A Worthy Man

by Jaime Reese

  Vann grabbed a piece of paper from Drayton’s desk and quickly scribbled a note, showing it to him, scripting his next response.

  “Baker,” Drayton said. “If you can have the prototypes to us within the timeframe for Connor’s release plan, then we’ll include a rush bonus which should cover Amanda’s first year tuition bill.”

  “Deal,” Baker responded without hesitation.

  “Perfect. We’ll touch base with you before the end of day to work out the details. Thanks, Baker,” Vann said, disconnecting the call.

  “Is this really possible?” Taylor asked. “Please tell me it is. I want to fuck over Sean and that company.”

  “If we can get these prototypes ready in time”—Connor jumped in, the excitement obvious in his tone—“I’d really like to reveal them at the mainstream show rather than the smaller-scale, exotic private showings two months after. It’ll mean we have to stick to the schedule and can’t allow for any delays, but I can capitalize on that platform and make sure our presentation stands out enough to gain more exposure, which will cut down on the advertising expenses. It’ll also give us a chance to unveil the models before Sean reveals his, so we’d set the bar for the market. We’ll have to bump up the budget for four model presentations, but I think the returns in the investment will merit it.”

  They chatted for a while longer, trying to establish a plan for how each person could help along the way. They cohesively strategized, all contributing input toward a shared goal. This was his team. And Drayton never would have uncovered the talent in each of them without Vann’s involvement.

  “You’re quiet,” Vann said after everyone had left the office.

  “I’m…amazed. You managed to find a solution within an hour for what would have taken me weeks to resolve.”

  “It’s just talk right now,” Vann said with a shrug. “A lot can happen before the presentation. You would have come up with an answer all on your own.”

  Drayton shook his head. “Don’t you dare minimize this. You pulled everyone together, and they are all inspired and determined to make this happen. I couldn’t have done that.”

  “I want this,” Vann whispered. He lowered his brow and chewed his lip. “I want to be a part of this, and I want to be able to help you.”

  Drayton pulled him into an embrace, screwing his eyes shut as he held him close. “It’s always been ours. And I’m glad you’re finally jumping in without me pushing you into it. I want you overseeing the plan and schedule. If you need my help on something, let me know. Connor will head up all the marketing. He’s great at what he does and doesn’t require handholding. He’s not shy about asking for something when he needs it, so don’t stress over the promotional plans or the reveal presentation. Just make sure you’re each updated on the progress. I’ll work on the business side of things with Taylor and anything else that comes up on that end. I imagine he’s going to go on the attack with Sean and our competitor, so I need to keep tabs on that as well. But I need you to handle things with Baker and the team to ensure everything is smooth on the production end of things. Okay?”

  Vann nodded, resting his head on Drayton’s shoulder. “By the way?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You never told me what was bothering you when I first walked in here.” Vann inched back and looked into Drayton’s eyes. “I’m not going to pry, but I’m here. You know that.”

  A smile tugged at his lips. “I know.”

  And he couldn’t be more thankful.

  They had been working their asses off during the last two weeks, getting things in place for the prototype productions and doing damage control from Sean’s article. Drayton had enough on his plate with that level of stress. He certainly didn’t need another morning phone call from his mother.

  He stood in line, waiting for his name to be called, still wondering what had possessed him to storm out of his morning meeting to make this visit. He pinched the bridge of his nose and blew out a heavy breath. Deep down, he knew why. He had had enough. He was tired of the nagging. Tired of the constant interference and dark cloud each call brought into his life. He wanted to end this, and he didn’t know how to do that other than facing it head on.

  “Drayton Delereux.”

  He walked over to the guard holding the clipboard. “It’s Drayton Shaw.”

  The guard frowned as he flipped to the next page on his board then returned to the first. “I saw you listed as her son, so I assumed…”

  “Honest mistake, but a bad assumption.”

  The uniformed man’s gaze slowly slid up from the clipboard to meet Drayton’s eyes.

  Why had he said that? Why had he been deliberately rude to this man who was simply doing his job? He kept his gaze steady. He knew exactly why. He wanted to be booted out of there, banned from visits so he wouldn’t have to ever take another call from his mother or request for a visit.

  “You obviously have her smart mouth. She’s…”

  “I’m sure I can come up with far more creative words than you can.” He sighed. “Sorry, I was an ass.”

  The guard scoffed and left the clipboard with the other officer sitting at the entryway desk. “Follow me.”

  Drayton followed the guard as he pushed through a heavy metal door and walked down a hallway. He shoved his hands in his pockets to stave off the sudden chill traveling through his body. His focus bounced back and forth between the gray, stained metal doors, the sterile, plain walls, and the flickering fluorescent light above. He frowned as a dull ache spread in his chest, wondering how Vann had managed to survive a decade surrounded by a place like this and still manage to keep that inner spark of his in the midst of all this coldness.

  “I’ve got a question, if you don’t mind.”

  “Shoot.” The guard looked over his shoulder, a hint of a smile playing on his lips. “I meant…ask your question.”

  He couldn’t muster the strength to smile in return. “Are all prisons the same?”

  The guard stopped and turned to face him.

  “Do they all look like this?” Drayton couldn’t help repeatedly scanning the room.

  “No. It depends on the level. Your mom—”

  “You mean Ms. Delereux.”

  The guard sighed. Drayton couldn’t blame the man for wanting to ignore the family drama. It was exactly what he had tried to do for the better part of his life. He swallowed his frustrations and glanced at the officer’s name badge.

  “Sorry about that, Officer Malone. It’s a touchy subject.”

  “I picked up on that.” Malone crossed his beefy arms. “Ms. Delereux is in for a white collar crime. Even with the length of her term, she wouldn’t be in a place like this. She’d have more liberties than what she’s receiving here. But they’re overpopulated right now, so she’s here until she’s transferred out. That should happen before the end of the year.”

  Drayton scanned his surroundings again for the umpteenth time. This wasn’t the same prison, but he wondered how similar the structure and style was to where Vann had stayed. “Is this maximum security?”

  “No.” The guard dropped his arms, hooking his thumbs on his belt.

  Drayton frowned. He had so many damn questions and being inside the prison didn’t compare to his online research.

  “Do you know someone in maximum security?” the guard asked, cocking his head.

  “He was.”

  “How long?”

  “Ten years.” Drayton frowned. “He shouldn’t have been there in the first place. I can thank Ms. Delereux for her…influence.”

  “Ah. So I assume you’re not heartbroken she’s temporarily staying here. Taste of her own medicine and all.” Officer Malone pulled down on the handle and opened the heavy metal door. He gestured for Drayton to enter and led him to a chair in a vacant room filled with a row of matching cubicles. “Have a seat here. She’ll be in in a few minutes. You can use the phone to communicate.”

  “Thanks.”

  The officer turned to walk out
, pausing at the door. “Your friend… How’s he adjusting?”

  “He’s resilient and strong.”

  Officer Malone pursed his lips. “He’d have to be after a decade in there.” He departed with a quick nod, leaving Drayton alone in the room.

  Drayton pulled out the chair and sat. He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths, trying to settle the tension stiffening his body. He craned his neck to see six other small cubicles identical to the one where he sat. The plastic chair was uncomfortable, but he imagined comfort wasn’t the top priority. A short wall served as a divider between cubicles, bookending him into a small space about three-feet wide with a little bit of table space and a phone mounted on the side. It reminded him of those old landline phones few people used nowadays.

  He looked ahead, through the scuffed acrylic glass, wondering how his visits would have been with Vann. He imagined Vann sitting across from him in standard-issue prison wear. Being so close, yet somehow, so far away.

  Movement from the outside hallway caught his attention. He saw the opening and closing of the door above the wall divider moments before his mother stood behind the chair in the cubicle area across from him. She pulled out the chair and sat, never breaking eye contact with him.

  Was he really here? Visiting the woman he swore he would never see again?

  Hell must have frozen over.

  He stared at his mother, but his mind wandered, imagining Vann sitting across from him, unable to hear the subtle inhale and exhale of his breath.

  He cleared his mind, needing his focus on the woman now sitting across from him.

  The woman who’d given birth to him. The woman who had disowned him and thrown him out of their family home. All conveniently before his twenty-fifth birthday when the trust fund would declare him the heir of the Delereux fortune.

  He couldn’t recall ever seeing her face without the mask of makeup. As a child, he’d imagined she slept sitting upright to avoid disheveling a single strand of hair. She’d always looked polished, refined, and emitted an aura of entitlement.

  Margaret Delereux, former senator, now sat before him wearing a bright orange jumpsuit. A color she swore she would never wear because it made her skin look blotchy. A truth now evident without the benefit of her expensive makeup facade.

  This stranger wore her sixty-three years in every tiny crack and crease of her skin. Her hair, heavily streaked with gray, was tied low in a ponytail at the nape of her neck.

  Margaret Delereux didn’t do ponytails.

  Hell was officially registering record low freezing temperatures, and the skies were now filled with pigs in flight.

  She tapped a short, unpolished nail against the glass divider, then pointed to the phone hanging on the wall.

  Drayton picked up the receiver and waited.

  “Hello, son.”

  Drayton returned the phone to the cradle on the wall and crossed his arms on the cubicle table.

  Ms. Delereux’s expression hardened. She gestured toward the phone.

  Drayton uncrossed his arms and picked up the phone again.

  “Was that necessary?”

  “You chose to disown me. Was that necessary?”

  She stared at him, her lips thinned to a straight line. She remained quiet for a few moments. He imagined she was strategizing, as she always did. It was how she’d clawed her way through social circles and up the political arena.

  “You have to get me out of here.”

  Drayton scoffed. “Why would I do that?”

  “I’m your mother.”

  “Do you want me to hang up again?”

  She sighed. “I’m not made for this place.”

  “And Vann was?”

  She inhaled sharply, obviously trying to rein in her temper. “You did everything in your power to get him out.”

  “And you pulled every string you could to keep him inside. And I wouldn’t be surprised if you used your contacts so that his time in prison was much more difficult. Why? Why did you do that to him?”

  “He’s not good enough for you.”

  Drayton let out a sardonic laugh. “Says the woman who disowned me.” He shook his head and blew out a heavy breath. He might not be able to decipher every element of human behavior, but he recognized his mother’s bullshit and how she avoided answering a direct question, especially when she wanted something in return.

  “His father is a lazy, disgusting drunk.”

  His focus snapped back to her. He gritted his teeth, biting down the rage threatening to break free. “He’s not his father.”

  She stared at him intently, never wavering from his equally intense gaze. “All he wants is money.”

  Drayton burst into laughter. This woman obviously didn’t have a clue what was and wasn’t important to Vann.

  “He’s the bottom of the barrel, Drayton. I don’t know how you fell into his trap.”

  His grip on the phone tightened. He took deep breaths, timing each inhale and exhale, hoping to control the anger ready to boil over. “My father hated me and spent my entire life reminding me of how I’d never be like him and how I embarrassed him because I didn’t think like him. And you were right there at his side, letting me know of all the ways I would fail because I refused to follow your social rules. And when my father had had enough of me and tried to end things, Vann was the one who stood up for me. He was the one who saved me and went to prison because of that. And what did you do?” He sat back in the chair. “You expected me to lie under oath and claim he was the one who had attacked me. Why would I betray the one person who actually cared about me?”

  She stared at him through the scuffed acrylic divider, refusing to utter a single word.

  He didn’t know why he had bothered with the visit; he had never been able to have a conversation with her. But there was something he needed to know. One more answer had eluded him for almost a decade…an answer he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

  “Why did you disown me? Was I really that horrible of a son?”

  She straightened in her plastic chair. Even without her head-to-toe disguise, she still managed to taint the air with a sense of arrogance and superiority. “You chose that vile delinquent instead of your family. You obviously had no desire to retain the integrity of your family name, so there was no reason for you to reap the rewards of your inheritance. You made your decision. You chose him. I simply followed the legal processes to grant you your wish.”

  Integrity? Drayton absently shook his head. She certainly had no clue what integrity actually meant. It shouldn’t surprise him that she would find a way to twist what had happened to her benefit and take ownership of the inheritance his paternal grandfather had left for him to claim on his twenty-fifth birthday. Disowning him severed the limb on the family tree and gave her the sole right to generations of fortune. A right only hers by marriage and by the death of her husband.

  Money and social status had always been her top priorities. The answer should have been clear to him. All she had cared about was snatching the opportunity to steal his inheritance—money that would offer the stepping-stone to reach the higher echelons of her social circles. And she had used Vann and her son as a means to her end. She didn’t care about Drayton, what he thought, or how he felt. She had tossed him aside just as she had everything else that didn’t help her achieve her goal.

  To her, he was an obstacle.

  He was irrelevant. And so was Vann.

  He now had his answer to both questions. She wanted the money and didn’t care about her son. But she had also indirectly given him the answer that had plagued him for a decade. Why Vann? Why had she done this to him? The money, her need for power, and her influence had given her the means. But the motives were now clear…because he had chosen Vann over her. She had kept Vann away from him out of spite. And she had ensured a decade of hardship in Vann’s life.

  Because of Drayton and his choice.

  He swallowed heavily, ignoring the pain ripping through his heart. “I
will always choose him over you,” he whispered into the phone, tightening his fingers around the handset. Vann was the one person in his life who never made him feel irrelevant. The one person who always put him first, regardless of the consequences.

  But his decision had set things in motion.

  His decision had caused a decade of pain in Vann’s life.

  “He ruined you!”

  Drayton’s focus snapped to her face. “No,” he yelled, his voice echoing in the vacant room. “I’m the one who ruined his life. I’m the one who’s not good enough for him.”

  He stilled and took a few deep breaths, trying to calm his racing heartbeat triggered by voicing the one thought that had always tickled the back of his mind but he had never had the courage to admit. Shit. The last thing he wanted was to let her know she’d gotten to him.

  Her sigh echoed through the line. “And you wonder why I disowned you.”

  His fingers numbed from the tight grip, the pain replaced with a burning fury stirring in the pit of his stomach. “No, I wonder why you’d bother to ask anything of me.” The last ten years of pain, struggle, and loneliness were attributed to her and her selfish, elitist efforts to keep them apart and find every way to hurt Vann. Hell would have to freeze over a dozen times before he ever considered extending her a helping hand.

  He refused to waste another second of his life on someone who didn’t care about him or Vann.

  He leaned forward and waited until he had her undivided attention. “You tried so hard to keep him away from me that it’s only fair you know he now keeps my bed warm every night.”

  A look of disgust twisted her features. “I’ve had enough.”

  “I agree.” He paused, staring into pale gray eyes that mirrored his own. “Don’t call me again. Have a nice life, Ms. Delereux.”

  He hung the handset back on the wall and rose from the chair, refusing to spare a glance back at the woman he once called “Mom.”