My father nods once, not quite convinced, but not probing either. “Good. Because this firm doesn’t survive divided leadership. And you know as well as I do—the Marchesi-Harrow legacy isn’t just a name. It’s a promise. A future we’ve built brick by brick. You let that fall, and it won’t just be your name that cracks.”
It’s not a threat, but it lands like one.
I nod and take another slow sip of my drink. The scotch burns less than it should. Or maybe I’ve just burned too much already to notice.
“Your mother always said you’d wear the crown one day,” he adds after a long pause, eyes flicking to her portrait above the fireplace. “She knew you had it in you. The discipline. The vision.”
He doesn’t say the darkness.
“I miss her,” I say quietly, because I should. Because I do. Because there’s guilt crawling up the back of my throat, and I need to press it down with something real.
His jaw tightens. Just a fraction. But I notice.
“We all do,” he says. His voice is steady—almost too clean. “She was… delicate. But strong. The kind of woman who saw the best in people, even when they didn’t deserve it. The kind who trusted instinct. Sometimes too much.”
My gaze lifts to his face, but he’s looking away now. At the fire. At nothing.
The air thickens, lingering on that last sentence—sometimes too much—and I can’t tell if he’s aware of how loaded it sounds. If it was deliberate. If it was directed.
If he suspects, or if I’m just projecting.
I shift forward, glass balanced between my knees, elbows resting on them like the weight of what I’m holding might collapse me otherwise.
There’s a moment. A crack where I could say it.
I could tell him the truth. Or part of it. Or at least enough to explain why I haven’t slept a full night in sixteen years without waking in a cold sweat, my hands clenched and aching.
He’s right here.
And for all his coldness, for all the distance he drowned us both in after she died—he did try. He was grieving. So was I.
And maybe he deserves to know.
Maybe I need someone else to carry it.
“Dad…” The word stutters out before I know I’ve said it.
His eyes come to mine. Calm. Curious. Open.
For once, I see the father I knew before the funeral. Before the boardrooms and the legacy and the weight of her name.
My chest tightens. My jaw locks.
Say it.
Tell him.
“I’m… trying,” I say instead, swallowing down everything else. “To fix things. To make it right.”
He nods again, the moment closing like a door that was never fully open to begin with.
“I know you are,” he says gently. “Just remember who you are, Grant. And what you were born into.”
I do.
Every goddamn day.
I was born into legacy.
