Damn. He should have turned them all around and walked out of that restaurant the minute he realized the horde had descended. “I need this marriage, Sylvie. That doesn’t mean I’m going to put you on the front lines of this war of mine. I’m sorry for anything Ashley said to you. She can be mean when she’s disappointed, and she’s almost always disappointed. I’ll make sure she doesn’t bother you again.”

“Gabriel told me she asked you for a job and you turned her down.”

“She did. She wouldn’t fit into the corporate culture we have at the company. You should know, though, that I did give Gabriel a job. He’s been working in the financial offices and he’s on a management track. I’m not evil. I’m not trying to keep anyone down, but Ashley would only cause trouble. She’s got zero real interest in business.”

“They said something about their father leaving them in a bad place.”

“Yes, he left the marriage, though I don’t think it had been much of a marriage for a long time,” Rene replied.

“I can imagine that would be hard.”

“Did they try to tell you it was all their dad’s fault? Don’t believe it. Aunt Helene did her own damage. I’ve paid off her bills three times in the last decade to the tune of a million dollars.” He had to lay it out for Sylvie or she would think he was the bad guy here. “I paid for her divorce attorney. I paid for Gabriel’s last year of college because he was going to have to drop out. That was my money, not the company’s.”

Her expression had softened. “How does it work? The whole family company thing? It seems like a lot.”

She had no idea. “I think it probably worked far better during my grandfather’s generation. My father had a brother who wasn’t interested in the company, and three sisters who never expected to take over. They were happy to cash checks and give my dad free reign. That started to change later on as they got older. They saw other companies going public and they got stars in their eyes. My dad knew if we went public, we would lose all control and we would probably turn into something we wouldn’t want to turn into. We also would lose control of being able to take care of our family the way we always had.”

“And how was that?”