Page 97 of The Husband Contract

“That’s not going to happen if Wall Street keeps labeling us as a volatile company,” Marcus snaps. “Frankly, this doesn’t look good. We need your dad to step up and—” Romanov’s voice cuts off as I glare at him. I’m fed up living in my father’s shadow. He spent so much time traveling and fucking different women that I have no idea how he didn’t run the company into the ground. I can still hear my mom yelling at him—telling him to stop the coke and the whores. Or hear him yelling back, accusing her of seeing “men in suits” at all hours of the day and night. The memories make me cold. I can even remember the first and last time I cried during one of their arguments. Mymom saw me. Her eyes bore into mine, and I thought she was going to come over to me, but instead, she slipped into her room and never talked about it. A month later, I was sent to boarding school. She never had to deal with me or my emotions again. I’d learned to keep everything bottled inside after that.

“I am the chairman of the board,” I say, squaring my shoulders. “Which means I’m taking care of everything.”

“Are you, though?” Romanov lifts up his phone. “The stock value is down over a hundred dollars today.” He frowns and shakes his head. “Look, Sebastian, we’re your biggest supporters. The other members of the board don’t trust you. They want a vote of confidence. They want to vote you out.”

“I’m still the majority stockholder,” I say coldly.

“Along with your family,” Romanov sighs. “Sebastian, look. See if your dad has any ideas. See if he’ll come in. That may make the other board members hesitate to move forward with the oust and give you time to figure out what to do.”

“Okay,” I say, though I don’t really want to my father to save the day. “I’ll be back.” I grab my phone and notice Jack called me two more times. I don’t have time to deal with him right now. I call my father, but the phone rings out. “Fuck it.” I then call my mom. She answers on the second ring.

“Sebastian.” She sounds surprised to hear from me, though that doesn’t shock me. I never call my mom.

“I’ve been trying to get in contact with Dad. There’s something going on at the company and?—”

“I know,” she says. “I’ve been following it in the papers. Is everything okay?”

“Not really. Sergio’s fucked up again, and I’m having to deal with the consequences. Do you know when Dad will be home? I really need to speak to him. The board memberswould like for him to come in, to help quell fears that the company isn’t tanking.”

“Your father is out of the country. He’s in…” She sighs. “I don’t really know where he is.”

“Fuck,” I say. “And you don’t know when he’ll be back?”

“I have no clue. You know your father and I don’t have that sort of relationship.”

“Why did you stay with him, then?”

“Sebastian, now’s not the time for that question,” she says. “Where are you right now?”

“I’m at the office. We’re having an emergency meeting.”

“At this time?”

“Yeah, Mom. It’s serious.”

She lets out a long sigh. “I can come in.”

“I don’t think that’s necessary.”

“It is. I can come in and address the board. I have some ideas.”

“Mom, what do you mean you have ideas? What could you possibly do?”

“Just because you think you know everything about me, Sebastian, doesn’t mean that everything you know is true.”

“What are you saying?” I frown at the tone of her voice.

“I’m saying that you’ve spent your entire life looking down on both your father and me and I’ve let you. But you don’t know the full story.”

“Care to elaborate?”

“Your father was never the one who ran the company. He was too high on drugs and sleeping with whores most of the time to worry about running the business into the ground.”

“And that means?” My head pounds. I don’t want to have this conversation with my mother right now.

“It means I’m the one who ran the company. I made thedecisions that helped us grow into the vast empire we are now.”

My mind splinters as I attempt to piece together what she’s saying and how that even makes sense.