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Continue from Episode 19
“Got something to ask me.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement. They were riding back home in the car, and Granddaddy had pushed the button to keep the driver from overhearing their conversation.
“No.”
“You don’t have a single thing you want to know regarding that crap Calista Harrison unloaded?”
“I wasn’t listening.”
“Don’t lie to me. Not if you expect me to be straight with you. Like I’m going to be now.” He didn’t look any happier to be telling her this than she was to hear it. “I did try to break her daddy’s will. But only because he and I had a deal. He was supposed to change it. Guess he didn’t expect to die the way he did, when he did. But that doesn’t change the facts. All that shared property Calista talked about, that should have gone to me. I loaned her daddy some money, and that was the collateral. We didn’t do anything in writing. Probably should have. But we were friends once. I owed him… I owed Martin Harrison a lot.”
“I understand,” Lauren said.
“No, you don’t. Let me finish.”
She flinched and he softened his tone.
“Remember what I said to you a long time ago, about Harrison having standards and whatnot? How he had this vision of himself as a great man; wouldn’t get his hands dirty? Well, you might as well know it, your Granddaddy – I’m not like that. I like making money. I know too well what it’s like to live without it. Harrison never did. I’ll take any job, don’t care what, don’t care from who. That’s why he and I stopped working together. Some of the projects I wanted us to take on, he objected. Casinos, prisons. Even did a couple of whorehouses once.” He hesitated. “You know what that is?”
Lauren nodded.
“Good. Hate to think my private school tuition is going to waste.”
The pair of them exchanged smiles.
Granddaddy went on. “Harrison’s high-falutin’ standards, they extended to the cost of doing business, too. I say we’d be well-advised to bribe a zoning commissioner, or maybe mention to a fellow whose land we’ve got our eye for developing that we know about the teenage boys he visits at night in dark alleys, and if he sees fit to sell, we might see fit not to tell his wife and pastor… Marty would have none of it. That’s no way to run a business in my book. Life’s not fair. Only way those without power will ever get any is to take it from those who do. And the only way to take anything is by force. You following me?”
Lauren nodded her head emphatically.
“You’re going to hear a lot of things about me. Most of it true. I’m not fixing to change who I am. So if you don’t like it… “ Granddaddy trailed off. In all honestly, he hadn’t given any thought to what he’d do if Lauren didn’t like it.
“You do what you have to do,” she echoed him with as much conviction as she could muster, considering she didn’t fully understand everything she was agreeing to.
“And it’s not like I’m the only one,” defensiveness crept into his voice. “You think the Harrisons don’t grease a palm or pull a string? Especially when they can swindle me out of a deal in the process? You know what they say: Invest in land, it’s the only thing God isn’t making any more of? I control most the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe, and the Harrisons, they’ve got the California side. But if either one of us wants to expand – and we do – it means squatting on the other’s territory. Calista and I been squabbling for years. I doubt motherhood is aiming to make her any more amiable. And now that the brother from Harvard,” his voice went up, mocking, “is in the picture, I imagine it’ll get worse. I won’t be pulling any punches, and neither will they. Am I making myself clear?” Granddaddy asked. Then followed up, “Still want to keep coming into the office with me?”
“Yes, sir!” Her voice went up too, in this case with certainty.
“All right then,” he sighed. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
To Be Continued
About the Author
Alina Adams wrote the “As the World Turns” tie-ins, “Oakdale Confidential” and “The Man From Oakdale,” and co-wrote “Guiding Light’s” “Jonathan’s Story.” She was the Creative Content Producer for “Another World Today,” and worked on the 2013 relaunches of “All My Children” and “One Life To Live.” Her books include romance novels, figure skating murder mysteries, and the historical family saga, “The Nesting Dolls,” from HarperCollins. Read more at: AlinaAdams.com
