I shot him a look. “Kent was a prick but he didn’t screw the entire family over. He’s not the reason we’re broke.”
“I can’t believe you,” he continued in a harsh whisper. “After everything he did to us, you still defend him.” He shook his head in disgust. “What is wrong with you, Sylvie?”
I bristled at the question. “Nothing is wrong with me. I was trying to be decent.”
“Decent?” Dad’s voice was quiet but dangerous. “Sylvie, that man is the farthest thing from decent.”
They were probably right, but I couldn’t forget about the moments when he’d been the guy I fell for. I tried to tell myself that it had been a ruse, but it felt real.
I didn’t waste time trying to make them understand.
CHAPTER 48
KENT
I’d been pacing for the better part of an hour. I was probably wearing a groove in the expensive flooring between my kitchen island and the living room. Back and forth, back and forth, my mind spinning through the same thoughts on an endless loop. The weight of what I was considering felt enormous. It felt like I was standing at the edge of a cliff and contemplating whether to jump.
Hudson sat sprawled across my leather sectional, one leg thrown over the arm of the chair, watching me with the kind of barely contained irritation that came from being summoned to his brother’s apartment when he had better things to do.
“Why did you call me up here, Kent?” he finally said. His impatience was loud and clear. “I have a thousand things to do today. So spit it out.”
I stopped mid-pace, turning to face him. I took a deep breath.
“I want to approach Dad,” I said. “About rewriting the acquisition offer for Northwood.”
Hudson stared at me. His expression cycled through confusion, disbelief, and then something that might have been amusement. Then he started laughing.
“Good one,” he said. “You really had me going there for a second. I thought you were actually serious about that.”
He stopped laughing when I didn’t join him.
“Wait.” His voice went flat. “Seriously?”
I nodded, my throat suddenly dry. “Seriously.”
Hudson sat up straighter, the last traces of humor draining from his expression. “Kent, what the hell happened up there? Did you hit your head on a tree branch or something? Because the brother I know would never even consider that.”
“I spent time with them,” I said, shrugging. “With the people in Northwood. I saw how they live, what they’ve built together. Hudson, they’re rich. Really rich.”
“Rich?” Hudson’s eyebrows shot up. “Did you see their financial statements? Because from what I understand, they’re like three good bottles of scotch away from being homeless.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “Are we really the rich pricks everyone thinks we are?”
“We’re Bancrofts, so yeah, kind of,” my brother said with a shrug. “I don’t think we’re as bad as people say, but we definitely don’t live like regular people.”
“Well, anyway, the Northwoods aren’t rich the way we are.” I started pacing again, unable to stand still while trying to make him understand something I was still struggling to articulate myself. “They’re rich in the kinds of things Bancrofts can’t buy. Community. Tradition. Belonging. It’s taken generations to build.”
Hudson was looking at me like I’d started speaking in tongues. “Good for them?” he suggested hesitantly.
“And if we buy it?” I continued. “If we go through with Dad’s plan? We’ll ruin it. We’ll wreck that farm, and the town itself will get replaced with some sanitized, corporate version of main street that looks like everywhere else in this country. We’llchange the very thing that makes the town valuable in the first place.”
“Well, it’s the oil that makes it valuable,” Hudson said. “And we make things better. Shinier. More efficient. More profitable.”
I shook my head, frustrated by his inability to see what now seemed so obvious to me. “Not this time. This is different.”
“How is it different?”
“You don’t understand,” I said, then stopped as an idea occurred to me. “But Diana would.”
