“It was your dad’s idea to do this so you could keep the company though,” I managed to grind out through my clenched teeth. Even though I didn’t condone the way he had been acting out, I could completely understand the why of it. I wanted bad things to happen to his father for even daring to do something like that. Not only did he betray his wife, but his own son too.

He shook his head. “No, this deal was my grandfather’s idea. He is the one who was pushing for me to be settled down with someone. Grandad was part of the reason I bought the ring for Venla.”

“What about the affair, didn’t he realize?”

“He found out about it, but not because I told him. Grandad is my mother’s father, so I couldn’t tell him because I wasn’t sure I wanted to be the one to devastate my mother that way.” He waved away his concerns for his mother and continued telling me how his grandfather found out. “There are security cameras in the boardroom and when I threw a chair and broke a window in a dividing wall, he reviewed the tape to see why.”

“Oh shit!”

“Yeah, exactly. The business belongs to my mother’s family, the Brightons, not my father’s. The Tuckers have some old family money, but nothing like what the Brighton Conglomerate generates. My father was brought on and given a place to work, a relatively high position even, only because he was married to my mother.”

“Okay, so what does that mean for you?”

“It means that Samuel Brighton, my Grandfather, is the real man behind the company and my father has only been the public face for the past few years. He cannot inherit the conglomerate, controlling shares in any of the companies, or anything else. It would all pass to me since I’m a Brighton by blood and name.”

“You were named after your grandfather?”

“Obviously,” he told me. “My grandfather had been about ready to hand things over to me, since I was settling down and seemed ready to take over.”

“Then you caught your dad having an affair with your girlfriend?”

“Then I caught my dad having an affair with my girlfriend, but that wasn’t all. It wasn’t the first time I knew of my father cheating. It was however my first time finding out that my grandfather knew about my father’s infidelity, and he never once told my mother about it because it was more important to him that the traditional family be kept intact. Appearances mattered more than his daughter’s happiness. I didn’t tell my mom the first time because it happened when I was ten years old. My father made me fear the consequences of telling her what I saw, even though I barely understood it then. I tried to convince Grandad to tell Mom, but he refused. They swore me to secrecy and have held it over my head this whole time,” he admitted.