by Ember Flint
“That’s what I said.”
“And what does this article have to do with me?” I ask and shake my head, pointless to argue about this any further.
It’s not like she is going to stick around anyway. They never do. Carson doesn’t care about his women, he never did. I’ve told him how I feel about this many times so I’m not going to get into this again right now. Besides, this particular bed-warmer I really can’t stand. She is a plastic bimbo, dumb as a box of bricks and so young she could almost be my daughter, let alone his.
She even put the moves on me right after we met. I despise her.
“Well, it’s more the picture on it I’m talking about. It’s from the charity fundraiser you went last night. Nice shot of you and that, heiress, the lovely daughter of Brent Rowells. I approve and so will the Board.”
I burst out laughing. I can’t help myself. What is this, a conspiracy? It’s absurd.
“I’m aware of the fact that I was your ward from baby to eighteen-year-old boy, Carson, but I did not know your approval on women was something I needed.”
“Well, you have it all the same,” he says gruffly.
I chuckle. “Save it. I don’t even know the name of that girl, she was simply standing close to me at the bar, the place was really crowded.”
I hear my old friend sigh. “Cash, you need to understand you can’t go on like this.”
I take off my Stetson and hang it on a fence’s post, brushing my sweaty hair away from my face. “Don’t tell me you want to give me sentimental advice, Carson.”
“I’m not talking about being sentimental here, Cash. Listen to me. Our position in life is not the same. I’m a wealthy businessman who happens to own some shares of a huge multinational. Lots of responsibilities on my shoulders, for sure, but nothing like yours. You, son, are the CEO of Stone Conglomerate International. First of all, you have to look the part if you don’t want troubles with the Board and even more importantly, you are thirty-two and very much aware, unfortunately, that life can take a turn for the worse in every moment. You need to find a wife and start thinking about having children, unless you want to leave your family’s legacy to the sharks after nearly two centuries of hard work and abnegation. The Stones must prevail. You need an heir for your heritage, someone who can step in after you’re gone.”
I huff. “For God’s sake, Carson. This is not the Nineteenth century.”
“It might very well be, when you have as much to pass on and as much to lose as you do. You really need to start to look around, son, and lose that menacing glare of yours: you’ll scare all the good girls off if you insist on looking so glum and serious all the time.”
“I don’t look glum and serious I am glum and serious,” I grumble to myself.
Great: more responsibilities and worries for me, like I don’t have enough of those.
“That is beside the point, Cash. You haven’t had a girlfriend since college for Pete’s sake!”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. I don’t want to go there. I don’t need to worry about a girlfriend let alone a wife right now. I can’t have one.
How do I know?
I have tried that already. It didn’t work out too well.
Even if my life was the way it was I tried, that’s how I learned the hard way that people just see money when they look at me.
The girlfriends were the worst.
They would ask for stuff while we were in bed, their fingers playing with the hair on my chest as they mentioned this nice designer bag they’d seen, how much they’d like to fly with my private jet to Vegas for a night, or how they would like to be seen hanging from my arm on the red carpet of a big soiree.
I caught up with their games pretty quickly and ended that shit.
I don’t like to be played and I don’t like to play, so no more dating for me.
There have been no more women in my life in the last couple of years; the companionship I could get from a girlfriend, it’s simply not worth the trouble and heartache I’ll get from being treated like a fucking ATM all the time.
Some of the men I know from the business circuit, Carson included, just pretend they’re stupid and that they don’t notice it so they can get some pussy. They let those gold-diggers live off of them and then toss them on their ass when they get tired of them only to start looking for the next floozy to fuck, or they just pay for some action when they feel like they have gone too long without.
Me, I’m not wired that way. I won’t bother: it’s not my style.
When I have an itch, I just scratch it myself, but honestly it doesn’t happen that often: between the ranches and the companies, I just pass out in bed every night so I don’t have much energy for that kind of shit.
I gesture for a passing stablehand to come closer.
“Hang on, Carson.”
I lower my cell. “James, please bathe Artax and take him back to his stall.”
“Yes, Mr. Stone.”
I get a nod from him and I go back to my call.
“Alright, let’s cut the pep talk short, Carson. I need to get going if I want to be at the bank in time.”
He sighs. “I’ll see you later then,” he blurts out and hangs up, without saying hello.
But he is not pissed at me, that is just how he ends his phone calls no matter what.
I jog to the house and pass by the kitchen.
I’m really sorry to be missing not just dinner, but breakfast and lunch, not only because I know everything will be fucking delicious and probably consisting entirely of my favorite dishes, but because I totally feel like a bastard knowing Molly has probably been up pretty much since I left this morning cooking for me.
Well, at least it won’t go to waste: there are twenty-five hands working on the main ranch.
“Hey Molls,” I smile at her guiltily and the mouth-watering combination of smells of waffles, bacon, chocolate and whatever else she managed to put together, hits me, making my stomach growl.
She puts another batch of cookies in the oven, shaking her head and sighs, drying her hands on her apron.
“You have to go already?”
“Yeah, sorry.”
She gives me a little smile. “It’s okay, dear. I’ll pack something you can have on the go.”
“Thanks, Molly.”
“Don’t even say it and tell that old party pooper that I need to have a talk with him. A stern one.”
She looks really put out, but something in her expression makes me chuckle.
“Alright, I will. See you in a bit, I’m going to wash-up.”
“Go ahead, but Cash?”
I’m already at the door and I turn around. “What?”
“You really need to slow down, okay? I’m proud of you, so is that bothersome bear and it would be the same with your parents if they had lived to see the man you are, but they will also be as worried as I am, you really need to cut yourself some slack.”
I swallow, looking away.
As usual whenever she talks about the parents I never knew, I feel this sad feeling enveloping me. It’s not pain, really, it’s more like melancholy, regret for what was never mine, for what I could have had, for what I missed.
Most of the time, I can live with it. Life happens, everyone knows that, but some days I feel like I’m not sure I can. Today is one of those days.
I shake my head. “I wish I could, believe me,” I say and walk out.
I drag myself up the stairs and my eyes catch sight as they always seem to do of the family’s portraits spread all over the wall along it, I turn my head down, a million of thoughts running through my brain.
I don’t know why I keep them hanging there, these people are strangers for me after all, but I feel a connection —even if it’s dim at best.
I look at myself in those photos, just a baby, I look at my smiling parents and my three-year-old, big brother and it feels like I’m looking at the pictures of a storybook. One t
hat everybody has read me over and over again, trying to convince me I was in that story as well even if only for a little, but I can’t seem to bring myself to believe it was real, even if I know it truly happened.
I had young parents who loved me and an older brother who was supposed to share this burden with me, someone who was going to actually be in my shoes, after all he was the heir, not I.
I enter my en-suite bathroom and switch the light on, then I undress and get in the huge shower stall, closing my eyes under the scalding hot sprays of the water jets hitting my body.
I never had a family after those first two months I can’t remember. I only had money, responsibilities and obligations, and a whole lot of strangers always around me.
The press had loved every second of it and kept barfing it up over and over again while I was growing up, just to fuck my life up even more.
I was, after all, the only survivor of the Stone dynasty, heir to a fortune worth billions, looked after only by my family’s staff, under the tutelage of an entire board of guardians, with my father’s closest friend, Carson McKade, at the helm.
Absolutely delicious fodder for gossipmongers.
But no one really looked too closely at what kind of existence I lead as a child.
They made my life sound like a gilded cinematic tragedy.
It was never directly said, but always implied that mine was a fortune that had been largely destined to my brother, left to me because of a twist of faith and considering how wealthy I had become, the insinuation that I should count myself lucky was always there.
Molly always says they only mean lucky to survive, but I know better: Carson maybe wasn’t an affectionate father figure in my life, but he made damn well sure I knew vultures when they flew around me.
He did what he could, I don’t blame him for how alone I was as a child —except for Molly of course —, it simply wasn’t in his nature to be a real parent, plus he was too fucking busy protecting my wealth and my company for me when I was still too little to even sit up properly and he did more than that: he kept it growing until I could get control of the money at eighteen and of the entire corporation at twenty-one.
He taught me all that I know and shared everything he could remember about my family with me and for that I’ll always be grateful.
Still, sometimes I really do feel like I missed out on everything good out there.
I don’t have much if you keep the fortune out of the equation and at thirty-two years, loneliness is the constant companion of my professional success.
I really wish there was a way for me to change things, get a slice of happiness, but my name could not be more apt: for every one I meet, cash is all I am and all I have to offer.
Chapter 2
ARIA
I’m sitting cross-legged on a bed I’m probably going to be calling mine only for a couple of days more —if I’m lucky—, staring down at the crumpled bills and coins gathered in front of me on my favorite pink comforter.
The grand total of seven hundred and forty-eight dollars and forty-nine cents constitutes my whole lemons-day stash and it will be probably all gone before the day is over if I can’t get those pencil-pushers at Fields Fargo Capital Bank to see things my way.
I remember the first time Silver Bridle Ranch got in a rough patch like yesterday.
I was barely ten and Alma was fourteen and we had said goodbye to Grandpa only a few weeks before.
Grams was broken, broke and lost and with two little girls to think of she didn’t know what to do, but no matter how sad, she was a strong woman and pulled us through.
After that, every month she would first and foremost pay our workers, pay the mortgage and then squirrel as much as she could away in what she called our lemons-day tin, money to use in case of emergency.
Since she started that tradition ten years ago, that yellow tin saved our backsides more times than I could count, so when Grams passed away Alma and I kept putting as much as we could in it.
I don’t think the tin is going to make much of a difference this time.
I feel a tear slide down my cheek and I dry it angrily with the back of my hand.
I can’t believe this is happening.
I have lost everybody I loved in my life and now I’m going to lose Silver Bridle Ranch.
I fucking love this place, not only our ranch is the heart and blood of Silverbrook City’s economy, it’s the place I grew up in and the only home I’ve ever had.
I can’t wrap my mind around the thought of never stepping foot in here again, but the angry red letters glaring at me from the notice I’ve got from the bank are telling me otherwise.
I doubt I will convince those bastards, but I have to try.
I love this place too much not to risk everything to save it.
I sigh, putting the money away.
I feel so many different things right now, my head is a jumbled mess.
I want to cry, scream, punch someone in the face and break stuff all at once.
I can’t afford to wallow up in misery right now, I can’t be sad, that wouldn’t help, but mad?
Hell yeah, I can definitely be mad: I’ve learned that when the world is trying to screw you over and you feel like you can’t breathe, can’t think and just want to disappear, anger can become the only source of energy you got, especially if you can’t even remember the last time since you had a proper meal.
This emotional state pretty much sums up my entire life right now.
I get up every day, I work hard, I save every cent I can, I get hungry, I get pissed. Wash, rinse and repeat.
And I swear if someone else tries to console me today with some trite saying like ‘When life gives you lemons…’, I’m seriously going to end up breaking a couple of fingers —both mine and theirs— ‘cause only God knows how many freaking lemons I have squeezed in my life, it’s pretty much all I can remember doing since I was little and now I have a fucking mountain of lemons ahead of me. I don’t even know how to climb to the other side now that I have to do it solo, let alone squeeze anymore, but I have to keep on trying, I can’t let them take my ranch.
It’s all I have left now; I don’t know what I’ll do if I lose it.
When Grandpa left us, we were scared and sad and this place kept us together. We could see him in every little thing and were grateful for the memories, even if they were painful sometimes.
When Grams was taken from us as well, we thought the world had come to an end, we were lost, completely alone and pretty sure that they were going to take me away because I was a minor, this ranch was the glue that kept us together, the thing that gave us the possibility to still be a family —even if it was just the two of us— the thing that saved us.
My sister took it upon herself to keep everything together, even if she was just eighteen years old.
She did everything she could to spare me foster care. She postponed college, kept the ranch working and guaranteed a home for both of us.
We finally thought our life was turning a corner and then Alma got sick.
We spent every cent we had for her treatments and even had to let go most of the workers from the ranch because we had no way to pay them, some of them kept on helping us with the cattle and the crops, that’s how great people are in this town and how much they loved our grandparents.
We sold most of our stock and even our own horses and I took two jobs waiting tables to pay the medical expenses that the health insurance did not cover, but it was never enough.
I wouldn’t even care we lost everything if in the end it would have saved my sister, but of course it didn’t, nothing could save her.
Alma left me as well, eight months ago, just like everybody else.
She fought as hard as she could, as long as she could, more for me than for herself when she was nearing the end I’m afraid, but it was not enough.
And here I am, twenty, alone in the world, with no education and no pr
ospects on ever getting one, with more debts than I could ever pay even if I worked for the next fifteen years and lived of nothing but breadcrumbs.
And you know what?
I would have been okay with that as shitty as it sounds.
I would have been okay with forgetting about my dreams, losing my chance to go to college, pulling my shit together, working two jobs —hell, even three— until I could put Silver Bridle Ranch up on its feet again.
But no, of course I can’t get that!
The stupid bank is going to take even this away from me, because I’m behind with the fucking mortgage payments, because I’m still paying the medical expenses the fucking good for nothing health insurance had not covered, because they don’t fucking care, because life keeps throwing freaking lemons at me and forgets to send a fucking juicer along.
I spring up from the bed and start getting ready for the appointment.
Fuck this, I’m not going to let them win easy!
They may think I’m just some dumb chick that is going to stand back and let them walk all over me, just let them take the ranch away without a fight, because I’m chopped liver, nothing but a twenty-year-old orphan with no money, no lawyer, and no one to help her, but fuck ‘em: they are going to have another think coming.
I won’t just simply disappear.
I’ll fight back, I’ll do anything and everything it takes, I don’t care what it is, but I will save Silver Bridle Ranch for me, for Alma and for our grandparents who put every ounce of strength they had in keeping it alive with their last breath.
I can’t let them win: this place means just too much to me, it means everything.
It’s all I have left of them.
Chapter 3
CASH
I come out of the Board meeting more discomfited than ever with the attitude of the other directors; these people don’t give a fuck about our minor investors and what they may or may not lose if we adopt the policy they want. They just want more money in their already deep pockets and nothing else matters.
