The Ahern Brothers Collection - Claudia Burgoa Page 0,46
arms envelope my body. Those big hands draw circles on my back, he whispers in my ear loving words. “I will never let anything happen to you again,” he assures me. “No one will hurt you—not even yourself. We’re going to work through this, Abby.”
I let myself believe that he can fix it the way he does with everything else. Will he be able to erase those bitter, painful moments?
“We should rest,” he offers.
I don’t fight him. We walk toward the bed, and we lay on top of it. He taps my arm rhythmically as he counts. My head rests on top of his chest. I listen to his heart and close my eyes, concentrating on the soothing sound and his voice.
“Tell me what you want from me,” he mumbles, kissing the top of my head. “I’ll give you all I can. My soul, if that’s what you need to be whole.”
The sadness in his heart breaks me a little more, and it upsets me too, because I know I’m the one bringing him down. For him, I should stop this nonsense. As my eyes begin to close I promise myself to be stronger for him. I want to be a redwood tree or a big boulder that he can lean on.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Wes
It’s always hard to leave Abby’s side after she’s had a panic attack. I stayed with her for as long as I could, but I needed to shower and arrange my schedule for the next couple of weeks. I sent an email to the board informing them that I’d be working away from the office for the next month. After pressing send, I regretted offering to go back if there’s an emergency. In their minds, everything related to the company is urgent. That’s not the truth. They just like to get paid for the hours they clock in during the meetings.
An email pops up almost immediately. One of the members reminds me that we’re shopping for an investment bank and preparing the initial public offering. I should be in the office, working on the documents we have to send to the banks and to the NYSE. These men are pushing me over the edge. I send an email to my lawyer. We should revise the contracts of the board members and change their roles and payments.
Mom and I argue about the company and the initial public offer every time we’re on the phone.
“If you don’t want to sell, at least stop the IPO,” Mom suggested. “The stress of going public killed your father.”
“He had a heart condition, ate poorly, and never exercised, Mom.”
“Either way, I don’t see the point of continuing something you’re not passionate about. Fire the board and put a stop to that nonsense.”
“I thought you stopped this nonsense. Why restart it again?”
After he died I put the idea on hold. There were other pressing matters, like Mom’s emotional health and a few mergers that required my immediate attention. But it’s time to continue Dad’s vision. He wanted to see his company on the market. The morning we fought about my future, he told me.
“One day, I want to turn on my computer and check the New York Stock Exchange. See those initials going to the top.”
He assured me that without me he couldn’t take Ahern Inc. where he wanted it to be. He’d never be capable of achieving his dream. This time, I won’t let him down. At any cost, this company will become what he dreamed it would before he died.
“You’re complicating everything and letting yourself down, Weston,” Mom said yesterday morning.
She’s right. It’d be easier to fire the board and transition the company into my own vision. I click on my document files and open my personal folder where I saved the drafts of the company I planned to open a couple of years back. Slowly, I open each document. The mission statement was ready, along with the competitor analysis, the financial planning, and the market research. An entire business model that took me almost a year to create sits in the cloud waiting to be deleted.
“You’re a control freak.” Sterling who is a petulant twenty-five-year-old man-child takes away my laptop.
“What’s wrong with you?” I arch an eyebrow crossing my arms.
He sets the computer close to the sink, and I pray to God that he doesn’t do anything stupid because I will make him pay. But instead of turning on the water and drowning it like he did to my Game Boy when