Page 51 of Accidental Mile High Daddy
“I told you I’d explain,” he said, opening the fridge and pulling out a bottle of white wine like this was some kind of date night. He plucked two glasses from a cabinet and set them down in front of me on the marble island, a piece of printer paper at one end with scattered crayons that Zach had abandoned.
“You’ve got five minutes,” I said, willing my voice to sound cold.
He didn’t flinch, didn’t even rush as he pulled a corkscrew from a drawer and worked at the top of the wine. “My parents were old money,” he said, the words calm and collected. “Like,Vanderbiltold. No love, really, just legacy. I’m sure you’ve seen if you’ve googled my last name.”
I hadn’t. I never saw the need to when I was with Ryan, didn’t see the need to now.
“My mother thought affection wasundignified, as she’d called it. My father only paid attention when you disappointed him,” he continued, and I blinked at him, not having fully expected that. “Ryan was the golden child. He was charming, loud,wild. They loved that. Thought he’d bring the Strathmore’s into today's era, thought he’d turn into someone that would give us relevance again.”
He poured out a glass and pushed it across the counter to me, not quite meeting my eyes. “I’m fine,” I said.
“Have a fucking drink with me, Sienna.”
My eyes met his instantly. There was a bite there, irritation behind his words, and I stared at him, not quite sure whether I needed to go or if the anger simmering behind his eyes was about me at all.
“Sorry,” he sighed after a moment, pouring himself a glass and downing nearly half of it like that was a completely fine societal norm. “This isn’t… It’s not easy for me to talk about my family. You don’t have to drink it if you don’t want to.”
My fingers closed hesitantly around the stem.
He took a deep breath and pushed his free hand through his hair, clutching at the strands briefly before letting go. “Ryan got everything. Every cent he asked for, every ounce of approval. They didn’t even try to hide it. I mean, for fucks sake, I was around for twelve years before they had him, and it was like I didn’t exist. Like didn’t have a son until they hadhim.”
Matt’s jaw worked as he leaned forward onto the kitchen island.
“I was just the spare. The one who worked. The one who tried to build things honestly. Ryan was the one who got rewarded for doing nothing but spending, for going out and getting drunk on the weekends, for wrecking Dad’s Aston Martin when he was fifteen and decided to go on a joy ride. I had nothing handed to me, which is saying a lot when you grow up in a family as wealthy as mine was.”
I took a hesitant sip of my wine. “Why didn’t you fight them on it?”
His brows furrowed as his gaze snapped to mine. “I did,” he huffed. “You think I didn’t fight? You think I didn’t argue, beg—beg, Sienna, for the seed money to start StrathOne? I had to sit there while they handed Ryan a condo in St. Lucia and a Porsche before he even had a job, and I had to pitch to them like I was a CEO looking for an investment from people I didn’t know.”
Matt started pacing, his glass clutched in his hand, his eyes everywhere but me — or maybe nowhere.
“They didn’t believe in me,” he continued, taking another gulp of wine. “Not really, at least. They humored me, gave me a tenth of how much they’d easily spent on Ryan by the time I’d turned twenty-eight. And you know what? I made it work. I built the airline. I earned every dollar I have now. And you know what they said when I started to turn a profit?
He stopped, his gaze cutting across to me, a fire behind his eyes.
“They told me not to be smug about it. Told me not to tell Ryan because he was still‘finding his path.’Told me to keep it all to myself, not to tell family.”
My eyes widened for a split second. “Christ.”
He went silent for a moment, his tongue raking over his teeth, his breathing loud enough to hear. He set his glass down on the counter as he stopped, watching me carefully. “They left everything to him,” he said quietly. “That part of what he told you was true. But they left me as a trustee. Nothing in my name except a responsibility.”
I blinked at him in confusion. They leftnothingto Matt?
“I can show you the will if you don’t believe me, if it matters,” he huffed. “But I never stole his inheritance. Everything was in his name, that wouldn’t—I couldn’t do that if I wanted to. But I did cut him off.”
I sucked in a breath. “So, youdid?—”
“I didn’t do it lightly,” he explained, his fingers rapping against the countertop. “Fuck, I didn’t want to do it atall. He was supposed to have to go through me when he wanted to remove money, at least until he was fifty. Those were the rules on the account. Our parents were smart enough not to give him full access. But they failed to consider how sneaky Ryan could be.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that a few months after everything was in place, he snuck into my fucking house and found the log in details for everything.”
My throat closed. “Hewhat?”
“He started making withdrawals without needing my approval, scrubbed the notifications. Was blowing the money on anything and everything, Sienna. Cars, vacations, cruises, throwing massive fucking parties in our parents’ estate. All the while, occasionally asking me to release ten grand here or there to keep up the act. I wasn’t looking at the balance, I wasn’t payingattentionuntil it was almost too late—until I authorized a seventy grand request so he could put a down payment on a house, and it came back withtransaction declined.”
I blinked at him in horror. I didn’t know how much money the Strathmore’s had when they left it all, but it was certainly in themillions. “How had he…?”
