“No.” He held up a hand to stop me. “I can see what it is on paper. What I’m asking is why. Why would we do business in an inefficient, less lucrative way when we have a perfectly viable plan already in place? What’s in it for us?”
I took a breath, preparing to deliver the argument I’d been rehearsing for days. I knew this would be his question. It was the most obvious. “Long-term sustainability. Brand diversification. Corporate social responsibility. The hospitality sector?—”
“Kent.” His voice cut through my prepared talking points like a knife. “Those are buzzwords. Marketing speak. I’m asking you what’s really in it for Bancroft Industries.”
The directness of the question forced me to abandon my carefully crafted business arguments and speak from a place that was far more dangerous—the heart.
“Doing the right thing by the owners,” I said quietly. “The Northwood family has owned that land for more than three hundred years. Their ancestors cleared those trees by hand and built that lodge. The Northwood name is woven into the fabric of that community.”
Dad’s expression didn’t change, but he leaned back slightly in his chair, waiting for me to continue.
“Drilling for oil would tear all of that apart,” I said, feeling the words gain momentum as they spilled out of me. “We’d strip away everything that makes that place special and replace it with industrial equipment and chaos. We’d destroy something irreplaceable for the sake of quarterly profits.”
“That’s just business,” Dad said with the kind of calm certainty that had built an empire. “It’s not personal.”
The words made me ill, not because they were cruel, but because they were so utterly typical of the man who had raised me. Everything was just business to him. Profit margins andmarket share and competitive advantages. He’d built his fortune by refusing to let emotion cloud his judgment, by making decisions based purely on financial logic.
But for the first time in my life, I found myself disagreeing with that fundamental principle.
“Maybe itispersonal for me,” I said, surprised by the strength in my own voice.
His eyebrows rose slightly. “How so?”
“I got to know the people whose lives we’re talking about disrupting. They’re not just names on a contract or obstacles to profit. They’re a family. A community. We have the power to preserve that instead of destroying it.”
“Sentiment,” Dad said dismissively. “Sentiment doesn’t pay dividends, Kent. It doesn’t drive stock prices or satisfy shareholders.”
Something cracked open inside my chest, like a door I’d kept locked for thirty years finally swinging wide.
“Then maybe we need to reconsider what we’re really trying to accomplish,” I said. “Maybe there are things more important than maximizing every possible dollar of profit.”
The silence that followed was deafening. Dad stared at me with an expression I couldn’t read, his fingers drumming against the leather planner on his desk.
“If none of this changes your mind,” I said, gesturing toward the business plan, “then do it for me. I’m asking you. As your son.”
It was the most vulnerable I’d ever been with my father. The most honest. For thirty years, I’d tried to earn his approval by becoming the son I thought he wanted, ruthless, ambitious, willing to do whatever it took to win. But sitting in front of him now, I realized I didn’t want to be that person anymore.
I wanted to be someone Sylvie could respect. Someone who chose a more compassionate path to profits, connection overcompetition. Someone who understood that some things were too precious to have a price tag.
Dad leaned forward, his elbows resting on the desk, his hands steepled in front of him. For a long moment, he studied my face with the intensity of someone trying to solve a particularly complex puzzle. I silently prayed for him to give me this one thing.
“This just isn’t how we do business, son,” he said finally.
I heard something in his voice I’d never heard before. Not anger or disappointment, but something that might have been uncertainty. As if my proposal had shaken something fundamental in his worldview.
“Maybe it’s time we started,” I said.
He picked up the business plan again, flipping through the pages with more attention than he’d given them the first time. I watched his face for any sign of what he was thinking, any indication that my weeks of preparation might actually be making an impact.
“The profit margins are lower,” he said eventually.
“But still profitable,” I countered. “And the investment would be sustainable long-term. Drilling has a limit. A hospitality business can generate revenue for decades.”
“The timeline for return on investment is longer.”
“But more stable. Tourism doesn’t fluctuate with commodity prices.”
He continued flipping pages. I felt like I was standing on the edge of a cliff. My toes hanging over. One small breeze and I would fall.
