I was wrong. He’d let her marry anyone but a Riscoff.

The groom smirked but said nothing, then they both turned and marched up the steps.

If I weren’t so fucking wasted, I’d go back in and try again.

He might be marrying her today, but I wasn’t done with Whitney Gable.

I’d never be done with her.

One

Lincoln

Ten years later – Present day

“Time to shit or get off the pot, boy. You can’t keep her dangling after you forever. I’m not getting any younger, and you need to get started on the next generation. The Riscoff line must continue, and I’m sick of waiting.”

My grandfather offers his unsolicited advice as my phone vibrates with a text on the table between us. We’re having our regular morning meeting on his deck overlooking the gorge and the river.

“This isn’t relevant to the conversation at hand.” I slide my phone off the table and slip it into my pocket. Ignoring the message from the woman I’ve been seeing occasionally for the last few months, I flip open a file with a stack of documents needing Commodore’s signature.

Business comes first. Last. Always. That’s the Riscoff family way.

Any woman who spends time around me knows it, and that these meetings with my grandfather are sacrosanct. I may be the heir apparent to a multibillion-dollar empire, but Commodore still officially holds the reins, and every decision I make has to be signed off on by him. Does it drive me fucking crazy? Yes. Do I have a choice? No, because that’s family tradition. We preserve and protect the legacy at all costs. That’s part of being the Riscoff heir.

“What is relevant, however, is you signing these documents so we can close the deal on these contract negotiations and make us another few hundred million before the end of the year.”

I push the stack of resolutions in front of him and hold them down as the wind whipping off the river causes the pages to flap, threatening to carry them away. It was more convenient when he lived at the family estate, but that ended when he accused my mother of trying to poison him two years ago and moved out to this cabin overlooking the river. Now I have to haul my ass out here every day, over ten miles of winding roads up through the mountains, with shitty cell service.

Part of me wonders if he decided to buy this place because Magnus Gable, his lifelong sworn enemy, bought the falling-down place next door, and Commodore wanted to keep an eye on him.

Keep your enemies close. Commodore is Machiavellian enough that I wouldn’t put anything past him.

I still don’t know what to think about whether my mother was trying to poison him. Would she try to hasten his demise to force the company holdings to be passed down? I should be able to say no with certainty, and the fact that I can’t says a lot about my family, and none of it good.