Kendra Wright is a journalist and single mother to a preteen son. Her high school sweetheart leaving her to raise her son alone, has left her with a caged heart, and a promise to never be with a man like that again.
Eli Carter, a photographer, run...
The drive to the apartment from Kyle's school was an uneasy one. I was proud of what I did for my friend, but I was sure I'd be getting a call from my family soon. My sister would be upset that I was flaunting the name, my mother would want to know who I helped and why. My father, well he'd be calling to find out if this sudden use of the name meant I had made my decision in his favor.
The decision.
That damn thing was a sword hanging over my head.
I didn't like thinking about it, but I knew I should. Time was running out. I couldn't be Eli Carter forever. Soon, I would have to be who I really was.
I was Elijah Sabastian Grant, the only son of multimillionaire Robert William Grant and expected heir of Grant Inc., The Grant Foundation and anything else with that God-forsaken 'G' logo on it.
I wanted to blame my father for the predicament that I was now in. But this wasn't on him. This was because of two love-struck teenagers who made a decision seventy five years ago that changed the Grant legacy forever. Leave it to teenagers to always screw things up.
What exactly did these dummies do? Well, I'd have to go way back in time to when it all started.
The Grants were a noble family in the United Kingdom. Like many people back in the 1600s, they moved to America to start their new life in the new world. They, like many of the people in those days, also owned slaves. They eventually became very wealthy plantation owners and were known for their hard work and particularly nasty treatment of their slaves.
Even though my grandfather, James Grant, was born almost half a century after slavery was abolished, he and his siblings were taught to mistreat and have that same nasty attitude towards the descendants of those African slaves. But my grandfather was a man of his own thoughts and views, though he was also a coward when it came to sharing them. During the day, he pretended to be as brute and racist as his father. At night, he snuck out to be with the black girl he had fallen in love with, my grandmother Faith.
Faith's father worked for the Grants, and the two met when she came to visit him on the job. They were smitten with each other from that day forward. The two young lovebirds promised each other that they would always be together, even though the law was against it. My father had told me and my sister stories of how my grandfather would purposely sabotage the meetings set up for him with other women so that they wouldn't like him. He thought if he built up a nasty enough reputation with women, none of them would want to be with him, and he would be free to be with my grandmother.
His father eventually found out and forbade him from seeing Faith. Something about not wanting the n-word blood in his bloodline. Like myself, my grandfather was faced with a decision. He could choose the woman he loved and be disowned by his family, or choose his family and forget all about Faith.
At first, he had chosen his family, due to the pressure from his parents. He even married the woman his parents had picked out for him. But his sprung self was back on my grandmother's doorstep the day after he got married. That secret affair went on until the day he died.
Growing up, my father didn't understand why his dad never lived with them or why, when he visited, he stayed for a whole month. He certainly didn't understand why he couldn't tell his friends who his father was. But their living conditions didn't affect the relationship they had. For an entire month, the two would be like velcro, you couldn't see one without the other.
Things changed when at fourteen, my father found out the truth. His father didn't live with them because he had another family. He couldn't visit for long because he had lied to his family, telling them that it was a business trip. No one could know who his father was because, according to the world, Robert Grant didn't exist. He hated his father for cheating on his wife and keeping him a secret. He hated his mother for sleeping with a married man. Though, my sassy grandmother would always argue that she had him first. But all of that didn't change the visits. James kept showing up, no matter how much my father fought it. Throughout their troubling relationship, there was something his father always said. "One day, you'll be the Grant you were destined to be."
But the drama didn't end there for the family. See, the Grants saw themselves as a Monarchy, and the family fortune as the crown. The "crown" always went to the firstborn child. Now imagine James' wife and their son, upon his death, finding out from the lawyer that there was an older son.
A black son.
My father was only twenty-two and newly married when he found out he was getting his father's fortune. For the first time, his father's words made sense. When the day came, my father took on the challenge, making the Grant name even more popular than it was before and removing that infamous nasty reputation.
My grandfather's other son, Charles, was not happy with what he got and had been trying for years to get his hands on what he believed was rightfully his. His latest stunt involved me.
My father is dying from prostate cancer, which meant it would soon be time for the family fortune to be passed on once again. It was always my older sister's job to take over. She had been groomed by my father for it. As the little brother, I was to be on the company's board, and I was cool with that. My father wanted me to start working at one of the family businesses, but I turned it down. Photography was my passion, and that was all I was planning to stick with. That was a plan I made very clear to people in my family. A plan that would come back to bite me in the ass.
My uncle's son appeared one day, saying that the family fortune could only go to someone of the Grant bloodline. This wouldn't have been a problem if my sister wasn't adopted. My parents struggled with having children when they got married. They eventually decided to adopt my sister. Years later, when my mother was forty, the miracle that is Eli was born.
At first, my father thought it was a joke, but when old family documents were read, it was painstakingly clear. My sister wasn't part of the Grant bloodline, which meant she had no right to the money.
And what did that mean for me? Technically, I was the firstborn. So the money and everything attached to it was all meant for me.
This wasn't what I wanted for my life, and my uncle knew it. If I chose to decline, the money, the business and everything else would go to him.
The pressure was now all on me. It was all up to me to keep the family fortune in my immediate family. Taking this on would mean giving up my photography career and any little control I had over my life. I wasn't ready to be done with the only thing that was making me happy. But I also didn't want to disappoint my family, especially my father. He had worked so hard to change what the Grant name meant to people. I couldn't let my uncle and his son run that all to the ground.
Just like my old cheating pretend racist grandfather, I was faced with a decision to choose between a love and my family. I hope that, unlike him, I make the right decision in the end.
As I drove into the apartment parking lot, I heard my cell phone ringing. I pulled it out of my pocket and saw my sister's name and number.
"Here we go," I said to myself before answering
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And there you have it. I'm so sorry for taking forever to post this new chapter, got a little caught up in the Christmas work. Plus I had to rewrite and edit this whole chapter. I hope that you guys like it. Don't forget to vote and leave a comment.
