Carlton

I walked into the room, my twin brother Alec right on my heel. The rest of the board members were already waiting, since we were actually late, but no one said a thing about it.

They all stood up as we joined them and took our positions. I took the seat at the head of the table and Al—ec took the seat to my right. Between us and the other attendees of this board meeting were several empty chairs, and I couldn't help picturing a canyon separating us from them. The move was definitely deliberate.

It was more than enough to know they weren't happy. They weren't expecting us to begin with, Dad was supposed to be sitting at this board meeting, but af—ter he'd suffered a heart attack about a week ago, we had taken over for him, for now. He was hardly in the best of health to be handling the company, but since my brother and I were new to the company, we weren't trusted. It was an unfortunate turn of events, but we all had to adjust to it at our own pace.

Somehow, we had to get the board, the investors, and the rest of the company to put their trust in us. Dad was supposed to retire and the handover wasn't going to be quite so immediate. I would have had time to prepare myself, as would my brother, and it wouldn't be as much of a shock. If we didn't succeed, we could cost Dad his company. Already stocks had fallen slightly because the CEO fell ill. Though it fell, it was less than expected, so we had to do a good job if we didn't want it to plummet.

It was somewhat difficult, navigating everything between the two of us, especially when it happened on such short notice, but we did our best.

"My brother and I apologize for arriving late," I said, facing the rest of the room. "We are both up to date with our father's projects, so we're ready to go ahead with the meeting. If you would please begin."

With a nod of my head, I sat down, and tried to look like I knew what I was doing, like I belonged in the chair I'd taken. Though Alec and I were twins, I was older by nearly an hour, so the position was mine while dad was out of commission, even when neither of us wanted it. My brother sat stone faced beside me, not once looking at me, and I knew he resented this.

Honestly, so did I. The only reason I had ap—peared, was because I was genuinely worried for my fa—ther, but my life couldn't be further from put together if I tried, and I was not in the best frame of mind to be tak—ing over a million—dollar worth company.

If only life would give me some breaks. At this point, I thought I was entitled to several.

"…The point of this meeting was to discuss the latest contract your father discussed with us for the company," one of the board members was saying. "The assumption is that he collapsed before he was able to handle the contract signing."

Alec nodded. "This is true, but I've been looking into it personally. A contract was already written up when my father met with the interested parties, all that's left is to discuss the terms and come to an agreement. The other parties have agreed to go ahead with the sign—ing, as long as we can come to a collective agreement."

He pulled out some papers from the folder he'd come in with and distributed the sheets to the other members of the table, having to stand up to hand them over. I was mostly silent as I watched over the proceed—ings, as Alec and I had talked at length about this. He'd been adamant about handling this contract on his own, and because I couldn't be bothered, I left him to his own devices. It wasn't as if he required supervision, anyway, and if I pushed the issue, it would just be annoying and more drawn out than necessary for the both of us.