Page 45 of Savage Suit

Dear Yellow-Bellied, Lily-Livered Little Sister,

I don’t know what to tell you, Sis. Except grow a pair, face your sister, and own up to your crimes.

Before I knew it, Tuesday afternoon, AKA the time of Ryan’s interview, arrived. It had been a busy few days as I met with division heads, department managers, and upper-level executives. Offering positions to women was a minor solution to a much bigger issue. Accusations of improper behavior reeked of sexual harassment. Did I overlook crass jokes? Guilty as charged. Did I manipulate the system and skirt equal opportunity legalities toward women? Again, guilty. No matter my reasons, I abused my power by carefully choosing my hires.

Maybe Grahamwasright, and my childhood trauma festered inside me. It was so fucking hard to ignore what happened when my siblings blamed me for our loss.

Nicholas wouldn’t hesitate to stand by my side during any ramifications from the fucking exposé. He understood we were open to fines and lawsuits. We’d counter, but it would take time and resources from day-to-day operations. Our stronghold would weaken.

Despitemyflaws, I didn’t tolerate the type of harassment alluded to in the article. One reason I despised Claude Amage and Channing Powers so much was because of the predicament they’d placed my mother in. I pretended not to know she’d slept with them to secure that first contract. I overlooked my father’s knowledge of the proposition and his encouraging her to proceed.

We’d gone to visit her mother, dying of heart failure. As the firstborn, my father had expected a lot from me. Excellent grades. Social skills. Athleticism. Good taste. My mother planted herself firmly between us. She kept me with her as much as she could. Maybe that’s why I always witnessed her triumphs and her tragedies.

Instead of staying at my grandmother’s house as usual, my mother and I stayed in a suite at the Ritz. She’d thought I was asleep. I had been, but a sound awakened me, and I’d gotten up to investigate.

The closer I got to her bedroom, the louder the moans and grunts grew. With the door ajar, I peeped in her room, and there she was. No, theretheywere. I hadn’t turned ten yet, so I wasn’t aware of the concept of monogamy, but I’d been horrified all the same and cried out.

She’d stopped long enough to send me back to my room. Later, she’d come to me and explained it had been nothing but a business transaction. When she couldn’t calm me, she’d called my father and told him to talk to me.

“As a woman, your mother is in a unique position to sway business deals in our favor,” he’d said sharply.

In my estimation, she’d had the acumen to secure contracts and awards without regard to her sexuality. Though she had won on merit numerous times, she’d given her body and her soul to triumph at all costs.

It wasn’t until after my father’s death, when I’d found journals, and discovered the rift between my parents caused by the Channing and Claude incident.

Pressing my lips together, I closed my eyes and drew in a breath.

She hadn’t wanted to whore herself out. Somehow, my father convinced her. But her affair with Claude lasted over a year and deepened my parents’ chasm. If not for my father’s threats, she would’ve left.

He’d sworn she’d see none of her kids again. Most especiallyme.So, she’d stayed. Claude saw me as the reason my mother hadn’t walked away from our family. To me, he was the motherfucker who’d brought sex into their business dealings.

Ihatedthat bastard.

As much as I detested him and resented him, it took me years to acknowledge my mother accepted the proposition. She didn’t have to adhere to my father’s demands and could’ve walked away. Or ignored my father’s insistence and told them all to fuck themselves.

But the only thing she loved more than Keegan Media Group, the division she’d created, was me.

I wanted to drag Ingrid Warrington to hell and back, along with anyone who’d helped her with her piece. Countering any lawsuits or suing for breach of non-disclosures risked exposing my mother’s secrets, those known to me and those I’m sure she’d kept to herself. I’d never finished my father’s journals and had burned them to ashes. Whatever records my uncle had in his possession, I’d also ordered destroyed.

As she had protected me, I would guard her memory and her legacy. I would protect women from predators like Claude Amage, see that they didn’t ruin their health to win a brutal race, and keep them safe from unnecessary traveling.

After my mother’s death, I never set foot on a company plane again. If not for my father’s threats and my siblings’ taunts, I wouldn’t have flown commercial. I hadn’t wanted my sisters on any airplane, but Dad and Nicholas had called me crazy and ignored my fear and my nightmares.

When I turned twenty-one, I received part of my trust fund and five percent of company stock. At twenty-five, another installment of my trust fund and another five percent of company stock allowed me to buy a private plane. Five years later, when I received the rest of the trust fund set up by my grandfather and added to by my father, he had been dead two years and I’d gotten an additional forty-one percent of the company and most of his fortune. Upon my thirtieth birthday, I’d also received an inheritance from my mother and deeds to several estates in different locales around the world that had belonged to my grandparents. In turn, I’d easily been able to acquire additional company stock to afford me a comfortable majority.

In the Keegan family, firstborn sons were everything. They gave us the world. Even if we didn’t ask for it.

I’d given one property to my sister and the jackass she married. Fuck Nicholas. He’d gotten jack shit from me. I’d sold another piece of valuable real estate and created offshore accounts for Nathaniel. He was burning through his trust fund at an alarming rate. By the time he turned thirty and received his last payment, he would be fucking broke. I didn’t know how to handle the real estate proceeds, money he was unaware existed.

I glanced at the clock on the wall. 3:11, and Ryan hadn’t arrived. Maybe she wouldn’t. Undoubtedly, she read of our creative hiring practices that started with me, backed by Tina, and adhered to by the divisional HR managers.

Ryan wouldn’t appreciate the bullshit, especially as a recipient of my behavior. I desperately needed her to accept the job.

No, scratch that. I didn’t needherspecifically to become one of my project managers. Yet, I wanted her to join my company. Sauncier would throw her to the wolves. Here, with me, I would be the wolf, and anyone who fucked with her, the sheep I slaughtered.

Another look at the clock revealed it was 3:13.

New York City had no shortage of stunning, witty, intelligent women, so Ryan shouldn’t haunt me daily because she was in their number. Yet, she did, and each minute that ticked by and she didn’t show left me agitated and at a loss.