The Kingmaker (All the King's Men Duet #1) - Kennedy Ryan Page 0,4

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.”

We cooked our haul over an open fire that night. I silently complete the memory, still tasting the fish and the laughter, the camaraderie that came so easily then.

“And remember that week we broke in Thunder?” he asks.

“That horse was half Arabian, half demon,” I recall with a short bark of laughter.

“He was no match for us, though. Between you and me, we broke him in.”

An image sears my mind. Thunder, with rolling eyes and a bucking back, his neighing a battle cry. We took turns, Dad and I, that week on our Montana ranch, riding the horse, bridling him, training and taming him until my father could lead him around a fenced circle by a rope, the horse’s spirit as subdued as his light trot.

Docile. Broken.

And that’s how my father wants me. Trotting obediently, my neck draped with the reins of his power.

“That horse was no match for the two of us. We can do anything together,” Dad continues. “Come run Cade Energy with me, Max.”

I almost fell for it. When his money doesn’t work, he employs his only other weapon: my love for him. He dangles his affection, his approval before me like ripe, low-hanging fruit. Just bite. A tempting trade. My will for his. Do what he says. Be who he wants and he’ll love me that way again. But I’ve seen too much—changed too much. Our eyes, hair, bones, and our very natures may be the same, but I’ve spent years venturing beyond the safety of my father’s borders, and it has fleshed me out. It’s made a man of me, and the man I want to be is not my father.

I don’t respond, but keep my gaze fixed through the tinted glass. I’m still formulating a response that won’t cause a backseat battle when we pull up to the construction site.

A few hundred people crowd the plot of desert. Bulldozers and trucks loiter, impotent and silent, each with a dark-haired protester anchored to it. Their arms hook around the necks of the bulldozers, a cast plastering both arms in an unbroken loop. Some are chained to the trucks, impeding any forward movement. Protesters raise signs and link arms to form a line of bodies around the site. Media trucks topped with satellite dishes dot the scene, and well-groomed reporters stand nearby armed with their microphones. Police officers ring the area, sober sentinels with expressionless faces. I can’t tell if they’re here to protect or threaten. I guess it depends whose side you’re on.

“Dammit to hell,” my father mutters. “I need those trucks moving.”

A vaguely familiar man approaches the Escalade, irritation and anxiety twisting his expression. He stands outside the door, obviously waiting for my father to get out. Dad rolls the window down halfway, not bothering to so much as lean forward. Anger strikes out