When they pulled up in front of the large mansion they’d grown up in, they remained in the Jag, none of them wanting to be the first to open their car door. Finally, though, Nick got out, and the others followed. Their passage into the mansion was quiet, their shoulders hunched.
“Where have you been?”
They stopped in the foyer as their uncle Sherman busted down the stairs glaring at them. The urgency in his voice had them terrified. They knew time was running out.
“We had to blow off some steam,” Maverick said, his hands tucked into his pockets as he rocked back and forth on his heels.
“Your father’s been asking for you,” Sherman scolded. “And there isn’t much time left. Your mother will need all of you.”
“We’re sorry,” Cooper said. The others seemed incapable of speech and just nodded their apologies.
Sherman sighed, not one to stay angry for long.
They followed their uncle up the stairs. None of them wanted to walk through that bedroom door. But they did it. Their father, who had once been so strong, was frail and weak now, the cancer taking everything from him, leaving him a shadow of the man he’d always been.
“Come here,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.
Slowly, the four boys surrounded the bed, facing the man they would soon lose.
“Time is running out so I can’t mince words,” their father started.
“Dad . . .” Cooper tried to interrupt, but his mother put her hand on his arm.
“Let him speak, son.”
Her voice was so sad that the boys turned to look at her for a moment, their shoulders stiffening before they turned back to their father and waited.
“I’ve done wrong by all of you,” he told them, disappointment on his face. He looked extra long at the blood on Cooper’s eye and sadly shook his head. “All of you.”
“No you haven’t, Dad,” Maverick insisted.
“Yes, I have. You’re men now, but you have no plans for the future. I wanted to give you the world, but you’ve only learned how to take because you haven’t learned how to earn anything. I know you’ll grow into fine men. I have no doubt about it. But please don’t hate me when I’m gone,” he said before he began coughing.
“We would never hate you, Dad,” Nick quickly said.
“You might for a while,” their father told them. “But someday you will thank me. I’m doing what I’ve done because I love you.”
“What are you saying?” Ace asked.
“You’ll know soon, son,” their father said.
“Dad . . .” Maverick began, but their father shut his eyes.
Cooper willed himself to say something, anything to break this awful silence. But he just stood there, anger, sadness, fear flowing through him.
And then it was too late.
Not a sound could be heard in the room when their father stopped breathing. For the last time in each of their lives, the boys shed a tear as they looked down at their deceased father.
Then Cooper turned and walked out. He didn’t stop at the front door. He didn’t stop at the end of the driveway. He kept moving, faster and faster until he was in a full-blown sprint with his gut and sides burning. He tried to outrun the fact that he was a disappointment, that he’d failed his father. What if the man was right? What if he never became half the man his father was? He ran faster.
Still, he wasn’t able to outrun his father’s last words of disappointment . . .
“. . . And for my boys, I leave each of you, Cooper, Nick, Maverick, and Ace, a quarter of my assets, but there is a stipulation . . .”
It had only been a day since the funeral, and none of the boys wanted to be sitting in this uptight lawyer’s office while he read a stupid will. It wasn’t as if they didn’t know what it was going to say anyway.
Their father, of course, had left his fortune to them; that is, what he hadn’t already given them in their enormous trust funds, and to their mother and his brother, Uncle Sherman. They were the only living relatives—well, the only ones they knew about, at least. So this was a waste of all their time.
“Can you get on with this? I have things to do,” Cooper snapped.
“You will learn some respect by the end of this,” Sherman warned Coop.
“Yeah, I get it,” Coop said. “Can I go now? I don’t want to hear the rest.”
“I think you do,” their mother said.
Her sweet voice instantly calmed the boys. They did love their mother, had a great deal of respect for her, and listened when she spoke. But they had hardened through the years, taking for granted what had been given to them.
That was about to change.
“You won’t receive a dime of your inheritance until you’ve proven that you will actually better not only your lives, but the lives of others.”
Cooper spoke first. “What in the hell is that supposed to mean?” He was up on his feet, his chair flying backward with the momentum. His brothers were right behind him.
The world was suddenly spinning and none of them knew how to deal with this latest news.
“If you will shut up and listen, then you will hear the rest,” Sherman told them.
The four young men were obviously upset, but slowly they resumed their seats, all of them except for Cooper, who stood there with his arms crossed, daggers coming from his eyes.
“You have ten years to turn your lives around. At the end of that ten years, if you haven’t proven yourselves self-sufficient, by working hard, being respectful to your mother and your uncle, and bringing something to the society that you live in, then your inheritance will be donated to charity.”