Page 45 of Last Resort

“I’d tell you dropping out is unacceptable, Callahan, but I know it doesn’t matter to you. You simply don’t care about my opinions or that you’ve given new meaning to the Sharpe legacy at Wharton. And not in a good way.” He sighs heavily as he leans back in his chair and levels a stare at me. “I sat and questioned how I was going to handle this, handle you. I wondered what kind of lesson I’d be teaching you by allowing this sort of thing to happen. What do you have to say for yourself?”

I stare at my father. He’s tough as nails expecting the most out of his boys. His name and his legacy mean everything to him, so to have one of us fail was never an option.

But Ledger is right. When he struggled with the everyday expectations of duty as a Sharpe and college course load, my dad had no mercy or sympathy for him. He held him to the fire with words about being a disappointment and threats about losing his place in the Sharpe dynasty.

Ford and I worried about him. His mental health. His state of mind. But that toughness is what spurred him to shake out of his funk and currently be sitting at the top of our class. Failure isn’t an option.

Is it because Ledger is a cookie cutter of our father that Dad accepted no less?

And does the same hold true to me? Because I’m our mother that I get more leeway than a child should get?

What about Ford? Is he a mixture of both so our father is hard in some ways and not in others, so he’s left in that middle child, no-man’s land where he wonders where he falls?

He loves us all. No doubt there. But he loves us in a way so very different that at times it’s unfair.

The issue? Just like now, I’m too fucking grateful not to be held to a bar of their height that I just shut my mouth and smile.

“Well?” he asks.

I rub my hands on my thighs and think of the shit I’ve done, the stunts I’ve pulled. “There’s nothing to say that I haven’t already said. I’m not going to apologize for being who I am, Dad. I’m not going to kiss your ass and beg you to forgive me for disappointing you. I am who I am. A Sharpe who doesn’t live up to your standards. I live up to mine, and right or wrong, that’s me.”

He twists his lips and swivels back and forth in his chair. “And your plans moving forward?”

“I don’t know.” I have no problem whatsoever with hard work, but sitting in an office with a tie cinched around my neck every day isn’t exactly what does it for me.

“You will not rest on your laurels.”

“No one said I was going to.”

A smile ghosts his lips. “You’re your mother, remember? I do know you.”

He rises from his seat and moves to his favorite corner of his office, shoves his hands in his pockets, and stares at the people down below. It’s his thinking corner. The place where he makes decisions.

I know better than to speak, than to push him to decide when I want out of this recirculated air and concrete confinement.

“Then you start your tenure with Sharpe International Network today.”

Oh Jesus.

Dropping out of school meant I was going to get fresh air and freedom. It meant I was going to be able to sit back and decide who I was without being surrounded by people who only looked at me as a Sharpe. Who only want to know me because of my last name.

I close my eyes and quietly groan.

This would be my brothers’ dream. To jump onto the pedestal and start their climb up the corporate ladder. The ladder that is superficial since they’d be walking in day one on the top rung. This is their everything.

And they’ll see it as more favoritism. More Callahan is the pet.

To me, I was just handed a death sentence.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Sutton

“I feel like I just got you back and now I’ve lost you again,” Lizzy says through the phone.

“But you’ve lost me for good reasons this time.” I lean back on the lounger and soak up the afternoon sun.

“True. True. But I still miss you nonetheless.”