Z stopped the car at the front steps. "I’m not coming in," he said quietly. "I can’t watch this."
"Thanks for the support."
"I like my job, Beau. Good luck."
I stepped out of the car. My one sock squelched on the marble steps.
The front door opened before I reached it, and there he was: Richard Sterling III, CEO of Sterling Industries, professional hard-ass, and the man whose disappointment could cut through steel.
"Father," I said, trying for casual and landing somewhere near "guilty as charged." "Funny seeing you up. Insomnia? I've got a guy who can—"
"Inside. Now."
Oh, we were using the CEO voice. The one that made shareholders piss themselves and stock prices tumble.
I followed him in, my bare feet leaving prints on the marble floor. The house was exactly as I remembered from childhood—cold, expensive, perfect. Like a museum where people occasionally slept.
"Sit."
I sat.
He didn't. He stood there, hands clasped behind his back, studying me like I was a particularly disappointing quarterly report.
"Do you have any idea," he said, voice deadly calm, "what I've spent the last three hours doing?"
"Sleeping?"
Wrong answer. His jaw tightened.
"I've been on the phone with lawyers, publicists, and severalvery unhappy business partners, trying to explain why my son—my only son, my heir—was photographed at a party where a federal fugitive was arrested, a goat was found swimming in a pool wearing stolen jewelry—yes, stolen, the diamonds were reported missing last week—and you apparently signed a napkin agreeing to invest a hundred thousand dollars in something called SexyHandle™."
Oh god. The napkin. I'd forgotten about the fucking napkin… I knew it would come back to bite me in the ass.
"It’s a tech startup. Diversifying the portfolio."
"It’s a scam run by a man named 'Slippery Steve.' You are twenty-four years old. You have an Ivy League education that I paid for.And you are, without a doubt, the single greatest liability to this family’s legacy."
"In my defense—"
"There is no defense!" For the first time in my life, I heard my father raise his voice at me. "You are twenty-four years old, Beau. Twenty-four. And you have accomplished exactly… Nothing except becoming a punch line. Do you understand that? You're not even a good scandal anymore. You're just... pathetic."
The word hit like a slap. Pathetic.
"Every party you throw, every headline you make, every idiotic decision you broadcast to the world—it's not charming anymore. It's not even interesting. It's just sad. You're sad."
I wanted to argue. To defend myself. To point out that being the family distraction was literally my job, that keeping people focused on my antics meant they weren't looking at whatever shady corporate shit Sterling Industries was up to.
But I couldn't. Because he was right.
When had I become this person? When had the parties stopped being fun and started being... empty? When had I stopped being the entertaining screw-up and started being just the screw-up?
He slammed his hand on the hallway table. The vase rattled. "I am done. Do you hear me? I am finished paying for your mistakes."
"What does that mean?"
"It means I’m freezing your accounts. The trust. The credit cards. The allowance."
"You can't do that. How am I supposed to live?"
