Page 99 of Pride and Privilege

Would he?

Roscoe took a slow sip of his drink. “How are you feeling?” he asked. “All this stress? It’s not too much?”

“Not at all. Just happy to get back to business. You know that’s what I live for.”

Was that a threat?Let’s talk about business because your love life might kill me…?Or was Roscoe going mad? This was his father… He was furious at his father. He was sitting down and sipping whisky with his father while Poppy was waiting outside…

The man sitting there had shouted at Poppy. Fired her. Hurt her. Did Roscoe hate him? And even if he did, could he hurt him the way he needed to in order to get free…? If he thought about Poppy’s face when he’d walked into the room, he thought perhaps he could. Right now, the man seemed far away. Astranger. The crack in their relationship that had started months ago as a bit of bitterness was black and deep, something sick and oily at the bottom of it that Roscoe was scared to look at because it was irreversible.

Get back to whatever East End gutter you crawled out of.

Was there a way back from that? When he looked at his father and heard those words?

“I sometimes do find it a bit too much,” Roscoe heard himself saying. “The stress. I don’t suppose you ever knew. I never told you. But it makes me ill working here. I’ve been to the doctor. Been given pills. But I don’t think that’s the answer—having to medicate myself to stand being here.”

His father frowned. “If you need medication, there’s no shame in that. I basically rattle these days.”

“It doesn’t give you pause for thought? What I just said? Your own heart attack?”

“What are you asking me? Yes, it’s a stressful job. It’s part and parcel of it. But what’s the alternative? This is who we are. This is BlacktonGold. Our life’s work.”

“Yours. Not mine.”

His father’s expression faltered, and now he did rub his chest again. Roscoe watched the motion with panic flaring. Could he do it? Could he really say what he needed to say? Ought he wait, wait for a quieter, calmer day, when his father might be more ready for a shock…?

“If you need some time off, my boy, of course you can have it. Maybe your suggestion about Aubrey Ford has some merit. We could bring him in as co-lead…”

Some time off, some sleep… If he passed over some of the work, if maybe Aubrey could eventually take over the project fully…

Would it help? Would it be enough, to make the walls go away, to let him wake up feeling like the days were something that stretched before him rather than something crushing and dead…

You can’t spend the rest of your life doing work you don’t enjoy.

Poppy’s voice, trees all around, the grounds of Malperton and dappled sun on red hair…

“Whatever doubts are in your mind, we can talk them out,” his father was saying. “Whatever adjustments you need, we can try to make them. But this is your company—”

“No.”

His father paused. Frowned, annoyed.

“No,” Roscoe repeated. “It’s yours.”

“Roscoe…” His father smiled, half-laughing, as though talking to a child. “This is your legacy, your inheritance. I built it foryou.”

“And what if I don’t want it?”

His father’s smile disappeared, had never been real at all. “Don’twantit? I’m notofferingit to you. It’s in your blood. In your name. This place is who you are.”

“Then why don’t I get a say? Why do you shut down every idea I have?”

“Your green funds? Yourethicaloptions?” His father scoffed. “Stop being so bloody naïve. You’re young. You need more experience. In a few years, you’ll see—”

Roscoe was shaking his head. “No.” A few more years? He couldn’t… “I can’t work here. Dad… I—”

His father suddenly stood up, face red. “You ungrateful little—” He broke off with a furious breath and turned to the window as though even the sight of Roscoe made him sick. “You’re as spoilt and lazy as your brother. As stupidly naïve as your sister. I’ve given you everything! This place has paid for almost everything we have! And you…”

Roscoe watched, frozen, Hugo’s words in his head, the memory he’d shared of that night…“He went completely white, collapsed right in front of me; he was so angry, and it was all my fault…”

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