Page 16 of Level Up (Franklin U 2 #4)

Chapter Sixteen

Ryan

The date was everything I wanted it to be and more.

I really didn’t expect us to become official so soon, but I was so damn glad we had. Yes, there were things we had to work out (namely, my family name), but at least now I had hope.

Plus, it was nice waking up next to my boyfriend .

“Where you off to?” Jay asked. He sat at his desk, going over some notes for one of his classes. He was in his sleeping clothes, his hair slightly messed up. I went in for a kiss, holding the back of his neck as I pressed my lips against his.

“Going to see my mom,” I said. It wasn’t necessarily a lie—I wouldn’t want to start our relationship with one—but it wasn’t the full truth, either.

“Oh, nice.” Jay cocked his eyebrow, eyes bouncing between mine.

“What?” I asked, suddenly nervous there was something on my face.

Jay chuckled and returned his attention back to his neatly organized notes. “Nothing. Just feeling lucky I get to kiss you, is all.”

“I’ve got news for you.” I smiled as I grabbed a fistful of my crotch. “It’s not the only thing you can do to me.”

Jay turned his gaze back to me, eyebrow arched. He licked his bottom lip. But before I got rock hard and had to take care of it with my new boyfriend, I gave him another kiss and grabbed my wallet and keys. “The second I’m back, we’re fooling around for the rest of the day.”

“Perfect,” Jay said. I could tell the idea had him as excited as I felt, judging by the tent that formed in his light blue shorts.

Fuuuuuck. I wanted to stay in the dorm and forget about everything else I had to do.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t. I left the dorm with a half chub and a full heart. Hopefully next time, it’d be with empty balls too.

The walk to my car was nice. The ocean breeze whipped through the palm trees and kept me cool. I hopped in my Range Rover and put on the newest episode from a true-crime podcast I’d been listening to lately. Maddy had mentioned it once when we were all hanging out, and I got hooked.

The drive to my house wasn’t a long one, so I only got to form assumptions about who the murderer was. I stopped the podcast as I pulled up to the security gate outside of my parents’ complex. The guard already knew me. He gave me a friendly wave before he pressed a button and the curling black iron gates slowly swung open onto a perfectly landscaped and mansion-littered community. I drove around the island of rare and expensive succulents, going down the wide and recently paved roads toward the back of the community. My house was the only one with solar panels attached to the roof, some of them visible from my angle.

All of it Mom’s idea.

My house rose up like a crown on a regal head. It was the biggest in the community, looking like a white-and-black glass monster ready to devour all the other homes around it. I parked next to my dad’s third Corvette. My grip around the steering wheel tightened. I rolled my neck and took a second to gather myself.

Yes, I was here to see my mom, but I was also here to talk with my dad.

That was the real reason I decided to stop by. I didn’t really have a plan, but I had a motive, and I was going to go through with it.

You got this , I thought to myself as I walked up to the front door. My parents had always talked about how much they loved this door. It was large and arching and clearly made from some expensive kind of wood. Now, all I could think about was where they had sourced the trees from. I’d never really thought about our environmental impact as much as I had since meeting Jay. I wanted to prove to him I wasn’t some kind of polluting monster, but first, I thought I should try and speak to my dad first. If I could show him whose side I was really on, then maybe Jay wouldn’t stress about being seen with me.

The door chimed as I stepped inside, echoing around the grand foyer. The floors must have been recently washed, the white marble shining like a mirror. I could hear activity near the kitchen, so I headed that way.

“Hey, Mom,” I said, finding her and a few of her friends around the kitchen island, hovering over a fruit ball and a cheese board. She set her glass of champagne down and gave me a tight hug, kissing me on the cheek.

“RyRy, we were just talking about you, actually.” It was Violet, my mom’s best friend. She was the lead singer of a rock band and had the look to go along with it. Half her head was shaved, she had a few neck tattoos, and she loved wearing as many rings as possible. She was very much the opposite of my mom’s clean-cut Stepford housewife vibe, which was probably what made them such great best friends for so long. “I was telling your mom that I really think you should meet my nephew. You two would be the cutest little couple.”

That got a laugh out of me. Violet was always trying to hook me up with someone in her family. It had become a running joke ever since it started. I wondered how many gay guys were part of her bloodline. “Thanks for thinking of me, but I’m happy to report I’m officially taken.”

My mom clapped her hands together. Violet braced herself against the island as if she’d received devastating news. The other friends laughed.

“Who’s the lucky person?” my mom asked, her eyes lighting up with curiosity.

“You’ll meet him eventually,” I said—I hoped. I wasn’t entirely sure how that meeting would go. I didn’t think Jay would make things awkward, but I couldn’t see him staying silent about my family’s business, either. “Where’s Dad?”

“In his office,” my mom answered. She had the look of a bloodhound fresh on a trail, same as Violet. I excused myself before they sat me down, shone a light in my face, and started to interrogate me about Jay.

I walked through the living room, up the spiraling staircase, down the family-photo-lined hallway, and up one last flight of stairs before reaching the partly open door to my dad’s office. A keyboard furiously clicked away from behind the door. My dad’s voice trailed along with the clicks. He must have been on the phone.

“Yes, yes, I know it’s—no, I don’t care. Don’t fuck me on this, Frank. I’m telling you right fucking now. Oh, hey, Ry.” My dad looked up from his desk and smiled at me as I tiptoed into the dimly lit office. Behind him were two windows with their shades drawn tight. The only source of light was a bronze floor lamp standing in a curving nook next to an untouched bookshelf.

I crossed the maroon carpet and pulled out the chair across from my dad. “Hold on, let me call you back, Frank. My son’s here.”

“You could have finished your call, Dad.” And given me more time to figure out how the hell I was going to do this.

“That’s fine. Frank’s a fucking dumbass anyway. I was close to firing him.” He leaned back, smiling. “You saved him.”

“Great,” I said. My dad could be ruthless; I already knew this about him. But his cutthroat business sense never leaked over into his family life. He always treated Mom and me as if we were the best damn things to ever have happened to him.

“It’s about the drilling project, anyway. So this is perfect timing.”

Yeah. Perfect.

My dad leaned forward. He could definitely be an intimidating man. Broad shoulders, icy-blue eyes, lips that rarely curved into a smile. I’d seen him chew people up and spit them out only to do it all again. There was a reason why he was such a successful businessman.

My mouth started to go dry. I tried to stop my leg from bouncing, but the nerves were beginning to escalate.

“About that, Dad… I wanted to talk to you.”

“Oh? Are you ready to hop on board? I really want you in on this from the ground up. I want you to see everything that goes into one of these projects.”

My leg wouldn’t stop bouncing. Every muscle in my body felt coiled up and ready to burst. Fight, flight, or freeze. My adrenaline spiked, my mouth still dry as fuck. How was I going to do this without causing my dad to blow up? “I’ve been thinking a lot about that, actually, and it’s the reason why I’m here.”

“Great,” he said, clapping his hands down on his desk and making me hop in my seat. “I’ll tell Gina to start the onboarding process. She’ll CC you on all the emails, and I can bring you in on the phone calls.”

“Dad, no, hold up.”

His eyes opened wide before they narrowed again.

Jay’s smiling face flashed across my vision. He had risked it all for the cause. He got himself basically kicked out of school because of his passion. How could I go back to the dorm and face my new boyfriend without even trying to stop my dad?

I had to do it. Rip it off like a Band-Aid.

“I don’t want to work with you on this.”

His face cracked with surprise. I rarely ever saw him drop his poker face.

“Really? Why? Is it school? Rowing? I understand if it’s too much. We can wait until you graduate for you to start?— ”

“No, I don’t want to start anything, Dad. I don’t want to work on the drilling project, and I don’t think you should either.”

He cocked his head before he started to laugh. It sounded as dry as my mouth felt. “You’re joking, right? This isn’t a funny joke. I know I’m laughing, but it’s not because of the joke.”

“It’s not a joke.” I swallowed down the clump of sand stuck to the back of my throat. I could feel each individual heartbeat pound against my rib cage. I’d never confronted my dad about this. Of course, I’d seen plenty of people try. Mostly protestors who camped out at whatever ribbon-cutting ceremony or presentation my father was set to give. I felt guilt for never giving them much thought, not until Jay came into my life and opened my eyes to the damage my family was causing.

“Ryan.” My dad said my name the same way he’d say it when I’d get in trouble as a kid. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but I’m basically handing you the keys to my entire empire. I want you to have all of it when I go. I’ve worked too damn hard for this. I want you to take it.”

“I don’t want it.” The words landed in the room like an atomic bomb. Never had I vocalized my inner wants to my dad. He blindly assumed that I was going to follow in his footsteps. I never wanted to disappoint him, but after my day with Jay yesterday, I realized that time was running out. I had to speak my truth, and my dad had to listen to it.

Before he could argue, I continued, using the momentum I was building. “Working in the family business has never been my passion. I thought it was something I had to do, something I was expected to do, but I never actually liked it. You know I’ve always loved video games, but it goes past playing them. I want to make them. I want to create stories that capture people’s attention, and I want to make a difference, too. I think I can do both if I go into game development.

“On top of that, I don’t think what we’re doing to the environment is right. We’re fucking so much shit up, just for the money. I think that’s wrong. I think we need to pivot, be more green. It’s the right thing to do.”

My dad blinked a few times before he gave another laugh. This one wasn’t dry. It was venomous. He shook his head, disappointment flashing across his face.

Fuck.

“I have managed to build a multimillion-dollar company from the ground up. Me, an immigrant, a first-generation college student, from the poorest county in my city to a beautiful, beachside zip code. And you want to throw it all away?”

“I’m not throwing anything away, Dad. I’m making my own path. It’s what I want.”

“What you want is stupid.”

He might as well have reached across his desk and socked me in the jaw. “I… That’s… I.”

Speechless. My father had effectively knocked all the wind out of my sails with that one simple—and exceptionally cruel—statement.

“Do you think I care about a couple ruined plots of land? Do you think I care that a few random bugs or frogs lose their habitats? No. I don’t. And neither do you or your mother when we’re taking our family trips to Greece, when you’re driving around in a brand-new Range Rover, when you have every single thing you could want at the tips of your fingers.”

“It’s not a few plots of land or a couple of bugs. It’s a chain effect. You’re playing with the building blocks of nature, and this tower you’ve built on top of those blocks is going to come tumbling down. And you’ll bring everyone else down with you.”

“That’s ridiculous.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. His cheeks were flushed red, his forehead wrinkled with the frustration and anger he must have been feeling.

“It’s not, and you know it.”

“So what do you propose I do, then? Hm?”

“Pull out of the Beacon’s Bay drilling project. That’s a start. Then stop it altogether.”

Please. Do it for me.

There was a long, long moment of contemplative silence. I felt like I was slowly melting into the chair. The stiff back kept me sitting up straight. For a flash of a second, I thought that maybe I’d done it. Maybe I’d gotten my dad to start thinking about making a huge pivot. I started to feel a flurry of excitement at the thought of breaking the news to Jay.

He’d be so proud.

“Get out.”

My turn to drop my jaw in shock.

“Go,” he repeated. I half expected him to start counting to five like he had when I was a spoiled kid being sent to my bedroom. “You’ve disappointed me today. I never thought we’d have this conversation. I need to think about this.”

“But—”

“No. Just leave my office. I have calls to make before the public finds out Redpine is jumping in.”

My dad sliced the conversation in half by picking up his phone and starting to dial a number. I wasn’t even out of his office when he greeted his assistant, asking to be connected to his next call. His voice carried as he asked for the person on the other line. I recognized the name as a CEO behind another company known for its destructive footprint. No doubt, he had made sure I could hear her name as I shut the door. And even with the door closed, my father’s words drifted out from under the threshold.

“Yes, yes, absolutely, the Beacon’s Bay project is green-lit.”

My heart dropped as I walked away. I’d gone from feeling on top of the world yesterday to feeling crushed by it today.

Fuuuck. And now I had to tell Jay about my dad’s involvement with the drilling project.

This wasn’t going to be good. Not at all.