The tie to the past, perhaps. A fantasy of a future, maybe.

The massive house that she and her father now inhabited by themselves—except when Winn came to visit—was twenty-five thousand square feet of historic, upkeep-intensive grandeur, all the antiques in it passed down from generation to generation, the art museum-quality, the carpets from Persia except for when they’d been handmade in France. It was a resplendent sanctuary where brass railings and gold-leafed fixtures glowed from countless polishings, and hanging crystal twinkled from the ceilings and on the walls, and wood well-mellowed from time’s passage offered warmth sure as a banked fire.

But it was a lonely place.

The sound of her stilettos was muffled as she had been taught how to walk properly, the quiet rhythm of her footsteps echoing in the lovely emptiness as she proceeded to the front of the house, passing by sitting rooms and libraries, parlors and powder rooms. Nothing was out of place, no clutter to be found, everything cleaned with reverent hands, no lint or dust anywhere.

The doors to her father’s study were opened, and he looked up from his desk. “There she is.”

His hands went to grip his chair arms out of a reflex born from always rising to his feet whenever a woman entered a room or left it. But it was an impotent gesture, his strength no longer there, the sad impulse that he couldn’t follow through on something she ignored with determination.

“Are you going in now, then?” he said as he dropped his hands into his lap.

“We’re going in.” She went around and kissed him on the cheek. “Let’s go. Finance Committee starts in forty-five minutes.”

Reynolds Winn Wilshire Symthe, IV, nodded at the bound book on the corner of the desk. “I read the materials. Things are doing well.”

“We’re a little soft in South America. I think we need to—”

“Sutton. Sit down, please.”

With a frown, she took a seat across from him, linking her ankles under the chair and arranging her suit. As usual, she was dressed in Armani, the peach color one of her father’s favorites on her.

“Is there something wrong?”

“It’s time to announce things.”

As he said the words she had been dreading, her heart stopped.

Later, she would remember every single thing about where the pair of them sat facing each other in the study … and how handsome he was with his full head of white hair and his perfectly pressed, pin-striped suit … and how her hands, which were just like his, had knotted together in her lap.

“No,” she said flatly. “It is not.”

As Reynolds went to extend his arm toward her, his palm flapped across the leather blotter, and for a moment, all Sutton wanted to do was scream. Instead, she swallowed the emotion and met his attempt to connect them halfway, leaning over the great expanse of his desk, messing up the piles of papers.

“My darling.” He smiled at her. “How proud am I of you.”

“Stop it.” She made a show of turning her wrist and looking at her gold watch. “And we have to go now so we can meet with Connor before we start—”

“I’ve already told Connor, Lakshmi and James. The press release will be issued to the Times and 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.