Читать книгу Once Upon A Friendship - Tara Quinn Taylor - Страница 11

CHAPTER TWO

LIAM MADE IT through the signing of the papers. He paid attention. Read and reread the forms he’d already vetted. After Gabrielle had vetted them. The deal was sound.

He’d planned to take his new partners out to lunch at the Capitol Grille—a place in historic Latimer Square where Denver’s elite and powerful movers and shakers were known to dine—but knew he wouldn’t be able to maintain the calm facade long enough for lunch to be served.

Instead, he gave them both a big hug. Thanked them for taking him on. Promised that their future together would be even better than their past, and told them he’d see them at the Arapahoe in an hour or so.

Gabi was working from home that afternoon, and Marie would be returning to the coffee shop.

What they didn’t know was that with some help, he’d arranged a surprise party to celebrate this milestone that was the biggest in each of their lives, if maybe for different reasons. He wasn’t going to miss it.

But first, he had to get back to Connelly Investments. To find out what in the hell was going on and to take on the fight of his life with his old man. Walter Connelly had been ruling Liam by threats for as long as he could remember. Today was the day it stopped.

Today was the day he’d called his father’s bluff in the real world.

And now it was time to guide himself and the old man into the new regime. He’d have liked to feel better prepared.

He’d planned to schedule a meeting with his father after the Threefold papers had been signed. Walter would have been displeased, to say the least, but there would have been no opportunity for him to issue threats that he’d then have to follow through on. At least in part.

He’d planned to prevent the threat stage and talk like rational adults.

To have more solid plans, a clearer vision as to exactly what the new world would look like. He was going to be writing more. He knew that much. Covering stories that had some meat in them, not just being a glorified society-page freelancer while on Connelly-financed vacations. Writing about the world’s biggest catch didn’t interest him nearly as much at thirty as it had a few years ago.

Skating in behind another car that was entering the bar-coded private garage, so that he didn’t have to wait for the bar to lower and the scanner to read his windshield, Liam waved to the woman in front of him—someone from accounting—who turned in the direction opposite of the front spaces reserved for top-floor personnel.

Liam’s gut clenched when he pulled into his prime parking spot under Connelly Investments corporate offices. His nameplate—the one his father had gifted him for his college graduation—was no longer hanging on the wall. In its stead were two ditches in the cement, marking the nails that had just been pulled, and a rectangle of paint that was brighter than the rest of the wall.

Eight years. Had it been that long since he’d officially become a man? Taken up a life of full-time work? He wasn’t proud of that. It was a wonder Gabi and Marie wanted to go into business with him at all.

Slamming the door of his Lexus, he strode toward the top floor’s private, secured entry, listening for the horn to emit its half honk, letting him know that the car locked itself as the key fob in his pocket reached the required distance away from the vehicle.

That part of the garage was devoid of other human presence at four o’clock, leaving him too aware of the sound of his own leather soles stepping across the cold cement. So good old Dad had wasted no time in having his name stripped from his parking spot. The old man was trying to scare him. Just as he’d done freshman year.

Walter Connelly was, in his own twisted way, still making a man out of his son. And he was doing it one threat at a time.

So now what? He’d have him parking in a public lot that would require him to pay a monthly stipend and walk across the street to get to work? Putting him in his place, like when he’d had to ride the bus from Boulder to Denver to get to work?

Liam swiped his card with a bit more force than necessary to get into the building. But when he pulled on the door and it refused to open, he swiped it again calmly. Technology didn’t respond to brute force. And as of today, neither did he.

The click that sounded when his card gained him entrance...didn’t sound.

Liam tried half a dozen times before he finally realized that his father had had his key card stripped of its clearance.

Instead of worrying him into capitulation, the action only angered him more. And maybe it was meant to do so, if Walter was making him into a man.

Returning to his car, he backed up and sped out of the garage, around the corner, and pulled to a quick stop at a meter a block away from the front of the Connelly building. A walk in the frigid Denver air would do him good.

Clear his head.

He might have to replace the shoes on his feet if the snow and salt had a chance to sit on the leather and ruin it. It would be a small price to pay for his freedom from tyranny.

All he’d wanted to do was use his own funds to buy a lousy apartment building. He’d made a deal on his own, daring to rely on his own acumen without consulting the father first. For eight years he’d subjugated his own adult interests out of respect for the man. Out of admiration. His father was hard, yes, but hardworking, too. Successful. And honest.

Still, buying an apartment building with his own funds and his desire to write some news pieces about things that were notable to him while traveling were hardly deserving of stripping him of his parking space and easy access key.

He was still hot, in spite of the cold, by the time he pulled open the heavy bullet-proof glass front door on the Connelly building. If James, the doorman, tried to stop him, he was going to...

“Afternoon, Mr. Connelly,” the guard said, as though Liam entering the building through the public entrance was a regular occurrence.

“James.” Liam nodded his head. Hoped he appeared more civil than he felt, and avoided eye contact with any other employees as he made a beeline for the elevator.

Half expecting his elevator card to be defunct as well, he was considering taking the stairs to the top floor, when he stepped into the arriving car to find a top-floor aide—Amy something or other—standing there. “Thirty-six, Mr. Connelly?” she asked, naming their destination like an elevator attendant.

“Yes, please.” He didn’t have to fake the smile he bestowed upon her. Amy was...nice on the eyes.

And his split from Jenna had happened over a week ago. Not that that made any difference. Liam didn’t hit on employees.

Or date them.

That was bad for business. Fodder for lawsuits. And made life far more complicated than it needed to be.

Just like he’d never, ever look at Marie or Gabrielle in that way. Not because he feared a lawsuit. No, something far worse. He feared losing them.

It was the worst thing he could imagine. Worse even than catching a deadly disease and being told he only had months to live.

Okay, that was a little dramatic, he allowed silently, as he watched the lit floor numbers climb slowly upward. When the button for floor thirty-six was pressed, the elevator didn’t stop on its way up or down.

Firmly in check, he thought about the imminent showdown with his old man. Pretty Amy was completely forgotten when the door opened, giving Liam access to the sacred top floor. His office was to the right. Though he was curious now to see if the old man had ordered his things to be packed, Liam didn’t bother to check.

Walter might take a hard line and make harsh threats, but Liam wasn’t a kid anymore. And his father wasn’t getting any younger.

The old man needed him.

They’d work through this.

His father’s office door was closed. Meaning nothing. It was always closed.

He didn’t kid himself. The hours, weeks, months ahead were not going to be easy. His father would do anything he could to make him pay for his obstinacy.

But in the end, he’d also acknowledge that Liam had done the right thing. Walter wouldn’t respect a man who didn’t know how to be strong in the face of adversity.

He didn’t knock. And didn’t listen as Gloria, his father’s personal assistant, tried to object to Liam’s occupancy in the private sanctum without an appointment. He wasn’t the least bit intimidated by the woman who was known to many in the company as the battle-ax. She’d been around since Liam was too young to know what battle-ax meant. She liked him.

He liked her, too.

Bursting into his father’s office, Liam was ready for battle.

Or he would have been if the door had opened. Turning the handle a second time, his sweaty palm slipped against the locked hardware.

“What’s going on?” He turned to Gloria. “Where’s my father?”

“He took the rest of the day off.”

Liam glanced back at the closed door. “He doesn’t ever take the day off.” Not even on Christmas—though he did tend to work at home more often than not on holidays.

Gloria shuffled a pile of papers, shrugged and said, “Well, he did.” She was glancing between her computer screen and the file folder she was sliding the newly aligned papers into.

He could try to charm information out of her, but he didn’t. His issues were with his father.

Besides, he knew now where the old man would be. Turning, he left the office without another word and went straight to his own. Where his father would have expected him to go first.

Just as he’d suspected, Walter was there. Sitting in Liam’s chair. Surrounded by...not a lot. Other than the mahogany desk and matching chair Liam had picked out for himself when he’d been promoted to the thirty-sixth floor five years before, the room was stripped bare.

“You work fast.” He leaned against the door he’d just closed. The thirty-sixth floor offices were soundproofed and what he had to say to his father had to stay between the two of them.

“You signed the papers. I told you what would happen if you did.”

“You had a spy at the bank?” Why the thought hadn’t occurred to him before then, he didn’t know. Walter was ruthless.

And Liam felt stupid. Thinking he was going to walk right in and announce to his father that he’d refused to give in to his threat. And then deliver the speech he’d been rehashing for years. The one where he told his father how much he respected and admired him, told him that he’d continue to serve him, but that he also had to have a life, a mind, of his own.

Building up to the part where he told him that while he still planned to give forty-plus hours a week to Connelly Investments, he was also going to more seriously pursue a career in journalism. Pointing out the benefits to the firm if he continued to rise to success in a world of internet information delivery.

“A spy, Liam? You think we’re playing some kind of game here? Grow up, man.”

He listened for the disappointment hiding in the derision in his father’s voice. The seemingly imperceptible note of fear.

And missed them both.

“I want to know about the conversation I overheard in George’s office this morning.” Liam stuck to his plan to fight aggression with aggression if he had to. If reason didn’t work. “Why would our head counsel promise someone an impossible investment return? Even at its best, the holding he mentioned didn’t promise those kinds of returns.”

Liam had overheard just a small bit of the conversation, but enough to know that something didn’t add up. He gave his father the particulars.

George had been on the phone and hadn’t heard Liam wander in. It had been before seven, before office staff started to arrive. Just before Walter had called Liam into his private sanctum to issue yet another threat—the one where he’d be cut off if he went through with the Arapahoe deal.

Otherwise Liam would have asked the question earlier that morning.

“That investment will not be impossible to meet.” Walter’s words were quiet. Deadening. “And you are no longer welcome here.”

Steel could not have been stronger. Or more cold.

“I heard what George said. I know that account. There’s no way it’s going to make that kind of return. I deserve to know what’s going on.”

“How dare you practice duplicity and then stand here and demand answers?”

Liam checked himself against the accusation of duplicity. The pause allowed his father to move in for the kill.

“I thought you’d learned your lesson freshman year, Liam. Today you have proven that you did not. We cannot be a team, you and I. I can no longer trust you. If you will go behind my back, keeping pertinent information from me because your two harlots call your name, there is no end to the possibilities of other ways you could betray me.”

“Buying that building had nothing to do with you, or with Connelly Investments. It wasn’t a lucrative purchase. Or a building you’d have any interest in. And they are not my, or anyone else’s, harlots. As I’ve told you before, they are family to me.”

More family to him than Walter was.

“You moved trust monies behind my back.”

“My trust money. I’m a man, Dad. I have to be able to do some things on my own.”

“But not behind my back. That trust money was yours, but it was family money.”

“From my mother’s family.” Walter had met Margaret, Liam’s mother, after he’d scratched and clawed his way to his first million. She’d been born into the privileged life.

“It was our money, your mother’s and mine, when we opened that trust for you.”

Technically. It had been given to them at his maternal grandfather’s death, with the express wish that if they didn’t need it to secure their own futures it be put in trust for Liam.

“If I’d told you about the building, you’d have done everything in your power to block that sale.”

“It’s a stupid purchase. Those old folks are paying far below average rent. You’ll never be able to turn a decent profit.”

“They’re paying all they can afford on fixed incomes.” Liam stated the more pertinent truth. “And we aren’t going to lose money on the deal. We didn’t go into it with an eye to support ourselves. Marie has her coffee shop. Gabrielle’s a lawyer. I told you that.”

“And you, Liam? While you’re so busy exerting your manhood, you still expect me to support you?”

“I earn every dime you pay me.”

“You say you’re a man, but you didn’t tell me about that old apartment building because you were afraid.”

The little bit of truth that lurked in the ugly words spurred Liam onward in a battle he didn’t want to fight.

“I’m standing up to you now.”

Going into business with Gabrielle and Marie...it had been his way to solidify his place in their future. To make the three of them, their little family, a brother and his sisters, legal. He’d done what he had to do.

“You are standing only because you don’t have a chair to sit on.”

The old man was sitting in the only chair left in the office. “What’s going on, Dad? What deal did I stumble on this morning that you don’t want me to know about? Because that’s what this is about, isn’t it? This has nothing to do with a loser apartment building I sunk my own pittance into.”

“You stumbled onto nothing more than a joke, Liam. A joke.” Spittle sprayed on Liam’s desk as his father repeated the word. “George was on the phone with Bob Sternan. They were mocking Senator Billingsley and his promises regarding the Indian land he recently purchased.”

Land that his father had purchased, with a signed agreement from the tribe, and developed several years before. A development that he’d since sold and which was for sale again. A development currently owned by Senator Ronald Billingsley—the immoral man whose campaign Liam had once thought his father had supported. He’d later found that neither his father nor anyone closely associated with Connelly Investments had been listed as campaign contributors.

And his father had told him to his face, looking him in the eye, that he’d never support the crooked politician.

Mock him, though, yes.

George had been on the line with Bob Sternan. A senator who’d proven himself trustworthy again and again. A family man who chose to serve his state without lining his own pockets.

Jenna’s dad.

Another man he respected whom he’d disappointed. Jenna had broken up with him. But Liam had agreed to take the blame so she didn’t have to face her father’s lectures. They hadn’t been in love. Nor had they relished the idea of a match made for business or the sake of the public good. They hadn’t wanted to marry just to bring together an appearance of money and morals that would instill public trust in their families.

Liam had asked her to marry him because he was thirty years old and the old man had been ragging on him constantly about his duties to provide a Connelly heir.

And Jenna had agreed because she hadn’t had the gumption to stand up to her father.

But when the wedding date started to get closer and neither one of them had been able to see themselves married to the other...

Liam had told himself he’d go through with it out of duty. He’d given his word. And because the idea of a kid of his own someday was kind of growing on him.

He’d have been faithful to Jenna.

He just wouldn’t have been happy with her.

So when she’d begged him to dump her, he had.

Liam was batting a thousand here at striking out.

“I’m sorry,” he said. Because it was the right thing to do. “I should have told you about the deal. I am grateful for all that you’ve done for me. I just need to be my own man, Dad. Surely you can understand that.”

His father’s steely blue gaze didn’t warm a bit. “I understand only that I can no longer trust you.”

“Of course you can. You know me.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, son. I would have bet this building, my entire empire, on the fact that you would never be duplicitous with me.”

He’d needed to make the deal on his own. He needed Marie and Gabrielle solidly in his life. To have something, someone, to call his own. Someone he could trust with his inside self.

“It’s a worthless apartment building.” By Connelly standards.

“Then you’re stupider than I thought, trading your future for a worthless piece of real estate.”

The old man was testing him. There was a way to turn this around. He had to know his father well enough to find it.

“Get out.”

He wanted to speak, to come up with the right words.

“Dad...”

“Get out, Liam. I’ve had George remove you from my will. You are no longer my son.”

He was bluffing. It wasn’t the first time Walter had said such a thing. And he’d done worse. Walter had once likened Liam to a terminal disease. He’d called him a fool. Told him time and time and time again that he’d never make it in the world.

And then he’d buy him a new car. Give him a promotion...

“Anything personal you had in this room has been relocated to your apartment. You have twenty-four hours to get that cleared out. Anything left there at this time tomorrow will be disposed of when the locks are changed. You can keep the car.”

“Dad...”

“Get out.”

The man sitting calmly in Liam’s chair didn’t blink. His hands weren’t trembling. His mouth didn’t twitch.

Liam looked at him and saw a stranger.

“You are no longer welcome here, Liam,” Walter said as though he was ordering a glass of water with the coffee he’d just been served. “Either you go quietly or I will call security.”

Liam didn’t remember getting back to his car. He knew he’d done so on his own. Without escort. He climbed behind the wheel, starting the car with a calm he’d probably feel if he felt anything at all.

What did you do when you realized that what you’d counted on to never change didn’t even exist?

All these years he’d put up with the man’s abuse because he’d thought he understood him. Thought that, ultimately, he and his father would be a team.

The old man was really capable of disowning him? What honorable man did that? Threaten, yes. Make life hell, maybe, if he thought his son needed toughening up.

But denounce him completely, as though he didn’t exist?

He had someplace to be. So he drove.

He turned away from the showpiece building that housed Connelly Investments, heading toward historic downtown, and then found a moving and storage company with his satellite phone service. Placed an order for the following morning.

And only faltered once—when the friendly female voice on the other end of the line asked him the final delivery address for his packed-up life.

He told them he’d have to get back to them.