Chapter 8: What could go wrong

*Some people inherit kingdoms. Others inherit the expectations that come with them. The second weighs a lot more*

Everette's POV

Outside, my eyes are locked on my phone, trying to answer the string of emails waiting for me as I wait for my driver to pull my Rolls-Royce around.

The fake engagement with Raze is getting way too much publicity that I want.

"I need your brain, Brainiac." Serena slips an arm around my waist from behind and steers me away just as the car pulls up. "Come on. We need a strategy. Dad's little fiancée has my title, and I intend to take it back before she gets comfortable sitting in my office. While we're at it, we should probably destroy their engagement too."

She starts marching back to the house before I answer, completely confident that I will follow because, in her mind, I always do. My driver gives me an apologetic look over the roof of the car, silently asking whether he should wait or leave. I sigh.

"When I said I have work to do, I wasn't joking, Serena."

"Oh, that?" She turns, waving a dismissive hand. "Tell your little worker bees to handle the computer thing. This is family business. Family businesses outrank spreadsheets."

"They're not spreadsheets, they’re called servers."

"Same thing,” she turns back around.

I stare at the back of her head. "They're... not remotely the same thing."

She spins around, putting a hand on her waist. "Eve, my career has just been hijacked by Dad's midlife crisis, and you're correcting my vocabulary?"

"I correct everyone's vocabulary."

"I know. It's exhausting."

A smile tugs at my lips and I shake my head, turning and climbing into the car anyway. Serena follows, sliding into the seat beside me.

“You’re really going to leave me to go play with computers, Eve?”

"I told you to just forget about Dad's stupid games, cut ties, and open your own company because you actually have the drive to pull it off."

"It isn't that easy," she throws her hands up. "Energy isn't some little app you build in your bedroom. It takes billions, political connections, government approvals, and people who actually know where oil comes from. If I leave Carrington Energy, I lose the family name. I'll have to invest my entire trust fund just to get people to take me seriously."

I sigh, pulling off my dark-rimmed glasses to rub the bridge of my nose while I listen to her rant about her career tragedy. Yet beneath all her sharp edges and self-centered ranting, my heart softens just a fraction because I love her more than anyone on this planet.

“…….I'd have to recruit executives. Build infrastructure. Convince investors I'm not just Theodore Carrington's angry daughter throwing a tantrum. Do you know how annoying competent men become when they're talking to a woman in business? They explain my own presentations back to me."

Everything she says is true. Carrington has made a great name in the oil business, investors will be wary if out of the blues, someone from the same company and family opens a new one. Especially if my father backs up the story that she is just acting out.

Still.

"They will be right though. About the tantrum stuff.”

She glares at me. "Whose side are you on?"

I raise my hands up in surrender. "Yours, sweetheart. Always yours."

"Didn't sound like it."

She sighs and leans back on the seat. I reach over and take her hands. "Serena. You're good."

"I know."

"And you don't need to empty your trust. You just need one good investor. I would invest," I offer. "You know that."

Her head snaps up immediately. "No."

"Serena—"

"I'm not taking your money." She folds her arms stubbornly, looking so much like our father that the resemblance almost makes me uncomfortable. "I want this to be mine."

"It will still be yours."

"Not if my big brother bankrolls it."

I smile. "Then find another.” I put my glasses back onto my face as I give her a steady, encouraging look. "We move in circles with dozens of capitalists who have millions to sink into a solid energy play, so go pick one of them, and make them see you’re not here to joke.”

She goes silent, a look crossing her face. I know that look. The gears behind her eyes are moving. Then her entire face lights up.

"Oh. I know exactly who to ask."

I narrow my eyes. "The fact that you're smiling worries me."

"Dad is going to hate it."

"Serena..."

"You're a genius." She pinches both my cheeks. "You see, this is why I need you, cutie pie."

"Serena—"

"Have fun working, bro."

Before I can ask who this mysterious investor is, she's already out of the car and striding back toward the house, heels clicking against the stone driveway. I sink into the leather seat. Sometimes I wonder whether she hears anyone except herself.

Then again...

She's always heard me.

She was the only person in this frozen dynasty who stood up for me when I first came out as gay to my father and publicly and she literally threatened to burn his precious family legacy to the ground if he didn't accept me. She fought battles I didn't know how to fight, and she never once made me feel like I owed her for it.

And it aches to see her and our father locked in this bloody war, completely blind to the fact that they are the exact same.

They're both brilliant.

Both relentless.

Both convinced they're the only one in the room who's right.

By afternoon, the conference room on the top floor hums with conversation.

"Your engagement announcement generated a forty-two percent increase in positive sentiment overnight," Mia, my Head of Communications, says as she projects the latest analytics onto the wall. "The SEC has withdrawn its request for additional disclosures, investor confidence is climbing again, and social engagement has tripled across every platform."

Ben, the Head of Legal nods. "The shareholder lawsuit is already losing momentum."

"Our largest institutional investors have postponed selling," Harold, the CFO adds. "That buys us breathing room."

I glance around the table. "Good work, everyone."

The meeting ends shortly afterward, executives filing out one by one until only Mia remains. She closes her tablet and studies me over the top of her glasses. "So."

"So?"

“I know you have been itching to say something,” she says.

"Can’t we just end this?" I lean back in my chair. "My reputation has recovered. The SEC is backing off. Investors are calming down. Isn't that enough?"

"Not yet." She shakes her head. "We're getting there, but the market is still volatile, and this strategy is working perfectly to stabilize the shareholders. You just have to endure a bit more."

"Right. You're not the one stuck living with his ex in his house," I mutter under my breath, my mind traitorously drifting back to the sunlit hallway yesterday. "Shirtless, no less."

I certainly noticed, because frankly, who wouldn't notice a sight like that? And who could blame me for having a momentary lapse in judgment when the bastard still looks like a walking, talking Hercules god? He knows it, too, using that ridiculous, perfect tattooed body as an unfair weapon while I’ve been a frantic, horny mess for days, fruitlessly trying to burn off the tension with Jacque, who suddenly feels like a very sweet, very lukewarm distraction.

To make matters a thousand times worse, Raze has been acting so ridiculously friendly and touchy-feely since he arrived, though I constantly have to remind myself that he’s only putting on this charming show for the massive payday he's going to get when this whole mess is over. I rub my temples.

"Ohhh so that’s what this is about,” she grins over her laptop. "You still have feelings for him."

I almost laugh. "Absolutely not. He betrayed me. He almost destroyed everything we built because of greed."

Mia sets the tablet aside. Mia is the only one in the office I can talk to about things like this. Not only did we all go to the same college but she had been with Raze and I from the very beginning.

And she is the only one who still believes I haven’t gotten over Raze.

"I’m sorry, Everette. I know how much you hate this, but we really had no other choice. This is business, and right now, Raze has what we want.”

My jaw tightens. “Sure. Just business.”

She leans forward. "Listen to me, Mr. I don't want that look on your face. You worked too hard to save this company and if thirty days under the same roof as your incorrigible hot ex is the price, then we pay it.” She shrugs. “There are less pleasurable ways to go down if you ask me."

I laugh. “You’re crazy.

She stands to leave. "I forgot. There is something else. Brandon Capital has started buying small blocks of our shares."

My smile disappears as a knot forms low in my stomach. "Hostile?"

"Maybe. God. I hate that bastard. That’s one thing I sure miss about Raze. When he was here... he handled investors like Brandon. He saw moves before they happened, he negotiated, he distracted predators and bought us time. We really do need him, you know. Who knows. This might work out better than you plan.”

"We don't need him."

Even if they were true...I wouldn't admit otherwise. Because she isn't wrong. I write code. I build products. I understand algorithms better than people. Raze understood people better than anyone I've ever met. He was always the brilliant, aggressive frontline fighter who thrived in the chaos of corporate negotiations.

Together...We worked.

Right now, without his ruthless instincts shielding me from the sharks, I feel like I'm blindly navigating a minefield, completely out of my depth.

The reason why I’m in this mess in the first place.

"Okay then. We will see,” Mia says heading towards the glass door. She turns back to look at me. “It's a big house, you know. What could possibly go wrong?"

I lean back in my chair and against my better judgment, my mind betrays me.

A bare chest…..Dark hair…….That infuriating grin.

I close my eyes.

*What could possibly go wrong indeed…*