“It also means that this isn’t theoretical anymore.”
The wordCEOhovered between us, unspoken, but heavy and inevitable. My phone buzzed again with another email in the same thread. Zach elaborated a little more this time, sending dates, names, and pressure points.
“It’s really happening,” I whispered, blinking fast and reeling at the implications of the information Zach was passing along.
Alex watched me carefully. “How hard would it be to get all your brothers back in town next weekend?”
I frowned. “Why?”
“Because I need to set a few things straight, and because you need to start thinking about how you want the new Thayer board to look.”
I laughed weakly. “Already?”
“Zach is making his moves,” he explained. “It’s likely the whole board is going to resign, which is good. It’s what we wanted, but we have to be ready.”
I looked at him then, at this man who made plans like they were scaffolding, not cages. Who stepped in when I hesitated. “Ready for what?”
“It’s a matter of weeks now, if not days before you’re the CEO, Killer. You have to be ready to hit the ground running.”
My chest tightened, but reality settled in as I held those deep green eyes and saw how serious he was about this. Alex wasgoing to keep the biggest promise he’d made me so far and give me back my dad’s company.
The knowledge wedged itself into the very center of my being, heavy and terrifying, but right. In perhaps a matter of days, I was going to be the CEO of Thayer Steelworks, and no matter what, I would have to be ready.
Even if I didn’t know yet exactly what I had to be ready for when I finally took that office as my own.
CHAPTER 30
ALEX
It was Wednesday and I hadn’t seen Jane since Sunday. We’d barely even talked, just clipped texts about schedules and mutedgood nightsthat felt more like punctuation than sincerity.
It weighed on me more than I wanted to admit. I’d replayed her face over and over in my mind, the way she’d looked sitting on my couch, torn clean down the middle by responsibility, guilt, and her own desires.
She was so upset about Wyatt, and in the meantime, I kept circling the same question like a dog with a bone.Why won’t she just lay down the law with her family? Bunch of ungrateful pricks.
But I’d never been in her situation. I’d never had to raise siblings or protect a parent who couldn’t protect herself. I’d never been forced into becoming the adult before I was done being a kid.
What I had done, and this was an inescapable fact, was to make her home life worse. When I pulled up outside their house that night to pick her up for the library gala, I already felt keyed too tight, the guilt over having aggravated an already bad situation clawing at my insides.
Nora opened the door when I knocked, a slight but polite smile on her lips. She stepped aside to let me in. “Alex, it’s good to see you again.”
“You too,” I replied, though it wasn’t entirely true right now.
As I stepped inside, however, I immediately spotted Wyatt lingering halfway up the staircase, his arms crossed and his posture tense with that familiar teenage defiance. He thought he was so clever, all grown up, and that he knew everything, looking at me down his nose like I was an intruder.
My chest tightened, my chin lifting as I held his gaze, resisting the very real urge to grab him by the back of his collar and shake some sense into him. Instead, I decided to end this once and for all, stopping at the foot of the stairs and waiting.
Once his mother had disappeared into the kitchen with a murmured, “She’ll be ready soon,” Wyatt arched a brow at me. “Doesyourwifeknow you’re here?”
The kid had balls. Too bad he was working on faulty information. I smiled but it wasn’t friendly. “My wife does know I’m here, actually, but that was a good question,” I said calmly. “You’re a clever young man, Wyatt.”
That threw him but only by a fraction. He recovered quickly. “Look, man, I don’t know what you think you’re doing?—”
“What Ithinkis that you’ll make a very good executive one day.”
The corners of his mouth tightened. “Excuse me?”
I tilted my head, studying him and seeing something different tonight than a tired kid after a wrestling meet. Although I’d never met their father, when you knew what you were looking for, it wasn’t difficult to see that the boy in front of me had been born into an empire with a last name to match.
