“I can’t do this. I’m not like you.”
“Despite being raised with a silver spoon in your fucking mouth, you are. You’re money wise. You’re good with people. You can wheel and deal and make people feel safe writing you checks. You were born for this. If I thought for one second you’d fuck it up, trust me, I wouldn’t have wasted my time grooming you to take things over. I just didn’t think it would have to be so soon.”
“You understand that I’ve never wanted any part in it?” I’d wanted to tell him for so long, and somehow, now that his ruin seemed imminent, the words could finally come.
“This isn’t a life sentence, Will. If Reilly or I get indicted, the investors will bail, without a doubt. We need you to come in and instill confidence. Become the figurehead for a while until the dust settles and one of us can take over again.”
I laughed and shook my head. “This guy—your business partner—skimmed millions from his friends so people like you could get fat kickbacks. You really think there’s anything I can say that’s going to convince investors to let you continue playing with their money?”
“There’s a six-month lock-up on the investments. That gives us time to repair the damage. But I can’t do it alone.”
“You mean you can’t do it from behind bars.”
The grooves between his brows deepened. “Nothing is certain right now. I told you. We need to plan for contingencies.”
He was right about one thing. Nothing was certain. Nothing about his tone or demeanor was confidence inspiring, and the way the news was spreading around, Bill Donovan and the future of Reilly Donovan Capital was heading south. The suggestion that I could do anything to unfuck the situation seemed unlikely.
The instinct to help my father, even as I disagreed with it in principal, still nagged at me. Was the fund really clean? I couldn’t imagine being part of the company. If the money was tainted at all, I had no choice. I wouldn’t go down the way my father was going down. That much I knew.
Chapter Six
OLIVIA
“Oh, good, you’re here. You have to tell me everything.” Maya pushed a glass of wine into my hand as I entered her kitchen.
Darren straightened from checking on the food in the stove and exchanged a look with Cameron. “What’s going on?”
“Never mind. Come on, let’s go sit.” Maya waved him off and pulled me toward the dining room area where Vanessa was already sitting at the long table with her wine.
While Darren and Cameron stayed busy in the kitchen, I was essentially sandwiched between my brothers’ wives. Two new sisters in the space of a year. Our family was growing faster than I could keep up with. A week didn’t go by without one of us hosting a family dinner, a ritual that kept our close family even closer. Except none to date had included our parents, a fact that I regretted.
We were a stubborn family. My brothers had broken out on their own not long after college, defying our parents’ wishes for their futures, and nothing had been the same after that. Long periods of silence, awkward dinners, tense holidays, and words that couldn’t be unspoken. Sometimes I felt like I was the only one keeping that line open between the two broken halves of our family, but I wondered if I’d always be able to do that.
“So what happened last night?” Maya’s voice was hushed.
I glanced back to the kitchen, worried that we were still within earshot of my brothers.
“Did you meet someone?” Vanessa’s light-green eyes brightened.
“Um…” How did I respond to that? “Sort of.” Technically I’d met Will. The rest fell into a very weird category that I wasn’t sure I could really talk about.
Vanessa smiled broadly and leaned in. “Who is it?” She clasped her wineglass, and her diamond shone brilliantly in the light.
Maya quickly answered for me. “Will Donovan. He’s the investor for the new gym.”
“Oh, wow.” She blinked. “Wait, that’s Bill’s son, right?”
I nodded, and her excitement dimmed. Her days at Reilly Donovan Capital had been short-lived, but I knew from Maya that she carried a lot of resentment toward her ex-boss, David Reilly. Thankfully, she’d landed a much better position at the Youth Arts Initiative, the very one that Will’s father had defrauded. Still, I wasn’t ready to hold anything against Will. From what I could tell, their business dealings were very separate, and the few words he’d shared on the matter seemed weighty with disappointment.
“So you still haven’t really answered my question. What happened? Did you stay over?”