She Was Never Just the Billionaire’s Wife (Natasha and Chase) novel Chapter 145

(Elias)

I have been awake since four.

This is not unusual.

I’ve been waking up at four for sixty years.

My wife, may God rest her, used to say that I woke at four because I was afraid the world was going to do something interesting without me.

She was probably right.

She was right about most things.

Today the world has, in fact, done something interesting without me.

It has done it on the internet, where I don’t go, but my assistant Brenda visits on my behalf every morning and prepares me a printed summary.

I am eighty-one years old and I don’t propose to learn what a hashtag is at this point in the proceedings.

The summary is on my breakfast tray as it usually is.

I read it once, with my coffee.

Then I read it again, with my toast.

There’s a clip of my grandson on the internet.

I don’t need to watch it, Brenda's transcription is sufficient.

He insulted a young woman at the gala last night. Called her vapid, manufactured, and parasitic among other things.

These are not, strictly speaking, untrue words.

Brenda has also done me a small file on the young woman.

She is, by the look of her output, vapid.

She is almost certainly manufactured, by which I mean cosmetically.

Whether she is parasitic is a matter of opinion, but I have a feeling she would survive a long winter on her own resources, which is more than I can say for most of my grandson's circle.

The accuracy of the words is not the issue.

The issue is that my grandson said them in a voice loud enough to be heard at the next table over, at an event that has my company name on the program.

An event whose entire purpose is to raise money for sick children.

The issue is that the public face of Warren Global is currently being described, in print, as unhinged.

I built that company over fifty-three years.

Kept it afloat through three recessions and one near-fatal decision in 1987.

I built it because I wanted my son to inherit something.

My son is in the ground.

The thing I built has been, since he was far too young, my grandson's responsibility to carry.

I have stood very patiently to one side while he has made it clear, in increments, that he does not want it the way he ought to.

I am not going to stand quietly any longer.

I finish my toast and instruct Brenda to call my driver.

I know Chase is going to be at the estate.

The housekeeper lets me in.

She tells me, in the careful voice she uses for things she does not want to be involved in, that Chase is in the study and has not slept.

I walk to the study.

He’s still wearing his tuxedo and there’s a glass of water on the side table.

He looks like a man who’s been in the chair for some hours and has not, mercifully, decided to do himself the additional disservice of getting drunk.

"Grandfather."

"Don't get up."

I take the chair across from him and look at him for a long moment.

The boy in front of me is thirty years old and looks fifteen.

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