“So when Dad said you weren’t answering even his calls—and that you’d trashed your office—I realized how mistaken I was.”

My stomach clenched around the sandwich I’d eaten. This might be my first hangover, but I wasn’t going to throw up. I could only be so pathetic, and I’d tipped the scales too far already. This was why I never drank. Losing control had never done me any good, and no one cared anyway.

“You love her.” He said it as if it was a little-known fact he’d never heard before.

“Why do you sound so surprised?”

“Robot.”

I tossed out his old nickname for being the family ass-kisser when we were growing up. “Gooder.”

“It’s not too late, Aiden. If you love her, it’s not too late.”

“She’s going to think I want to keep the fifty million and not her.”

“Then prove you love her.”

I kicked my feet up onto the coffee table that ran in front of the couch. I refused to let hope creep in. This was Kate we were talking about. She wasn’t impulsive. She was measured. Even-keeled. She hadn’t rushed into the divorce. She’d thought about it. Contemplated it. She wouldn’t have had the papers drawn up if she was undecided.

“You don’t know Kate,” I said.

“Do you?” That earned him another glare, but he remained unmoved. “Look, I know we haven’t been the closest since you left for college, but you’ve been stuck in your own little world for so many years, I think you’ve forgotten that the people around you need you.” He leaned forward. “You. Not what you can do for them. You.”

He meant to make me feel better, but he was forgetting that he was one of the people who’d needed what I could do for them. He didn’t even realize it—in that, I’d been successful. His lucrative tech company? That would’ve been a dream, a side hustle at the most, if I hadn’t taken up the reins at King Oil. Falling for Eva? Yes, he’d thought he was pulling a fast one when he’d made the fake marriage deal with her. But he wouldn’t have had the chance had the public learned about the trust—and they would’ve, if I hadn’t gotten Kate to marry me in time. Our neighbor would’ve gleefully sold his story to the press. Hell, Danny Cartwright would’ve given that story away for free. But Danny had gone to his grave oblivious. And Beck had been able to take his time and move forward with the right girl instead of wondering if every woman who talked to him had dollar signs dancing in her head.