The Kingmaker (All the King's Men, #1)(4)

When my father stands, his knee knocks the table. The file falls, spilling a flurry of papers onto the thick pile carpet. I bend to retrieve them, stuffing a few back into the folder. Certain words blare from the top page.

Pipeline. Army Corps of Engineers. Ancestral burial grounds. Water rights. Environmental impact.

“Dad.” I force myself to look up from the page long enough to catch and hold his gaze. “Where are we and what are we doing here?”

He doesn’t answer for a moment, but extends his hand until I reluctantly give him the file.

“We’re in Arizona.” He grabs his suit jacket from a hook on the wall and slips it on. He’s still fit and trim, and that suit costs enough to take ten years off any man. “Laying a new gas pipeline, and let’s just say the, uh, natives are getting restless.” He smirks at his own joke, but sobers when he sees I’m not laughing.

“That memo referenced the Apache,” I say with a frown.

“Until you man up and actually run something in Cade Energy, that memo’s none of your damn business, but that’s why I’m here. If they think their little protest will stop my pipeline, they can think again.”

“We’re laying a pipeline that disturbs sacred burial grounds?” Outrage and anger almost choke me. Shame, too, that my name is attached to something so heinous. “Will this endanger their water supply?”

“We’re laying a natural gas pipeline that will transport half a million barrels a day and create thousands of jobs.”

“So no thought for the environmental impact?”

“What about the economic impact?” he counters harshly. “If you did something other than sit at a computer all day studying, you’d know what it’s like to be responsible for thousands of families. Thousands of livelihoods. To have shareholders demanding a profit. And they care even less about some river on a reservation than I do. It’s my job, Maxim.”

“Your job should also be ensuring that pipeline doesn’t contaminate other people’s water.”

“I don’t have time to argue with you.” He heads for the exit. “You can stay here while I handle this, or get off for all I care. The worksite’s near a reservation, and according to our foreman, those Indian women got some of the best pu—”

“Stop.” I swallow my disgust and follow him down the short flight of steps lowered from the plane. “I don’t want to know what your foreman thinks about women.”

“Like you don’t get your dick wet,” he says, his voice caustic.

“Oh, I love women. Too much to disrespect them.”

“I should have known better than to send you to Berkeley,” Dad mutters, climbing into the back seat of the black Escalade that’s waiting for us. “Damn sissy school’s made you soft.”

“You didn’t send me anywhere.” I look out the window, watching the desert landscape rushing past as we leave the airfield. “And having actual principles isn’t the same as being soft.”

“You know what your problem is, Maxim?”

“I’m sure you’ll tell me.”

“You aren’t ruthless enough. You think your brother won that Senate seat worrying about some reservation water supply or burial ground?” Before I can reply, he charges on. “Damn right he didn’t. Politics requires balls of steel, and Owen’s got ’em.”

“Glad you’re pleased with one of us,” I say through tight lips.

“If you’re not a ‘fit’ for the family business and your delicate constitution isn’t suited to politics, what do you plan to do?”

He’s not ready to hear what I plan to do, and I’m not sure I want to tell him. I’ll let my actions speak for themselves. For me.

“How’s Mom?” I ask, shamelessly shifting conversational gears because this line of discussion is going nowhere.

His face softens, the hard planes yielding to what is maybe his one redeeming quality. He adores my mother. It may be the only undefiled thing left about him.

“She’s good.” He clears his throat and studies the passing landscape as I did, retreating to the scene beyond the window. “Misses you.”

“I’ll make sure to see her soon.”

“It hurt her when you didn’t come home for the holidays.”

“As much as seeing you and I at each other’s throats would have hurt her?”

I regret the words immediately. So much for redirecting our conversation. No matter what I do, it always comes back to this—to me not measuring up, me not pleasing my father, me failing. Him disappointed. Him leveraging money to twist my arm and trying to bend me to his will.

Well I won’t be bent. If he thinks I’m not ruthless, he hasn’t been paying attention. Head to head, I’d bury my brother. Owen gobbled up every crumb our father dropped, leading him down the prescribed path. Balls of steel? Fuck that. My father practically bought Owen that seat in the Senate. If I want to make my own way, I’ll have to pay my own way.

And that’s fine with me.

“God, Maxim,” my father says, his voice low and loaded with frustration. “I thought this trip might . . .” He shakes his head, letting whatever he hoped for trail off with the unspoken words. “What happened to you? What happened to us, son? We used to hunt together.” He chuckles and flashes me a reminiscent grin. “Hell, you’re a crack shot. You can shoot the wings off a flea. And fly fishing in Big Horn River.”