1 Chapter 1

1

It was time to read the will. Ted was grateful for the numbness that had spread through his heart and soul over the last few days. This wasn’t going to be pretty.

A handful of board members filed into the conference room, spectators on behalf of MAC Superior, plus MacTaggart cousins, aunts, uncles, and other curious parties. Race MacTaggart had requested each person be present, though none expected he’d left them anything.

Except his sons. Ted, the eldest, settled quietly into the seat at the right hand of the attorney—his seat for the last few years of his father’s life. Wally, the middle child, threw himself into his seat across the table and smirked at his big brother like this was some kind of party.

He probably thought it was. For all Ted knew, Wally had reason to celebrate. Over the course of the last week—first, when it became clear Race MacTaggart wasn’t going to live much longer, then when he actually went and died, and then as arrangements were made, memorials were had, and burials took place—Ted had tried to prepare himself for this moment. The moment where he’d find out for certain whether his father had valued his hard work, sleepless nights, careful study more than he hated the fact that Ted was gay.

Finally, Ted had reached the conclusion that there was no preparing for such a revelation. He used to drink in moderation, but for the last week, he’d self-medicated like a champ. It was the only thing that let him focus.

As the lawyer, Mitcham, started talking, Ted wished for a scotch. Alas, it wasn’t that kind of party, if it was to be one at all.

“Mr. MacTaggart’s will is over a decade old, but we discussed it a few days before his death, and he assured me it still held with his wishes.” Mitcham offered up a thin smile, weak and watery as Budweiser. He began to read the usual blah-blah-blahs, this and that.

Ted sat, gaze fixed to Wally’s. Wally shifted his own from Ted to every other person around the table, but his infuriating smirk remained fixed.

Ted wished the board members weren’t there. At least then he might’ve gotten away with smacking the smile off Wally’s face after this was over. Possibly, that was whyRace had insisted board members be present. He knew his kids well enough to predict that much.

Wally got these stocks and this thing. Their younger half-sister in New York, Becca—who hadn’t bothered to come—got this and that property. But after much long-winded bullshit, Mitcham came to the important bit:

“I leave all my stake in MAC Superior to my son, Theodore Ansel MacTaggart—”

Ted began to let out a long-held breath, but was interrupted by the rest of the sentence:

“—providing he marries by his twenty-fifth birthday. The board will hold his shares in trust until he’s been married for ten years, at which point they fully revert to him.

“Upon Theodore Ansel’s twenty-fifth birthday if he remains unmarried, or upon his divorce before ten years of marriage have passed, my stake in MAC Superior passes to my younger son, Wallace Reid MacTaggart, to be held in perpetuity.”

Ted’s blood rushed in his ears; his face went cold. Wally laughed so loudly Mitcham had to pause in his reading to let him finish.

Whatever else the will said, Ted had no idea. He couldn’t hear over the sound of his own blood.

He wasn’t sure if it would’ve been better or worse if their mother had come. He couldn’t help being glad she hadn’t, all the same.

* * * *

“Well, we can’t contest the entire will. He made sure his mental state was noted as unimpeachably sound.”

Ted heaved a sigh into the phone. “Find something. There’s no way this is legal. It’s some feudal bullshit Dad read about in a Sir Walter Scott novel or—or whatever.”

“I’ll look into loopholes,” Taisha, his lawyer, replied. “I’ve seen clauses less ridiculous get overturned, but it’s a long, long, uphill battle, and your father left a lot of people on retainer. I’m not sure you know what you’d be getting into.”

Yes, Ted did know what he’d be getting into, and that was about the size of it. It’d be just like Race to leave behind a team of high-paid lackeys to carry out his whims from the grave. Ted had long since gotten his own legal team, seeing as his father’s were so far up his ass they could’ve talked through his mouth. It’d mean a long legal boxing match, while Ted had a lot of more important things to worry about—like stabilizing MAC Superior in the wake of Race’s death. He had employees to reassure, production to carry on with, orders to fill all over the country.