“He’s only fifty-eight. You don’t know how many years we’d be signing up for, but he sure as hell doesn’t have another thirty years of at-home care in his accounts, Cam. And as for the inheritance? That’s easy for you to say. You came home to a house that’s already yours. Land that’s yours. This building that’s yours. You have fifty-five percent of the mining company already and a voting membership in the Historical Society.”

“You sit on the damned council!” I snapped. “Do you honestly care if I vote?”

“I don’t sit there. Dad does. I only have his seat because he’s incapacitated, and you know it. And when he dies, what then?”

“Are you seriously asking me about his seat?” Flames licked up through my lungs, tickling my tongue to say something reckless, to breathe the fire that Xander knew I was capable of. “Do you think I give a shit about who sits on the council?”

“I didn’t think you cared about the company or the mine, yet here you are.” He gestured to the doorframe with his leather-gloved hands.

“I’m only in this building because I have to get a plan to the council by next week. That’s the only way to reopen the mine!” This was a means to an end.

“Why is that so important to you?”

“Because it will pay for Dad’s care if you won’t!” I shouted, pointing directly at him.

His mouth hung open for a split second before he closed it. “You’re reopening the mine to pay for Dad’s care?”

Now was definitely not the time to get back into the DNR question. Xander was a politician, but I’d spent the last ten years waging war and building infrastructure. I wasn’t showing my hand yet. Not when I couldn’t trust him to have a rational conversation about it.

“Yes. I have no control here, Xander. You have it all. You control Dad’s care, his finances, his council seat, and his very life. So if money is really the only reason you won’t let him stay in the house he was born in, that our mother died in, then I’m alleviating that concern. The money the mine will bring in from tours will more than cover it. Even if I can only give Dad fifty-five percent of the money.”

He flinched at that last sentence.

“I just thought you needed a job. Needed income,” he admitted quietly.