King of Sloth (Kings of Sin, 4)

It should come as no surprise that a man who’d barely been there for me in life was equally absent in death.

Alberto Castillo, Colombia’s richest man, former CEO of the Castillo Group, and father of one, died at home at five minutes past three on Saturday afternoon.

I made it to his room just in time to witness his last heartbeat.

He never woke from his coma before he passed, and we never exchanged a proper goodbye.

If this were a movie, we’d have some dramatic heart-to-heart or big confrontation before he died. I would unload my grievances on him; he would confess his regrets to me. We would have a cathartic fight or make up. Either way, we’d have closure.

But this wasn’t a movie. It was real life, and sometimes, that meant loose ends didn’t get tied up.

In the wake of his death, I felt a strange mix of nothing and everything all at once. I was relieved that we no longer hung on tenterhooks, waiting for a final health verdict, but I couldn’t fully process that he was gone and never coming back. I despised the last-minute manipulation he’d pulled with my mother’s letter, but the overwhelming closeness I’d felt to her when I read her words was worth it.

Yet constraining that sea of complicated emotions was a layer of numbness I couldn’t shake no matter how hard I tried.

Top drawer of my desk.

Those were the last words my father had uttered to me, and I supposed it was fitting that our chapter ended with ties to my mother. Dead or alive, she was the bedrock of our relationship.

The pocket watch I found in his desk drawer burned a hole against my thigh.

“Do you think I’m a monster for not crying?” I stared at the scotch in my hand. It was midnight and I was in the kitchen, drinking my worries away, because what else would one do the night after their father died?

“No,” Sloane said simply. “People grieve in different ways.” She poured a glass of water and slid it toward me.

She’d stayed with me through the immediate aftermath of my father’s death, forcing me to eat and turning away my family members when they tried to accost me with questions about my inheritance.

Thankfully, she didn’t smother me with pity. I could always count on Sloane to be Sloane. Whenever I was drowning, she was my anchor in the storm.

Part of me was embarrassed to show her this side of me—raw and exposed, tangled in the pieces of the mask I usually wore for the world. It was easy being Xavier Castillo, the billionaire heir and party boy; it was torturous being Xavier Castillo, the man and disappointment. The one with a fucked-up past and uncertain future, who had plenty of friends yet no one to lean on.

Sloane was the closest thing I had to a support system, and she didn’t even like me. But she was here, I wanted her here, and that was more than I could say for anyone else in my life.

She examined me, her face softer than usual. “But I might be the wrong person to ask about grief. I can’t…” A beat of hesitation. “I can’t cry.”

That surprised me enough to shake off some of my self-loathing. “Figuratively?”

“Literally.” She rubbed her thumb across the beads of her friendship bracelet as if debating whether to elaborate.

“I can cry if I’m in pain,” she finally said. “But I’ve never cried out of sadness. I’ve been that way since I was young. I didn’t cry when our family cat died or when my favorite grandmother passed. I didn’t shed a single tear when my fiancé—” She stopped abruptly, her face darkening for a split second before her composure slid back into place with a near-audible clank. “Anyway, you’re not the only one who’s felt like a monster for not crying when you should.”

She grabbed the bottle of scotch from the counter and poured some into a crystal tumbler. It was her third of the evening.

Fiancé. There were rumors she’d been engaged years ago, but no one could confirm it—until now. Sloane was notoriously private about her personal life, and it helped that she’d been living in London at the time, away from the vicious Manhattan gossip machine.

I watched in silence as she sipped her drink.

Perfect hair. Perfect clothes. Perfect skin. She was the picture of flawlessness, but I was starting to see the cracks beneath her polished façade.

Instead of detracting from her beauty, they added to it.

They made her more real, like she wasn’t an elusive dream that would slip through my fingers if I tried to touch her.

“We seem to have more and more in common,” I drawled. Shitty fathers. Commitment issues. Major need of therapy.

Who said adults couldn’t bond over trauma?

Sloane must’ve expected me to pry about her fiancé because her shoulders visibly relaxed when I lifted my glass instead.

“To monsters.”

A soft gleam brightened her eyes, and she raised her glass in turn. “To monsters.”

We drank in silence. The house was dark, the clock ticked toward one, and an army of reporters gathered outside the gates, waiting to turn my father’s death into a media circus.

But that was a problem for the morning. For now, I basked in the warmth of my drink and Sloane’s presence.

She wasn’t a friend or family, and on a bad day, she made the Titanic iceberg look like a tropical paradise. And yet, despite all that, there was no one else I would rather spend tonight with.

Saturday marked my last gasp of breath before the tsunami of press and paperwork descended.

The next few days blew by in a whirlwind of funeral arrangements (extravagant), media requests (incessant but unanswered save for the press statement Sloane had crafted), and legalese (complicated and headache-inducing).

My father had left meticulous directions for his funeral, so all we had to do was execute them.

His will was an entirely different matter.

The Tuesday after his passing, I gathered in the library along with my family, Eduardo, Sloane, and Santos, our estate lawyer.

The reading of the will started off as expected.

Tía Lupe received the vacation house in Uruguay, Tío Esteban received my father’s rare car collection, so on and so forth.

Then it got to me, and apparently, my father had made a lastminute change to the terms of my inheritance.

Murmurs rippled through the room at the news, and I straightened when Santos started reading the conditions.

“To my son Xavier, I bequeath all remaining fixed and liquid assets, totaling seven point nine billion dollars, provided he assumes the chief executive officer position before the day of his thirtieth birthday and serves the role for a minimum of five consecutive years thereafter. The company must turn a profit in each of those five years, and he must fulfill the chief executive officer position to the best of his abilities as determined by a preselected committee every six months, starting from his official first day as CEO. Should he not meet the above terms, all remaining fixed and liquid assets shall be distributed to charity according to the terms below.”

The room erupted before Santos read the next paragraph. “All assets to charity?” Tía Lupe screeched. “I’m his sister, and I get a measly vacation home while charity gets eight billion dollars?”

“You must’ve read that wrong. There’s no way Alberto would do that…”

“Xavier as CEO? Does he want to run the company into the ground?”

“This is outrageous! I’m calling my own lawyers…”

Spanish shouts and curses ricocheted off the walls like bullets as my family devolved into chaos.

Throughout it all, Eduardo, Sloane, and I were the only ones who didn’t utter a word. They sat on either side of me, Eduardo’s face pensive, Sloane’s impassive. Across the room, Santos maintained a neutral expression as he waited for the indignation to die down.

The first line of my inheritance clause rang in my head.

I bequeath all remaining fixed and liquid assets, totaling seven point nine billion dollars, provided he assumes the chief executive officer position…before the day of his thirtieth birthday.

My thirtieth birthday was in six months. Of course, my father knew that; trust the bastard to force my hand even in death.

The shouting matches around me retreated before an onslaught of memories.

My last conversation with him. The pocket watch. The letter.

The drum of my heartbeats chased away the silence as I stared at my mother’s familiar handwriting. She’d loved calligraphy and insisted I learn cursive, even though no one used it much anymore.

I used to sit next to her as she hand wrote thank-you cards and birthday greetings and get-well-soon wishes, tracing the loops and swirls on my own piece of paper.

Some people found her handwriting difficult to read, but I parsed it easily.

Dear Xavier,

I met you for the first time yesterday.

I’d imagined the moment many times, but no amount of imagination could’ve prepared me for holding you in my arms. For seeing you stare up at me, then falling asleep together because we’re both exhausted, and hearing you laugh as you grabbed my fingers on our way out of the hospital.

You’re only two days old at the time of this writing, so tiny I can almost fit you into the palm of my hand. But a parent’s best gift is watching their child grow up, and I can’t wait for the journey ahead.

I can’t wait to see you off to your first day of school. I’ll probably (definitely) cry, but they’ll be happy tears because you’ll be starting a new chapter of your life.

I can’t wait to teach you how to swim and ride a bike, to give you advice about girls, and to see you fall in love for the first time.

I can’t wait to watch you discover your passions, whether it’s music, sports, business, or anything else you want to do. (Don’t tell your father, but I’m rooting for art.) However, I’ll be happy with anything you choose, and I mean that from the bottom of my heart. The world is big enough for all of our dreams.

There’s potential in each and every one of us, and I hope you fulfill yours to the point of happiness.

Your father says I’m getting ahead of myself because you’re so young, but by the time you read this, you’ll have turned twenty-one. Old enough to attend college, drive a car, and travel on your own. My heart hurts just thinking about it, not because I’m sad, but because I’m so excited for you to experience my favorite parts of the world and to find your own. (And if you can’t decide where to go, choose a spot close to the beach. Trust me. The water heals us in ways we can’t comprehend.)

I can’t say for certain what the future will hold, but at the risk of sounding like a cheesy motivational poster, know this: life ebbs and flows, and there’s always room for change. Humans have the capacity for growth until they leave this earth, so never feel like it’s too late for you to take another road if you’re unhappy with the one you’re traveling.

No matter which road you take, I’m proud of you. I hope you are too.

Be proud of the person you’ve become and the person you’ll grow into. Even though you’ve just arrived in the world, I know you’ll make it a better place.

You’re my greatest joy, and you always will be.

Love always,

Mom

P.S. I left you a special gift. The pocket watch has been handed down through generations in my family, and it’s time I passed it on to you. I hope you cherish it as much as I did.

Something dripped onto the paper, smudging the words. Tears. The first I’d shed since I arrived.

I retrieved the pocket watch from the drawer with a trembling hand and opened it. It was so old the numbers had faded, but the message engraved inside remained legible.

The greatest gift we have is time. Use it wisely.

“Xavier? Xavier!”

The present rushed back in a tidal wave of noise.

I blinked away the memories fogging my brain as Tía Lupe’s face came into focus. Not the first person I wanted to see under any circumstance.

“Well?” she demanded. “What do you have to say about this will? It’s utterly—”

“Tía? Shut the hell up.”

I thought I saw Sloane smirk out of the corner of my eye as Tía Lupe gasped. Eduardo made a strange noise that fell somewhere between a laugh and a cough.

I tuned out my aunt’s splutters and focused on Santos.

The echoes of my mother’s letter lived in my heart like a blade lodged between my ribs, but I couldn’t afford to dwell on the past right now.

The greatest gift we have is time. Use it wisely.

“Can you repeat the condition of the will in plain terms?” I asked calmly. I understood what it meant, but I wanted to be sure.

The room quieted as everyone waited for Santos’s response.

He met my gaze with an unflinching one of his own. “It means if you don’t assume the CEO position by your next birthday, you will lose every cent of your inheritance.”

A collective shudder swept through the library.

My family didn’t want me inheriting the billions because I didn’t “deserve it” (fair enough, though that was like the pot calling the kettle black), but they would rather die than see all that money flow outside the family.

“That’s what I thought.” My hand curled around the arm of my chair. “Who are the preselected committee members my father mentioned?”

“Ah, yes.” Santos adjusted his glasses and read from the will again. “The committee will consist of the following five members: Eduardo Aguilar…” Expected. “Martin Herrera…” Tía Lupe’s husband. Less expected, but he was the fairest and most levelheaded person in my family. “Mariana Acevedo…” Chairwoman of the Castillo Group’s board. “Dante Russo…” Wait. What the fuck? “And Sloane Kensington.”

Pin-drop silence followed his proclamation.

Then, as one, every head in the room swiveled toward Sloane. She sat ramrod straight, her face pale. For the first time since I’d met her, she resembled a deer caught in headlights.

Five people were in charge of my family fortune’s fate, and my publicist was one of them.

Once again: What the fuck?