She could pretend Eric hadn’t told his entire family to stay the fuck out of his life or he’d air their dirty laundry to the press. And he could pretend they didn’t say anything to him at all.
But this was different. The assistant’s voice, curt and cold, had simmered with desperation.
Grandmother took a leisurely sip with shaky hands. “You might be stubborn like your father, but you were never an idiot. Clearly I’m not in good health.”
Eric pressed his lips together. “Of course. I’m sorry to—”
“Let’s not play coy, Eric,” she interrupted. “You loathe this family—you made that perfectly clear when we saw you last, and have continued in the years hence.”
Eric gritted his teeth but didn’t argue. When your family works together to split up you and your fiancée because they don’t think she’s good enough for them, you get pretty pissed off. And when their actions cause her to kill herself, well, that’s pretty fucking unforgivable.
So, yeah. He had a bit of a grudge.
“What do you want, Grandmother?” he asked, setting his untouched tea on a gilded tray balanced on the sky-blue ottoman. “Julie said it was an emergency.”
“Isn’t it, though?” She gestured at the oxygen tank and her dilapidated body. “I’m dying, Eric, since apparently your senses are failing you. The doctors, fools, all of them, say I have six months, at best. Cancer, apparently. It’s so…pedestrian, isn’t it?”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Did you ask me here for some kind of absolution? You want forgiveness for what you did to Penny? Because I’ll tell you right now, it’s not coming.”
Eric swallowed hard, but ultimately, was unmoved. He knew it was cold, but he had truly lost all love for this woman a very long time ago. It was she, after all, who led the crusade that caused Penny to slit her wrists that terrible morning in May.
Grandmother just scoffed, waving her paper-thin hand. “No, no,” she said. “I expect that’s a lost cause, particularly since I don’t regret it. Not her death, of course, but that wasn’t really our fault. We couldn’t have known she was so…delicate.”
Eric’s face flamed. He was determined to keep his cool when he arrived, but he should have known better. Grandmother took sadistic pleasure in getting under people’s skin.
So instead he rose. “I think that’s enough.” Without a backwards glance, he started out of the room, not giving two shits whether or not his sneakers left tracks on her precious floors.
“Eric, stop right there!” Her voice rang out, though it was quickly swallowed by the thick Aubusson carpets. And damn it, there was something in it that made Eric obey once again. A terror. A weakness he’d never heard before. Not coming from her.
Slowly, he turned around but remained in the doorway.
“I’ll be gone in six months,” Grandmother said. “And just who do you think is going to get all of this?”
She meant the opulence around them. The de Vries fortune was older than Manhattan, having started with a New Amsterdam shipping company that became one of the biggest conglomerates in the world. The name was on containers and boats worldwide, although no de Vries had done more than sit on the board of directors for nearly a hundred years. But money made money, and the de Vries family had more than just about anyone.
Not that Eric wanted a goddamn cent.
He crossed his arms and glared. “I’m not going to help you play inheritance games with your kids, Grandmother. You want Mother and Aunt Violet to jump through hoops, you talk to them about it. Or talk to Nina, your other grandchild. The one who actually speaks to you.”
“That would be all fine and good if I intended them to have it, but I don’t.” Grandmother paused to take a long siphon of oxygen, then offered a smile that could only be described as sickly sweet. “It’s for you, Eric. All of it.”
Eric’s heart stopped. Completely. He was dead for at least two full seconds.
“What?” he finally croaked. “But that’s…you have one other child. Who is alive, I might add.”
“Violet is not a de Vries,” Grandmother said. “And therefore, neither is Nina. Now, before you say anything, they’ve always known that’s how it would go. Girls can’t continue the family name, Eric. Astors and Gardners can’t own a company called De Vries Shipping. But you can, my boy. You’re the last one.”
It was true: Eric was, in fact, the last in a long line of de Vries men. His father was