Free The Red Hot Fix by T. E. Woods Page A

is the word Reinhart would use. He seems to think I’m moving too fast.”
    “You’ve been running Rainy Day for over a year,” she said. “Would a leader care what Reinhart thinks?”
    Pierce fantasized about making a drinking game out of his visits to his mother. A shot thrown back for every veiled insult to his masculinity. A typical evening would have him drunk before salad was served. “It’s Bird’s company, Mother. It’s in my best interests to care what he thinks.”
    “Must you insist on calling him that ridiculous nickname?” Pierce imagined another drink slammed down. “The time for childish in-jokes is long past.”
    He breathed in deep and slow. His mind floated back to when he first met the large man with the intimidating presence who would become his stepfather. Raised in the company of hismother, grandmother, housekeepers, and cooks, Pierce had never before encountered such primal masculine power. Reinhart knelt down on one knee, looked the six-year-old Pierce straight in the eye, and asked him if he could do with a game of catch before dinner. It was an invitation he’d longed for but never received from his seldom-present grandfather. After dinner, when his mother handed him over to his nanny and breezed out with the tall new man, Pierce hurried to the family library, found an English-German dictionary, and learned that
Vogel
meant “bird.” Eager to impress, he shared what he’d learned the next time he saw his mother’s beau. Pierce smiled at the memory of Reinhart’s booming laugh as he ruffled his hair. “Bird” became his preferred name for Reinhart from that moment.
    “Whatever I call him, the fact remains Reinhart can, at any time, step back in and take control.” He watched his mother work to scowl and wondered how many more times her surgeons would be able to stretch her thinning facial skin. “And might I add your comment sounds a bit like the pot calling the kettle.”
    “Another childhood rhyme, Pierce?”
    “You and I are in similar positions, Mother.” He savored a bite of cake. “You’re Reinhart’s employee with the Wings. We can imagine family equality all we want. We can even fancy ourselves to be masters of our impressive titles. But the truth is we go to work every day at jobs we enjoy because Reinhart lets us.”
    Ingrid drew herself to her full height and threw her shoulders back. “Reinhart Vogel is where he is today because my father,
your
grandfather, made him. It was Stinson money that started Rainy Day. Without its success, he couldn’t have purchased the team.”
    Pierce let his mind drift as his mother launched into a rant by now so familiar he could recite it word for word, albeit without the rancor his mother exhibited when she told the tale of a talented young finance graduate who’d taken his first job out of graduate school at Stinson Lumber. How he soared through the ranks thanks to the tutelage of Ingrid’s father. Reinhart was the head of the company’s international development office eight years later, when Ingrid was brought in to learn the industry. He swept her off her feet, married the boss’s daughter, and left the family business ten years later, wanting to make his own mark.
    “It was my fifty-thousand-dollar investment that seeded him for the Internet business. He’s done well over the years, I’ll give him that. But never forget it’s
your
family money that gave him the opportunity.”
    “Turning fifty thousand into four hundred million is a bit more than doing well.” He hated defending Reinhart to his mother as much as he hated defending his mother to Reinhart. “He paid back your investment and buys you a new Mercedes every year as thanks. The Wings he bought on his own.”
    “And he makes damned sure no one else owns one piece of either Rainy Day or theWings.”
    Pierce wondered how she packed so much venom into such a soft voice. “Can you blame him, Mother? Bird—excuse me,
Reinhart
—has told me several times