His voice turned icy.
“You’ll change your mind. You always do when it gets hard. Enjoy your little Stanford fantasy while it lasts, Drew. But don’t expect me to keep bankrolling a decision I don’t agree with forever.”
The line went dead.
I stood there in the kitchen, phone still in my hand, breathing hard.
Between Isa running from what we could have and my father trying to control what little freedom I had left, I felt like I was being squeezed from both sides.
And for the first time, I wasn’t sure how much longer I was willing to keep letting either of them do it.
I was still standing in the kitchen when my phone buzzed again. I figured it was another call, but it was a text.
Richard:
If I see one more video or picture of you with those girls hanging all over you, we’re going to have a serious problem. You so much as touch one of them or knock some party girl up and I’m cutting you off. Whatever Stanford isn’t covering, I’m not paying for that house anymore. You better come home for Thanksgiving with someone I actually approve of. And I mean it this time. Don’t bring some little slut to dinner like you did last year. Or don’t come home at all.
My fist clenched around the phone so hard my knuckles cracked.
Last year I’d done it on purpose. I’d gone down to Boca, picked up some girl at a bar whose name I barely remembered, and brought her home for Thanksgiving just to watch the vein in my father’s forehead throb. She’d shown up in a dress two sizes too small, called everyone “babe,” and asked if the caviar was “that fish egg shit rich people eat.” I’d almost smiled through the whole miserable dinner.
Because at least it was better than sitting there alone while his new wife and her friends looked at me like I was something they’d scraped off their shoe.
I used to love the holidays.
Before my mom got sick, it was just the two of us. She’d bake the turkey from scratch even though it was just us. We’d watch football all day with the volume too loud and put up the Christmas tree the second Thanksgiving dinner was over. It was loud and messy and smelled like real food instead of whatever overpriced catering my father’s assistants ordered now. It never felt lonely.
Now the holidays were country clubs and stiff handshakes. Ex-wives. New wives. Half-brothers who looked at me like I was the mistake that refused to disappear. Business associates who only spoke to me because they knew who my father was.
And on top of all of it, the constant pressure to change my last name.
He wanted Travers off my birth certificate. Wanted everyone to know I was a Montgomery—that I was set to inherit millions one day. That I wasn’t just some bruised-up football player who happened to share his blood. He hated that I still went by my mother’s name. Hated that I refused to let him erase her completely.
My phone buzzed again with another text.
Richard Bryant Montgomery:
I’m serious, Drew. Clean it up. Or I will.
I dropped the phone on the counter like it burned.
He didn’t actually give a shit about me. He gave a shit about the image. About having one son who wasn’t a total fuck-up. One son who could eventually take over the company without dragging the family name through another scandal. That’s why he was suddenly so invested. Because the other two had already torched their chances — one with a boat and a bottle of whiskey,the other with the mayor’s daughter and a positive pregnancy test.
I was the only clean option left.
And he was going to squeeze that leverage for everything it was worth.
I ran a hand down my face and let out a rough breath.
Isa didn’t know any of this. She didn’t know about the money. She didn’t know about the name. She didn’t know I was supposed to inherit millions one day if I played my cards right and stopped pissing my father off.
And that was exactly why I liked her.
She didn’t want me for any of it.
She just didn’t want me at all.
I was already in a shit mood before the game even started.
