The Angels' Share (The Bourbon Kings #2) - J. R. Ward Page 0,20

the Wall Street Journal as soon as your employment contract is amended. Lakshmi’s drafting it as we speak. This isn’t just something between you and I anymore.”

Sutton felt cold fear, the kind that pricked the back of your neck and made you sweat under your arms. “No. It’s not legal. It has to be ratified by the board—”

“They did it last night.”

She sat back, separating them. And as the hard chair hit her shoulder blades, for some absurd reason she thought about the number of employees they had worldwide. Thousands and thousands. And how much business they did between their bourbon distilling, the wine subsidiary, and then their vodka, gin, and rum lines. Ten billion annually with a gross profit of nearly four billion. She thought of her brother and wondered how he was going to feel about this.

Then again, Winn had been told two years ago this was the way things were going to go. And even he had to know that she was the one with the business head.

Sutton looked at her father—and promptly forgot about the corporation.

As her eyes blurred with tears, she threw out all decorum and regressed back to when her mother had been lost. “I don’t want you to die.”

“Neither do I. And I have no intention of going anywhere.” He laughed ruefully. “And with the way this Parkinson’s is progressing, I fear that is more true than I should like it.”

“Can I do this?” she whispered.

He nodded. “I’m not giving you the position because you’re my daughter. Love has a place in families.It is not welcome in business. You are succeeding me because you’re the right person to take us into the future. Everything is so different from when my father gave that corner office over to me. It’s all … so global, so volatile, so competitive now. And you understand all of it.”

“I need another year.”

“You don’t have that. I’m sorry.” He went to move his arm again and then gritted his teeth with frustration—which was the closest he came to ever cursing. “Remember this, though. I didn’t spend the last forty years of my life pouring everything I had into an endeavor just to turn it over to somebody who wasn’t fit for the job. You can do this. Moreover, you will do it. There is no other option than to succeed.”

Sutton let her eyes drift down until they settled on his hands. He still wore his simple gold wedding band. Her father had never remarried after her mother had passed. He hadn’t even dated. He slept with her picture beside his bed and with her nightgowns still hanging in their closet.

The romantic justification for that was true love. The actual one was probably part loyalty and reverence for his dead wife, and part the disease and its course.

The Parkinson’s had proven to be debiliting, depressing and scary. And was a testament to the reality that rich people weren’t in a special class when it came to the whims of fate.

In fact, her father had been slowing down markedly these last couple of months, and it was only going to get worse until he was bedridden.

“Oh, Daddy …” she choked.

“We’ve both known this has been coming.”

Taking a deep breath, Sutton was aware that this was the only time she could ever let any vulnerability show. This was her one chance to be honest about how terrifying it was to be thirty-eight years old and at the helm of a global corporation upon which her family’s fortunes rested—and also stare down the barrel of her father’s death.

Brushing away a tear, she looked at the wetness on her fingertip and told herself that there would be no more leaking after she left the house. As soon as she got to headquarters, everyone was going to measure her to see what kind of leader they had. And yes, there would be snakes coming out of the woodwork to undermine her and people who didn’t take her seriously because she was a woman and she was family, and her own brother was going to be angry.

Just as importantly, she couldn’t show any weakness to her father after this, either. If she did, he was going to worry whether he’d done the right thing and possibly even second-guess himself—and stress did not help people with his condition.

“I’m not going to let you down,” she said as she met him right in the eye.

The relief that suffused that handsome face was immediate and made her tear up