Page 1 of The Price of Power
Chapter One
OLIVIA
Any other time, any other situation, and I would have died to stay in a hotel room like this one.
Stylish and sophisticated, the Ritz was the definition of elegance with its pristine white bedding and floor-to-ceiling draperies. A dozen stories up, looking out over the lush, green oasis of Central Park in the middle of Manhattan, a night in a place like this should have been a dream come true.
Instead, it was turning out to be a nightmare.
I had no idea how much the room cost per night, but even being the most modest the hotel offered, I still knew I couldn’t afford it. Even worse, now I knew my family—the ones who had promised to pay the bill if I’d agree to fly out to New York and save their butts this one last time—couldn’t afford it either.
I might not be rich, but after spending the entire flight pouring over their ledgers, I was aware of just how badly off they were. Not just broke but so deep in debt that it was hard to see a clear path out.
No wonder they needed my help.
And maybe if they had asked me for it a year ago, I could have done something. But now…
Well, now all I could do was stare out the window and sigh in frustration as I tried to figure out how the hell I was going to pull a miracle out of my hat.
I wasn’t likely to get any help. That much was clear.
My mother stopped picking up the phone the minute she sent me the financial files to download this morning. My brother, too. Everyone in the family had.
No surprise there.
My family’s reaction to bad news had always been to bury their heads in the sand, so chances were good that everyone from my parents to my cousins had their phones turned off. Still, I couldn’t help trying.
Grabbing my phone off the window sill, I dialed my brother.
He was the one my parents had chosen to take over the family business, after all. You would think he’d be the most responsible of all of us. Sadly, that wasn’t the case, and my call went directly to voicemail without a single ring.
This is Theo Collins. You know what to do.
Not exactly the most professional message for the man who now ran the liquor distribution company that our great-grandfather had founded right after prohibition ended. The business might’ve been small compared to the major conglomerates that ran the industry, but my family had managed to keep it alive for four generations.
Of course, all that changed once the company landed in Theo’s hands.
I wish I could say I was surprised, but the truth was I’d seen this coming a mile away.
Theo managed to take our family’s aversion to responsibility to new heights. Always looking for the easy way out, no matter what he did, he only put in enough effort to coast to the finish line.
Anyone else would have been a better choice to take over the reins of the company…like maybe the daughter who had graduated at the top of her class with a degree in economics.
But in the end, Theo had the only two qualifications my parents cared about: first, he was a man, and second, he was my parents’ favorite.
While I’d had three years to process the disappointment of being passed over, apparently I was still holding on to a good chunk of resentment—especially when they still expected me to drop everything to swoop in and clean up their messes.
When the beep sounded, I had a hard time holding back my true feelings.
“Theo, it’s Olivia.”
Olivia, not Liv.
Only the people I liked got to call me Liv. My full name, on the other hand, was for professional purposes and people who pissed me off. Right now, my brother checked both of those boxes.
“I know everyone is worried that I’m calling with bad news.” Because I was. “But I need you—or anyone—to call me back.”
Honestly, I didn’t even know if they were listening to my voicemails at all. If past behavior was any indication, they weren’t. And even if they were, what I was about to say next would only make them pull the covers even higher over their heads.