I shook my head and avoided his gaze—and Kendall’s compassionate one. He hadn’t made me feel like I didn’t have to either. We hadn’t gotten that in-depth in any of our discussions. If he’d spoken up, would I have let it sway me from Grams and DB’s expectations? It didn’t matter all these years later, so all I said was, “It’s a good job.”

“It’s an excellent job,” Dad agreed. “There are others out there who want to do it.”

“I want to do it.”

“Do you? Or since you’re here, are you going to make sure you do the best job possible because that’s your personality?”

“It’s not a personality trait, it’s expected. And it doesn’t matter. I’m the King Oil CFO now.”

But Dad wasn’t to be brushed off. This wasn’t the same dad from high school. This dad didn’t give up. “Is that why you took the layoff incident so personally? Because you wanted to do something else and you thought that was what’d caused the oversight?”

Maybe because Dad had held the position open after the previous CFO resigned. He’d held the position open, hadn’t promoted Sebastian, and slid me right in. I’d gotten the job over other qualified candidates. And I’d fucked up. Sebastian had fucked up, but he might not have if he’d been CFO and some other vice president had had to run the numbers and make their best educated guess.

“It’s in the past,” I said, my desperation to move beyond this conversation and never think about it again growing.

“It feels like it’s firmly in the present, Aiden.”

“Dammit, Dad.” I jumped out of my chair and stalked to the window. Many days, this was my only dose of sunshine. The heat from the window eased the pressure in my head. Damn headaches. “Can you just fucking drop it?”

In the reflection of the glass, Kendall’s wide gaze was on Dad, but his maddening, steady gaze was glued to my back.