Not a week after the funeral, Sissy and I sat in a small office with our family attorney, Mr. Rochester.
The slender, balding man pushed his glasses up on his nose as he continued to read from my father’s will.
As our parents’ only children, everything would be left to us. The mansion in Chicago, and the three homes in DC, New York, and California were now ours.
There was a trust fund of $20 million, plus valuable shares of company stock that I was to inherit on my thirty-fourth birthday, which was just forty days away. It was the same fund Sissy would inherit when she turned thirty-four in two years.
All this we had always known, but not until that moment was I informed of the single stipulation.
Mr. Rochester looked over his glasses at me, cleared his throat, and then continued reading. “In order for you to take possession of your inheritance, you, Cobi Aiden Winslow, must be lawfully married to a woman, by your thirty-fourth birthday, for a period of at least two years. On the date of your wedding, you will receive one hundred percent of your shares and twenty-five percent of your monetary inheritance. Another twenty-five percent will be given to you on your one-year anniversary, and the remainder will be given on the second-year anniversary.”
Sissy grabbed my hand tight. “What is this? There must be some mistake,” she said.
“I can’t believe him,” I said. “He could never accept me when he was alive, now he’s trying to force me to be who he wants from the grave. Fine. If he wants to hold on to his money that badly, I don’t need it. He can keep it.”
“No, Cobi, Daddy wants you to have it, otherwise he wouldn’t have left it in the will,” Sissy said, still holding my hand. She turned to Mr. Rochester. “I’m sure there’s some way around this.”
“I’m afraid there isn’t,” Mr. Rochester said.
“Like I said, I don’t care,” I spat at Mr. Rochester. I walked out the door and paced down the hallway. I heard the door open and close. A moment later, Sissy was standing beside me.
My father adopted a son because he wanted someone to take over the family business when he stepped down. He told me as much, and I remember him always talking about it, what I needed to know for when that fateful day finally came. But the day in the garage came first, and all the grooming stopped then. Sissy then became the person who would succeed him. Funny thing is, she should’ve been the one from the beginning.
She was a whiz with numbers and had a mind like a supercomputer. She earned both an MBA and a law degree from the University of Chicago, where she graduated top of her class. She approached the most daunting situations with optimism and the tactical mind of a five-star general.
“We’re going to get your trust, Cobi,” Sissy said, taking me by the shoulders.
“Whatever you say. It’s not like I earned it. If Dad didn’t want me to—”
“Cobi, stop it! He wanted you to have it, so you’re entitled.”
“Okay. So what do we do now?”
“We think about whatever we have to do to get it. And I mean whatever. It’s that important.”
“No. It’s not that important. I make enough money to—”
“This is not just about you, Cobi,” Sissy said. She lowered her voice. “Do you want the company to stay in our family?”
“Of course, I do. It always has and it always will.”
“What if we lose it? You know the company hasn’t been doing very well. There have been other companies interested in the success we’ve had in the past, in the millions of people who buy our products.”
“I know, but I thought we were getting that under control. We are getting—”
“We could lose it,” Sissy said, narrowing her eyes at me, tightening her grip on my shoulders. “Do you hear me? If things aren’t played perfectly, we could lose Winslow Products. So that money, it might not be a lifesaver for you, but those shares, Cobi, we have to get those shares, because they might play a major role in whether or not we keep Winslow Products. Do you understand?”
I looked sadly at my sister. “Yes, I understand.”