by Hazel Parker
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I have here a contract to hand over the company to you three months from now.”
What.
“I promised you that I would give you the company if you got married or I died,” he said. “And, well, you fulfilled the first one. I’m still here, but I’m a man of my word.”
Something’s not right. There’s something unspoken here.
“What’s going on, Dad?”
“Nothing, Megan. Please review the contract and let me know if you have any questions.”
I sat in a chair across from him and read the document. It stated that I would take over in exactly ninety days, which would have me starting on a Monday. It said that in the interim, I agreed to shadow and follow my father as much as needed. It said that I agreed not to try and obtain the title earlier and that I agreed to the retirement compensation package for my father—which, actually, was surprisingly sparse, relative to other golden parachutes I’d seen on Wall Street.
“I…you’re serious?”
“Of course,” he said.
He seemed relieved, even. Some of this had to be acting, but still. I was…could I really say I was getting the role of CEO? Could I let myself believe it without getting burned again?
“I had made that warning to you to try and get your act in gear. I will admit I had my doubts that you would fulfill it, but you proved me wrong. So yes, in ninety days, you will take over.”
I was damned. Maybe my father wasn’t the cold-hearted, ruthless businessman in all walks of life. He could be a good guy, or at least one who honored contracts. It still felt like there was something I was missing, but I didn’t want to press my luck right now.
I read through the contract one more time, analyzing it line by line, trying to see if there was anything where my father could yank it out from under me. It looked pretty airtight—once I signed this, the only thing that could make me lose my job was if at least sixty-six percent of the board voted me out, and I knew many of them already. They expected me to take over sooner or later.
“Well, thank you,” I said, still hesitant to believe this wasn’t about to be a cruel joke.
But my father just nodded, signed it, and leaned back in his chair.
“You’ll spend today and the next day or so passing off your responsibilities and projects to other people in your department, but as soon as you wrap up that, you can begin shadowing me.”
“Great!” I said, the first time I allowed myself to show some sort of excitement. “Thanks!”
My father nodded, gently shooed me away, and went back to his desk. I walked out in something of a daze. This was real.
This was real!
I went to the stairs, laughing, waiting to wake up. Something good had finally happened.
But…
If Brad was intent on ending it…
What the hell would that do to the contract?
I had to call him. Even if he’d ignored me last night by text, even if he hadn’t said anything, I still had to reach out and confirm this. I couldn’t have my entire world come crashing down from some stupid technicality.
I called him. To my surprise, he answered on the first ring.
“I’m working, Megan.”
“I know, but I—”
“You know better than to call me during business hours. I’ll call you later.”
Click.
And just like that…
He didn’t ask what had happened with my father. I didn’t even get to know what had happened with his family. Things had been so good.
And now, they were still so good, but that could have just been the world’s greatest facade. It could be a matter of hours before I learned my dream of being CEO and happily married were all just illusions cruelly placed before me, only to get swept away.
I know better? I’m your fucking wife!
And if you really want to put it that way, I’m about to be your business partner. But if that’s how you want to do things…
I started to develop a painful headache. How could I have been so wrong for so long? How could I have signed that contract with my father with things with Brad still in some sort of limbo? I felt like I had just learned that my life was a lie, like some sort of crossover between Saw and the Truman Show. What a fucking nightmare.
Calling wasn’t doing any good. Texting certainly wasn’t either. That left only one option.
When work ended, I had to go to Brad’s apartment.
* * *
Somehow, I distracted myself at work enough to get into a flow where I didn’t think about Brad that much.
As soon as I stepped out of the office at seven, though, it all came rushing back.
And there was another element of going to Brad’s that made this doubly scary.
I knew where he lived, but I had never actually been to his place. I’d never had a reason to go over. And now these were the circumstances that I was seeing him in?
Things could not be more fucked up.
I hailed an Uber and rode it about fifteen minutes away. When the car pulled up to the high-rise, I nervously got out, went to the front desk, and asked them to call up. The concierge gave away nothing with their facial reaction. But finally, I heard him say, “I’ll let her know,” and he hung up.
“He would like you to call him first,” he said.
Fuck, seriously. What sort of fucking bullshit is this?
“OK, thanks.”
I felt like a whore who wasn’t allowed to come back. I felt like a rejected date. I felt ignored.
Not like a wife or even a girlfriend, that was for damn sure.
I pulled out my phone, stepped out of the lobby of the building, and called Brad. He picked up on the third ring.
“What now?”
I bit my lip. What now? Whatever had happened with his family had clearly put him on the edge pretty hard. I had to remind myself to be kind and gentle with him.
“Brad, what’s going on? Can you please let me up? You’ve been quite frankly a complete asshole and cruel since we got back. I just want to talk and know what happened.”
I heard a hitch on the other line, and I could practically see what he surely looked like. I’d seen it in the hotel room—that brief moment where his eyes would have expressed some softness, some sorrow, some kindness. Such moments were rare, but they were real.
Unfortunately, just as he’d turned right back into an asshole in the hotel room, he now went back to his cold and distant self.
“We’re not talking, Megan. I’ve got a lot of shit on my plate.”
“Brad, don’t give me that. You know I do too. But we’re married. We need to talk—"
And then, as if driving the knife in wasn’t bad enough, he pulled it out and thrust it back into somewhere more vulnerable.
“We don’t need to talk,” he said, pausing for just half a beat before continuing. “We need to get an annulment.”
My heart felt like it stopped. Everything in my life was suddenly dependent on what Brad chose to do, and right now, he was fucking over my life. And I didn’t even know why.
An annulment? After what we’d done on the Pegasus? After the moments we’d shared? Were those not real?
“Brad!” I said, my voice becoming emotional. “I…my father gave me the CEO role because I married you. I thought we had something. What changed? Let me in, please. Let’s just talk for five minutes.”
A long silence. I couldn’t help the few sniffles that came. I wanted to project strength in this moment, but that was impossible. Brad was sticking the knife in new places and twisting it. I almost was afraid to ask if he was enjoying it.
That was ridiculous. But with my emotions all over the place, thinking straight wasn’t happening.
“I can’t, Megan,” he said. “It’s not going to happen. I made…look, it doesn’t matter. It’s not going to happen. Give it up.”
And for that moment, he did sound genuinely pained. He really did sound like he was put in a s
pot where he had no choice but to do what he did.
And that all disappeared with one more sentence.
“My lawyer will be in touch with you soon.”
Click.
“No!” I screeched, loud enough that all the burrows of New York City probably heard me.
Good. Everyone needed to know my fucking pain. Everyone needed to know what a fucking cruel thing Brad Nimico had pulled on me. Everyone needed to know that that fucking asshole would ruin your life and undo everything that you had ever wanted.
I just started aimlessly walking the streets of New York. The fuck was I supposed to do now? My father would accuse me of being a fraud and probably make sure I never got the job. Brad would continue to thrive in his business, growing richer and richer despite his shady activity. And me? I mean, if word didn’t get around about what had happened, maybe I’d luck my way into a half-decent job, but I’d forever carry this scar with me that would prevent me from ever feeling anything.
What a fucking nightmare.
What a fucking horrible way for things to turn.
I should have never gotten drunk with Brad Nimico. I should have known that the bad boy, the player, the suave seducer wouldn’t suddenly turn into a gentleman and a scholar just because I married him. He’d still be who he always was; he’d just change how he seemed.
What a fucking shithead.
* * *
Three Days Later
The rest of the week passed, but the Nimico family lawyer never reached out to me.
I suppose someone more optimistic than me would have said that this was a sign that Brad was changing his mind, but I just saw it as the legal system moving slowly. Brad still hadn’t messaged me since our call Tuesday night. I hadn’t gotten any sort of sign either way, so I was left believing that the annulment letter was still en route.
I hadn’t said anything to my father in the time since. I was still married. Until I got a letter saying that we weren’t married or that he wanted to begin the divorce process, I saw no reason to say anything different. Fucked up? Maybe, but I had to have something good in my life.
I was in my apartment, drinking wine and watching some show that I didn’t know on TNT. I was feeling miserable. I was feeling shitty.
But, yeah, nothing bad had happened since the Brad phone call, so I suppose that it was really just a fucking grand old time. Everything was great!
Except everything is fucking not. Everything—
My phone rang.
It was sick how quickly I would lunge for my phone when it rang, somehow hoping that Brad was the one calling me. And of course, like it had happened every time since Tuesday evening, it wasn’t Brad. But this time, it was a number I didn’t recognize.
I had almost all of my work contacts in my phone, so that wasn’t it. It was too late for any salesmen or telemarketers to call me. I answered the call.
“Hello?”
“Yes, is this Megan Adams?”
The voice on the other end was a woman’s. It was polite, but there was a certain formality to it that left me wondering if the call was for ominous reasons.
“Yes, who is calling, please?”
“Ms. Adams, we have you down as next of kin for Mario Adams. Is that your father?”
I gulped. What the hell happened?
Chapter 15: Brad
The more time that passed, the less confident I felt about what my mother had compelled me to do.
Usually, the more time that went by, the more I understood their position. But in this case, each passing day made me feel like I was acting like an asshole instead of begrudgingly assuming the role for my long-term sanity. My mother may have had good intentions in mind, but right now, I just felt so shitty.
And it was pissing me off. I didn’t like to lose confidence. No one else was going to have any fucking idea about it, but I couldn’t run from myself.
I was a CEO in my thirties. Where the fuck did she get off thinking they could tell me what to do? What the fuck was she thinking staging a quasi-intervention for me to get divorced?
And for that matter…why did my mother think she could pull that shit while I still didn’t know anything about her financial situation?
That was the straw that broke the stagnant camel’s back. I got up from my couch, put on half-decent clothes, and hailed an Uber to go to my mother’s place.
I knew how this conversation would go. My mother would say the case was closed and there was no reason to talk any further. It was an annoying trait of hers—and, admittedly, my father when he was alive. My family seemed to have a thing for talking about something once and then moving on like it had never happened.
For a marriage that was still technically alive—and one I had not made any further moves to cut off, still not entirely sold it was the right move—it was a terrible strategy.
But if I was going to call myself a man, I had to act like one. I had to press my mother. I had to get answers.
* * *
When I got to her apartment, I knocked twice and heard no answer. I had a key to her place that I did not want to use, but want and need were two different things here right now. I needed to know just what the hell was going on.
I knocked one more time. No answer. I put my key in the lock, turned, and walked in.
“Mom?”
I didn’t hear any answer. I quickly checked the entirety of the apartment to make sure nothing bad had happened, but nothing appeared that way. She wasn’t home at all. I sighed and started to walk out, deciding to wait for her in the lobby of the apartment complex, when I saw papers unfolded on the kitchen counter.
It was a recent financial statement.
Some might have said it was none of my business to know what it said. Some might have had good reason to believe they were right. But given that I was the one who took care of much of the family finances, especially after my father died, and not to mention the money issues she had been having. I had damn good justification for looking at it. I went over and read it.
And there, from the last week or so, was a deposit of ten million dollars from a holding company.
What.
The.
Fuck.
As CEO of a large company, I was used to seeing enormous transactions in business accounts. Eight- and even nine-figure contracts were things I saw regularly. But what happened in business accounts and what happened in personal accounts were two very, very, very different things. Even I didn’t get eight-figure lump sums very often. And I knew my mother didn’t have a job.
“Brad?”
I jumped at the sound of my mother’s voice. But I quickly corrected myself. She must have known what I saw because panic crossed her face.
It was time to get answers.
“What the hell is this?” I said, holding the statement in my hand.
“That is my personal business, and I do not appreciate you going through my financial statements like this.”
She tried to reach for it, but I held it back from her.
“You’re going to tell me who I should and should not marry, and yet when I ask about your finances—which I’m helping you with since you can’t do a damn thing for yourself—you play coy and act like it’s not my business?”
My mother looked like she wanted to slap me.
“Those are two very different things, Brad, and you know that,” she said. “I am right about that woman. That is the bottom line. And this money has nothing to do with you.”
OK, now I was going from annoyed and tense to outright furious. I would never hit my mother, but I was coming damn close to cussing her out like a sailor. I didn’t give a fuck if it offended her—which, I was starting to think, it did not. She just liked to act high and mighty.
“Mom, you need to tell me right now where you just found ten million dollars,” I said. “From…Perocheau Principal Holdings? What the fuck place is this?”
“Brad!”
“Don’t even give me the attitude about swearing, Mom,
” I said. “I think I have a right to say fuck in response to ten million fucking dollars raining down from the sky and landing in your fucking bank account!”
My mother went around the kitchen island and took a seat. It was the same damn spot she’d been at when we’d had the last argument about Megan. She just glared at me as if I was too sinful to have a real conversation with.
“Where did you get this money from?”
She didn’t answer. And since she wasn’t supplying any information, I had to fill in some gaps. And it didn’t take long for an idea of it to come to mind.
Fucking Uncle Gio.
He’d said he was taking care of something for her last week. It was one thing if he had wired her a few thousand dollars to float her for a couple of months. Ten million dollars was the sort of shit that someone retired off of and never had to work for again. Ten million dollars involved some shady ass shit.
“Are you in trouble?” I said. “Did Gio get you mixed up in something?”
My mother pursed her lips.
“I’m going to fucking kill that bastard—”
“Brad, it’s nothing like that,” she said. “This is my business, not yours. You need to leave it alone.”
Well then.
If my mother wasn’t going to give me answers, then someone else was.
I pulled out my phone.
“Who are you calling?”
“Uncle Gio.”
“Brad!” she said. “You need to trust me, Brad!”
But I ignored her. I turned my body away from her as she stood up and tried to grab the phone from me.
“Put your fucking phone away, Brad!”
I hurried out to the porch of her place and shut the door. I was a little surprised now, honestly. I couldn’t ever recall my mother swearing in front of me, let alone at me. And now she’d dropped it in a level of anger that I had never, ever heard from her before.
She was lying. She was in some deep shit with Uncle Gio that I didn’t know about.
Suddenly, my drunken Las Vegas marriage was the least scandalous thing in our family.
“Brad? How’s it going?” Uncle Gio answered in a playful tone.
