that I had never prepared myself for when it actually happened.

  I felt numb.

  “I’ll go get changed.” I got up and left the room. I even made it all the way to the bathroom before I vomited my guts out into the toilet. It was mostly booze and it smelled awful.

  I took a long shower; waiting for the tears to come. They never did. The fact that he wasn’t my biological parent didn’t mean a damn thing to me. He was my real father and I loved him. That’s what bothered me the most.

  Was I so broken that I couldn’t even cry for the death of a loved one?

  Chapter 21

  Lucas

  The rest of the day was a painful circus of bullshit.

&nb
sp; Richard and I got some food to help me sober up, then started making the arrangements.

  I quickly discovered that I hated the whole system of taking care of a dead family member. Between the medical examiner, the funeral director, getting the death certificate and planning the wake, there was no time to grieve.

  How did they expect anyone to do all this?

  It was like trying to plan a birthday party after just getting stabbed in the heart. The whole thing was fucking insane!

  At the end of the day—that felt like a month— Richard and I drank beers in Dad’s garage. He sat in the Aston Martin and I sat next to him in the nineteen-sixty-six Shelby Cobra. The tops were down in each car making it easy to talk to one another.

  “What a fucking zoo,” Richard said, popping the top on a cold beer.

  I did a double take at him. Richard never swore. That polished, professional exterior was finally breaking down enough that someone might mistake him for an actual person.

  “Is what’s her face coming to the funeral?” We decided to keep the wake small and private. Family was flying in from all over the world. The rest of the week was going to be hell. Richard gave me a questioning look that needed clarification. “Uh... Madeline? You know the one who looked like the blonde Terminator robot from that movie.”

  “Madison.” Richard chuckled. “No, she’s long gone.”

  “Good. I didn’t like her. You really aught to call the dark-haired girl though, you smiled more while you were with her.”

  “So people tell me…” He blew out his air, shaking his head, then took another sip. “That’s over too. You talk to Molly?”

  “She won’t see me either.” I pressed the perspiring can into my forehead, letting the condensation cool my skin. It was a balmy, awful night and I still felt like shit from the week long bender. “We’re really bad at this whole falling in love thing.”

  “Amen to that.” Richard tipped his beer slightly in a mock toast.

  “I didn’t knock anyone up.” I turned to him and asked, “You?”

  “Nope. I have no idea what’s going to happen to his inheritance now that he’s gone. My lawyers are looking over the will, but with the way he was acting these past few months it’s anyone’s guess.”