Page 123 of Broken Brothers

“Chance,” Morgan said like a teacher about to deliver a warning. “Don’t be so stubborn that you can’t answer my actual question.”

Goddamnit. I know where this is going.

“Trying to push your father out of a position of power.”

“And does that run in tandem with our mission to be our own bosses? To do well with our own investment firm? To—”

“In a way,” I said, trying to keep my voice even-keeled. I had not bargained for a fucking fight with my brother today, and I desperately wanted to avoid it becoming that. “Right now, we have a ceiling on our heads in the form of Edwin Hunt. Whatever businesses we try to invest in, he’s going to make a better offer. Whatever way he can to spread rumors about us, we can. Edwin is both the ceiling preventing us from growing and the chainsaw underneath trying to cut us at the roots and the base.”

“See, I just don’t see it like that,” Morgan said. “Before you say anything, let me speak.”

It took far more self-control than I cared to admit to bite my tongue and let him do so.

“The best thing we can do for MCH is to continue to grow our portfolio, invest aggressively, and use the knowledge that we have to build the business,” he said. “These types of businesses, as you well know, tend to explode either into the billion-dollar status or into oblivion. If we go into oblivion, well, we’re rightback where we started. If we explode into the billion-dollar state, then we are in a position to have influence over Dad and prevent him from ever doing anything.”

“Yes, but—”

“Ah, Chance, please.”

I nodded, actually said I was sorry, and allowed him to continue.

“This is the safest way for us to operate,” Morgan said. “On a personal level, I get to keep my family intact. I get to go home for Christmas dinners. And my father and I can have some semblance of a relationship. On a professional level, we also get to keep family drama out of the business gossip. Do you really think if we take the approach you are that we’re never going to encounter any resistance? You don’t think other friends of my father will hear what happened and blackball us as a result?”

I…

I had thought about those things, but only in passing, only as things I had to dismiss as quickly as possible. I hadn’t given them the serious thought they deserved. I hated that Morgan was starting to poke holes in my plan.

He was making me realize that I hadn’t really pondered all of the consequences of my decisions. I had simply kept an eye out for what would happen between the three of us, but never had I really sat down to consider what it would mean outside of us. What it would mean for our reputations, for Rising Sun, for Virtual Realty, for the companies that Hunt Industries invested in…

I was just twenty two years old, but I was realizing that when you played games with billions of dollars, you affected millions of lives. It wasn’t just us three that would feel the repercussions of what happened.

“I hadn’t given it as much thought as I should have, to be honest,” I said, grimacing. “I just kind of assumed all would be well and then we could move forward. I didn’t think this all out.”

Morgan just sat silently.

“I don’t know, Morgan,” I said.

But even as I stewed, even as I realized how drastically I underestimated the impact of what we would do could have, I still came back to the idea of continuing this conquest over Edwin. I could not have been the only person, and John Burnson could not have been the only businessman, hurt by Edwin. Maybe our decisions would have ripple effects, but what if those ripple effects were actually an end-positive?

“I keep coming back to what I said earlier,” Morgan finally said. “We should accumulate enough wealth through MCH that we can get a seat on the board at Hunt Industries. So much time will have passed by then that it’ll be easier for us to make amends with my father, lessen what he wants, and make us more successful. The only part that sucks is there’s not as much instant gratification as here, and even then, it’s not like we’re going to wake up tomorrow and find Edwin is out as CEO.”

Unless John Burnson can pull some triggers with this tape.

But he’s right. I don’t want to rush anything, and I can’t rush anything because nothing is able to be rushed.

“I just wish there was a way to make it happen,” I said with a sigh. “The man has been a bit of a thorn in my side.”

“I get it,” Morgan said.

But he didn’t get it. He never had. Why would things change now?

We eventually settled into silence, just watching sports and trading small talk about the highlights I saw on the screen, but it was here that I began to first fear that Morgan and I might have been drifting apart on our goals. I couldn’t fault him too much, given that Edwin was his father and the stress he was under, butI did silently wish sometimes Morgan had more of a spine than he did.

Of course, in my selfish world, I would have wished for MCH to already be worth more than Hunt Industries, for Edwin to be out of his role as CEO, to have Morgan have a spine, to have Layla, Claire, and Sarah all in bed, and to have no emotional confusion or turmoil while this all happened.

But what I wanted and what I got rarely aligned. I didn’t know if that was par for the course for most people, but for someone used to getting fucked over in relationships, in business, and in life…

It sadly seemed all too common. And if I lost Morgan…