The Kingmaker (All the King's Men Duet #1) - Kennedy Ryan Page 0,3
to one of America’s most powerful oil barons.
“What the ever-loving fuck are you talking about, boy?” he bellows, his voice bouncing off the walls, trapped in the luxurious cabin. “You’ll finish that damn useless master’s degree, and start in our California office as soon as possible. I got no time for this wind and air and whatever tree-hugger horse shit nonsense they’ve been teaching you at Berkeley.”
“Nonsense is believing this planet will run forever on poison. If you’d just listen to my ideas about transitioning to clean energy—”
“Oil was clean enough when it was paying for your fancy education, huh? And your trips and cars and clothes. It wasn’t poison then, was it?”
“I wouldn’t expect you to notice, but I paid my own tuition,” I correct him softly.
Before he can verbally express the disdain on his face, a uniformed attendant peers through the curtain.
“We’re here, Mr. Cade,” she says.
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